Mrs. Scott’s pain was very present with her, however, on that beautiful morning. She was in the midst of a trouble which might well have exhausted a more patient woman. She had to sit still and see her household gods broken one by one; she was forced, as she said herself, to “bide quiet” whilst ruin stalked towards their home, drawing nearer every hour. Death to her seemed naturally a less trial than this lengthened torture, and she could not agree with her visitor when Miss Moffat answered,—
“The greatest because it is hopeless.”
“Not making light of your trouble, Miss Grace, don’t you think it may be just as hopeless a grief as death to feel yourself coming to want and your children to beggary?”
“If there were no way to avert such misfortunes, perhaps not,” was the reply; “but it is because we cannot avert death, because we can never hope in this world to see those who are gone, that I say death is so terrible a grief.”
“It is terrible,” Mrs. Scott agreed; “but I don’t feel as if it was as hard a sorrow as to see everything going, and not be able to put out a finger to save us from ruin. There are the potatoes undug in the ground, and I dursn’t take up a root of them to boil for the dinner. We have had to sell the cows, for we were “threatened” if we tried to graze them. The boys have nothing to do, and the meadows are all laid; but they warned Amos off when he went to mow. They poisoned our dog because he flew at one of the bailiffs Brady sent; and they tell me now Brady is going to get the grass in, and the potatoes up, and the corn cut when it ripens, if he has to bring a regiment of soldiers to protect his men.”
At the idea of which imposing array Mrs. Scott dropped her work on her knee, heaved a deep sigh, and remarked,—
“God alone knows what the end will be!”
“I will tell you what the end ought to be,” said Grace kindly. “You ought to begin to pack up your belongings now, and leave the Castle Farm as soon as ever you can get out of it.”
“Amos’ll never leave it alive,” she answered. “He is not a hard man to talk to in a general way, but Brady has tried to head him, and it has made him that dour, there is no reasoning with him.”
“Have you ever really tried to reason with him?” Miss Moffat inquired.