Five years after that eventful night when the cow died due to the young man’s mistake, Harry stood on the doctor’s front porch, a youth of eighteen, bidding good-bye to the two who had been more to him than father and mother. He was going to college in the West, where he could work his way, and in his trunk was a high-school diploma, and in his pocket a “gilt-edged recommendation” from Dr. Layton.
“God bless you, my boy! Don’t forget us,” said the doctor, his voice husky with unshed tears as he wrung the strong young hand that had been so helpful to him in the busy years flown by.
“Forget you, my more than father!” murmured the young man, not even trying to keep the tears out of his eyes. “No matter how many years it may be before I see you again, I shall always remember your unfailing kindness to me. And can I ever forget how you saved me for a higher life than I could possibly have lived if you had set me adrift in the world again for leaving that barn door unfastened, and killing your cow? As long as I live, I shall remember that great kindness, and shall try to deserve it by my life.”
“Oh my dear, Harry,” said the doctor, “that was nothing but common humanity!”
“Uncommon humanity,” corrected the youth. “Good-bye, Mrs. Layton. I shall always remember your kindness, too. You have been like a mother to me.”
“You have deserved it all, Harry,” said the doctor’s wife, and there was a tear in her eye, too, which was an unusual sight, for she was not an emotional woman. “Today I can see that it was not such a great calamity to lose Brindle just as we did, for Daisy is a finer cow than her mother was, and there has not been another chance since to get as good a heifer.”
“So it was a blessing in disguise, after all, Harry,” laughed the doctor. “As for you, you have been a blessing undisguised from that day to this. May the Lord bless and prosper you! Write to us often.”
Four years passed, and in one of the Western States a young college graduate stepped from his pedestal of oratorical honours to take a place among the rising young lawyers of a prosperous new town that was fast developing into a commercial center.
“I am doing well, splendidly,” he wrote Dr. Layton, after two years of hard work, “and one of these days I am coming back to make that promised visit.”
But the years came and went, and still the West held him in its powerful clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the sweet, new joy of a woman’s love and devotion, and into his home came the happy music of children’s voices. When his eldest boy was eight years old, he had a successful business that provided a comfortable living for his family.
“And now, at last,” he wrote Dr. Layton, “I am coming east, for that long-promised visit. And how is the family cow?”
The doctor replied briefly but gladly:
“So you are coming at last, my boy! Well, you will find us in the same old house, —a little the worse for wear, perhaps,—and leading the same quiet life. No, not exactly the same, though it is quiet enough, for I am growing old, and the town is running after the new, young doctors, leaving us old ones in the rear, to trudge along as best we can. There isn’t any ‘family cow’ now, Harry. Daisy died long ago and we never got another, for I am getting too old to milk, and there never seemed to come along another boy like the old Harry, who would take all the barn-yard responsibility on his shoulders. Besides, mother is crippled with rheumatism, and can hardly get around to do her housework, let alone to make butter. We are not any too well off since the Union Bank failed and I have had to help pay the depositors’ claims. But we have enough to keep us comfortable, and much to be thankful for, most of all that our famous son is coming home for a visit. Bring your wife, too, and the children, all five of those bright boys and girls,—bring them all! I want to show them the old stall in the barn, where, twenty-five years ago, I picked their father up in my arms early one spring morning as he lay fast asleep on the neck of the old cow, over whose expiring breath he had nearly broken his poor little heart.”
And a blessed visit it was when the two finally met each other again after so many years. “Yes, father, of course it has paid to come down here. I would not have missed it for all the world.”
“It does not seem possible that it is twenty years since I stood here, saying good-bye when I started West. By the way, do you remember what you told me that memorable night when the lamented Brindle laid down her life because of my carelessness, and her own gluttony? I was standing at the horse’s head, and you were sitting in your buggy, there at the carriage steps, and I said I wished you would horsewhip me, instead of treating me so kindly. I remember you reached over and tickled my neck with the lash playfully, and told me there was no use in thrashing a fellow who was all broken up, anyway, over an accident.”
The doctor laughed as he held his arms more closely about the shoulders of Harry’s two eldest boys; while “Grandmother Layton,” with little Ted in her lap, was dreaming again of the little form that had long, long ago been laid in the graveyard on the hillside.
“Yes, yes,” said the doctor, “I remember. What a blessed thing it was I did not send you off that day the old cow died,” he laughed through his tears.
“Blessed!” echoed Mrs. Layton, putting down the wriggling Ted. “It was providential. You know, Harry, I was not so kind-hearted as John in those days, and I thought he ought to send you off. But he declared he would not, even if you had cost him two cows. He said that if he did it might cost the world a man. And so it would have, if all they say you are doing out West in your work is true.”
“I do not know about that,” he said modestly. “I am of the opinion that he might have saved more of a man for the world; but certain it is, he saved whatever manhood there was in that boy from going to waste by his noble act of kindness. But what I remember most, father, is what you told me, there at the carriage step, that when I became a rich man, I could pay you for that cow. Well, I am not exactly a rich man, for I am not in my place of employment only for all the money I can get out of it. However, I am getting a better income than my leaving that barn door open would justify any one in believing I ever could get by my brains; so now I can pay that long-standing debt without inconvenience. It may come handy for you to have a little fund laid by, since the Union Bank is failing, and so much of your other funds went to pay the poor depositors of that defunct institution. It was just like you, father, to be honest and not to hide your assets, as so many of the people did, by putting all their property in their wife’s name. So, since you made one investment twenty-five years ago that has not seemed to depreciate in value very much,—an investment in a raw young boy who did not have enough forethought to fasten a barn door,—here is the interest on what the investment was worth to the boy, at least a little of it; for I can never begin to pay it all. Good-bye, both of you, and may God bless you.”
When the dust of the departing carriage had filtered away through the morning sunlight, two pairs of tear-dimmed eyes gazed at the slip of blue paper in Dr. Layton’s hand,—a check for five thousand dollars.
“We saved a man that time, sure enough!” murmured the old doctor softly.
Is this not what God does for you when you have made a mistake? He does not cast you off and send you away; rather He freely forgives you when you are sorry and repent, and then gives you a second chance because He can see the value in you. He sees your talents and wants to help you to develop them. What will you give to God in return?