“All ours, and, thank God, the little flock is yet unbroken.”
The stranger averts his face. He is disturbed by emotions that it is impossible to conceal.
“Contentment is better than wealth,” he murmurs. “Oh that I had comprehended the truth.”
The words were not meant for others; but the utterance had been too distinct. They have reached the ears of Robert, who instantly recognises in the stranger his long-wandering, long-mourned brother.
“William!”
The stranger is on his feet. A moment or two the brothers stand gazing at each other, then tenderly embrace.
“William!”
How the stranger starts and trembles! He had not seen, in the quiet maiden, moving among and ministering to the children so unobtrusively, the one he had parted from years before—the one to whom he had been so false. But her voice has startled his ears with the familiar tones of yesterday.
“Ellen!” Here is an instant oblivion of all the intervening years. He has leaped back over the gulf, and stands now as he stood ere ambition and lust for gold lured him away from the side of his first and only love. It is well both for him and the faithful maiden that he cannot so forget the past as to take her in his arms and clasp her almost wildly to his heart. But for this, conscious shame would have betrayed his deeply-repented perfidy.
And here we leave them, reader. “Contentment is better than wealth.” So the worldling proved, after a bitter experience, which may you be spared! It is far better to realize a truth perceptibly, and thence make it a rule of action, than to prove its verity in a life of sharp agony. But how few are able to rise into such a realization!