In a short time the mill, rebuilt with sound timbers and strong machinery, was going round as merrily as ever, and grinding as much if not more grist than it did in former days. People had wondered at the change in Sam Green; they wondered still more at the change in his master,—once so sullen and ill-tempered,—now so gentle and kind and obliging. The change in him was even greater than in the mill itself.
It is easy enough to rebuild a house: no human power can change a man’s heart, as Mark Page’s had been changed.
Story 1—Chapter 9.
Farmer Grey, as he sat in his large house by himself, often felt sad and lonely. He had lost his wife when young; she had had no children, and he had not married again. His nephew, James, was his only near relative; and he found, whenever he thought of the young man, that, in spite of his faults, he loved him more than he had supposed. For a long time he had not heard from him; and, as several bloody battles had of late been fought in India, he began to fear that he might have been among the killed, and that no one had known his address to write and tell him. Still, Farmer Grey was not a man to sit by himself and brood over his sorrow. He went about as usual, doing all the good he could, not only in his own village but in the neighbourhood; and he never heard of a poor person falling sick or getting into trouble, whom he did not visit and relieve as far as he was able. He thought, too, more of poor Mary Page than of himself. He knew how much she loved James, and that she would spend the best days of her youth waiting for him to come back, as he was sure that she would never marry anybody else. Meantime, though Mary was often sad, still she believed that James was alive, and that he would some day come back to her. She often blamed herself for thinking so much of him, while the fate of her unhappy brother was so uncertain. It was surely through God’s kindness that she never learned what his fate had been.
Mary’s home, in many ways, was far happier than it had ever before been. She soon saw the change in her father, and it did her heart good. Instead of sitting gloomily by himself when he came in from work, or, as he used, reading some bad paper opposed to religion and government, his great pleasure was to listen to her reading the Bible, or to talk with her on religious subjects.
Whilst Mary Page was, one evening, sitting at the window of the parlour of the new mill-house, she saw a dark-bearded soldier-like man looking up at the house, as if surprised at its appearance. The stranger passed through the wicket; Mary could sit quiet no longer. She rose and opened the front door: “James, James, is it you?” she cried out, as if yet fearful that she might be mistaken.
“Yes, Mary, I am James, but not the James who went away in disgrace a few years back,” he said, when she had led him into the parlour. “But tell me, do you forgive me? Does my uncle forgive me?”
“Oh, yes; yes—all is forgiven, long, long ago. It will give your kind uncle a new life, to see you back safe and well.”