Dwight saw his helpless condition, and sighed. After a pause, he said,
"Mother, it seems to me you are discouraging me from trying to be a better boy."
"No, Dwight; but I don't want you to depend on false hopes that must only end in your disappointment. Your determination will help in not indulging the bad feelings; but I want to have your heart changed so that you could not possibly have such feelings. I hope mine is. I once shewed the same spirit that you do; but now I don't think it would be possible for me to take any pleasure in teasing Caleb, or you, or David.
"I hope," added Madam Rachel, "that God will give you a benevolent and tender heart, so that there shall be no tendency in you to do wrong. He will change yours, if you pray to him to do it. In fact, I hope, and sometimes I almost believe, that he has begun. I do not think you would have gone to Caleb to-day so pleasantly, and acknowledged your fault, as you did by your actions, and felt so totally different from what you had done, if God had not wrought some change in you. I have very often talked with children about such faults, as plainly and kindly as I did with you, and it produced no effect. When they went away, I found, by their looks and actions afterwards, that their hearts were not changed at all. And so, Dwight," said she, "I have not been saying this to discourage you, but to make you feel that you need a greater change than you can accomplish, and so to lead you to God that you may throw yourself upon him, and ask him, not merely to help you in your determinations not to act out your bad feelings, but to change the very nature of them, or rather, to carry on the change, which I hope he has begun."
Dwight remembered, while his mother was talking, how full his heart had been of kindness and love to Caleb, while he was helping him that afternoon, and he perceived clearly that he had not produced that state of mind by any of his own determinations that he would feel so before he actually did. He remembered how happy he had been at that time, and how discontented and miserable after he had been troubling Caleb; and he had a feeling of strong desire that God would change his heart, and make him altogether and always benevolent and kind.
Now, it happened that Caleb had not understood this conversation very well, and he began to be weary and uneasy. Besides just about this time he began to recollect something about his grandmother's beginning a story for him, when she took him up in her lap, after he came in from the mole. So, when he noticed that there was a pause in the conversation, he said,
"Grandmother, you promised to tell me a story about blind Samuel."
"So I did," said his grandmother smiling, "and I began it; but before I got through you got fast asleep."
David and Dwight laughed, and so in fact did Caleb; and Madam Rachel then said that if he would tell David and Dwight the story as far as she had gone, she would finish it.
"Well," said Caleb, "I will. Once there was a blind boy, and his name was Samuel; and, you see, he was going through the woods, and his father was with him. And his father walked along, and he walked along, and it was stony, and he said he would do just what his father said, because his father knew best,-and-and so he took hold of the string again."
"What string?" said Dwight.
"Why, it was his father's string," said Caleb, eagerly, looking up into Dwight's face.
"What did he have a string for?" said David.
"Why to lead him along by," said Caleb.
"Yes-but why did not he take hold of his father's hand?" asked Dwight.
"Why,-why,-there was a snake in the road, I believe,-wasn't there, grandmother?"
His grandmother smiled,-for Caleb had evidently got bewildered, in his drowsiness, so that he had not a very distinct recollection of the story. She, therefore, began again, and told the whole. When she got to the place where she left off before, that is, to the place Samuel heard a splash in the water, Dwight started up, and asked, eagerly,
"What was it?"
"A stone, I suppose," said David, coolly.
"No," said Madam Rachel, "it was only the end of the stem of a small tree, which Samuel's father was trying to fix across the brook, so that he could lead his blind boy over. It was lying upon the ground, and he took it and raised it upon its end, near the edge of the bank, on one side, and then let it fall over, in hopes that the other end would fall upon the opposite bank. But it did not happen to fall straight across, and so the end fell into the water, and this was the noise that Samuel heard.
"He drew the stick back again, and then contrived to raise it on its end once more; and this time he was more successful. It fell across, and so extended from bank to bank. In a few minutes he succeeded in getting another by its side, and then he came back to Samuel.
"'Samuel,' said he, 'I have built a bridge.'
"'A bridge!' said Samuel.
"'Yes,' said he, 'a sort of a bridge; and now I am going to try to lead you over.'
"'But, father, I am afraid.'
"'You said you would trust yourself entirely to me, and go wherever I should say.'
"'Well, father,' said Samuel, 'I will. You know best, after all.'
"So Samuel took hold of his father's hand, and, with slow, and very careful steps, he got over the roaring torrent, and then they soon came out into a broad smooth road, and so got safely home."
"Now, Caleb," continued Madam Rachel, after she had finished her story, "do you remember what I meant to teach you by this story?"
"Yes, Grandmother; you said that I was like blind Samuel, and that God knew what was best for me, and that I must let him lead me wherever he pleases."
"Yes; and what was it that you said that reminded me to tell you the story?"
"I said that I wished that I was well and strong, like the other boys."
"Yes," said his grandmother, "I do not think you said it in a fretful or impatient spirit; but I thought that this story of Samuel would help to keep you patient and contented."
"Yes, grandmother, it does," said Caleb.
CHAPTER VIII. THE CART RIDE.
A week after this, Caleb had his whip to mend. He had broken off the lash, by whipping in sticks and little pieces of drift-wood to the mole. David and Dwight worked a little every day upon the mole, and had carried it out pretty far into the stream, and had almost finished the lower branches of the Y. So, one morning, after the boys had gone to school, and Caleb had had his reading lesson, he sat down upon the steps of the door, behind the house, and began to tie on his lash with a piece of twine which Mary Anna had given him.
Behind the house where Caleb's grandmother lived, there was a lane which led to the pasture. At the head of the lane, where you entered it from the yard, were a pair of bars. While Caleb was mending his whip, he accidentally looked up, and noticed that the bars were down.
"There, Mr. Raymond," said Caleb, talking to himself, as he went on winding his twine round and round the whip-handle; "for once in your life, you have been careless. You have left your bars down. Now we shall have the cattle all let out, unless I go and stop the mischief."
Caleb thought he would go and put the bars up again, as soon as he had tied the ends of his twine; but before he got quite ready, he heard a noise, as of something coming in the lane. He could not see down the lane far, from the place where he sat, for the barn was in the way. But he wondered what could be coming, and he looked towards the bars, and sat waiting for it to appear.
In a moment, the head and horns of a great ox came into view, and, immediately after, the body of the ox himself, walking slowly along towards the bars.
"There now," said Caleb, "there comes Lion, and he'll get away." So he jumped up, and ran towards the ox a few steps, brandishing his whip, and shouting out to drive him back. Old Lion, however, seemed to pay no attention, but came steadily forward, stepping carefully over the ends of the bars, and then, advancing a little way into the yard, began quietly to feed upon the grass. Before Caleb got over his surprise at the entire indifference which old Lion seemed to feel towards him and his whip, he heard the bars rattling again, and looking there, he saw Star, Lion's mate, following on.