How utterly lonely and desolate she felt as she lay moaning and groaning upon her hard couch, weeping as if she would weep her very life away, longing to lay down the burdens and sorrows of life, yet shrinking in unspeakable terror from the thought of death.
Some words that she had heard, she knew not when or where, kept sounding in her ears, “The way of transgressors is hard.” “The wages of sin is death.” How the truth of those inspired declarations had been verified in Bangs’s case, in Phelim’s, and in her own!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Two days after the death of Bangs, Mr. Wiley went for his wife, who was visiting acquaintances a day’s journey from home.
He shrank from the task of telling her the story of the dreadful scenes enacted in Prairieville during her absence, but the tidings had preceded him, and he found her lying on a couch in strong hysterics.
She greeted him with bitter reproaches—“Why had he not exerted himself to save poor, dear Avery from the fury of the mob?”
“I couldn’t,” he said; “you might just as reasonably ask me why I do not prevent the lightning from striking where it will.”
“Don’t talk in that way to me!” she cried, in passionate tones; “you didn’t try; you didn’t make the slightest effort; the papers would have said so if you had; you were too great a coward to lift a finger to save him.”
“Have it your own way,” he returned, gloomily; “it’s a thousand pities you were not there to quell the fury of the mob, and turn them from so many tigers, thirsting for blood, into lambs; you could have done it, of course; there’s nothing you can’t do, except treat your husband decently,” he added, with bitter emphasis.