concluded to stay a spell," and that night Ben brought her bag over
which she had packed in the morning, and she stayed as long as she was
needed, to the help and comfort of them all.

As for the grandfather, it went hard with him these days. He was
outwardly silent and grave as usual, giving no voice to the anxiety that
devoured him. But at night when his wife slumbered, worn out with the
day's watching, or when she seemed to slumber, and in Pine-tree Hollow,
which in the time of his former troubles had become to him a refuge and
a sanctuary, his cry ascended to God in an agony of confession and
entreaty. He, too, wondered that it should be God's will that the child
of his enemy should be saved, and his child's life made the sacrifice;
but he did not consciously rebel against that will. It was God's doing;
Davie had not even known whose child it was whom he tried to save. This
was God's doing from beginning to end.

Far be it from him to rebel against God, he said to his wife when,
fearing for him and all that he might be thinking, she spoke to him
about it. It was a terrible trouble, but it did not embitter him as
former trouble had done, and his enemy had fewer of his thoughts at this
time than might have been supposed.

But he had not forgiven him. He knew in his heart that he had not
forgiven him. When Jacob came with his wife, grateful and sorry, and
eager to do something to express it, he kept quiet in a corner of
Davie's room, into which they were not permitted to enter. Mrs Fleming
said all that was needful on the occasion, and when Jacob broke down and
could not speak of his boy who had been given back to them almost from
the dead, she laid her hand gently upon his arm and said, "Let God's
goodness make a better man of you," and even Mrs Jacob did not feel
like resenting the words. But there was no one who could help them in
their present trouble, she repeated, as they went sorrowfully away.

No one except Miss Betsey, grannie felt gratefully, as she turned into
the house again--Miss Betsey, who seemed made of iron, and never owned
to being tired. She slept one night in three, when Katie and her mother
kept the watching, and at other times she took "catnaps" in the
rocking-chair, or on Mrs Fleming's bed, when grannie was at her
brightest and could care for Davie in the early part of the day.

And poor Davie tossed and muttered through many days and nights, never
so delirious as to have forgotten