“What can that be?” asked Sam.
“That He might draw you to Himself,” said Farmer Grey. “Would you wish to go where Paul is?”
“Ay, that I would, sir,” said Sam, in an eager tone.
“Then, my friend, you must try to become like a little child, as Tiny Paul was, and be like him,” said the farmer.
“I’ll try, I’ll try,” answered Sam. “But how am I to do it, sir? I feel very weak and foolish and bad; I don’t know even how I can try.”
“Pray that God will send His Holy Spirit to help you. Trust to Him, and He will not fail you.”
Much more Farmer Grey said in the same style. He came day after day to see Sam. Sam, in the course of time, became a changed man. He not only no longer grumbled and growled, and spoke ill of his neighbours, but he was cheerful and contented, and seemed ready to be kind and do good to all he met. When he got his leg strong, he went back to his work at the mill, and Mark used to say that Sam was twice the man he used to be, and that much more grist was brought to the mill than when he was, as once, crabbed and sour to all who came near him.
Still Sam was often sad; but it was not about Tiny Paul. It was when he thought of Ben Page, the miller’s son. “Ah,” he thought, “how often and often, when he was a boy, I said things to him, and in his hearing, which must have done him harm. I might have led him right, and I led him wrong. Truly my brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”