"I am glad to find you have returned, Mr. Branford," he said, "and have sent for you to see if you would be willing to take another scholar in addition to my son. I have a widowed sister, who has now returned to Easton and will make my house her home. She has a daughter but two months younger than my boy, who is a cripple; was made so by the same accident that deformed her cousin. By the way, has Louis ever told you how he came to be deformed?"
"No, sir," Ray answered. "I have purposely avoided asking him anything about it. I knew he was extremely sensitive, and so have tried to draw his thoughts away from his deformity, and teach him to believe that the all important thing is a beauty of soul."
The merchant nodded approvingly, and then told the story of the accident: "It was the summer Louis was four years old. My sister was visiting us with her little girl, and my wife, who was living then, spent much time riding about the city and its suburbs with her and the two children. I had a new coachman, but he seemed to be thoroughly reliable, and I had no thought of danger, though I knew the horses were exceedingly high-spirited. It seems, however, that the fellow drank occasionally, and one morning, when my wife had ordered the carriage to be driven around to the door for a ride, she found that he was tipsy. At first she thought of postponing the drive. Would that she had done so! But it was the last opportunity my sister would have to ride out, as on the morrow she was to return home, and they had arranged an excursion to Weetunk Lake, five or six miles from here. Finally, much against her better judgment, my wife decided to go.
"They reached the lake, and were riding along a steep bank on the west side, when, for some unaccountable reason, the horses became frightened, and the driver in his drunken condition was unable to manage them, and down the bank they plunged. The carriage was overturned and crushed against some trees, while the liberated horses and driver were hurled down into the lake. They escaped serious injury, as also did my wife and sister. But both children were caught under the broken carriage; and, when removed, it was found that my boy's back was injured, and one limb of my sister's little girl was wrenched almost from its socket: one was deformed, the other crippled for life."
"Yet how merciful was it that their lives were spared!" remarked Ray.
"Merciful!" cried the merchant, with intense bitterness. "A strange mercy, it seems to me. Why, I am more merciful than that! If I could, I would not have allowed a defect, nor a pain to have come to my beautiful child."
"God never does wrong," replied Ray, simply; "and even inscrutable providences are overshadowed by mercy, though we may not see it."
"It would take a great deal to make me believe that," muttered the merchant.
Ray forgot that the gentleman before him was Mr. Grafton, the proudest and richest merchant in the city. He forgot for the moment that he was father to his pupil, and the very man who, if offended, could take from him the very means by which he hoped to pay his way in the academy. He forgot that he was perhaps trespassing upon the valuable time of the merchant, and that his own business with him was not yet completed. I say Ray forgot these things; perhaps it would be more correct to say that he lost sight of them for a time, because a more important thing had already taken possession of his mind. He remembered only that the man before him had questioned the wisdom and mercy of the God he loved and served. Had he a right to let this fact go unnoticed? Would he not, in a sense, be denying his Lord if he did? Whatever others may have thought under the circumstances, this was the view Ray took of the case; therefore, he said, politely, but firmly:
"I beg your pardon, sir, but may not God in his wisdom know better than we what is best for us; and may he not in his mercy, knowing just what is before us, send a light affliction upon us to save us from a more terrible evil that otherwise would have befallen us?"