Midway in the journey, Joe and his aged mistress dismounted to cross the Trent,—and four more miles brought them to Gainsborough. On arriving at the market-town, the good old dame, somewhat to the lad's surprise, presented him with half-a-crown,—a sum he had never, till then, possessed. After a brief preface of prudence, she informed him that he was at liberty to spend the next three hours in looking at the rarities in the market, in walking about the town, or in any mode that he thought would most highly gratify his curiosity. Joe set forth, anticipating sights which might afford a passing gratification; but in the course of the first hour became immovably attracted by a display of merchandise, from which the rustic traffickers of the market, too generally, turned away with indifference,—a spacious stall of old books.
The image of a homely country lad, clad in a rustic garb, and shod with heavy-laced boots, standing by that old book-stall, presented a very uninteresting spectacle to the market people at Gainsborough. The butter-women brushed rudely past him, grumbling at the awkwardness with which he obstructed their crowded path; and the hucksters roughly cursed him, half-overturning the absorbed youth in their haste to forestall each other in cheapening the produce of the village dairies. Yet Joe was wont to refer to the hour during which he looked over the tattered treasures of the travelling bookseller as the most important in his whole life. He laid out the first half-crown he had ever possessed in purchasing the translated work of a French philosopher, without knowing, for many months after, that the author of the book bore an opprobious designation among theologians. At successive periods of his after-history, Joe attributed this occurrence to the operation of the inevitable laws of necessity, to accident, to permissive Providence: but, without entering into the labyrinth of his progressive trains of thought, or solving the question of the validity of any of his conclusions,—suffice it to say, that the purchase of that book produced a sequel of the most intense interest to the young and undirected inquirer.
Joe had but just paid his half-crown into the hand of the bookseller, and buttoned the volume in the breast of his coat, when his ears were stricken by the boisterous tones of a bawling pedlar. With remarkable elongation of face, the man was proclaiming the wondrous contents of a pamphlet that he held in his hand, copies of which he was offering for sale, "amazingly cheap," as he avowed, to the staring by-standers. The stroller rapidly gleaned coppers among the wonder-stricken butter-women, who forgot their baskets in the serious interest awakened by the pedlar's tale; and Joe could not refrain from noting the comments which the simple people made upon the story.
"Here is a true and faithful account," reiterated the pedlar, with all his power of lungs, "of the awful apparition of a young woman to her sweetheart, three weeks after her death,—warning him, in the most solemn manner, to forsake his evil ways, and not to deceive others, as he had deceived her,—and foretelling to him that he would die that day fortnight,—and then vanishing in a flash of fire, leaving a smell of brimstone behind her! And how the young man took to his bed immediately after, and died at the time his sweetheart had foretold,—making a godly confession of his sins on his death-bed. All which happened," concluded the pedlar, with a look of solemn assurance that went at once to the hearts of his unsuspecting audience,—"but one month ago, in the county of Cornwall;—and here are the names of ten creditable parishioners of the place, who heard the young man's confession, and have set their names as witnesses of the truth of the circumstance, that it might be a warning to young men to repent, and not to deceive their sweet-hearts,—and all this you have for the small charge of one penny!"
"The Lord ha' marcy on us, Moggy," cried a young and blooming butter-woman to her elderly neighbour, as they leant over the handles of their baskets, aghast with wonder:—"what an awful thing it must ha' been to see that young woman come from the deead!"
"It must, indeed, Dolly," replied the older gossip, shaking her head: "it's enough to mak one tremmle to think on't! Some folks say that there's no sich thing as a ghooast,—but I'm sewer I wouldn't be so wicked as to say so."
"And she vanished in a flash o' fire and brimstone, did she, maister?" said Dolly to the pedlar, as she tendered her penny.
"That she did, pretty maid!" quickly answered the vender, with a look of roguish seriousness: "take the book home, and let your sweetheart read it to you, if you can't read it yourself; and you'll find that what I have said is all true."
"I hope it is, maister, for they're solemn things to joke about!" remarked a staid-looking matron, who was taking out her spectacles to read the veracious story.
"True as the Gospel!" exclaimed the ready pedlar: "I was born and brought up in the parish, and know every one of the creditable yeomen who have signed the young man's confession."