self."

"Oh, father! when you are giving Him your new care to-night, will you
just ask Him not to be so dreadfully busy, but to try and come Himself?"

"Yes, Harold," said the father.

After this promise little Harold went to sleep very happily.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"THY WILL BE DONE."

"You always give your cares to God," little Harold had said to his
father.

That father, on his knees with his head bowed between his hands, and a
tempest of agony, of entreaty in his heart, found suddenly that he could
not give this care away to God. For a moment, when the boy had spoken,
he had believed that this was possible, but when little Harold had
himself spoken so quietly of dying and going to Jesus, the father's
heart rose suddenly in the fiercest rebellion. No; if it meant the
slaying of his first-born he could not so quietly lay it in the hands of
God and say, "Thy will be done." This unearthly man, who had always
lived with a kind of heaven-sent radiance round his path, found himself
suddenly human after all. His earthly arms clung tightly round the
earthly form of his pretty little lad and would not unclasp themselves.
It was to this man who had so serenely and for many years walked in the
sunshine of God's presence, with nothing to hide his glory from his
eyes, as though he had come up to a high, a blank, an utterly
impenetrable wall, which shut away all the divine radiance. He could
neither climb this wall, nor could he see one glimpse of God at the dark
side where he found himself. In an agony this brave heart tried to pray,
but his voice would not rise above his chamber, would not indeed even
ascend to his lips. He found himself suddenly voiceless and dumb, dead
despair stealing over him. He did not, however, rise from his knees, and
in this position his wife found him when, late that night, she came up
to bed. She had been crying so hard and so long that by very force of
those tears her heart was lighter, and her husband, when he raised his
eyes, hollow from the terrible struggle within, to her face, looked now
the most miserable of the two. The mute appeal in his eyes smote on the
wife's loving heart, instantly she came over and knelt by his side.

"You must come to bed, Angus dear. I have arranged with Mr. Hinton, and
he will sit up with our little lad for the next few hours."

"I could not sleep, Lottie," answered the husband. "God is coming to
take away our child and I can't say, 'Thy will be done.'"