“If you do bring the child here,” said he, “I will leave.”
“Do so before, if you choose,” I answered, “for in one hour she will be here.” And I further informed him that upon his future quietness and good behavior it would depend whether he should be proceeded against for the sale of spirits to minors and his other misdeeds.
A new cause of alarm was now discovered. The mother of the child lay sick in another house; and investigation into the nature of her illness developed the fact that, in a stolen interview with poor little Bessie, it was she who had communicated to the child the infection. Both mother and daughter were removed to the tavern, a nurse was provided, and all proper steps were taken for their comfort. Yorkshire John, having become subdued by these events, was suffered to be their attendant. The landlord, having received Mariot’s assurance that his reasonable charges should be met, sullenly acquiesced, and did not carry out the threat of removal. The customers, however, fortunately for themselves, avoided the “Pest House,” and his business was reduced completely to that of an infirmary. Thus, what fear of moral contagion could not accomplish, was effected by the dread of physical infection.
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III.—THE VISION.
Pass over a couple of years, and behold me, the energetic actor—perhaps almost unclerical—in the events of the preceding narrative, now domiciled permanently in the “Mariotdale Hotel.” The old landlord—a good weaver—has resumed his place in the works, and frequently avows his satisfaction at the change which circumstances compelled him to make in his pursuits. Yorkshire John, his very self, is my landlord—and a quieter dwelling there is not in the country. Perhaps much of this is due to the good management of his wife—for she, after all, is the man of the house.
And Bessie?
Poor Bessie! We laid her down to rest in the churchyard two years since, for the illness she had was unto death. It was this shock which recalled the father to his senses; and rest assured I did not spare him. He was not a man who could bear consolation, for it seemed as if he could almost strike the person who offered it. He rebelled against the blow, but found that he was in the hands of a God who will reach those by affliction who refuse to be persuaded by mercy.
Poor Bessie—did I say? Blessed child! If the dead can look on earth, she knows that her father and mother have been reformed and reconciled through her death; that father and mother have learned to believe that the early lost are early saved.
And Mariot, my warmer friend than before, admits that my counsel was sound—that the souls as well as the bodies of his people are in some sense in his charge, and that he who neglects his duty in regard to the first cannot atone for that neglect by care of the last.