Norston's Rest

by Ann S. Stephens

"It is a sprain, and a bad one," she thought, leading the poor beast into his stall, where he lay down wearily; "but no bones are broken. Oh, if he could only speak now and tell me if my lad is alive—or—or—Oh, my God, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me!"

Here the poor woman leaned her shoulder against the side of the stall, and a burning moisture broke into her eyes, filling them with pain; for this woman was given to endurance, and, with such, weeping is seldom a relief; but looking downward at the pathetic and almost human appeal in the great wild eyes of the wounded horse, tears partaking of compassion as well as grief swelled into drops and ran down her face in comforting abundance. So, patting the poor beast on his soiled neck, she went to the house again and heating some decoction of leaves that she gathered from under the garden wall, came back with her lantern and bathed the swollen limb until the horse laid his head upon the straw, and bore the slackened pain with patience.

It was a pity that some other work of mercy did not present itself to assuage the suspense that was becoming almost unendurable to a woman waiting to know of the life or death of her only son. She could not sit down in her accustomed place and wait, but turned from the threshold heart-sick, and, still holding the lantern, wandered up and down a lane that ran half a mile before it reached the highway—up and down until it seemed to her as if unnumbered hours had passed since she had seen her husband go forth to learn whether she was a childless mother or not. "Would he never come?"

She grew weary at last, and went into the house, looking older by ten years than she had done before that shock came, and there she sat, perfectly still, gazing into the fire. Once or twice she turned her eyes drearily on a wicker basketful of work, where a sock, she had been darning before her husband came in, lay uppermost, with a threaded darning needle thrust through the heel, but it seemed ages since she had laid the work down, and she had no will to take it up; for the thought that her son might never need the sock again pierced her like a knife.

Turning from the agony of this thought she would fasten her sad eyes on the smouldering coals as they crumbled into ashes, starting and shivering when some chance noise outside awoke new anguish of expectation.

The sound she dared not listen for came at last. A man's footstep, slow and heavy, turned from the lane and paused at the kitchen door.

She did not move, she could not breathe, but sat there mute and still, waiting.

The door opened, and John Storms entered the kitchen where his wife sat. She was afraid to look on his face, and kept her eyes on the fire, shivering inwardly. He came across the room and laid his hand on her shoulder. Then she gave a start, and looked in her husband's face: it was sullenly dark.

"He is not dead?" she cried out; seeing more anger than grief in the wrathful eyes. "My son is not dead?"

"No, not dead; keep your mind easy about that; but he and I will have a reckoning afore the day breaks, and one he shall remember to his dying day. So I warn you keep out of it for this time: I mean to be master now."