“Poor Jenny York, mother, she must have died without me. Thank Heaven, I was there, mother. Thank Him that I knew how to save her.”
CHAPTER X.
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR OLD MAID.
If ever a man had reason to be disappointed at the ways of Providence, that man was Mark Small, owner of the mill, whose earthly possessions had vanished in fire and smoke. Twenty years before, he had wandered over from Foxtown, a sunburnt lad, with all his wardrobe—a cotton shirt, homespun pants, and a straw hat, stuck loosely upon his thin frame,—and the sad recollection of the death-bed of his father, a dissipated laborer, firmly fixed in his memory. In search of a job he stumbled into Capt. Thompson’s kitchen, where he was treated to a good, warm meal, and afterwards given charge of the captain’s “cattle;” i. e. a lively young horse, and a quiet, orderly cow,—for the captain’s domestic establishment was then on a very small scale. This work contented him for five years; when a desire to become a tin-peddler, induced the captain to equip him with a horse and wagon, and to set him off upon his travels. A very promising year at this business was ended by the disappearance of his whole stock from the breaking of a bridge; and the bankruptcy of that concern was the consequence. Then he tried book-peddling with considerable success, until one night the barn, in which he and his library had taken shelter from a storm, was struck by lightning and burned; he barely escaping with his life. Then he took to farming;—cut his leg with a scythe, and was laid up all winter. So fast failures followed all his attempts to rise in the world, that he jestingly asserted he must have been named Mark, that misfortune might make no mistake in marking him for its victim. At length he sought employment at the paper mill, where he prospered; and in time, by careful saving and shrewd management, was able to purchase the whole concern. And now fire had again made him penniless. Yet he sat there, lounging on a stone, humming a tune, and whittling a stick, as the twilight was gathering, and the flickering flames dying out of all that remained of his earthly possessions. He was a tall, thin man, with hollow cheeks, a ring of grizzled beard encircling his throat, a long, sharp nose, and a pair of rambling, piercing eyes, which were now fastened upon the fast blackening heap before him. So deeply was he interested in the last flashes of his expiring treasures, that he was unconscious of the approach of footsteps, until a hand was laid upon his shoulder.
“Mark, if it wasn’t the Lord’s doings, I should say that you’re the worst treated man in Cleverly.”
Mark started, and turned to see the sharp eyes of Hulda Prime looking into his eagerly. He was not quite sure, but he thought they looked moist and watery.
“Yes, Hulda, the old tune’s struck up again,”—by which Mark meant his old follower, misfortune—“I’d kinder lost the hang of it, so long since I’ve heeded it, but now it seems jist as natral as ‘auld lang syne.’”
“Mark, I’m real sorry for you. I don’t know as I’m welcome, but I couldn’t help putting on my bunnet and coming over to see you, if ’twas only for the sake of ‘auld lang syne’ you tell about.”