When she returned, he was gone up the stair of her future, leaving
behind him, like a last message that all was well, the loveliest smile
frozen upon a face of peace. The past had laid hold upon his body; he
was free in the Eternal. Dorothy was left standing at the top of the
stair of the present.

CHAPTER XLIX.

EMPTY HOUSES.

The desolation that seized on Dorothy seemed at first overwhelming.
There was no refuge for her. The child's tears, questions, and outbreaks
of merriment were but a trouble to her. Even Wingfold and Helen could do
little for her. Sorrow was her sole companion, her sole _comfort_ for a
time against the dreariness of life. Then came something better. As her
father's form receded from her, his spirit drew nigh. I mean no phantom
out of Hades--no consciousness of local presence: such things may be--I
think _sometimes_ they are; but I would rather know my friend better
through his death, than only be aware of his presence about me; that
will one day follow--how much the more precious that the absence will
have doubled its revelations, its nearness! To Dorothy her father's
character, especially as developed in his later struggles after
righteousness--the root-righteousness of God, opened itself up day by
day. She saw him combating his faults, dejected by his failures,
encouraged by his successes; and he grew to her the dearer for his
faults, as she perceived more plainly how little he had sided, how hard
he had fought with them. The very imperfections he repudiated gathered
him honor in the eyes of her love, sowed seeds of perennial tenderness
in her heart. She saw how, in those last days, he had been overcoming
the world with accelerated victory, and growing more and more of the
real father that no man can be until he has attained to the sonship. The
marvel is that our children are so tender and so trusting to the slow
developing father in us. The truth and faith which the great Father has
put in the heart of the child, makes him the nursing father of the
fatherhood in his father; and thus in part it is, that the children of
men will come at last to know the great Father. The family, with all its
powers for the development of society, is a family because it is born
and rooted in, and grows out of the very bosom of God. Gabriel told
Zacharias that his son John, to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord, should turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.

Few griefs can be so paraly