“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.

“I’ve seen ’em come an’ go like the flakes of light out yonder in the orchard,” he answered almost in a whisper.  “Young an’ old, glad an’ sorry, I’ve seen ’em go—­an’ never one among ’em but showed in thar face when ’twas over that ’twas the best thing had ever happened.  It’s hard for me now to separate the livin’ from the dead, unless it be that the dead are gittin’ closer all the time an’ the livin’ further away.”

“And you’re never afraid, grandfather?”

“Well, when it comes to that, honey, I reckon if I can trust the Lord in the light, I can trust him in the darkness.  I ain’t as good a Christian as my ma was—­she could beat Sarah Revercomb when it came to sayin’ the Bible backwards—­but I’ve yet to see the spot of natur, either human or clay, whar we couldn’t find the Lord at work if we was to dig deep enough.”