“‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘I scarce like to break in upon your sorrow, but my friend Judge Wharncliffe and his wife have just died of the plague, and their two sons are at death’s door, with no one but an old man-servant to care for them, and the doctor who had attended them hath now died in the very house.”
“At that Gabriel put aside his own trouble, and went forth to see what he could do. He found the elder lad, a fine fellow of one and twenty, beginning to rally, but the younger, a tiny, delicate child of but two or three years, lay at the point of death. He fought for its life, and never left it till it had passed the crisis, and by that time, as he afterwards told me, life had again become bearable to him, and he found what the joy of battle meant; it was not the brutal love of bloodshed, it was the God-like desire to overcome evil with good, disease with health, and death with life.”
“And did the little boy get quite strong?” asked Mollie, eagerly.
“Ay, to be sure, he’s alive to this day, and has lived a right noble life. Few men have suffered with a better courage than Hugo Wharncliffe, and one day I’ll tell you his story.”
“And now tell me the rest about Uncle Gabriel,” said Mollie. “Did he live much longer?”
“Only five years more, but they were five years full of good Work. It was in 1670, I remember, that he wrote to say he was advised to take a few weeks’ rest and hoped to pay us a visit at Bosbury on his way home to his father. Now Dr. Harford was attending some sick folk at the Grange, and chanced to be here the very day he arrived. As we all dined together Gabriel told us with much interest of certain people called Quakers that he had lately come to know. Their way of thought had great attraction for him, especially the effort they made to obey literally the teaching of Christ as to using no oath, and avoiding all war and violence.”
“‘Seeing the quiet way in which they laid down their lives for their peace principles,’ he said, ‘set me wondering whether Christ must not be grieved to find the war spirit so strong still among His followers, and that 1670 years after his birth the bulk of us still demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
“We found that in addition to all his usual work he had been visiting many of these Quakers, who, under the persecuting laws of those times, were imprisoned in Newgate, Bishopsgate Gaol and the New Prison. It was in this fashion that he had taken a fever, for gaol fever raged among these prisoners for conscience’ sake; but he said he grudged not having taken the infection from them, for he hoped that he had caught from them, also, some of their noble and true thoughts. He spoke, too, of Lord Falkland’s craving for peace, and thought that, like him, the Quakers were in advance of the times, and were to lead the nation to truer and nobler ways of thought, particularly on this point about peace, which one day all men would see to be the only true Christ-following.
“We were still talking of the Society of Friends when Dr Harford said he must go out again to visit two more patients. I remember we all three stood for a minute at the garden-gate, and can almost hear your uncle’s voice still as he said, ‘When they spoke of the duty of Christians to take no part in war, I used to feel as on the day when Waghorn would have pulled down the cross, and you spoke of love which is the bond of peace, and then coming hither we found Hilary standing beneath the yew tree holding open the gate for us.’
“His eyes grew wistful, and I noticed that his hand rested for a minute on the gate, as though anything she had touched was sacred to him. Then, his cheerfulness returning, he said he must pay a visit to the Tower of Refuge, and so we parted, for I knew that the place was full of memories to him and that he would fain be alone.