She paused, having uttered these words with deep feeling, but at the same time in a steady and fearless voice. The effect on her hearers was overpowering. Not a scornful eye, not a sneering lip remained when she had finished, but sobs and tears burst from those who had for long years known little other than fictitious weeping. Each took the offered tract, each returned with warmth the kind pressure of her hand as she parted from them; and as she remounted her horse, one voice was heard to say, “Poor thing! God bless her!” Then all shrank back into the theatre, and the happy three turned homeward once again. And oh, with what deep thankfulness did all make their way along the cliffs, and then close to the incoming tide, whose every wave seemed to throw up for them a sparkle of joy in its glittering spray! Few words, however, were spoken. Amos could hardly realise that this moral heroine was the sister whom he had once known so weak, so self-willed, so unimpressible for anything that was good and holy. Walter also was utterly staggered and humbled when he reflected on what he had just witnessed, though at the same time he was truly happy in having been strengthened to carry out his own noble and self-denying purpose. As for poor Julia, she could hardly believe that she herself was the person who had addressed that group outside the theatre walls. Oh, it was so strange, so terrible, and yet so blessed! for through that newly-opened door of work for the gracious Master bright rays from the flood of glory in which he ever dwells had been pouring in upon her soul.
The happy three reached their cottage, overflowing with love to one another, and all anxious that Miss Huntingdon should be a sharer in their happiness, when she should hear what a bright and blessed day had been granted them. So they sought her in the evening, when their mother had retired to rest. Seated at her bedroom window, the four looked forth upon the mighty deep, now rolling in its great waves nearer and nearer, and every wave flashing in the silver light of the full-orbed moon. And surely the moonlight streaming down upon those waves, like God’s calm peace on the billows of earthly trial, was in sweet harmony with the feelings of that little group, as Amos and Julia poured out their account of Walter’s noble address, and as Amos and Walter told of the unexpected and loving self-sacrifice exhibited in the conduct of their darling sister. Need it be said that in Miss Huntingdon they had one who listened with almost painful interest and thankfulness to the adventures of that never-to-be-forgotten day? Drawing them all round her, she poured out her heart in praise to God for what he had done in them and by them, and in prayer that they might be enabled to persevere in the glorious course on which they had all now entered. And now, when all were again seated—a little mound or pyramid of young hands being heaped together over one another in Miss Huntingdon’s lap—Walter’s voice was first heard. “I want an anecdote, an example of moral courage, auntie; and it must be a female one this time, for we have a moral heroine here, there can be no doubt about that.”
“There is no doubt of it, I am sure,” replied his aunt; “and there can be no difficulty in finding moral heroines, as well as moral heroes. Indeed, the only difficulty lies in making the most suitable selection from so many. Our dear Julia has shown a moral courage such as I am certain she could not have done had she not sought strength from the only unfailing fountain of strength; and so I will take as my example one who was surrounded, as Julia was, by persons and circumstances which might well have daunted the stoutest heart, much more the heart of a poor and desolate young woman. And my example will be the more appropriate because it will bring before us a scene which is closely connected with the seashore—such a seashore, it may be, as we are now gazing on, with its sloping sands, and waves rushing up higher and higher on the beach. My heroine, then—and she had a fellow-heroine with her—was a humble Scottish girl who lived in the reign of Charles the Second, when the poor and pious Covenanters were bitterly and remorselessly persecuted, even to the death, because they would not do violence to their consciences and deny the Lord who bought them. Many of them, you know, were hunted by the king’s savage soldiery among the hills and mountains, and, when overtaken, were slain in cold blood, even when in the act of prayer.
“Margaret Wilson, my heroine, was a young girl of eighteen. She was taken prisoner by the soldiers, tried, and condemned to die, because she steadily and courageously refused to acknowledge the supremacy of any other than Christ in the Church. A few words might have saved her life; but she would not utter them, because they would have been words of falsehood, and, though she dared to die, she dared not tell a lie. So they brought her out to the seashore, such as is before us now. The tide was rising, but had not then begun long to turn. She had a fellow-sufferer with her of her own sex—one who, like herself, preferred a cruel death to denying Christ. This fellow-sufferer was an aged widow of sixty-three. The sentence pronounced against them both was that they should be fastened to stakes driven deeply into the sand that covered the beach, and left to perish in the rising tide. The stake to which the aged female was fastened was lower down the beach than that of the younger woman, in order that the expiring agonies of the elder saint, who would be first destroyed, might shake the firmness of Margaret Wilson. The water soon flowed up to the feet of the old woman; in a while it mounted to her knees, then to her waist, then to her chin, then to her lips; and when she was almost stifled by the rising waves, and the bubbling groan of her last agony was reaching her fellow-martyr farther up the beach, one heartless ruffian stepped up to Margaret Wilson, and, with a fiendish grin and mocking laugh, asked her, ‘What think you of your friend now?’ And what was the calm and noble reply? ‘What do I see but Christ, in one of his members, wrestling there? Think you that we are the sufferers? No. It is Christ in us—he who sendeth us not on a warfare upon our own charges.’ She never flinched; she sought no mercy from man. The waves reached her too at last; they did the terrible work which man had made them do. The heroic girl passed from the hour of mortal struggle into the perfect peace of her Saviour’s presence.”
As she finished, Julia looked with tearful eyes into her aunt’s face, and said gently, “Dear auntie, Christ was her strength; and,” she added in a whisper, “I believe he was mine.”
“Yes, yes, precious child,” said Miss Huntingdon, drawing her closely to her, “I am sure it was so; and the one great lesson we may learn from our three heroines is this, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.’”