“‘But there’s strength in hominy and pork and peach-brandy,’ he said. ‘Come to my log-hut; you can rest and feed till you feel your strength, and by-and-by, you can do a little.’
“I accepted his offer. Our living was, as he said, almost literally hominy and pork, but these suited my reduced system excellently, and in a few weeks I was strong enough to strike with the hammer against him. He had plough-shares and all the irons for ploughs and harrows, shoes for horses, and tiring and bushes for drays for the farmers around to make, and having nothing much else to do in the winter, they were always coming to demand them.
“Well, to make a short story of it, by degrees I became capable of striking with the big hammer against him. Day after day, from early morning till night, I thus toiled and sweltered. Oh, what mortal weariness, what aching bones were mine! Many a night I could not sleep for aching, bone-weary fatigue. There was a young child which cried continually in the room next to my little cabin of a place, and though the stout blacksmith snored through it all, it kept me awake when I could have slept. Through the long dreary winter I continued to beat the anvil, and earn my hominy and pork, hominy and molasses, hominy and milk. These were my chief articles of diet, and my three dollars a-week. There was no help for it. The forests around were impassable for snow; there was no communication with New York.
“But in those long laborious days, those dreary nights, in that dreary village of Tunckhannock, the scenes of my past life came before me in very different colours. Oh! what an idiot I saw myself to have been. The letter of Mrs. Heritage, which the thief had carried off in my coat—may it do him the good he greatly needs!—but which was engraven on my memory, and the words of that good old Jesse Kersey, they stood as if written in fire on my soul. I acknowledged the hand that had thus led me into this school of hard discipline, which had stripped me, and bruised me to the very core, and I poured out my soul in tears and wrestling prayers for the gifts of soberness and wisdom. If I am not greatly deceived, the fire-spirit, as Jesse Kersey called it, is beaten out of me. That big hammer and its ever-straining blows have tamed the wild blood in me. I feel another, ‘a sadder but a wiser man.’
“The favour of God, indeed, seems to be returning to me. In this city of the west, at the principal inn, whom should I discover but the man of my long and vain search. As I entered the room I saw him at a table opposite. He was no longer the brown-headed, sandy-whiskered man, but one with a head of raven hair, a clean-shaven face, and spectacles,—but I could never mistake those features. I cautiously withdrew and returned with a constable. My man very coolly assured us we were entirely mistaken in him. ‘If I am,’ I said, ‘this black hair is not false,’ and with that I lifted off his wig, and showed the brown crop beneath. We now searched his portmanteau, found papers fully identifying him, and to my joyful surprise three thousand pounds of my own money. A good Providence seemed to have compelled him to wander like a Cain, and to carry his spoil always with him.
“I have stayed to see him put on the treadmill of the prison for three years, and now I am about to travel on to New York. Boat and carriage are now at my command. In the summer I trust once more to see England, and a wife who will add to all her other undeserved goodness that of receiving her repentant and for-ever sobered
“Henry Thorsby.”
“Well,” said Mr. Woodburn, “God grant that he may be as completely sobered as he says. That big hammer is one of the best things for taming a man I ever heard of. If it has effected a cure, as we will hope it has, Thorsby ought to have it emblazoned in his arms.”
“Yes, truly,” said Mrs. Woodburn; “and I pray that it may have done that good work with all my heart.”
“And you can still forgive him, Letty?” said Mr. Woodburn.