"But they are just recovering from sickness; they are too young to work. O, where, where can we go?"
"To the poorhouse," said the landlord, fiercely.
The poor woman rose, and approaching the landlord's feet, fell upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked upward in his stern and unrelenting face.
"Israel Wurm," she said, "has your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember that my husband was your early friend—your schoolfellow—your playmate. Remember that when he was rich and you poor, he gave you from his plenty—freely—bountifully—not gave with the expectation of a return; his gifts were bounties, not loans."
"Therefore I owed him nothing," said the obdurate miser, turning away.
"You shall hear me out," said the woman, starting to her feet. "I ask for a further delay; I ask you to stay the hard hand of the law. You profess to be a Christian; I demand justice and mercy in the name of those sleeping innocents, my poor grandchildren, whose father is in heaven. You shall be merciful."
"Heyday!" exclaimed the miser; "this is fine talk, upon my word. You demand justice, do you? Well, you shall have it. The law is on my side, and I will carry it out to the letter."
"Then," said the outraged woman, stretching forth her trembling hand, "the curse of the widow and the orphan shall be upon you. Sleeping or waking, it shall haunt you; and on your miserable death bed, when the ugly shapes that throng about the pillow of the dying sinner shall close around you, our malediction shall weigh like lead upon you, and your palsied lips shall fail to articulate the impotent prayer for that mercy to yourself which you denied to others. And now begone. This house is mine to-night, at least. Afflict it no longer with your presence. Go forth into the night; it is not darker than your benighted soul, nor is the north wind one half so pitiless as you."
With a bitter curse upon his lips, but trembling and dismayed in spite of himself, Israel Wurm left the presence of the indignant victim of his cruelty, and turned his footsteps in the direction of his home. His home! It scarcely deserved the name. There was no fire there to thaw his chilled and trembling frame—no light to gleam athwart the darkness, and send forth its pilgrim rays to meet him and guide his footsteps to his threshold. No wife, no children, waited eagerly his return. It was the miser's home—dark, desolate, stern, and repulsive. Its deep cellars, its thick walls held hidden stores of gold, and notes, and bonds, but there were garnered up no treasures of the heart.
The miser's path lay through the churchyard, a desolate place enough even in the gay noon of a midsummer day, now doubly repulsive in the wild midnight of midwinter. The wall was ruinous. The black iron gateway frowned, naked and ominous. The field of death was crowded with headstones of slate, and innumerable mounds marked the resting-place of many generations. The snow was now gathering fast over the dreary and desolate abode, as the miser stumbled along the beaten pathway, bending against the blast and drift. A strange numbness and drowsiness crept over him. He no longer felt the cold; an uncontrollable desire of slumber possessed him. He sat down upon a flat tombstone, and soon lost all consciousness of his actual situation.