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, was occupied with other things, and he was humming over the verse of a hymn the boys had been singing--'Far from my heavenly home.' There was no drilling into them the proper rendering of the last pathetic words-- O guide me through the desert here, And bring me home at last. He quite started when a hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice, changed indeed, and weak, but still the voice that in old days--not so very old either--was the one voice for him in all the world, said: 'Father!' I think just for one minute his impulse was to take her in his arms and forget the ingratitude and desertion and deceit, like the father in the parable whose heart went out to the poor prodigal while he was yet a long way off; but the next moment the cold, bitter, resentful feelings quenched the gentler impulse, and he drew away his arm from her detaining hold, and passed on along the flagged path as if he were unconscious of her presence, and this on the very threshold of His house, who so pitifully forgives the debts of His servants, forasmuch as they have not to pay. But he had not reached the churchyard gate before she was at his side again. 'Stop,' she said; 'you must hear me. It's not for my own sake, it's the child. It's a little girl; the others were boys, and I didn't mind so much; if they 'd grown up, they might have got on somehow--but there! they 're safe anyhow--both of them in one week,' wailed the mother's voice, protesting against her own words that she did not mind about them. 'But this is a girl, and not a bit like him. She 's like me, and you used to say I was like mother. She's like mother, I 'm sure she is. There, just look at her. It's so dark, but you can see even by this light that she's not like the Blakes.' She was fumbling to draw back the shawl from the baby's head with her disengaged hand, while with the other she still held a grip on his arm that was almost painful in its pressure; but he stood doggedly with his head turned away, and gave no sign of hearing what she said. 'He left me six months ago,' she went on, 'and I 've struggled along somehow. I don't want ever to see him again. They say he's gone to America, but I don't care. I don't mind starving myself, but it's the little girl--Oh! I 've not come to ask you to take me in, though it wouldn't be for long,' and a wretched, hollow cough that had interrupted her words once or twice before, broke in now as if to confirm
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