As the doctor wheeled around he saw the members of his family coming out to welcome him home. His manner changed at once. Inwardly delighted with their prompt affection he put the children aside with good-natured rebukes of their clamorous joy, and stalking into the room, which served as an office, sunk quietly into a leathern easy chair, and desired the eldest boy to hand down his fiddle.
The boy took an old violin from its place on the wall and gave it into his father's hand. The doctor drew a lump of rosin from his pocket, rasped the bow with it for a full minute, then lifting the instrument to his shoulder began to play; directly the children came rushing in from the hall and kitchen, astonished, for some of the wildest and most invigorating music heard for many a day, rang out from the dark old violin, filling the whole house with cheerfulness.
The doctor's wife—a fine woman, of the Connecticut stamp—came softly into the room with word that his supper was on the table; but he only answered with a dash at Yankee Doodle, and revelled in it with a zest ten thousand suppers could not have excited. The good housewife never urged her husband to any thing; she knew the folly of that too well; so she sat down pleasantly and listened to his music. It was well worth the trouble, for the doctor threw off a world of generous thankfulness in those erratic notes, and when music comes from the soul it is always good. She asked no questions, but knew very well that something satisfactory had happened to her husband, for he always expressed these feelings through his violin.
Meantime the two travellers kept on up the turnpike. They passed the rock spring, which sparkled out from the shadows cast over it from the dogwood thickets; all cut up root and branch in these days, and moved slowly over the old bridge. They could see the white spire of the Episcopal church, rising into the moonlight from the high bank opposite, and, with the sight, Katharine's heart melted within her. She lifted her eyes to Thrasher; the moonlight lay full upon his face. It was pale and troubled. In that church he had been baptized.
Katharine took his hand with touching gentleness, and pressed it to her lips. Her face was so heavenly that he bent down and kissed it, leaving a heavy tear on her cheek, which she would not have wiped away for the world.
"Ah, Nelson!" she said, clasping her hands and lifting her eyes from the church spire to the heavens, which it seemed to penetrate—"how plainly I see the great goodness of God in all that has happened. At first it was very dark, and I struggled against the cruelty of that arrest, and the unjust sentence which branded me before the world. I forgot that the Son of God was thus assailed, thus branded! and worse still, put to death, that Christianity might be our inheritance. I did not know what great happiness might spring out of this degradation; how holy a work lay waiting for me in that prison!"
"My poor girl, it was a terrible life for you. Can God forgive me for bringing you there?"
"Nelson, this is wrong—it is unkind! It was to be; God knew what was best, and sent me in the path of a great duty against my will, or I never should have found it. He had compassion on those poor creatures so barbarously cut off from every thing sweet and good in life. They were perishing or turning to demons for the want of a little care, a few kind words, a smile of pity now and then. I was poor as poor could be, helpless as a child, but these things I could give them; so he thought it best that I should go.
"I was rebellious at first, Nelson, and wondered how it could be that I, an innocent woman, should suffer among the guilty. I was so young, so weak, and miserably selfish. Besides, I hoped so fondly that you would come back and save me. But they were dragging me away from all possibility of seeing you."
"My poor Katharine!"