not. And Bud stood
outside and watched his face, lit up like a saint in the light of the
candle falling on his silvery hair, whiter than the white sand of
Sand Mountain, a stern, strong face with lips which never ceased
moving in prayer, the eyes riveted on the little fluttering lips. And
watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white
stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it,
suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost
imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting
sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and
swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely
wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw
the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes
till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his
head and heard him say:

"_Lord God Almighty ... My God ... My own God ... an' You ain't never
gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is
within me; bless His Holy Name!'_"

Bud could not help it. He laughed out hysterically. And then the old
face, still smiling, looked surprised at the window and said: "Go
home, Bud. God is the Great Doctor, an' He has told me she shall
live."

Then, as he turned to go, his heart stood still, for he heard Shiloh
say in her little piping child voice, but, oh, so distinctly, and so
sweetly, like a bird in the forest:

"Pap, sech a sweet dream--an' I went right up to the gate of heaven
an' the angel smiled an' kissed me an' sed:

"'Go back, little Shiloh--not yet--not yet!'"

Then Bud slipped off in the dawn of the coming light.

CHAPTER XXIII

GOD WILL PROVIDE

In a few days Shiloh was up, but the mere shadow of a little waif,
following the old man around the place. She needed rest and good food
and clothes; and Bull Run and Seven Days and Appomattox and Atlanta
needed them, and where to get them was the problem which confronted
the grandfather.

Shiloh's narrow escape from death had forever settled the child-labor
question with him--he would starve, "by the Grace of God," as he
expressed it, before one of them should ever go into the mill again.

He had a bitter quarrel about it with Mrs. Watts; but the good old
man's fighting blood was up at last--that hatred of child-slavery,
which had been so long choked by the smoke of want, now burst into a
blaze when th