“It is because you are beginning to know your father!” “Beginning to know my father, Moll!” “You never came right in sight of him till now. He has been the same always, but you did not--could not see him!” “Why couldn’t I see him, wise woman?” said Walter. “Because you were never your father’s son till now,” answered Molly. “Oh, Walter, if you had heard Jane tell what a cry he gave when he found his boy on the cold bench, in the gusty dark of the winter morning! Half your father’s heart is with your mother, and the other half with you! I did not know how a man could love till I saw his face as he stood over you once when he thought no one was near!” “Did he find me on the stone bench?” “Yes, indeed! Oh, Walter, I have known God better, and loved him more, since I have _seen_ how your father loves you!” Walter fell a thinking. Ha had indeed, since he came to himself, loved his father as he had never loved him before; but he had not thought how he had been forgetting him. And herewith a gentle repentance began, which had a curing and healing effect on his spirit. Nor did the repentance leave him at his earthly father’s door, but led him on to his father in heaven. The next day he said, “I know another thing that makes me feel more at home: Aunt Ann never scolds at me now. True, she seldom comes near me, and I can not say I want her to come! But just tell me, do you think she has been converted?” “Not that I know of. The angels will have a bad time of it before they bring her to her knees--her real knees, I mean, not her church-knees! For Aunt Ann to say she was wrong, would imply a change I am incapable of imagining. Yet it must come, you know, else how is she to enter the kingdom of heaven?” “What then makes her so considerate?” “It’s only that I’ve managed to make her afraid of me.” CHAPTER XXX. WORKADAY MOLLY. The days passed; week after week went down the hill--or, is it not rather, up the hill?--and out of sight; the moon kept on changelessly changing; and at length Walter was well, though rather thin and white. Molly saw that he was beginning to brood. She saw also, as clearly as if he had opened his mind to her, what troubled him: it needed no witch to divine that! he must work: what was his work to be? Whatever he do, if he be not called to it, a man but takes it up “at his own hand, as the devil did sinning.”