"That my ways are rough for your feet; for that, when all's said and done, ye come of a different kind. Are ye quite content now, Margaret? Ye told me once that we had made a mistake."
Margaret turned to him with a smile that was answer enough. "Contentment is hardly the right state of mind for your wife, is it?" she said. The wistful tenderness in her face deepened. "You will never rest contented while there is a single 'unawakened' person left. I am more than contented now; though I am not so hopeful as you are. Only keep me very close to you, please, if your way is rough."
"What a sight o' houses, an' full—full to the cellars!" said the preacher. Meg knew what he was thinking when she saw his nostrils dilate and his eyes brighten like those of an old war horse when he hears the sound of a drum.
"To-morrow," cried Barnabas, "to-morrow I'll begin again. These last months have gi'en me a lesson. Ay, they've taught me I am too ready by times to serve two masters; that I've thought a deal too much o' my bodily life."
And his wife sighed under cover of her smile. That moral was perhaps hardly the one that most people would have drawn from late events. But a man sees what he has eyes to see, and that only!
"Barnabas," she said, "do you think from the bottom of your heart that your mistakes in life have generally arisen from a time-serving backwardness, from over-prudence and cowardliness?"
After a moment's silence, he answered, with reddening cheek:—
"Ay, lass; those ha' been my sins; I'd not call 'em mistakes. Mistakes one's bound to make, but they doan't matter. So long as a man follows the light as he sees it, he's bound to near it in time, and naught else is worth th' counting; but an' he holds back for fear o' mishaps, and is neither hot nor cold, phew!—the devil himsel' might be 'shamed o' that soart. Happen it takes all hell to warm some into life! For the rest, of course one must pay for blunders; it's a child's part to cry over that. We are apt to make a deal too much fuss about suffering, though we call ourselves the servants o' Him who chose it."
He frowned, looking over the housetops with eyes that saw the inside of Newgate and Jack dying.
"As a man sows, he reaps," he said. "An' there ain't no such thing as escaping payment. One sees that payment in the hospitals and the streets and the prisons. But it's a just law; and a remission of it 'ud mean death, not life. There is none, I fancy, lass, unless the Lord ceases to be merciful."