Into the Highways and Hedges

by F. F. Montrésor

"Oh, ay, ye've won her at last," he said. "It's ta'en a near sight o' the gallows to make her like ye, lad; but I fancy it 'ud take a deal more nor that to kill the liking. She's not the soart as 'ull be any trouble to keep. She'll hold to 'ee now through thick and thin; but,—ye might mind, times, that the ways ye walk are rough to a woman's feet; in especial one as was born i' cambric sheets. She'll never remind ye o' that; doan't 'ee quite forget it."

"I doan't," said the preacher. "But the ways must be stiff that lead uphill;" and Tom, looking at his brother's whitened hair and bowed shoulders, was silent.

Barnabas' wife was not likely to have an easy time of it; but, after all, there are a good many things that are more worth living for than easy times. He went back to the farm the next day, carrying with him a small packet, which Meg had charged him to throw unopened into the bottomless depths of the Pixies' Pond. It was not safe for her to keep it, for more reasons than one; and she felt no pang at parting with it. She had flung away more than diamonds for Barnabas! Tom asked no questions, and accepted and carried out the commission with no comments. If he guessed anything, he kept a still tongue on the subject. Barnabas' wife trusted him utterly, and neither he nor the pixies betrayed the trust. This time the diamonds did not return.

Timothy never confessed. After a time, he reappeared, limping ragged and foot-sore over the marshes to his mother's hut, looking over his shoulder as he shambled along. He was nearly starved and very thin, and weak and dirty. His mother received him with unbounded joy. He did not tell her where he had been; only vouchsafed the information that "the preacher had 'lain' the fellow, else he could never have come back".

No one connected him with the attempted murder of Mr. Sauls, but he was less mischievous and less restless than of old. He never understood that Barnabas Thorpe had nearly been hanged in his stead; but he had certainly lost his hatred of the preacher, and even, oddly enough, showed some rudimentary signs of a conscience. Barnabas would possibly have counted that in itself worth going to prison for; and, that being so, Barnabas was hardly, perhaps, to be pitied, though the cloud on his name was never cleared, and though there were always some, generally those who had not fallen under his personal influence, who considered him more knave than fool.

He never betrayed that confession, and the consequences that followed his hearing it did not make him one whit more cautious; but, to the end of his days, he felt "'shamed" when he reflected on his own "cowardliness" in the prison. He believed he might have done more for his Master, if he had not been weighed down during the whole of one afternoon by a most despicable and self-seeking weakness. His devotion to the miserable, his deep sympathy with the fallen, were the greater for that recollection.

It must be owned that from the moment he was certain that he possessed Meg's heart, his hatred of George Sauls ceased to trouble him; that knowledge exorcised that devil more effectually than all his prayers and fastings,—a fact which he put down to his want of faith, but which would rather have amused the doctor; though it is doubtful whether either Dr. Merrill or Barnabas Thorpe had arrived at an entirely just conclusion about the universe in general, and themselves in particular.

Both being honest men in their way, perhaps both had got hold of a splinter of the truth. Perhaps there will be a general piecing one day, when each generation and even individual will bring the precious fragment he has practically believed in, to the "saving of his soul"—materialist and mystic alike!

The last chapter of the story necessarily inclines one to end one's sentences with a query, seeing that an ending must always mean a fresh beginning somehow and somewhere.

The preacher and Margaret moved into the rooms over Giles' shop. He recovered his health to a certain extent; for his constitution, like his will, took a great deal of breaking. His horror of living in a city was lost in his growing desire to fight against the evil of it. Nevertheless, he meant to take a holiday and see the country he loved, when he should be no longer needed. I do not know when that day dawned;—possibly when his body was in its coffin; but one would not like to be sure even of that, for the rest of Heaven must surely mean to such strenuous souls as his, but "increased service".