When Rotha re-entered the sick-room a candle was burning on a table by the bedside. Mrs. Garth still crouched before the fire. The blacksmith was awake. As he lifted his eyes to Rotha's face, the girl saw that they wore the same watchful and troubled expression as before.
“Shall I read to you, Mr. Garth?” she asked, taking down from a shelf near the rafters a big leather-bound book. It was a Bible, dust-covered and with rusty clasps, which had lain untouched for years.
“Rotha,” said Garth, “read to me where it tells of sins that are as scarlet being washed whiter nor wool.”
The girl found the place. She read aloud in the rich, soft voice that was like the sigh of the wind through the long grass. The words might have brought solace to another man. The girl's voice might have rested on the ear as a cool hand rests on a throbbing brow. But neither words nor voice brought peace to Garth. His soul seemed to heave like a sea lashed by a storm.
At length he reached out a feeble hand and touched the hand of the girl.
“I have a sin that is red as scarlet,” he said. But before he could say more, his mother had roused herself and turned to him with what Rotha perceived to be a look of warning.
It was plainly evident that but for Mrs. Garth, the blacksmith would make that confession which she wished above all else to hear.
Then Rotha read again. She read of the prodigal son, and of Him who would not condemn the woman that was a sinner. It was a solemn and terrible moment. The fathomless depths of the girl's voice, breaking once and again to a low wail, then rising to a piercing cry, went with the words themselves like an arrow to the heart of the dying man. Still no peace came to him. Chill was the inmost chamber of his soul; no fire was kindled there. His face was veiled in a troubled seriousness, when, at a pause in the reading, he said,—
“There can be no rest for me, Rotha, till I tell you something that lies like iron at my heart.”
“Whisht thee, lad; whisht thee and sleep. Thou'rt safe to be well to-morrow,” said Mrs. Garth in a peevish whimper.