But Alice would not heed her. She put some of the spirits in a spoon to the poor sufferer’s lips. She was astonished to find him perfectly conscious, for he closed his mouth tightly, and shook his scarred face from side to side.
“He won’t have it, mother,” said Betty, earnestly.
“Give me a drink of cold water,” said the poor man in a low voice. Betty fetched it him. “Ay, that’s it; I want nothing stronger.”
Alice slipped down again to her companions below, but her daughter remained in the chamber.
It was a desolate room, as desolate as poverty and drink could make it; and now it looked doubly desolate, as the scorched figure of the old collier lay motionless on the low, comfortless, curtainless bed. A dip in an old wine bottle standing on a box threw a gloomy light on the disfigured features, which looked almost unearthly in the clear moonlight which struggled with the miserable twinkling of the feeble candle, and fell just across the bed. Betty sat gazing at her father, full of anxious and sorrowful thoughts. How solemn the contrast between the stillness of that sick-chamber and the Babel of eager tongues in the house below! She felt unspeakably wretched, and yet there was a sense of rebuke in her conscience, for she knew how great a mercy it was that her father’s life was spared. She sighed deeply, and then, suddenly rising quietly, she lifted the lid of the box, and brought out a well-worn Bible. She was not much of a scholar, but she could make out a verse or a passage in the Holy Book with a little pains. She had put her mark against favourite passages, and now she turned to some of these.
“‘Come, unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”
She paused on each word, uttering it half aloud, as she travelled carefully from one line to another.
“Ah, that’s what I want,” she said to herself, but in an audible whisper. “It means, Come to Jesus, I know.”
She turned over several more leaves, and then she read again, and rather louder,—
“‘Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus.’