Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us, CHAPTER XXIX. BUSY DAYS. The Warrens had urged Richard to make his home, until the building was finished, with them. But he longed to be back with his people, and felt he was needed on the ground. He had written the hour when he would come, and had asked Jonn to find him a room which he could make his home for a time. The week since Richard sped through the scenes of the home journey had wrought their changes. The vines had been robbed of their luscious treasures. The corn stood in shocks, and now and then a farmer was at his husking. Here and there a yellowheaded pumpkin, which had been missed in gathering, suggested to the travelers visions of delicious pies. Stacks of hay and straw dotted the fields. The birds were gathering into flocks in preparation for their journey to their winter homes in the South. The lark had flown, but the quail had taken its place in the choir of nature. The leaves, fluttering in the air and falling lazily to the earth, were packing themselves over the roots of vegetation as if to protect the trees that had borne them, and the grass and flowers which had made a beautiful earth for them to look upon. Nature seemed to Richard to be preparing itself for winter, as a captain prepares his ship for the approaching storm. Other changes, thought Richard, as he looked into the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Warren and Ethel, have taken place-not the changes of the autumn, but of the springtime. The far-away and careworn look had left the faces of his friends. The pent-up hunger of Ethel's heart was satisfying itself without stint in the love of father and mother. How glad he felt that he had had his part in bringing this to those who were doing so much for him and his people, and how wonderful that the gipsy girl whom he had defended and whose face had fixed itself so unyieldingly in his mind should be the daughter of his friends and interested in the work of his life. As the city drew near, Richard could hardly wait the speed of the train. He wanted to see the people again and to find out what had been done in the mission while he was away, and to go over the plans of the architect. His head was teeming with suggestions for the building and the work. His strength seemed entirely restored, and his fingers, he said to the Warrens, tingled to be at work. John, Hi, Selkirk, and a few others were at the station to meet him. You would never have forgotten the greeting had you seen it that day. The sentences of the men were few and short, but the bearing of the men and the hand-grasps they gave were full of meaning. They recognized and greeted Mr. and Mrs. Warren with unstudied courtesy, and Richard introduced Ethel to each one. It had all been arranged that Richard should stop at John Miller's. As they walked home that day, the people flocked about him. It was the hour of supper, and the men were home from work. A stranger would have thought the President had come. Women whose homes had been made happy by husbands won in Richard's work; men with a new sense of manhood; young men whose steps had been turned to virtue; and little children who knew that in some way Mr. Harrison was accountable for the change in |