'Don't, don't fight against it,' said Dr. May, affectionately drawing him to his seat on the bed, as, indeed, the violence of the paroxysm made him scarcely able to stand. 'Let it have its way; you will be all the better for it. It ought to be so—it must.'
And in tears himself, the Doctor turned his back, and went as far away as the cell would permit, turning towards the books that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. 'How long, O Lord, how long?' were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable passion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might have done.
'Oh—thank you—I am ashamed,' gasped the still sobbing boy.
'Ashamed! No; I like you the better for it,' said the Doctor, earnestly. 'There is no need that we should not grieve together in this great affliction, and say out all that is in our hearts.'
'All!' exclaimed Leonard. 'No—no words can say that! Oh! was it for such as this that my poor mother made so much of me—and I got through the fever—and I hoped—and I strove—Why—why should I be cut off—for a disgrace and a misery to all! and again came the heart-broken sobs, though less violently.
'Not to those who look within, and honour you, Leonard.'
'Within! Why, how bad I have been, since this is the reckoning! I deserve it, I know—but—' and his voice again sank in tears.
'Ethel says that your so feeling comforts her the most; to know that you have not the terrible struggle of faith disturbed by injustice.'
'If—I have not,' said Leonard, 'it is her doing. In those happy days when we read Marmion, and could not believe that God would not always show the right, she showed me how we only see bits and scraps of His Justice here, and it works round in the end! Nay, if I had not done that thing to Henry, I should not be here now! It is right! It is right!' he exclaimed between the heaving sobs that still recurred. 'I do try to keep before me what she said about Job—when it comes burning before me, why should that man be at large, and I here? or when I think how his serpent-eye fell under mine when I tried that one word about the receipt, that would save my life. Oh! that receipt!'
'Better to be here than in his place, after all!'