“Nay,” said Higgins, “yo’ may say what yo’ like. The dead stand between yo’ and every angry word o’ mine. D’ye think I forget who’s lying there, and how hoo loved yo’? And it’s th’ masters as has made us sin, if th’ Union is a sin. Not this generation maybe, but their fathers. Their fathers ground our fathers to the very dust; ground us to powder! Parson! I reckon I’ve heerd my mother read out a text, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and th’ chidren’s teeth are set on edge.’ Its so wi’ them. In those days of sore oppression th’ Unions began; it were a necessity. It’s a necessity now, according to me. It’s a withstanding of injustice, past, present, or to come. It may be like war; along wi’ it come crimes; but I think it were a greater crime to let it alone. Our only chance is binding men together in one common interest; and if some are cowards and some are fools, they mun come along and join the great march, whose only strength is in numbers.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Hale, sighing, “your Union in itself would be beautiful, glorious—it would be Christianity itself—if it were but for an end which affected the good of all, instead of that of merely one class as opposed to another.”
“I reckon it’s time for me to be going, sir,” said Higgins, as the clock struck ten.
“Home?” said Margaret very softly. He understood her, and took her offered hand. “Home, miss. Yo’ may trust me, tho’ I am one o’ th’ Union.”
“I do trust you most thoroughly, Nicholas.”
“Stay!” said Mr. Hale, hurrying to the bookshelves. “Mr. Higgins! I’m sure you’ll join us in family prayer?”
Higgins looked at Margaret, doubtfully. Her grave sweet eyes met his; there was no compulsion, only deep interest in them. He did not speak, but he kept his place.
Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A RAY OF SUNSHINE.
“Some wishes crossed my mind and dimly cheered it,
And one or two poor melancholy pleasures,
Each in the pale unwarming light of hope,
Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by—
Moths in the moonbeam!”
Coleridge.