"Mr. Mahan—Andrew Mahan, that lives in a big house in the square. And he asks five dollars for two rooms in that shanty, that's squeezed into a bit of a place where nothing else would go. Besides, the house is so old that the rats have ate it half up, and what's left I could carry off on my back in a day. When Mr. Mahan came to-day, his dog crawled through the door before it was opened. I said to him, says I, 'Sir, when the wind and the rain take possession of a house, it belongs to God, and no man has a right to ask rent for it.' You see, I was mad. And so was he, by that same token."
"But he is an Irishman, and a member of your own church," said Anne.
"And why not?" demanded the woman. "Do you think that Yankees are the only ones that grind the poor? Yes, Mr. Mahan is rich, and he lives in style, and sends his daughters to a convent school in Montreal. And often I've seen him in church, dressed in his broad-cloths, and beating his breast, with his face the length of my arm, and calling himself a sinner; and troth, I thought to myself, 'that's true for ye!'"
Anne Lane went into her school-room the next morning with a burning heart, and it did not soothe her feelings to see Mr. Sanborn, her landlord, appear at the door, a few minutes after, smilingly escorting a clerical-looking stranger, who had come to visit the school.
Mr. Sanborn, though not an educated man, chose to consider himself a patron of education; made himself exceedingly consequential in school affairs, and had now brought a distinguished visitor to see his pet school, the "Excelsior." Anne Lane had one of the show-classes, and he began the exhibition with her.
"Commence, and go on with your exercises just as if there were no one here," he said, with a patronizing smile, after they had taken their seats. "This gentleman wishes to see the ordinary daily working of our system."
The first exercise was a reading from the Bible, and a prayer by the teacher, and Anne's fingers were unsteady as she turned over the leaves for a chapter. Her eyes sparkled as she caught sight of one, and her pulses tingled as she read, her fine, deliberate enunciation and strong emphasis arresting fully the attention of her hearers:
"Times are not hid from the Almighty:
but they that know him, know not his days.
"Some have removed landmarks,
have taken away flocks by force, and fed them.
"They have violently robbed the fatherless,
and stripped the poor common people.
"They have taken their rest at noon among the stores of them,
who after having trodden the wine-presses suffer thirst.
"Out of the cities they have made men to groan;
and God will not suffer it to pass unrevenged.
"Cursed be his portion upon the earth:
let him not walk by the way of the vineyards.
"Let him pass from snow-water to excessive heat,
and his sin even to hell.
"Let mercy forget him: may worms be his sweetness;
let him be remembered no more,
but be broken in pieces like an unfruitful tree."
Closing the book then, Anne Lane dropped her face into her shaking hands, and repeated, almost inaudibly, the Lord's prayer.
Mr. Sanborn was not dull, but he was incredulous. It was almost impossible that this little school-mistress would dare to mean him. Yet that new sternness in the young face, ordinarily so smiling, the passion in her voice, with the remembrance of his last interview with Mrs. Lane, altogether made up a pretty strong case against her.