“Mother’ll rest you, Maggie,” soothing her, as if she sang again her first lullaby, when she came to her, the little pure baby,—­her only one.

“Mother,” once more, “the door was unlocked.”

“It has been unlocked every night for seven years, my child.”

She closed her eyes after that, some stupor creeping over her, her features in the firelight softening and melting, with the old child-look coming into them.  Looking up at last, she saw another face bending over her, a face in which grief had worn stern lines; there were tears in the eyes, and some recent struggle quivering out of it.

“Father, I didn’t mean to come in,—­I didn’t really; but I was so cold.  Don’t send me off, father!  I couldn’t walk so far,—­I shall be out of your way in a little while,—­the cough—­”

“I send you away, Maggie?  I—­I might have done it once; God forgive me!  He sent you back, my daughter,—­I thank him.”

A darkness swept over both faces then; she did not even hear Muff’s whining cry at her ear.

“Mother,” at last, the light of the room coming back, “there’s Somebody who was wounded.  I guess I’m going to find him.  Will he forget it all?”

“All, Maggie.”

For what did He tell the sin-laden woman who came to him once, and dared not look into his face?  Was ever soul so foul and crimson-stained that he could not make it pure and white?  Does he not linger till his locks are wet with the dews of night, to listen for the first, faint call of any wanderer crying to him in the dark?

So He came to Maggie.  So he called her by her name,—­Magdalene, most precious to him; whom he had bought with a great price; for whom, with groanings that cannot be uttered, he had pleaded with his Father:  Magdalene, chosen from all eternity, to be graven in the hollow of his hand, to stand near to him before the throne, to look with fearless eyes into his face, to touch him with her happy tears among his sinless ones forever.

And think you that then, any should scorn the woman whom the high and lofty One, beholding, did thus love?  Who could lay anything to the charge of his elect?

Perhaps he told her all this, in the pauses of the storm, for something in her face transfigured it.

“Mother, it’s all over now.  I think I shall be your little girl again.”

And so, with a smile, she went to Him.  The light flashed broader and brighter about the room, and on the dead face there,—­never Meg’s again.  A strong man, bowed over it, was weeping.  Muff moaned out his brute sorrow where the still hand touched him.

But Martha Ryck, kneeling down beside her only child, gave thanks to God.

What Was the Matter?

I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, when it happened; but it might have been yesterday.  Among all other childish memories, it stands alone.  To this very day it brings with it the old, utter sinking of the heart, and the old, dull sense of mystery.