"You'll understand better when you're past seventy," he answered gently. "Thar's a softness like a sort of green grass that springs up an' covers you when you begin to git old an' worn out. I've got it an' Spot's got it--you can tell by the way he won't trouble to git mad with the chickens that come peckin' around him. As soon as it's safely spread over you, you begin to see that the last thing to jedge anybody by is what you've known of the outside of 'em." "I can't feel about him as you do, but I don't mind takin' his money as long as you share it," returned the girl in a softer voice. "It's a pile of money such as you've never heard of, Molly. Mr. Chamberlayne says thar'll be an income of goin' on ten thousand dollars a year by the time you're a little older." "Ten thousand dollars a year just for you an' me!" she exclaimed, startled. "Thar warn't so much when 'twas left, but it's been doublin' on itself all the while you were waitin'." "We could go everywhere an' see everything, grandfather." "It ain't for me, pretty. Mr. Jonathan knew you wouldn't come into it till I was well on my way to the end of things." Kneeling at his side, she caught his hands and clung to him sobbing. "Don't talk of dying! I can't bear to think of your leaving me!" His trembling and knotted hands gathered her to him. "The young an' the old see two different sides of death, darlin'. When you're young an' full of spirit, it looks powerful dark an' lonely to yo' eyes, but when you're gittin' along an' yo' bones ain't quite so steady as they once were, an' thar seem to be mo' faces you're acquainted with on the other side than on this one--then what you've been so terrible afeared of don't look much harder to you than settlin' down to a comfortable rest. I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. The Lord always appears a heap nearer to the dead, somehow, than He does to the livin', and I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled." "You've seen so many die that you've grown used to it," said Molly through her tears. For a moment he gazed wistfully at the apple boughs, while his face darkened, as if he were watching a procession of shadows. In his seventy years he had gained a spiritual insight which penetrated the visible body of things in search of the truth beneath the ever-changing appearance. There are a few blameless yet suffering beings on whom nature has conferred a simple wisdom of the heart which contains a profounder understanding of life than the wisdom of the mind can grasp--and Reuben was one of these. Sorrow had sweetened in his soul until it had turned at last into sympathy.