“The sun has been down, some time,” he said at last, “and the bright colors have all faded out of the sky. It looks pretty sober over there now.”
Walter felt, as the sky looked, “sober.” The distant blue hill had quickly turned to a dark, undefined mass of shadow. The hill near by went behind a veil. Soon, the fields shrank out of sight, like green scrolls rolled up and taken away. Walter rose and left the room. He did not leave his thoughts behind. Those went with him. For several days, he was thinking upon that subject: “What am I living for?” The longer he thought, the more deficient seemed his life. There came another night when he bowed his head in prayer as never before. Feeling his unworthiness, how poor and mean his life had been, he asked God to forgive him. Feeling that his life had been without a strong, definite, acceptable purpose, he asked God to take him, and help him live for the highest ends. And there rose up before him Jesus Christ, as the expression of God’s readiness to forgive a past, deficient life, sincerely regretted; Jesus Christ, as the perfect, divine Guide by which to direct all our lives in the future; Jesus Christ, his Saviour from sin. A letter arrived for the Plymptons one day, and it read thus:
“Dear Father and Mother: I suppose you will be surprised to get this, but I wanted to tell you of something that has interested me and I know will interest you. I have made up my mind, God helping me, to be a different person. I hope I haven’t been what people call a bad boy, but still, I might have been better, and thought more of your interests, and tried hard to do my duty toward God. You will forgive me for all my thoughtlessness, won’t you? And you will pray for me, please, won’t you? Your affectionate son,
“Walter.”
“The dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Plympton. “Yes, father and I will pray for you, won’t we?”
Mr. Plympton could only nod assent, for the tears filled his eyes. Indeed there were two people in that house who often looked at one another with red eyes that day, but it was the redness that goes with happy hearts, with the bright hopes of a morning sky, and not the glare of a sad fire that destroys our dearest interests.
It may have been two weeks after the arrival of the above letter, that another came.
“Here is a letter from your brother Boardman,” said Mr. Plympton, entering the kitchen, where his wife was cooking her weekly batch of pies. “Open it, please, and see what he says.”
Mrs. Plympton wiped carefully her floury hands, adjusted her spectacles, and sitting down by a window where the light streamed in across the hollyhocks and sunflowers in the yard, began to read: