A NEW HOME.
IT was a solemn and almost speechless procession that marched through the midnight woods, waking up the sleeping birds in their nests, and frightening timid rabbits in their burrows. The moon shone down from the cloudless sky, filling the open spaces with a white light, but deepening the shadows where the hazel bushes grew thickest.
Elsie walked beside Ishmael with her hand in his; remembering, oh! how keenly, that day five years ago, which had laid the foundation-stone of all his sorrow. But beyond the present sadness there shone a bright hope in the future, though he could not at this moment catch its light. Only a few days, and she and her mother were going to sail for America; and now, when Ishmael had seen his mother's feeble worn-out body laid in the old churchyard, he would be free to go with them, and begin his new life in a new country.
They found old Humphrey lying in a drunken sleep on the damp floor of the hut, at the foot of the ladder, which he had not been able to climb up; and they had to drag him on one side to carry their burden to its resting-place in the loft overhead. He was an old man, with his brain softened and soddened with drink, and he could not be made to understand what had happened, or be persuaded to let Ishmael remain even for a few hours in his old home.
It was only now and then, when his father was away during the few days that intervened before the funeral, that he could steal in to look at his mother's calm and placid face, from which the wrinkles, graved sharply on it by many troubles, seemed almost smoothed away. But every house in the parish was open to him, the castaway who had been driven from his home, and thrown upon the world.
He followed his mother to the grave, and stood for the last time amid his father and brothers. There was a whole crowd of villagers and neighbours gathered about the grave; and Nutkin was there with the little boy whom Ishmael had sought and found in the windings of the old quarry.
"I'd like to shake hands with all the Medways," said Nutkin, as the crowd began to melt away, "and let bygones be bygones. And, Ishmael, the squire bid me say, is there nothing as he can do for you; nothing as 'ud make it worth your while to stay at home, 'stead o' going to America?"
"Nothin'," answered Ishmael; "there's no home for me now mother's gone. It was home, sweet home, and I shall never have another."
But ten years after, when Ishmael came back to England, not to stay, but only to visit the old place, he had made a home for himself, with Elsie in it for his wife. He owned a farm of his own, and was prospering in every way. He found the old hut fallen into ruins, for his father had died in the workhouse the year after he had left England: and no one had lived in the desolate hovel since.
The old door-sill was there yet, though the thatched roof had long ago mouldered away; and he could almost fancy he saw his mother sitting there, and looking out for him.