Salome's Burden.
[CHAPTER I.]
Salome's Trouble.
IT was summer time. The day had been oppressively hot; but now, as the sun disappeared like a ball of fire beyond the broad Atlantic, a cool breeze sprang up, and the inhabitants of the fishing village of Yelton came to their cottage doors and gossiped with each other, as they enjoyed the fresh evening air.
Yelton was a small, straggling village on the north coast of Cornwall. It owned but two houses of importance—the Vicarage, a roomy old dwelling, which stood in its own grounds close to the church; and "Greystone," a substantial modern residence on a slight eminence beyond the village, overlooking the sea. The fishermen's cottages were thatched, and picturesque in appearance, having little gardens in front where hardy flowers flourished; these gardens were a-bloom with roses and carnations on this peaceful June evening, and the showiest of them all was one which, though nearer the sea than the others, yet presented the neatest appearance of the lot. This was Salome Petherick's garden, and Salome was a cripple girl of fourteen, who lived with her father, Josiah Petherick, in the cottage at the end of the village, close to the sea.
Salome had been lame from birth, and could not walk at all without her crutches; with their help, however, she could move about nimbly enough. Many a happy hour did she spend in her garden whilst Josiah was out in his fishing boat. She was contented then, as she always was when her father was on the broad sea, for she felt he was in God's keeping, and away from the drink, which, alas! was becoming the curse of his life. Josiah Petherick was a brave man physically, but he was a moral coward. He would risk his life at any hour—indeed, he had often done so—for the sake of a fellow-creature in peril. He was fearless on the sea, though it had robbed him of relations and friends in the past, and if help was wanted for any dangerous enterprise, he was always the first to be called upon; but, nevertheless, there was no greater coward in Yelton, than Josiah Petherick on occasions. He had lost his wife, to whom he had been much attached, five years previously; and, left alone with his only child, poor little lame Salome, who had been anything but a congenial companion for him, he had sought amusement for his leisure hours at the "Crab and Cockle," as the village inn was called, and there had acquired the habit of drinking to excess.