CHAPTER XIV.

THE RAVENS.

MRS. REARDON was very reluctant to leave her husband on the following day, notwithstanding his cheerful assurance of feeling much better and stronger; but there was no help for it. The work had already been delayed longer than she feared Mrs. Browne would approve of. Besides which she really wanted the money which she expected to receive, in order to procure several little necessaries of which they stood greatly in need.

Before she went, she left strict injunctions with Polly, as to the due administration of the small remaining portion of beef-tea, together with many directions relating to her father, more especially if he should be faint, or be ill during her absence, promising not to be gone a moment longer than she could possibly help.

"Never fear," said Matthew, cheerfully. "The children will take good care of me. I shall do very well. There is no need for you to hurry yourself."

Mrs. Reardon went away with a heavy heart, nevertheless. But it was heavier still when she came back, long before they had begun to expect her, pale, weary, and empty-handed, and sitting down before the fireless hearth, covered her face with her apron, and wept aloud.

For a few moments the children stood and watched her, thinking that she had lost the bundle of work; and then, not knowing what to say to comfort her, began to cry also.

The sound of their grief, together with the remembrance of her sick husband, aroused the poor wife and mother to the necessity for exertion. Well knowing that nothing is so hard to bear as suspense, she told Matthew what had happened, for Mrs. Browne, as the reader already knows, had made up her mind to give her no more work.

"If I understand rightly," said he, "the work is only kept back for a time? Mrs. Browne will be glad to let you have it again when—"

"When you are better," interrupted his wife, quickly. "Yes, that must have been what she meant. But how are you to regain your strength, and get better without food to eat—leave alone nourishing food, such as the doctor spoke of? What will become of us now that this hardhearted woman has taken the bread out of our mouths!"

"It mayn't be for long," said Matthew, in a cheerful voice; "somehow I don't think it will. And meanwhile, as the children were singing just before you came in:

"'The Lord will provide.'

"What was the text you were learning, Bess?"

"Though He kill me, yet will I trust Him," answered the child.

"'Though He slay me,'" suggested her sister.

"It's all the same," said Bessie. "Isn't it, father?"

"Yes, it's all the same meaning. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.'"

"It needs a strong faith," said Mrs. Reardon, with a sigh, "to see beyond the present darkness."

"It seems to me," replied her husband, "as if God gave us faith according to our need. Try and sing your mother one or two verses of that hymn, children. It will cheer her, maybe, as it did me just now."

The little pathetic voices rose up clear and sweet in obedience to their father's commands, but they were very sad to listen to, notwithstanding, owing to "the lump in their throats," of which Bessie had before complained.

"Though troubles assail And dangers affright. Though friends shall all fail And foes all unite: Yet one thing secures us— Whatever betide. The Scripture assures us The Lord will provide.

"The birds without barn Or storehouse are fed, From them let us learn To trust for our bread. His saints what is fitting Shall ne'er be denied, So long as 'tis written, The Lord will provide."

"It's all very well," said Mrs. Reardon, shaking her head. "But we're not saints; I wish we were."

"Yes; that knocked the wind out of me at first," answered her husband. "But it's all the same, as Bessie says, whether we're called saints or believers. Let's have the last verse, children:

"No fear or doubting With Christ on our side, We hope to die shouting, 'The Lord will provide!'"

Mrs. Reardon marked the flushed cheek and glittering eyes of the sick man, and said no more.

All went on as usual that day, just as if nothing had happened. The scanty meals were prepared and eaten; and then Mrs. Reardon took out her sewing—she could never bear to be idle a moment—and began to look over and mend some of her husband's clothes, wilfully blinding herself to the fact that he would never wear them again.

As night drew on, Matthew became somewhat restless and feverish, but would keep talking nevertheless.

"What should you say," asked he, "if I were to go away for a while on pilgrimage?"

"That it was a good thing, Matthew, so long as you took your wife and children with you, but not else."

"You must bring them afterwards, Mary. Why, even little Bessie knows the way—Jesus, 'the way, the truth, and the life!' Old Marshall was telling me about it a little while before he went. There was no fear of our getting out of the right path, he said, so long as we kept near to Christ. Nothing could be plainer than the directions he gave. I have them all by heart.

"Nothing to do but to ask for Jesus' sake, and knock in Jesus' name, and straightway the golden gates will be opened to let us in. No rent to pay in those heavenly mansions, wife; no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain. Read what it says about it, Polly, at the end of the book; or, perhaps, mother will read it. I don't seem able to wait while you spell out those words!"

Mrs. Reardon took the Bible, and read as well as she could for tears. It was a long time since she had opened that holy book, but she determined that it should never be so long again; and that, if God would only spare her husband, they would read it together every day, and begin, as he had said, "a new life."

Poor Matthew! The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak; and while she still read to him of the heavenly Jerusalem, he fell into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that he was already there.

After a time, Mrs. Reardon closed the book, and went on patching and mending with a sad and touching diligence, while the children whispered together as of old.

Presently there was a low tap at the door; so low that it had to be repeated before Mrs. Reardon, who thought at first that it must be a mistake, arose to open it. But there was no one there, only a parcel directed to her in a large scrawling hand, with a paper bag placed carefully on the top. If she had looked up instead of looking down the wide staircase, which she never thought of doing, she might have seen a pale girlish face leaning over the banisters, with a pitiful expression in her large wistful eyes.

When Mrs. Reardon had gone in again and closed the door, the girl came down a few steps and stood a moment, wet and weary as she was, to listen to the joyful exclamations of the children, as their mother, carefully opening the paper bag, took out the bunch of grapes, which our readers may remember to have seen before.

"Oh, mother!" exclaimed Bessie. "How beautiful! What are they?"

"And see," added Polly, peeping into the parcel, "tea, and sugar, and rice, and I don't know what besides!"

Mrs. Reardon did not reply. She was watching her sick husband eat the grapes, and crying quietly the while for joy. How grateful they were to his poor parched lips, and how he did enjoy them! It seemed as if he could not eat them fast enough. After a time, however, he remembered the children. They had never tasted, scarcely even seen, a grape before, but nevertheless the poor little things would not touch above one or two, and, when he insisted upon their taking more, gave them quietly to their mother, who put them aside for him to eat in the night.

"Who could have brought them?" said Mrs. Reardon, wonderingly, as she turned over the paper in which they had come, and once more examined the direction.

"It would not be Mrs. Browne, I suppose!" suggested Matthew, who, what with the sleep and the grapes, was feeling greatly refreshed.

Mrs. Reardon shook her head.

"I know who brought them," said Bessie, mysteriously.

"Who was it, Bess?"

"The ravens!" answered the child. "Don't you remember God sending them to feed Elijah, and now He has sent them to feed us—only it does not say that they brought Elijah any grapes."

"I almost forget the story," said her father. "Tell us about it, Bess."

"It isn't a story, father. It's in God's book."

And then in her childish way, Bessie went on to relate that touching episode in the life of the prophet Elijah, when he dwelt by the little brook Cherith that is before Jordan, and God commanded the ravens, and they brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook.

After which, she went on to tell of the poor widow of Zarephath (only she could not recollect the name), who had nothing save a little meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse, and was gathering two sticks in order that she might go and dress it for herself and her son, that they might eat it and die. And when Elijah bade her make him first a little cake, and fear not, for the Lord would not suffer the meal to waste, neither the cruse of oil to fail, she went and did according to his word, and she, and he, and her house did eat many days, and the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which He had spoken by Elijah.

"Bessie is right," said her father, when she had finished. "I do believe that it must have been the ravens. Oh, wife, it seemed hard for you to be able to trust God this morning. It will be easier next time."

"I think it will," replied Mrs. Reardon, softly. "At any rate, I am sure that it ought."