THE GRANDFATHER."Forgive your enemies."
THE GRANDFATHER.
"Forgive your enemies."
Ourprayers to be aided in the fulfilment of the Divine commands are always heard by the Holy One who gave them.
Molly and her agitated father were still kneeling together at the entrance of the cave, when Molly felt herself suddenly raised from the ground, then closely embraced, and, upon looking up, she saw herself in the arms of her grandfather, who, in the most unexpected manner, had tottered to the rude door of the cavern.
"O'Neil," said the old man, while his voice trembled audibly, "O'Neil, I have heard your prayer. I read in your moistened eyes thatyou have conquered; and that no feelings of revenge or hatred towards the man who has been the cause of all your misfortunes still linger in your soul. I freely acknowledge that I have treated you in the most shameful manner. The eager thirst for gold, that, like a wicked demon, possessed my whole being, induced me to betray your father, whose firmest friend I once was; it enticed me on to wish to sell, for my pecuniary advantage, my own sweet child. Baffled in this inhuman desire, I drove her from her home, burdened with my curse. It was the love of gold which led me on to oppress and abuse my tenants; to torture and drive them, until I had put into my own coffers all which they had gained by the bitter sweat of their rugged brows. Nay, it was indeed sometimes from their very heart's blood that my purse was filled. Tortured by this insatiable thirst for money, and stimulated by my cruel agent, Wilkins, whom you, O'Neil, had several times reproved for his cruelty, and who consequently hated you, I drove you from your last shelter, without suffering myself to be moved by your manly prayers; forWilkins had already found another tenant, who was willing to pay a higher rent for your wretched hovel. Yet believe, upon my most solemn word, O'Neil, that I have never truly known you. A secret and gnawing anguish has tortured me for years, which I have in vain struggled to suppress. Dreaming and waking was the face of my poor daughter ever before me; sometimes pale and bloody, sometimes in the full brilliancy of her youthful bloom and beauty. O, if in that dreadful morning in which I drove you from your hut I had thrown a single glance upon the face of the maiden whom you callyourchild, and who is the perfect image ofmydaughter, now sleeping in the quiet grave, over which you have trained the long moss and planted the violet, certainly I must have granted your prayers, and all would have terminated in a different manner. But I do not regret it for my own sake. I bless my fate which led me to this desolate spot; I bless the fall from my horse, and the wound which I then received. If it had not been for these apparent misfortunes, I would never have found the ministeringangel whose sweet compassion was so infinitely grateful to me, when I lay almost without consciousness before her; whose heavenly goodness restored me to life, and has given me back a far greater gift than life,βthe possibility to love again!
"O'Neil," continued the old man, while from his eyes, which had long since almost forgotten to weep, two great tears rolled down and mingled with his tufted beard of snow;β"O'Neil," he cried, as if from the very depths of his heart, while he stretched out both his hands entreatingly towards the man whom he had so deeply injured;β"O'Neil, for the sake of this angel, forgive the hard father of your Kitty, whom you so ardently, so truly loved, and whose innocent life he filled with bitterness. O, forgive him, as she who has long since gone to her home in heaven forgave the cruel father, upon the very bed of death which he had prepared for her, for the cruel curses with which he had burdened her heart!"
Overpowered by a wild rush of alternating feelings, O'Neil fell upon the breast of the old man.
"My Kitty! my Kitty!" he cried, gazing up to heaven, while the gushing tears flooded his manly cheeks;β"my Kitty, if you had only lived to have seen this day! But be witness of all my struggling, yet deep feelings! Even as you prayed for and blessed your father with the last gasps of your breath, so will I also forgive him! Now," said he, heaving a deep sigh, and pressing the trembling hand of the old man to his heart, "now all is forgiven! all is forgotten!"
The two men clasped each other in a silent embrace, full of holy emotions. Repentance and forgiveness met, and understood each other!
Full of the highest happiness, Molly went to the cave to bring her sister out, who, tired of remaining so long alone, had already groped her way to the entrance.
"Come, Kitty, come," said she joyously, as she took the little one in her arms, "O, come quickly, for we have found our grandfather!"
"Our grandfather?" answered the astonished child; "you seem so rejoiced, Molly, that it must be a very pleasant thing to have found our grandfather!"
"O, very, very pleasant!" answered Molly, and then gave the little blind girl into the arms of the old man, who pressed her to his heart, and kissed her. Then he said rapidly: "Now let us all hasten away from this desolate, frightful place; and it shall henceforth be my only care to make you forget all the unspeakable misery you have suffered through my cruelty."
Molly and O'Neil again entered the cave, to bid farewell to their strange place of refuge. Molly looked gratefully round, as if to thank it for the shelter it had afforded them.
Soon the whole four were on their happy way together home. Their path passed by the hovels whose inmates had evinced so much kind feeling towards the banished family; and they found there a man who, upon a promise of good pay from the landlord, was willing to take them home in his little one-horse wagon. Towards evening they reached the handsome house of the grandfather. The old housekeeper came rushing out to meet them, perfectly astonished to see her master, whose return she had awaited with the mostdreadful anxiety during the whole of the stormy night now past, and whom she never thought again to have seen alive, as his horse, covered with foam and blood, had returned home without a rider. She was also very much surprised at the little band of strangers who accompanied the old man. She turned herself right and left in her confusion, without exactly knowing what kind of welcome she was to offer the new guests, who, although scarcely covered with their miserable rags, yet through their noble bearing and appearance inspired respect. At last the old man said to her, in a more friendly tone than she had ever before heard from his lips: "Make haste, Mary! Prepare the very best you have in the house, for I intend to celebrate this evening the happiest festival of my whole life!"
He then dismounted from the wagon, and placed himself upon the threshold of his own door, to welcome his new inmates, whom he begged, individually, upon their entrance, to consider the house and everything in it as their own.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, as he led them in, andgazed in the soft eyes of Molly, "how poor was I, until this moment, although surrounded by so much wealth! and how truly rich have you always been, although in the midst of such bitter poverty, in the sweetness of your holy love! How warmly my heart beats to-day! how full it is of happy feelings! Like a tree blasted by lightning, I have stood stripped and desolate in the arid desert my own faults had made for me, almost afraid to gaze around me. But I have grown young again in your embracing arms; for the first time since I cursed my poor Kitty, does it seem to me a joy to live!"