For it is now a holiday.”
The ardent, generous spirit which made him quick to resent any sort of cruelty or oppression also gave him the power to be such a lover as might well content the most exacting of maidens, and there were probably no happier people in England that day than these two lovers as they sat under the shadow of Bosbury Cross.
Meanwhile in the tiled cottage to the east of the churchyard an old clergyman, in the last throes of a lingering and painful death, faintly gasped the words, “Lord, how long?”
The physician sorrowfully watched the havoc wrought by man-inflicted ill, from time to time speaking a word or two of comfort and good cheer, or gently raising the dying man into an easier posture. And at the foot of the bed, his face buried in his hands, knelt Peter Waghorn, his frame shaken with sobs, his heart consumed with hatred of Dr. Laud, and in his mind the psalmist’s passionate cry, “Let there be none to extend mercy unto him! . .. Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.” A last faint gasping sigh made him raise his head. The physician was gently laying down the worn-out body and closing the sightless eyes.
From the open casement the wind wafted into the quiet room the glad sound of children’s voices, and as the little people ran down the road the words and the clear high notes floated back to the lovers by the cross, and to the bereaved, sore-hearted man:
“. . . let us away!
For it is now a holiday.”
Dr. Harford noted the strange contrast within the room and without. He laid his hand kindly on Peter Waghorn’s shoulder.
“Your father, too, keeps holiday,” he said; “be comforted, he has entered into rest.”