I flew to the drawers and opened them, and began to put the spy-glass together. Suddenly he cried out again,—
"Oh, here's where the fault was! What right had I ever to marry the child, not loving her? I bound her! I crushed her! I stifled her! If she lives, it is my sin; if she dies, I murder her!"
He hid his face, as he spoke, so that his voice came thick, and great choking groans rent their way up from his heart.
All at once, as I looked up, there stood mother, in her long white gown, beside the bed, and bending over and taking Dan's hot head in her two hands.
"Behold, He cometh with clouds!" she whispered.
It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of hands,—perhaps every one feels just so about their mother,—but only her touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it's in the heart or the head.
"Oh, Aunt Rhody," said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted eyes, "can't you help me?"
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," said mother.
"There's no help, there!" called Dan. "There's no God there! He wouldn't have let a little child run into her damnation!"
"Hush, hush, Dan!" murmured mother. "Faith never can have been at sea in such a night as this, and not have felt God's hand snatching her out of sin. If she lives, she's a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation."