Norston's Rest

by Ann S. Stephens

"There," she said, "I will bring another bowl and we will have supper; there is porridge enough for two."

There was enough for two, though one had the greatest portion, for joy took away the old man's appetite. It was enough for him that he could sit there with a spoon in his hand, gazing at her. There was not much conversation during this meal. The timid old man asked few questions, and Judith only said that she had been in a servant's place away up the railroad, and had brought home her wages, or most of them.

The girl had every penny that she had earned in her bosom, and gave it to the old man that night. She had walked all the way from "Norston's Rest," that the little sum might be worth giving. So the old man was happy that night, and after Judith had carried her bundle, in which was the red garment Storms had given her, up-stairs, he was on his knees by the unmade bed, in his little room, with a prayer of humble thanksgiving on his lips, and tears streaming down his face like rain.

The next day Judith took up her household work with unusual energy. It was her only resource from the excitement of hopes and fears that possessed her. The love that had tempted her from home was absorbing as ever; but doubts and fears strong as the love tormented her continually. Even at the last moment she had hesitated to leave the neighborhood of "Norston's Rest." There had been something in Storms' manner that made her distrust him.

But she would wait patiently. That was her promise. In three days he had pledged himself to see her. If he failed, if he was mocking her, why, then—

Judith turned away from the subject here. That which might follow was more than she dared think of.

I have said that the girl was not all evil—indeed what human being is? She loved this man Storms, with all the passion of an ardent, ill-regulated nature. Heedless, selfish, nay, to a certain extent, wicked, she might be; but deliberate cruelty of action was repulsive to her—that of speech had its origin in the jealousy which tormented her more than any one else.

Judith understood well enough that the paper she had given to Storms might cause great trouble to Sir Noel Hurst, but her ideas of the rights of property were very crude, and she could see no reason why that should not be used to win a portion of the baronet's great wealth, for the benefit of her lover. "Why should one man be so enormously rich without labor," she reasoned, "and another win the bare necessities of life by incessant toil?" Judith had gathered these ideas from her lover, and dwelt upon them in extenuation of her fault, when she joined him in a conspiracy to wring wealth from the proud old man at "Norston's Rest."

After her return home, the destitution of her father gave a new impulse to this levelling idea. She began to look on him as a victim to the injustice of society, and persuaded herself that in the advancement of her lover's projects she would lift him out of this miserable existence.

It was with difficulty that Judith kept silent, on this subject. She longed to cheer and astonish the old man by the brilliancy of her projects, but Storms had forbidden this, and she dared not disobey him.