“He can’t get over it; he’ll never see another sunset,” said one.
“Well, any way we can’t have a harder master, that’s some comfort!” exclaimed another.
“Oh! Master William is a real right down lord,” cried a third eagerly, “he won’t rack-rent the tenants, and grind down the poor. Why, he saved us and our little ones from the workhouse last winter, though he is poor—that is quite poor for a gentleman—I well know.”
“Then hurrah! for the new lord!” said the second speaker, throwing his hat in the air; “and I think they should pension the horse, that has given him to us, with the free run of the park all his life, instead of shooting him, as some one talked of doing.”
“For shame, it is wicked to rejoice over the fallen,” said a woman in the crowd, and in the next moment the sound of a pistol was heard proclaiming that the horse had paid his penalty for the accident, and would never throw another rider!
And now for a moment, before these pages close, let us contemplate the death-bed of the selfish and avaricious young lord, who in the three stages of ease, affluence, and luxury—and as boy, youth, and man,—had only laid up his “treasures on earth.”
But they could not assuage one torturing pain, or prolong his life for a second!
Far more than bodily pangs, oh! harder to endure a thousand times, were the stings of
conscience which now assailed him. In dark array rose all the scenes of suffering he might have relieved, and had not; he saw himself again the selfish child, the covetous youth, the grasping landlord, and the unrelenting man. The events of that same day were even yet more fresh in his memory. Had he but listened to his cousin’s wants, instead of his own selfish plans, might he not have lived?—was it not one last opportunity of amendment offered by a merciful God, ere He swept him from the earth, and called him to give a strict account of his stewardship?
And it was that cousin, who would now have all his wealth, to whom he had denied in the morning so small a portion.