At night I went agin to the door, and agin I hearn the sound of weepin’ inside.
Sez I, “Arvilly, let me in; I’ve got a letter for you from Waitstill Webb.”
Sweet little creeter! She remembered her agony, and dropped this flower onto the grave of Arvilly’s happiness. Oh, how she, too, wuz suffering that day, wherever she wuz, and I wondered as much as Tommy ever did about the few cents the govermunt received for the deadly drink that caused these murders and the everlastin’ sorrow that flowed out of ’em.
Well, Arvilly told me to put the letter under the door, which I did. But nothin’ more could I git out of her; and though I sent up another tray of food to her, that too come 297 down untouched; and as I told Josiah, I didn’t know as I could do anything more for her, as bad as I felt, only to think of her and pray for her.
“Yes,” sez he, “we will remember Sister Arvilly at the throne of grace at evenin’ worship.” And after we went to our room he did make a able prayer, askin’ the Lord to look down onto the poor heart of our afflicted sister, and send peace and comfort to her. It wuz a good prayer, but even in that solemn time come the thought: “If you and other church-members had voted as you prayed, Arvilly no need to be shet up there alone with her life agony.”
But it wuz no time to twit a pardner when we wuz both on our knees with our eyes shet, but when it come my turn I did say:
“O righteous God, do help good men everywhere to vote as they pray.”
Josiah said “Amen” quite loud, and mebby he duz mean to vote different. He voted license to help Jonesville, most of the bizness men of the town sayin’ that it would help bizness dretfully to have license. Well, it has helped the undertaker, the jail and the poorhouse.
Well, the next day Arvilly come down lookin’ white and peaked, but didn’t say anything about her eclipse; no, the darkness wuz too awful and solemn to talk about. But she showed me Waitstill’s letter. In it she said she had been for several days caring for a very sick woman for half the night, and at midnight she would go back to the hospital, and every night for a week she had seen a bent figure creeping along as if looking for something, payin’ no attention to anything only what he had in the searchin’ eyes of his mind.
It wuz Elder Wessel lookin’ for Lucia, so Waitstill said. It wuz Love waitin’ and lookin’ out, hoping and fearing. Poor father––poor girl! Both struck down by a blow from the Poor Man’s Club. She writ considerable about Jonesville news to Arvilly, knowin’, I spoze, how welcome it would be, and said she got it from Ernest White.