UNCLE DANIEL'S BLESSING.
"I hope I will, an' then I'll feel as if I had kinder paid for runnin' away. If Uncle Dan'l will only let me stay with him again, he may whip me every mornin', an' I won't open my head."
The boys were impatient to hear the story of Toby's travels, but he refused to tell them, saying,
"I'll go home, an' if Uncle Dan'l forgives me for bein' so wicked, I'll set down this afternoon, an' tell you all you want to know about the circus."
Then, far more rapidly than he had run away from it, Toby ran toward the home which he had called his ever since he could remember, and his heart was full almost to bursting as he thought that perhaps he would be told that he had forfeited all claim to it, and that he could never more call it home again.
When he entered the old familiar sitting-room, Uncle Daniel was seated near the window alone, looking out wistfully, as Toby thought, across the fields of yellow waving grain.
Toby crept softly in, and going up to the old man he knelt down, and said, very humbly, and with his whole soul in the words, "Oh, Uncle Dan'l, if you'll only forgive me for bein' so wicked, an' runnin' away, an' let me stay here again—for it's all the home I ever had—I'll do everything you tell me to, an' never whisper in meetin' or do anything bad."
And then he waited for the words which would seal his fate. They were not long in coming.
"My poor boy," said Uncle Daniel, softly, as he stroked Toby's red, refractory hair, "my love for you was greater than I knew, and when you left me I cried aloud to the Lord as if it had been my own flesh and blood that had gone afar from me. Stay here, Toby, my son, and help to support this poor old body as it goes down into the dark valley of the shadow of death, and then, in the bright light of that glorious future, Uncle Daniel will wait to go with you into the presence of Him who is ever a father to the fatherless."
And in Uncle Daniel's kindly care we may safely leave Toby Tyler.