The Young Pilgrim: A Tale Illustrative of "The Pilgrim's Progress"

by A. L. O. E.

“I thought that I would go first to Mr. Ewart, and ask his advice.”

“I grieve to say that will no longer be in your power. That excellent minister was to leave Marshdale for Yorkshire yesterday.”

This piece of information fell like a heavy blow upon Mark, and his face showed how much he felt it. “Then I must return to the cottage at once,” said he, in a low tone.

“I can understand your reluctance, my boy, to become a burden upon your poor parents.”

There was not a particle of hypocrisy in Mark; he wanted no praise for motives which were not his. “I was not thinking about that,” said he.

“Ah! I understand,” said Lowe, in his own peculiar tone; “you feel being deprived of the spiritual advantages which you enjoyed while under my roof.”

“Not exactly that,” replied Mark, hesitating and looking embarrassed, for there was a mixture of this regret in his reluctance to return home, though it was not his principal feeling.

The truth was, that Mark dreaded not so much the poverty and discomfort of Ann’s cottage—though he did not like that—as the positive cruelty which he would probably have to endure if he returned. Having for some time slipped his neck from the yoke, he shrank exceedingly from having to bear it again. A soldier who fights bravely on the battle-field, if he leave it for a while till his blood cools and his wounds begin to stiffen and smart, finds it a much greater trial of courage to return to his post than to stay there without ever quitting it.

But Mark seemed to have no other resource, and bidding a friendly farewell to his late master, who, whatever he was in the sight of Heaven, had ever been kind to him, he walked slowly up the street. The gloomy, threatening clouds above him, seemed like types of his darkened fate, and the forerunners of a storm. As he proceeded, pondering over the difficulties of his position, he was startled by the sight of a lady, who was standing at a door at which she had just knocked. Mark had seen her but once before, but her face was imprinted on a memory naturally good, especially as the most important event of his life, his repentance and turning to God, was in some way connected with her. She was the lady who had dropped the bag by the stile which contained Mark’s precious Bible.