“It is the last trial,” said the Puritan; “heretofore I have been ever in danger, living so much a life of peril that I heeded it not—perchance, Edith, that I gave not due thanks for manifold and oft deliverance; but now this last peril into which I go, is sure, as men say, and parts not with its victim. As men say—it is not for me, a servant of Him who ruleth all things, to think that any created desolation carries in it certain fate; but where he sends this scourge of His anger, there straightway departs all hope. Edith, I am lingering on these words, thou seest—I would have thee make up thy mind to this, and yet I would not. It is hard to part with thee, my little one! and yet—for the Lord’s sake, Edith, bid thy father God-speed. If I leave thee alone, He is yet with thee.”
“Father,” exclaimed Edith Field, “you speak to me in parables, what is this? You can trust me, father; I am ready to bear any thing—to do any thing; father, you can trust me.”
“I can trust thee, Edith,” said the minister, sadly, “if it concerned my life only—if it concerned His cause for whom we labor. In every thing needing honor and truth, a brave young heart, and a pure spirit, I can trust thee, Edith; but can I trust thee alone, poor child, in this troublous and evil country? can I leave thee without one living heart whose blood is kindred to thine own in all this earth? Edith, Edith! the tempter assaileth us through our nearest and dearest. He would have me choose—choose between my Lord and thee—thee, my sole child! my little one!”
“And if it is so,” said Edith, firmly, “if it is so, father, choose! I—I owe all things to thee, but thou owest all things to Him, and there is naught to make thee waver. I also, who can do little, would do all for His cause; but thou, father, choose!”
There was a pause—they went on together in silence, the solemn hills rising over them on either side—the still air stirred by no mortal breath but theirs, alone before God. The strong man, moved with some deep struggle, was contending with himself—the girl, with her clear eyes fixed upon him, looked on anxiously, yet with the thrilling, youthful enthusiasm of resolve, shining in her face. She did not speak—she left the elder spirit, scarce stouter, bold and manlike though it was, than her own, to fight its battle out in silence.
It ended at last. The lips of the Puritan moved; he looked at his daughter, and then, lifting his hat reverently from his head, gazed with a yearning, solemn look upward into the sky—the soft, balmy, spring sky, serene and calm and beautiful, undimmed by all those angry vapors, which darkened the human air below—and as he looked he became calm. He had committed his one treasure into the keeping of his King.
“Now, Edith,” he said, “let me tell you whither I go, and why. I have come from Hampstead. Edith, from our old home. It would grieve you sorely to see it now.”
“Have they made so great a change, father?” said Edith, following this sudden turn of the conversation with an anxious smile, though she wondered why he avoided telling her the nature of the solemn errand to which he had devoted himself.
“They have changed it, Edith; it is sorrowfully changed, and you may trace, alas! the steps of the rejected Gospel, which they have cast out from among them, but I meant not that. The Lord is among them, Edith, a man of war. The king and his flatterers, it is said, are about to flee from the terror of His presence. The hireling to whom they gave my flock has fled, and I go back, Edith, to meet the great messenger of the Lord’s anger—the Plague!”
“The Plague!” The light, and hope, and enthusiastic youthful firmness faded from her face, like the latest sunbeams from the sky of even. Peril, want, labor, hardship, she was prepared to meet, but not this deadly certainty; the young soul was stricken down in a moment before that terrible name.