s hand, which trembled as with a
palsy, to his head, and stared wildly at Robert. But he did not speak.
Robert repeated the one great word. Then Andrew spoke, and said in a
trembling, hardly audible voice,

'Are you my son?--my boy Robert, sir?'

'I am. I am. Oh, father, I have longed for you by day, and dreamed about
you by night, ever since I saw that other boys had fathers, and I had
none. Years and years of my life--I hardly know how many--have been
spent in searching for you. And now I have found you!'

The great tall man, in the prime of life and strength, laid his big head
down on the old man's knee, as if he had been a little child. His father
said nothing, but laid his hand on the head. For some moments the two
remained thus, motionless and silent. Andrew was the first to speak. And
his words were the voice of the spirit that striveth with man.

'What am I to do, Robert?'

No other words, not even those of passionate sorrow, or overflowing
affection, could have been half so precious in the ears of Robert. When
a man once asks what he is to do, there is hope for him. Robert answered
instantly,

'You must come home to your mother.'

'My mother!' Andrew exclaimed. 'You don't mean to say she's alive?'

'I heard from her yesterday--in her own hand, too,' said Robert.

'I daren't. I daren't,' murmured Andrew.

'You must, father,' returned Robert. 'It is a long way, but I will make
the journey easy for you. She knows I have found you. She is waiting and
longing for you. She has hardly thought of anything but you ever since
she lost you. She is only waiting to see you, and then she will go home,
she says. I wrote to her and said, "Grannie, I have found your Andrew."
And she wrote back to me and said, "God be praised. I shall die in
peace."'

A silence followed.

'Will she forgive me?' said Andrew.

'She loves you more than her own soul,' answered Robert. 'She loves you
as much as I do. She loves you as God loves you.'

'God can't love me,' said Andrews, feebly. 'He would never have left me
if he had loved me.'

'He has never left you from the very first. You would not take his way,
father, and he just let you try your own. But long before that he had
begun to get me ready to go after you. He put such love to you in my
heart, and gave me such teaching and such training, that I have found
you at last. And now I have found you, I will hold you. You cannot
escape--you will not want to escape any more, fa