Two days had he sought employment, and sought in vain. There he stood, without a home—without food—without shelter. Beg he could not. A step is heard—a horrid thought darts through his brain; despair nerves him, and, as the unknown passes, he demands his money. The stranger resists—with one stroke of his powerful arm, he fells him to the earth—rifles him of his purse—and fleeing, leaves him for dead.
Reader, now we have witnessed the last step to ruin of the miserable young man. Why follow him in his downward career? Why enter with him into the abodes of vice and infamy? Why present the blackened picture to the mind of innocence? The guilty can imagine it but too well.
For a moment Ellen seemed transfixed to the spot whereon she stood. “I think it is all over with him,” said the woman, who had followed her to the bed-side.
Ellen, stooping, took one of the cold hands that lay upon the coverlid, and pressing her fingers to his pulse, discovered by its faint, slow movement, that the soul yet lingered this side the portals of eternity.
Kneeling, she breathed one intense, imploring supplication, which, caught by the listening angels, was on wings of rapture borne to the throne of Grace.
Rising, she said to the woman, who stood gazing wonderingly upon her—“Where is the clergyman who belongs to this institution?”
“Oh! madam, he’s gone a traveling after his health!”
“And the physicians?”
“If it’s the doctors you mean, ma’am, they gave him up long ago.”