The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Leyton. Franks respectfully rose, and gave up his chair to the young clergyman, and, at his request, brought the large Bible, which always occupied a conspicuous place in Ben's home. Very few words were exchanged, but Franks felt that the portion of Scripture selected by the curate was peculiarly well suited to deepen any impression which the late conversation might have left. It was the fifty-first psalm which Mr. Leyton read, almost without comment, by the sick-bed of one just beginning to have his eyes opened to the truth that he, too, had need to cry, Have mercy upon me, O Lord! Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me!
The eyes of Ben Stone were never again to be utterly closed to that truth; as life's day waned, a better light dawned on the invalid's soul.
[J] 1 John iii. 3.
[K] Hebrews xii. 10.
XXIII.
The Wife's Resolve.
On, on flowed the stream, round and round went the mill-wheel; and even so flows the current of time, and the circle of daily occupation goes round and round. Little Bessy, the miller's child, used every afternoon to watch Ned and his little band of workers going cheerfully to their toil; for the short cut to Wild Rose Hollow was through the wooded glen. Whistling and singing, laughing and shouting, the boys came along, and often a nosegay from a cottage garden, or a garland of flowers from the hedge, was left on the way for Bessy. The almshouses she always called her cottages, and the boys who labored to repair them her workmen; and the child's day-dream, as she sported by the stream, was to build a whole village of cottages, the prettiest that ever were seen, so that every poor old woman in England might have one with a garden all brilliant with flowers.
Before Ned and his "jovial crew," as he called the school-boys, had left off working in Wild Rose Hollow, just at the hour of six they always saw John Sands return from visiting the hospital of B——. The Hollow, though a little apart from the high road, yet commanded a view of it, and, punctual as the clock, with his black coat, white neck-cloth, and a narrow-brimmed hat surmounting his close-cropped black hair, the lean, stiff figure of the clerk was seen passing a certain thorn-tree which grew by the dusty highway. The boys were so much accustomed to this sight of the poor husband pursuing his silent, joyless way back to his solitary home, that he would certainly have been missed by them, had he on any day failed to appear. It was as natural to catch that glimpse of him passing the thorn-tree, as it was on Sundays to see him in his place under the reading-desk in church; whatever John Sands did, there seemed to be a kind of necessity that he should go on doing it forever.
It caused no small surprise, then, amongst the boys, when, on one evening in the latter part of May, as the clerk appeared at his usual hour, instead of passing the thorn-tree as usual, he turned off to the left from the high road, and, at the same pace, descended the narrow path which led down into Wild Rose Hollow. Any deviation from John Sands's daily course appeared as strange as if the mill-stream had suddenly taken to flowing in some new channel. The attention of the boys was even distracted from old Matthews, the cake and biscuit-man, who, with his well-known basket, had come that evening down into the Hollow to tempt the "jovial crew" to spend some of their half-pence and farthings in buying its sweet contents. Persis, who had brought her baby on that bright, warm afternoon to the Hollow, partly that she might visit old Sarah Mason, and partly that she might watch her husband and his crew at their work, looked up with an inquiring glance from the low wall on which she was seated, as John Sands came, with his long strides, towards the party.