And Corney did not laugh. He listened with a grave, even sad face. When the major ceased, his eyes too were full of tears.

“I shall not forget Markie’s dream,” he said.

Thus came everything in to help the youth who had begun to mend his ways.

And shall we think the boy found God not equal to his dream of him? He made our dreaming. Shall it surpass in its making his mighty self? Shall man dream better than God? Shall God’s love be inferior to man’s imagination or his own?

48. A Family

—Forty-Eight —

A Family

When Mark’s little cloak was put in the earth, for a while the house felt cold—as if the bit of Paradise had gone out of it. Mark’s room was like a temple forsaken of its divinity. But it was not to be drifted up with the sand of forgetfulness! The major put in a petition that it might continue to be called Mark’s, but should be considered the major’s. He would like to put some of his things in it and occupy it when he came!

Every one was pleased with the idea. They no longer would feel so painfully that Mark was not there when his dear majie occupied the room!

To the major it was thenceforth chamber and chapel and monument. It should not be a tomb except as on the fourth day the sepulchre in the garden! He would fill it with live memories of the risen child! Very different was his purpose from that sickly haunting of the grave in which some loving hearts indulge! We are bound to be hopeful, nor wrong our great-hearted father.

Mark’s books and pictures remained undisturbed. The major dusted them with his own hands. Every day he read in Mark’s bible. He never took it away with him, but always when he returned in whatever part of the bible he might have read in the meantime, he resumed his reading where he had left off in it. The sword the boy used so to admire for its brightness he had placed it unsheathed on the wall. In Mark’s bed the major slept, and to Mark’s chamber he went always to shut the door. In solitude there he learned a thousand things his busy life had prepared him for learning.

The master had come to him in the child. In him was fulfilled a phase of the promise that whosoever receives a child in the name of Jesus receives Jesus and his father. Through ministering to the child he had come to know the child’s elder brother and master. It was the presence of the master in the child, that without his knowing it, opened his heart to him, and he had thus entertained more than an angel.