Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

"I was asleep, Father, and I heard her cry. I wakened up, and I think you had but just left the house, and that she was calling for you. Then she prayed, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, and kept saying--'Oh, that I could walk!--Oh, that for one hour I could run and walk!' So I said, 'Mother, I can run and walk. Where must I go?' And she clutched at my arm; and bade God bless me; and told me not to fear, for that he would compass me about; and taught me my message; and now, Father, dear Father, you will meet mother in Heaven, won't you--and not be separate forever and ever?" She clung to my knees and pleaded once more in her mother's words. I took her up in my arms and turned homeward.

"Is yon man there, on the kitchen floor?" asked I.

"Yes!" she answered. At any rate, my vengeance was not out of my power yet.

When we got home I passed him, dead asleep!

In our room, to which my child guided me, was Nelly. She sat up in bed, a most unusual attitude for her, and one of which I thought she had been incapable of attaining to without help. She had her hands clasped, and her face wrapt as if in prayer; and when she saw me, she lay back with a sweet, ineffable smile. She could not speak at first; but when I came near, she took my hand and kissed it, and then she called Grace to her, and made her take off her cloak and her wet things, and, dressed in her short scanty night-gown, she slipped into her mother's warm side, and all this time my Nelly never told me why she summoned me; it seemed enough that she should hold my hand, and feel that I was there. I believed she had read my heart; and yet I durst not speak to ask her. At last she looked up. "My husband," said she, "God has saved you and me from a great sorrow this night." I would not understand, and I felt her look die away into disappointment.

"That poor wanderer in the house-place is Richard Jackson, is it not?"

I made no answer. Her face grew white and wan.

"Oh," said she, "this is hard to bear. Speak what is in your mind, I beg of you. I will not thwart you harshly; dearest John, only speak to me."

"Why need I speak? You seem to know all."

"I do know that his is a voice I can never forget; and I do know the awful prayers you have prayed; and I know how I have lain awake, to pray that your words might never be heard; and I am a powerless cripple. I put my cause in God's hands. You shall not do the man any harm. What you have it in your thoughts to do I can not tell. But I know that you can not do it. My eyes are dim with a strange mist, but some voice tells me that you will forgive even Richard Jackson. Dear husband--dearest John, it is so dark I can not see you; but speak once to me."

I moved the candle--but when I saw her face, I saw what was drawing the mist over those loving eyes--how strange and woeful that she could die! Her little girl lying by her side looked in my face, and then at her; and the wild knowledge of death shot through her young heart and she screamed aloud.

Nelly opened her eyes once more. They fell upon the gaunt, sorrow-worn man who was the cause of all. He roused him from his sleep, at that child's piercing cry, and stood at the doorway looking in. He knew Nelly and understood where the storm had driven him to shelter. He came toward her:

"Oh, woman--dying woman--you have haunted me in the loneliness of the Bush far away--you have been in my dreams forever--the hunting of men has not been so terrible as the hunting of your spirit--that stone--that stone!" he fell down by her bedside in an agony--above which her saint-like face looked on us all, for the last time, glorious with the coming light of heaven. She spoke once again:

"It was a moment of passion--I never bore you malice for it. I forgive you--and so does John, I trust."

Could I keep my purpose there? It faded into nothing. But above my choking tears, I strove to speak clear and distinct, for her dying ear to hear, and her sinking heart to be gladdened.

"I forgive you, Richard; I will befriend you in your trouble."

She could not see; but instead of the dim shadow of death stealing over her face, a quiet light came over it, which we knew was the look of a soul at rest.

That night I listened to his tale for her sake; and I learnt that it is better to be sinned against than to sin. In the storm of the night mine enemy came to me; in the calm of the gray morning, I let him forth, and bade him "God speed." And a woe had come upon me, but the burning burden of a sinful, angry heart was taken off. I am old now, and my daughter is married. I try to go about preaching and teaching in my rough, rude way; and what I teach is how Christ lived and died, and what was Nelly's faith of love.

[From Fraser's Magazine.]

PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.--AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.