She never went to church. Her cherished sorrow grew morbid; her hopeless hope became a monomania; her life narrowed down to one mournful routine. She went nowhere but to the turnstile on the turnpike, where she leaned upon the rotary cross, and watched the road.
Even to this day the pale, despairing, but most beautiful face of that young watcher is remembered in that neighborhood.
Only very recently a lady who had lived in that vicinity said to me, in speaking of this young forsaken wife—this stranger in our land:
"Yes, every day she walked slowly up that narrow path to the turnstile, and stood leaning on the cross and gazing up the road, to watch for him—every day, rain or shine; in all weathers and seasons; for months and years."
CHAPTER XIX.
NOBODY'S SON.
Ishmael lived. Poor, thin, pale, sick; sent too soon into the world; deprived of all that could nurture healthy infant life; fed on uncongenial food; exposed in that bleak hut to the piercing cold of that severe winter; tended only by a poor old maid who honestly wished his death as the best good that could happen to him—Ishmael lived.
One day it occurred to Hannah that he was created to live. This being so, and Hannah being a good churchwoman, she thought she would have him baptized. He had no legal name; but that was no reason why he should not receive a Christian one. The cruel human law discarded him as nobody's child; the merciful Christian law claimed him as one "of the kingdom of Heaven." The human law denied him a name; the Christian law offered him one.
The next time the pastor in going his charitable rounds among his poor parishioners, called at the hut, the weaver mentioned the subject and begged him to baptize the boy then and there.