“We ought to have learned this evening how to get rid of the Midianite,” observed quiet Mrs. Bolder, but in a melancholy tone, for she herself was oppressed with cares, and had by nature little spirit to struggle against them.
“Yes,” said Lottie more cheerfully; “I will be with thee, that is a wonderful word! I will repeat it over and over to myself, when I lie down, and when I get up, and when I’m about my work. We should never feel lonesome or sad when the dear Lord says, I will be with thee: with us all through our lives; and then when the time comes for us to die, we know that we shall be with Him.”
The same promise which strengthened a warrior of old for heroic deeds, cheered and encouraged a little servant maid in her path of humble toil. Lottie trod more lightly on her way when she thought of Gideon and his heavenly Guest.
Mrs. Bolder, after she had parted from Lottie, turned towards the single shop in the hamlet of Wildwaste, which was kept by herself and her husband. The shutters were up, so she saw no light, but the door was upon the latch, and she entered through the shop into the little back-parlour where Tychicus Bolder, seated by the fire, was awaiting his wife’s return from the meeting.
Sadly poor Miriam looked on what she called “the wreck of such a fine man!” Over the hard-featured, smoke-dried looking face of Bolder, wrinkled with many a line traced by care and pain, hung the white hair, streaked here and there with iron gray. His beard had grown long, and lay on his sunken chest; his back was bowed, his knees drawn up, as he sat with his feet on the fender, with a black shawl of his wife’s wrapped round his rheumatic frame. Bolder could not turn his head without pain; but he bade his wife shut the door, come and sit beside him, and tell him all about the parson’s lecture.
“Oh, how different it was in the days when it was you that went, and you that had the telling—you who can talk like a parson yourself!” sighed Mrs. Bolder, as she stirred the fire, which was getting low, as Bolder had no power to stir it himself.
“Wife,” said Bolder solemnly, “you’ve been to a lecture, and I dare say a good one, for I think more of Mr. Eardley now than I did in old times; but I’ve had my sermon too, as I sat here by the fire, and my preacher was one as spoke with more power than Mr. Eardley, or any other parson under the sun!”
MR. AND MRS. BOLDER.