They were united only in one thing, their love for him, and the zealous prayer that he might be, like Samuel, called even in childhood to the service of the Temple. So they had dedicated him; and, when he saw the grass springing upon their graves in the churchyard, and took a last look upon that humble home, now passed into other hands, he remembered this strong wish of the hearts that had loved him so, and were now mouldering to dust beneath his feet.
“But where are you going?” said the child, who had been thinking of many other things, and had now returned to this new fear of parting.
“Many, many hundred miles from this, Miriam, away from the busy city and its crowded streets. Far off to the still woods, where there are no church-bells, and even no Sabbaths. I am going to the poor Indians, to teach them where to look for the Great Spirit they worship, and to the settlers of those Western lands, ruder still, and in darker ignorance. They scarcely know there is a God.”
“But they have the sky there, and the sun; and who do they think made them and the little flowers in the grass? They could not make the flowers!”
“But they do not love the flowers and the sky as you do; they are blind: ‘Eyes have they, and they see not; ears, but they do not hear.’ So I am going to them with God’s own word, that will speak more plainly to their hearts. Do you not think it will be a beautiful life”—and his sunken eyes glanced with strange enthusiasm—“devoting every power of soul and body to those benighted people, forgetting this life and its comforts and pleasures in the thoughts of that which is to come?—reaping the broad whitening harvest?”
He forgot that he was speaking to a child. And yet she seemed to understand him, at least to feel that he was swayed by some noble emotion; for she raised her head and listened eagerly, as if a new life of thought was opened to her.
“And will you have a home there?”
“Nay, I shall never have a home on earth; parents, wife,
