Then Content rejoined, in his
quiet tones, speaking firmly, but with the modest utterance he rarely
failed to use--
"The hand that hath held the balance is just," he said, "and we have been
found wanting. He that made the wilderness blossom hath caused the
ignorant and the barbarous to be the instruments of his will. He hath
arrested the season of our prosperity, that we may know he is the Lord. He
hath spoken in the whirlwind, but his mercy granteth that our ears shall
know his voice."
As his son ceased, a gleam of satisfaction shot across the countenance of
the Puritan. His eye next turned inquiringly towards Ruth, who sate among
her maidens the image of womanly sorrow. Common interest seemed to still
the breathing of the little assembly, and sympathy was quite as active as
curiosity, when each one present suffered a glance to steal towards her
benignant but pallid face. The eye of the mother was gazing earnestly, but
without a tear, on the melancholy spectacle before her. It unconsciously
sought, among the dried and shrivelled remnants of mortality that lay at
her feet, some relic of the cherub she had lost.
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