CHAPTER XLII.
IN CONCLUSION.
When Winter closed in, and the first snow mantled the farms of Groveland, the poor girl whom Johnny La Porte had reluctantly made his wife, closed her eyes upon this earthly panorama.
She never rallied after her return from the South. They said that she died of consumption, but her friends knew, whatever medical name might be applied to her disease at the end, that it began with a broken heart.
When it was over, and Nellie Ewing had no further need of his presence, Johnny La Porte,—who, held to his duty by the stern and oftentimes menacing eye of 'Squire Ewing, as well as by the fear which Carnes had implanted in his heart, had been as faithful and as gentle to his poor wife as it was in his worthless nature to be,—now found himself shunned in the community where he had once been petted and flattered.
There was no forgiveness in the heart of 'Squire Ewing, and his door was closed against his daughter's destroyer; for such the Grovelanders, in spite of his tardy reparation, considered Johnny La Porte.
He attempted to resume his old life in Groveland; but 'Squire Ewing was beloved in the community, and when he turned his back upon Johnny La Porte his neighbors followed his example.
Nowhere among those cordial Grovelanders was there a place or a welcome for the man who had blighted the life of Nellie Ewing, and so he drifted away from Groveland, to sink lower and lower in the scale of manhood—dissolute, brainless, a cumberer of the ground.
Nellie Ewing's sad death had its effect upon thoughtless little Mamie Rutger. She was shocked into sobriety, and her grief at the loss of her friend brought with it shame for her own folly, and then repentance and a sincere effort to be a more dutiful daughter and a better woman.