“God bless you,” said Johnson, squeezing Ned’s hand hard; “you’re a gradely comforter.”
And so they parted.
It was not long, however, before Thomas’s patience was tried to the uttermost. His enemies let him alone for a short time after his wife’s death—for there is a measure of rugged consideration even among profligates and drunkards. But a storm had been brewing, and it fell at last when Ned Brierley had been gone from Langhurst about a month. A desperate effort was made to get Johnson back to join his old companions at the “George,” and when this utterly failed, every spiteful thing that malice could suggest and ingenuity effect was practised on the unfortunate collier, and in a measure upon Betty also. But, like the wind in the fable, this storm only made Johnson wrap himself round more firmly in the folds of his own strong resolution, rendered doubly strong by prayer. Such a thought as yielding never crossed his mind. His only anxiety was how best to bear the cross laid on him. There were, of course, other abstainers in Langhurst besides the Brierleys, and these backed him up, so that by degrees his tormentors began to let him alone, and gave him a space for breathing, but they never ceased to have an eye towards him for mischief.
The month of October had now come, when one evening, as Johnson and Betty were sitting at tea after their day’s work, there was a knock at the door, and immediately afterwards a respectable-looking man entered, and asked,—
“Does not Thomas Johnson live here?”
“Yes; he does,” was Johnson’s reply.
“And I suppose, then, you’re Thomas Johnson yourself?” said the stranger.
“I reckon you’re not so far wrong,” was the answer.
“Ah, well; so it is for sure,” broke out Betty. “Why, you’re the teetottal chap as came a-lecturing when me and our poor Sammul signed the pledge.”
“Sit ye down, sit ye down,” cried her father; “you’re welcome to our house, though it is but a sorrowful one.”