"
The strong features of the Highlander worked convulsively, as he drew his
faded blue bonnet over his eyes. "Jacob, did ye ken that we lost our eldest
bairns, some three summers since?" he faltered, in a broken voice.
"The Lord, in his mercy, has restored them to you, Donald, by my hand,"
said the trapper.
"Let me see, let me see my children. To him be the praise and the glory,"
ejaculated the pious father, raising his bonnet reverently from his head;
"and holy and blessed be his name for ever. I thought not to have seen this
day. Oh! Catharine, my dear wife, this joy will kill you."
In a moment his children were enfolded in his arms. It is a mistaken idea
that joy kills, it is a life restorer. Could you, my young readers, have
seen how quickly the bloom of health began to reappear on the faded cheek
of that pale mother, and how soon that dim eye regained its bright sparkle,
you would have said that joy does not kill.
"But where is Louis, dear Louis, our nephew, where is he?"
Louis whose impetuosity was not to be restrained by the caution of old
Jacob, had cleared the log fence at a bound, had hastily embraced his
cousins Kenneth and Donald, and in five minutes more had rushed into his
father's cottage, and wept his joy in the arms of father, mother, and
sisters by turns, before old Jacob had introduced the impatient Hector and
Catharine to their father.
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