Chapter Forty Nine.
My father, much to his surprise, has a bit of land to put his foot upon, and say, “This is my own.”
“You’re too late, Tom,” said Ben the Whaler, as I jumped down from off the basket of the coach; “the old woman died last night.”
“I’m sorry for it, Ben,” replied I, “as she wished so much to see me; but I did not receive Anderson’s letter till this morning, and I could not get here sooner.”
This intelligence induced me to direct my course to the hospital, where I had no doubt that I should find old Anderson, and obtain every information. I met him as he was walking towards the bench on the terrace facing the river, where he usually was seated when the weather was fine. “Well, Tom,” said he, “I expected you, and did hope that you would have been here sooner. Come, sit down here, and I will give you the information which I know you have most at your heart. The old woman made a very happy end. I was with her till she died. She left many kind wishes for you, and I think her only regret was that she did not see you before she was called away.”
“Poor old Nanny! she had suffered much.”
“Yes, and there are great excuses to be made for her; and as we feel so here, surely there will be indulgence from above, where the secrets of all hearts are known. She was not insane, Tom; but from the time that she supposed that her son had been gibbeted, there was something like insanity about her: the blow had oppressed her brain—it had stupefied her, and blunted her moral sense of right and wrong. She told me, after you had communicated to her that her son was in the hospital, and had died penitent, that she felt as if a heavy weight had been taken off her mind; that she had been rid of an oppression which had ever borne down her faculties—a sort of giddiness and confusion in the brain, which had made her indifferent, if not reckless, to everything; and I do believe it, from the change which took place in her during the short time which has since elapsed.”
“What change was that? for you know that I have been too busy during the short intervals I have been here to call upon her.”