"
The master returned from the sea-coast, bringing Truffey with him,
radiant with life. Nothing could lengthen that shrunken limb, but in
the other and the crutch together he had more than the function of two.
And the master was his idol.
And the master was a happier man. The scene of his late failure had
begun to fade a little from his brain. The expanse of the church and
the waiting people was no longer a vision certain to arise in the
darkness that surrounds sleep. He had been loving and helping; and love
and help had turned into a great joy, whose tide washed from out his
heart the bitterness of his remembered sin. When we love truly, all
oppression of past sin will be swept away. Love is the final atonement,
of which and for which the sacrifice of the atonement was made. And
till this atonement is made in every man, sin holds its own, and God is
not all in all.
So the earth and all that was therein did the master good. And he came
back able to look people in the face--humble still, but no longer
humiliated. And when the children gathered once more on a Monday
morning, with the sad feeling that the holidays were over, the master's
prayer was different from what it used to be, and the work was less
irksome than before, and school was not so very hateful after all.
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