The chill, however, and the damp revived him almost immediately, and struggling to his feet he started on his route back to Grey's Park along the same road he had come, seeing nothing, bearing nothing but that one word, that name his father had given to his grandfather, and which he, too, had echoed. Over and over again the winds repeated it until the, woods seemed full of it, and he said to himself: "Will it always be so? Shall I never hear anything but that again so long as I live, and I am so young, only fourteen, and I meant to be a great and honorable man, and a good one, too. And I can still be that. God knows I am not to blame. Would he hear me, I wonder, if I should ask him now to take some of this pain away which fills my heart to bursting!"
And there, on the pure white snow, in the shadow of the leafless woods, the heart-broken boy knelt down, and with clasped hands, and the great tears streaming over his upturned face, asked God to forgive him for his grandfather's sin, and take the pain away, and help him to be a good man, if he could never be great and distinguished. And God heard that prayer made to him in the wintry night, from the depths of the boyish heart, and a feeling of quiet came over Grey as he resumed his walk.
"I am not to blame," he said, "and people will not think so if they know, which they never will, for father will not tell, nor Mr. Sanford either; but I shall always know, and life will never be the same to me again."
It certainly looked forlorn and dreary enough to him by the time he reached Grey's Park, and letting himself quietly in, he crept noiselessly up to his bed, from which he did not rise until late the next morning, when his Aunt Lucy came herself to call him, and told him his grandfather was dead.