“Yes,” assented the doctor, with a sigh. “Ah, well, I must try to make it up to her during the rest of our two lives!”
With that he took his departure, and Miriam opened her note. It was written in a most cheerful strain, asking her sympathy in the writer’s joy over her deliverance from the great trial of the last few weeks.
“My dear,” she wrote, “if ever you are in sore distress, cry to the Lord for deliverance, as I did, and He will surely hear. ‘In His favor is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’”
The thought comforted Miriam. “Shall it not be so with me also, and even with poor Nora?” she asked herself, with a feeling of partial relief and hopefulness, as she refolded the note and put it in her pocket.
“Grandmother,” she said, aloud, “will you go with me to see poor Nora? You will, I am sure, know how to speak a word of comfort to her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Heath said, rising; “I can at least repeat to her some of the precious Bible promises to the widow and the fatherless; and we will carry them something to eat. The children will be hungry, even if grief deprives the mother of her appetite.”
The night that followed that day was to Miriam the longest and saddest she had ever known in all her young, healthful life. Her heart was sore for Nora in her overwhelming grief and despair, and full of horror at the remembrance of Bangs’s crime and the fearful retribution that had so speedily overtaken him.
She slept little till toward morning, and in consequence rose somewhat later than her usual hour. Hastening down-stairs to begin the duties of the day, she met McAllister in the lower hall.
“Gude-mornin’, Miss Mirry. The captain left this as he was ridin’ by a few moments since, biddin’ me give it to you,” he said, handing her a note.
In spite of a determined effort to seem unconcerned, Miriam felt her cheeks flush hotly as she took the missive and glanced at the address, unmistakably in Charlton’s handwriting.