One look--and he fell back in his
chair, while Hildegarde quietly sat down on the floor and cried. For the
diamonds were there! Big diamonds and little diamonds,--some rough
and dull, others flashing out sparks of light, as if they shone the
brighter for their long imprisonment; some tinged with yellow or blue,
some with the clear white radiance which is seen in nothing else save a
dewdrop when the morning sun first strikes upon it. There they lay,--a
handful of stones, a little heap of shining crystals; but enough to pay
off the mortgage on Hartley's Glen and leave the farmer a rich man for
life.
Dame Hartley was the first to rouse herself from the silent amaze into
which they had fallen. "Well, well!" she said, wiping her eyes, "the
ways of Providence are mysterious. To think of it, after all these
years! Why, Jacob! Come, my dear, come! You ain't crying, now that the
Lord, and this blessed child under Him, has taken away all your
trouble?"
But the farmer, to his own great amazement, _was_ crying. He sobbed
quietly once or twice, then cleared his throat, and wiped his eyes with
the old silk handkerchief. "Poor ol' father," he said, simply. "It seems
kind o' hard that nobody ever believed him, an' we let him die thinkin'
he was crazy. That takes holt on me; it does, Marm Lucy, now I tell ye!
Seems like's if I'd been punished for not havin' faith, and now I git
the reward without havin' deserved it."
"As if you _could_ have reward enough!" cried Hildegarde, laying her
hand on his affectionately.
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