Leaning with his hands folded on the handle of the weeding hoe, his gray beard sweeping over his bosom, his bare, silvered head bowed, and his mild, peaceful blue eyes resting on his son’s tomb, Mr. Hammond stood listening to the music; and when the strains ceased, his thoughts travelled onward and upward till they crossed the sea of crystal before the Throne, and in imagination he heard the song of the four and twenty elders.

From this brief reverie some slight sound aroused him, and lifting his eyes, he saw a man clad in white linen garments, wearing oxalis clusters in his coat, standing on the opposite side of the monumental slab.

“St. Elmo! my poor, suffering wanderer!  Oh, St. Elmo! come to me once more before I die!”

The old man’s voice was husky, and his arms trembled as he stretched them across the grave that intervened.

Mr. Murray looked into the tender, tearful, pleading countenance, and the sorrow that seized his own, making his features writhe, beggars language.  He instinctively put out his arms, then drew them back, and hid his face in his hands; saying in low, broken, almost inaudible tones: 

“I am too unworthy.  Dripping with the blood of your children, I dare not touch you.”

The pastor tottered around the tomb, and stood at Mr. Murray’s side, and the next moment the old man’s arms were clasped around the tall form, and his white hair fell on his pupil’s shoulder.

“God be praised!  After twenty years’ separation I hold you once more to the heart that, even in its hours of deepest sorrow, has never ceased to love you!  St. Elmo!—­”

He wept aloud, and strained the prodigal convulsively to his breast.

After a moment Mr. Murray’s lips moved, twitched; and with a groan that shook his powerful frame from head to foot, he asked: 

“Will you ever, ever forgive me?”

“God is my witness that I freely and fully forgave you many, many years ago!  The dearest hope of my lonely life has been that I might tell you so, and make you realize how ceaselessly my prayers and my love have followed you in all your dreary wanderings.  Oh!  I thank God that, at last! at last you have come to me, my dear, dear boy!  My poor, proud prodigal!”

A magnificent jubilate swelled triumphantly through church and churchyard, as if the organist up in the gallery knew what was happening at Murray Hammond’s grave; and when the thrilling music died away St. Elmo broke from the encircling arms, and knelt with his face shrouded in his hands and pressed against the marble that covered his victim.

After a little while the pastor sat down on the edge of the slab, and laid his shrunken fingers softly and caressingly upon the bowed head.

“Do not dwell upon a past that is fraught only with bitterness to you, and from which you can draw no balm.  Throw your painful memories behind you, and turn resolutely to a future which may be rendered noble and useful and holy.  There is truth, precious truth in George Herbert’s words: