He felt also strangely afraid of the child, he could not have
told why. Wretched about one son, he was dismayed at the nocturnal visit
of the other. The cause was of course his wrong condition of mind; lack
of truth and its harmony in ourselves alone can make us miserable; there
is a cure for everything when that is cured. No ill in our neighbours,
if we be right in ourselves, will ever seem hopeless to us; but while we
stand wrapped in our own selfishness, our neighbour may well seem
incurable; for not only is there nothing in us to help their redemption,
but there is that in ourselves, and cherished in us, which cannot be
forgiven, but must be utterly destroyed.
There was an unnatural look, at the same time pitiful and lovely, about
the boy, and the father sat and stared in gathering dread. He had nearly
imagined him an angel of some doom.
Suddenly the child stretched out his hands to him, and with upcast,
beseeching face, and eyes that seemed to be seeing far off, came close
to his knee. Then the father remembered how once before, when a tiny
child, he had walked in his sleep, and how, suddenly wakened from it, he
had gone into a kind of fit, and had for a long time ailed from the
shock.
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