Part 4 (1/2)

The women and the doctor exchanged sad looks.

His mother went up to him and caressed him. ”Toneli, Toneli,” she said again and again in a tender voice, ”don't you know me? Don't you know your mother any more?”

As always before Toni pressed against the wall, made no motion and stared before him.

In tender tones the mother continued mournfully:

”Oh, Toneli, say just a single word! Only look at me once! Toneli, don't you hear me?”

Toneli remained unmoved.

Still once again the mother looked at him full of tenderness, but only met his staring eyes. It was too much for poor Elsbeth, that the only possession she had on earth, and the one she loved with all her heart, her Toni, should be lost to her, and in such a sad way! She forgot everything around her. She fell on her knees beside her child, and while the tears were bursting from her eyes, she poured out aloud the sorrow in her heart:

Oh G.o.d of Love, oh Father-heart, In whom my trust is founded, I know full well how good Thou art-- E'en when by grief I am wounded.

Oh Lord, it surely can not be That Thou wilt let me languish In hopeless depths of misery And live in tears of anguish.

Toni's eyes took on a different expression. He looked at his mother. She did not see him and went on imploring in the midst of her tears:

Oh Lord, my soul yearns for thine aid In this dark vale of weeping; For Thee I have waited, hoped and prayed, a.s.sured of thy safe keeping.

Suddenly Toni threw himself on his mother and sobbed aloud. She threw her arms around him and her tears of sorrow turned to loud sobs of joy. The child sobbed aloud also.

”It is won,” said the doctor in great delight to the women, who, deeply moved, were looking on at the mother and boy.

Then the doctor opened the door of the next room and beckoned Elsbeth to go in there with Toni. He thought it would be good for both to be alone for a while. In there after a while Toni began to talk quite naturally with his mother and asked her:

”Are we going home, Mother, to the stone hut? Shan't I have to go up on the mountain any more?”

And she quieted him and said she would now take him right home, and they would stay there together. Soon all Toni's thoughts came back again quite clearly, and after a while he said:

”But I must earn something, Mother.”

”Don't trouble about that now,” said Elsbeth quietly; ”the dear Lord will show a way when it is time.”

Then they began to talk about the goat, how pretty and fat she had grown, and Toni gradually became quite lively.

After an hour the doctor brought them both into the living-room back to the ladies. Toni was entirely changed, his eyes had now an earnest but quite different expression. The lady from Geneva was indescribably delighted. She sat down beside him at once, and he had to tell her where he had been to school and what he had liked to study.

But the doctor beckoned to Elsbeth to come to him.

”Listen, my good woman,” he began, ”the words which you repeated made a deep, penetrating impression on the boy's heart. Did he know the hymn already?”

”Oh, my Lord,” exclaimed Elsbeth, ”many hundred times I have repeated it beside his little bed, when he was very small, often with many tears, and he would weep too, when he didn't know why.”

”He wept because you wept, he suffered because you suffered,” said the doctor. ”Now I understand how he was aroused by these words. With such impressions in early childhood it is no wonder he became a quiet and reserved boy. This explains to me much in the past.”

Then the lady from Geneva came up for she wanted to talk with the mother.

”My dear, good woman, he certainly must not go up on the mountain again.