Amos Ryck was a respectable man; he had the reputation of an honest, pious farmer to maintain. Moreover, he was a deacon in the church. His own life, stern in its purity, could brook no tenderness toward offenders. His own child was as shut out from his forgiveness as he deemed her to be from the forgiveness of his God. Yet you would have seen, in one look at the man, that this blow with which he was smitten had cleft his heart to its core.
This was her birthday,--hers whose name had not passed his lips for years. Do you think he had once forgotten it since its morning? Did not the memories it brought crowd into every moment? Did they not fill the very prayers in which he besought a sin-hating God to avenge him of all his enemies?
So many times the child had sat there at his feet on this day, playing with some birthday toy,--he always managed to find her something, a doll or a picture-book; she used to come up to thank him, pushing back her curls, her little red lips put up for a kiss. He was very proud of her,--he and the mother. She was all they had,--the only one. He used to call her "God's dear blessing," softly, while his eyes grew dim; she hardly heard him for his breaking voice.
She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthday nights, so did he live them over. But none could know it; for he did not speak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead. Martha Ryck looked up at last into her husband's face.
"Amos, if she _should_ ever come back!" He started, his eyes freezing.
Would he have said "she _shall_ not?" God only knew.
"Martha, you talk nonsense! It's just like a woman. We've said enough about this. I suppose He who's cursed us has got his own reasons for it. We must bear it, and so must she."
He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about the room; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife. Muff, rousing from his slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of. She used to love the dog,--the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; he was always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found her asleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pink arms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream.