Nor can all the pleasure of that day be told. The little log-house was like a palace in the eyes of Morely. Indeed, it would have been very nice in any one's eyes. The beds had been moved into the inner room, now that no fire was needed; and the large room, which was parlour and kitchen all in one, was as neat and clean as it could be made. It was bright, too, with flowers and evergreens and branches of cherry-blossom; and there were many comfortable and pretty things in it that Morely had never seen there before.

They did not stay much in the house, however. Mr and Mrs Grattan came up in the afternoon, and with them one whom John Morely presented to his wife as the best friend she had in the world, after Grattan and his wife--his friend Samuel Muir. Knowing a little of what he had been to her husband all these months past, Mrs Morely welcomed him with smiles--and tears, too--and many a silent blessing: and if he had been the head of the firm--Steel and Ironside in one--he could not have been a more honoured guest.

They sat out on the hill during most of the afternoon. The day was perfect. It was warm in the sun, but cool in the shadow of the evergreens. The maples and elms did not throw deep shadows yet, and the air was sweet and fresh and still.

It was a very happy day to them all. To Samuel Muir it was a day never to be forgotten. Montreal is not a very great city. An hour's walk from the heart of it, in any direction, will bring one either to the river or to fields where wild flowers grow. But his life had been town life--and a very busy one; and to sit in the mild air, amid the sweet sounds and sweeter silence of the spring time, among all these happy children, was something wonderful to him. His constant anxious care for Morely all the winter had done much to make a man of him. His little weaknesses and vanities had fallen from him in the midst of his real work; and seeing the happy mother and her children, his heart filled with humble thankfulness to G.o.d, who had permitted him to help the husband and father to stand against his enemy.

As for Stephen Grattan, the sight of his face was good that day. He did not say much, but sat looking out over the river, and the village, and the hills beyond, as though he was not seeing _them_, but something infinitely fairer. Now and then, as he gazed, his thoughts overflowed in words not his own: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people." "Ask and receive, that your joy may be full." And sometimes he sang Dolly's favourite chorus, repeating in queer, old, trembling strains,--

"His loving-kindness, oh, how good!"

But he said little besides. Even Dolly spoke more than he that day, and with great pains drew out John Morely to tell how his prospects were brightening, and how since the first of May he had been foreman among his fellow-workmen, and how if things went moderately well with him he should have a better home than the little log-house for his wife and children before many months were over.

"Not just yet, however," he said, looking with pleased eyes at the brown, healthy faces of the little lads. "No place I could put them in could make up to them for these open fields and this pure air. I think, Alice, they will be better here for a time."

As for Alice, it did not seem to her that there was anything left for her to desire. Her heart was rejoicing over her husband with more than bridal joy,--her husband who had been "lost, and was found." On this first day of his coming home she suffered no trembling to mingle with it. She would not distrust the love which had "set her foot upon a rock, and put a new song in her mouth." "Mighty to save" should His name be to her and hers henceforth. The clouds might return again, but there were none in her sky to-day.

Things went well with the Morelys after this. How it all came about, cannot be told here; but when the grand cut-stone piers of the new bridge were completed, it was John Morely who built the bridge itself,-- that is, he had the charge of building it, under the contractor to whom the work had been committed,--and it was built so quickly and so well that he never needed to go away from Littleton to seek employment again.

The little Morelys have come to think of the days before that pleasant May-time as of a troubled dream. The first fall of the snow-flakes brings a shadow to Sophy's face still; but even Sophy has come to have only a vague belief in the troubles of that time. The little ones are never weary of hearing the story of that terrible winter storm: but Sophy never tells them--hardly acknowledges to herself, indeed--that there was something in those days harder to bear than hunger, or cold, or even the dread of the drifting snow.

If after that first bright day of her husband's home-coming there mingled trembling with the joy of Mrs Morely, she is at rest now. Day by day, as the years have pa.s.sed on, she has come to know that with him, as well as with herself, "Old things have pa.s.sed away, and all things have become new;" and, in the blessed renewal of strength a.s.sured to those who wait upon the Lord, she knows that he is safe for evermore.

As for Stephen Grattan, he has had a good many years of hard work since then, making strong, serviceable boots and shoes, and serving the Lord in other ways besides. He is ungrammatical still, and queer, and some people smile at him, and pretend to think lightly of him, even when he is most in earnest,--people who, in point of moral worth or heavenly power, are not worthy to tie his shoes. But many a "tempted poor soul"

in Littleton and elsewhere has his feet upon a rock and a new song in his mouth because of Stephen's labours in his behalf; and if ever a man had the apostle's prayer for the Ephesians answered in his experience, he has; for he is "strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might."

He is an old man now, whose "work of faith and labour of love" is almost over; and I never see him coming up the street, with his leather ap.r.o.n on, a little bowed and tottering, but always cheerful and bright, but I seem to hear the welcome, which cannot be very far before him now,--"Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."