“I join you!” exclaimed a bystander.
“So do I!”
“And I too!”
“And I!” shouted a number of voices. And those who spoke were members of the notorious Black-eye Club. Then they all knelt around the body and swore, hand-in-hand together, never to drink another drop of intoxicating spirits.
And thus by Helen’s death many sinners were converted, many a drunkard’s home made happy again; for the ways of the Lord are mysterious. Good is not seldom wrought out only through tears and suffering. Oh! who will say it was not well for Helen to die?
But poor Mike was inconsolable. He who had once been so blithe and frolicsome now spoke scarcely a word. Days and weeks rolled by, yet he did not change. We may pity him indeed! There was no light in the window now to welcome him from afar as he trudged back from his work in the dusk. And when he sat down to warm himself by the stove, instead of lighting his pipe as of yore and falling into a pleasant doze, he became strangely wakeful.
Then the spectre remorse would glide out of some shadowy corner and whisper bitter words in his ear. If at times he succeeded in silencing its voice, and would give himself up to a reverie of other days, when this miserable shanty
was more gorgeous to him than a palace, oh! the pleasure which the sweet vision brought was like music heard from withinside a prison wall, like sunshine seen through the bars; for those golden days would come never more. Eternity stood between him and them.
Then back remorse would creep and whisper: “You beat her—you broke her heart—you killed her—you did—you did!”
And one evening, while these torturing words were wringing his soul, he threw up his right hand—the hand which had struck her so often—and groaned aloud: “Oh! this is hell. Where’s the axe?”