VI She Believed in Miracles. Do You?
She approached the next part of her story diffidently.
“Maybe you will not care for the rest. I know you don’t believe in signs.”
“But I do,” I protested.
She brightened with delight. The blind one said nothing. I think her head bent a trifle lower.
“And do you believe that God helps those who love Him when they are in distress?”
“Yes,” I said, “and some who do not love Him as well as you do. He has helped me—when I did not deserve it.”
She gazed a moment in wonder.
“I don’t mean indirectly?”
“Directly!” I said.
“But you surely do not believe in”—she halted, ashamed of the ancient word for an instant, then bravely put it at me—“miracles”?
“I have seen miracles.”
And I told her of some that I had seen.
Do you suppose that I would cast a shadow of doubt upon so precious a heritage? A believer in miracles! I thanked God after I had heard the end of her story that I need not. Don’t you believe in miracles? Don’t we all constantly expect the impossible? And if we do not believe in miracles, how can we expect that? And doesn’t the impossible often happen? Well then!
“I wouldn’t like to tell you if you would laugh.”
“I am more likely to cry,” I said.
Alas! I fear that she did not quite trust my hyperbole. She continued carefully:
“Well—then—comes the—mystery. There was no way except to pray for it. You know people—especially women—believed more in the efficacy of prayer then than they do now—they used to think of that first. And my heart was almost broken, for I had spent nearly all my money, and that was my only hope for a trousseau—and, of course, no girl can be married without one—her husband would have no respect for her. At least that is what was thought then. So every night I prayed, but no miracle happened. Then one night I slipped out of bed, where I could do nothing but think of it, and came downstairs to pray so that I would not disturb sis. As I prayed I heard coin rattle into the old teapot! I lit a candle (I had been in the dark) and ran in to look. (It was only in the closet in the next room.) I could not lift the teapot down—it was so heavy. At last, when I got it off the shelf, it slipped out of my hands, and was only saved from destruction by falling on the thick rug at the hearth. It was then that it was cracked. But the gold pieces fell and rolled about in a veritable shower. My candle went out. I let them all lie, and rushed up to wake sis. It was hard to do—she was sleeping so soundly. But when I could make her understand, she was as surprised and happy as I was.
“We lit another candle and stole down and closed the shutters and locked the doors and gathered them all up. There were exactly one hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces. Only think! And all were stamped 1836.
“‘Oh, sis,’ I said, ‘some one has stolen your money!’
“‘If any one went to the trouble to steal my money, he would keep it, not present it to you, never fear! Mine is safe at the bank.’
“And sure enough, when she went down to see, the next morning early—for she was very anxious—it was all there, quite safe, drawing its seven per cent. For sis had put hers there from the first, and used only the interest. And at that time a hundred and forty dollars a year was enough for a girl to live on very well. But I had spent my all in what Hiliary called riotous living.
“I thought, at first, we ought to make it known through the paper. But sis said that if any one had been robbed of that money, he would be the person to make it known, as he certainly would, and that to talk of it in that way was to doubt that it was a miracle.
“I have never doubted that. But I did watch the paper for a long time.”