"To whom am I indebted for this kind reception?" I inquired, as I finished my meal.
"I am John," he answered, "the son of Zacharias; and I dwell in the desert until the time of my showing unto Israel."
A deep human groan from the interior of the cavern now startled me, and I sprang from my seat.
"What is that?" I exclaimed.
"My poor old patient has awakened. I must go and examine him."
"He takes in the sick as well as the wandering," said I to myself. "Surely the angels must protect him in some peculiar manner."
John came forward again with an anxious countenance. "Alas!" said he, "the old man has rapidly changed. He fell into a soft slumber an hour ago, but he is now plainly dying. I knew he was very ill, for he has raved all day about his children and some magicians who wish to destroy them."
At these words a fearful tremor seized me. I could not speak. I sprang past the young man, and in a moment was kneeling at the side of my father!
I seized his withered hand and covered it with kisses.
"My father! my father! Do you not know your son, your only son?"
The young hermit looked on in tears.
The old man slowly opened his eyes and cast a bewildered look, first at me, and then at John.
"Yes-you are angels," he said, "who have come to welcome my spirit into paradise."
He breathed heavily. I sank down weeping. John came forward with a little basin of water. "There is no time to be lost," said he in a low tone.
"Do you believe in G.o.d, and in Moses his lawgiver, and in the prophets his servants?"
"I do! I do!" said the old man, eagerly.
"Do you repent of your sins, and pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you?"
"I do! and G.o.d be merciful to a miserable sinner!"
"Then I baptize you with water, the emblem of purification,-and in the name of the Lord, the only G.o.d, into his spiritual Church and into the hope of immortal life."
Thus saying, he sprinkled some water on the old man"s forehead. His own face shone with a meek and holy radiance. My father closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.
Suddenly he started, frowning, as if some great pain had changed the current of his thought.
"Tell my son to beware of his uncle. He is a magician."
"Here is your son!" I exclaimed, eagerly; "here is your son! Oh, speak to me, my father!"
He did not notice my grief; but, pointing slowly to John the Baptist, he said, solemnly:
"Behold the prophet of G.o.d!"
He then looked fixedly upward; and as I followed his glance to the roof of the cave, his spirit pa.s.sed away beyond the blue dome, beyond the stars and the sun, beyond the entire realm of nature, into the paradise of Moses and the prophets.
I spent the night in prayer and tears by my father"s dead body.
Occasionally the young prophet broke in upon the stillness of the air with his silvery voice, chanting the sweet verses of Scripture. I was sorely tempted to rebel against the providence of G.o.d, which permitted such a good man as my father to be so cruelly dealt with. The presence, however, of the young prophet, was in itself a sermon, a blessing, a help to resignation. One could not be skeptical or even critical in his luminous atmosphere of peace and love. I reflected that there were many great mysteries which my youthful and inexperienced mind could not at present comprehend, and returning faith a.s.suaged the grief it could not remove.
The next day about noon the young prophet offered a prayer over the corpse, and we consigned it to a humble grave dug by our own hands in a large cavern near by. I observed that there were four other graves in the same spot.
"Yes," said John, meekly, "this is my little cemetery. Here I bury my dead in ground consecrated to the Lord. This was a robber who was wounded in a fray and left by his comrades. He dragged his bleeding limbs into the desert. I found him and bore him to my home. I preached to him the new gospel of repentance and faith, and he died in my arms weeping like a child over the sins of his youth. He who occupies that grave was a madman, who broke his chains, and drove every one from him with knives and stones until he met me in the wilderness. He followed me to my cave, and would sit contented at my feet hearing me sing or read or pray. Under that mound is a poor slave who fled, mutilated and frenzied, from a cruel master. I kissed the wounds I could not heal; and he died clasping my hands smilingly to his lips. And that last one is the grave of another poor leper like your father, forsaken even by his wretched companions-but not forsaken by the Lord, whose Word I obeyed when I tended him in his long illness.
"I call it consecrated ground," he continued; "for these poor people are the children of G.o.d. The leper is cured of his leprosy; the slave is free; the madman is sane; the robber is forgiven."
"What induces you," said I, "to lead this strange, lonely life, so full of self-sacrifice, so full of terrors and dangers?"
"The Spirit of G.o.d!" he said, solemnly.
"Are you not afraid of the silence, the solitude, the darkness of the desert?"
He replied in the words of Scripture:
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?"
I felt awed in the presence of this young man, who was not more than ten years older than myself. I was better satisfied to leave my father"s ashes in his keeping, than if I had built above them the most splendid monument of Pentelican marble or Corinthian bra.s.s.
After a frugal meal we started for the public road. It was ten long miles to the nearest highway, and it was ten more from that to Bethany. We discoursed, as we walked along, about spiritual things; and although I did not understand half he said, he spoke with such eloquence and sincerity that he convinced me he had some great mission in the world. We parted a little before sunset with mutual embraces and blessings. I dropped some grateful and admiring tears as I gazed after the heavenly-minded hermit, picking his way with his long staff through the rough places, until he disappeared from sight over the brown, bare hill.
It was not until the comforting and sustaining power of his presence was withdrawn, that I recognized how exhausted and helpless and lonely I was.
Fatigue, fear, excitement, sorrow, loss of sleep and inadequate nourishment, had considerably shattered my nerves; and now to appear suddenly in the presence of an uncle who thought he had murdered me, was a difficult and perhaps a dangerous task. I would gladly have turned in any other direction; but my sisters were in the power of the monster who had plotted my a.s.sa.s.sination. Nothing but a vague fear that those lovely women were in some trouble or distress, gave strength to my tired limbs and courage to my aching heart.
Night came on, and I had to advance more slowly. The full moon was shining halfway down the western sky, but a dark cloud had risen from the ashes of the sunset, and was advancing upward. It was important that I should make all the haste I could, before the light of the moon was obscured by that ascending blackness. To get out of the road might be to lose the whole night.
I moved so rapidly that I became exceedingly tired. If I sat down to rest, a mysterious fear impelled me to rise and press forward to Bethany. I have faith in those secret attractions, those silent monitors, those inexplicable warnings. A minute"s repose of muscle, a minute"s recuperation of breath, and I started again with renewed energy.
A wind came up behind the cloud and drove it furiously onward. It covered the moon and all was dark. I groped my way. I stumbled over obstacles. I advanced slowly. It was late, late in the night, when I entered the village of Bethany. No lights were visible; no sounds were heard. I traversed the streets alone. I pa.s.sed my uncle"s residence, brimful of maledictions against its wicked proprietor. Soon my father"s house loomed up before me. I saw the long white wall in front of it, and the parapet of the house-top darkening above.
Suddenly a strong blast of wind stirred all the trees of the village. It sighed along the deserted streets and up into the sky. It lifted the lower edge of the cloud from the moon which shone out, low down, just above my father"s house, as it were with a sudden brilliancy.
It revealed to me two astonishing things.
One was a large, strange, gilded vehicle drawn by two powerful horses standing before the gate.
The other was the figure of a woman on the house-top, between me and the moon-a woman with flowing robes and disheveled hair, raising her arms wildly to heaven, while a man was approaching her in the att.i.tude of striking.
It was my sister Martha!
With a cry of horror I sprang against the gate, which gave way before me.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]