Chapter VIII: Mr. Penrose Brings Home a Bride (4)

During the morning the two men talked of art, of philosophy, and of history, the discussion of these calling out a light of intelligence and rapture on the old man's face. When, however, the graver questions of theology were broached, his voice became hard and inflexible, a shadow fell, and the radiancy of the man and scholar became lost in the gloom of the divine.

Whenever Mr. Penrose ventured to hint on some phase of the broader theology, the old man was provoked to impatience; and when he went so far as to quote Browning, and declare that--

'The loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds,'

a gleam of fire shot from the mild eye of Mr. Morell, significant as a storm-signal across a sea of glass.

The younger man was often taken at disadvantage, for, while he was in touch with modern thought, he did not possess the old dialectician's skill. Once, as Mr. Penrose remarked that science was modifying theology, Mr. Morell, detecting the flaw in his armour, thrust in his lance to the hilt by replying that science and Calvinism were logically the same, with the exception that, for heredity and environment, the Calvinist introduced grace.

Whereupon Mr. Penrose cried with some vehemence:

'No, no, Mr. Morell! that will not do. I cannot accept your statement at all.'

'Can't you?' said the old man, rising from his chair, the war spirit hardening his voice and flaming in his eye. 'Can't you? What says science of the first hundred men which will pass you, if you take your stand in the main thoroughfare of the great city over the hills yonder? Watch them; one is drunk, another is linked arm in arm with his paramour, a third is handcuffed, and you can see by the conduct of him who follows that he is as reckless of life as though the years were for ever. Why these? Ask science, and it answers _election_--the election of birth and circumstance. Ask Calvinism, and it, too, answers election--the election of decrees.'

'But science does not do away with will, Mr. Morell.'

'Well, then, it teaches its impotence, and that is the same thing. It bases will on organization, and traces conduct to material sources. Huxley tells us the salvation of a child is to be born with a sound digestion, and Calvinism says the salvation of a child is to be born under the election of grace. Logically, the basis of both systems is the same; the sources of life differ, that is all. One traces from matter, the other from mind--from the mind and will of the Eternal.'

'But science fixes it for earth only--you fix it for eternity,' suggestively hinted the younger man.

'Yes, you are right, Mr. Penrose; we do.'

'Then a man is lost because he cannot be saved, and punished for things over which he had no control?'

'Ask science,' was the curt reply.

'Well, Mr. Morell, I will ask science, and science will yield hope. Science says, take a hundred men and a hundred women, and let them live on a fruitful island and multiply, and in four generations you will have an improved stock--a stock freer from atavism, hysteria, anomalies, and insanities. Science holds out hope; you don't. You say God's will and decrees are eternal, and what they were a thousand ages since they will be a thousand ages to come. Science does eventually point to a new heaven and new earth, but Calvinism throws no light across the gloom.'

The old man quietly shifted his ground by asking his opponent if he ever asked himself why he did, and why he did not, do certain things.

'I suppose the reason is because of my choice, is it not?'

'And what governs choice--or, if you like, will?'

'I do, myself.'

'Who are you, and what part of you governs it? Will cannot govern Will, can it? And can you divorce will from personality?'

'Tennyson answers your question, Mr. Morell.

'"Our wills are ours, we know not how,"

that is the mystery of existence.

'"Our wills are ours, to make them Thine,"

that is the mystery of salvation.'

'Then, Mr. Penrose, I ask you--why don't we make our wills God's?'

Mr. Penrose was silent, and then he made a slip, and played into his opponent's hands by saying:

'My faith in a final restitution meets that difficulty. We shall all be God's some time; His love is bound to conquer.'

'Suppose what you call Will defies God's love, what then?'

'It cannot.'

'Then it is no longer will.'

'Cannot you conceive of Will winning Will?'

'I can conceive of Will, as you define it, defying Will, and that for ever. But we escape your contradictions; we accept the fact that some men are under a Divine control they cannot resist--'

'Then you both agree as to the principle,' broke in Dr. Hale; 'you are both Calvinists, with this difference: you, Mr. Morell, say only the few will be called; Mr. Penrose, here, says all will be called. Let us go in for the larger hope.'

'You are right, doctor. I am a Calvinistic Universalist,' cried Mr. Penrose in triumph.

And Mr. Morell was bound to admit the doctor had scored.

It was not long, however, before Mr. Penrose found a spring of tenderness hidden beneath the crust of Calvinism that lay around the old man's soul, and on which were written in fiery characters the terrors of a merciless law. And the rod that smote this rock and tapped the spring was none other than the story of Amanda's return and repentance, told in part by Dr. Hale and in part by the young pastor himself.

As the story was unfolded, the old man evinced much feeling, often raising his hand to shade fast-filling eyes, or to brush away the tears that fell down his furrowed face. They told him of Amanda's silence as to the past, and he commended her for it, remarking to Mr. Penrose that the true penitent seldom talked of the yesterdays of sin; they told him how she counted herself unworthy of home and of love, seeking blame and not welcome from the mother to whom she had returned, and he declared it to be a token of her call; they told him of the great light and peace that fell on her as she rested on the goodness of God, and they heard from him the echo of his Master's words over Mary--'She hath loved much, for she hath had much forgiven'; and then they told him of her desire for the restoration of her name on the Rehoboth register, and he was silent--and for some minutes no sound disturbed his reverie.

That silence was God's speaking hour. Within the old pastor's soul a voice was whispering before which the thunderings of the creed of a sect were hushed. He, poor man, knew full well that it was a voice which had long striven to make itself heard--a still, small voice that would neither strive nor cry--a haunting voice, a voice constant in its companionship during his later years. How often he would fain have listened to it! But he dared not, for was it not a contradictory voice? Did it not traverse the letter which he had sworn to uphold and declare? What if the voice were the voice of God? No! It could not be. God spoke in His Book. It was plain. Wayfaring men might read, and fools had no need to err. But was God's voice for ever hushed? Had He had no message since the seal was fixed to the Canon of Scripture? What if that which he heard was one of those messages concerning which Christ said, 'I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.' Had the _now_ in his life passed? Had the _then_ come when a fuller revelation was about to be vouchsafed? Nay! even the Apostle--the man inspired--only knew in part. Why should he, then, try to pry into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful throne? And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at all. Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays of light from Him--rays seeking to pierce the clouds, and bring more truth--truth which, in his highest moments, he had dreamed of, but never dared to follow. Was not Dr. Hale right after all? Was it not better to trust what we knew to be best in us, and follow the larger rather than the lesser hope?

And so, in the silence, the two voices reasoned in the soul of Mr. Morell.

In a little while Mr. Morell, roused from his reverie, turned to the young pastor, and said:

'Your poet is right, Mr. Penrose. The loving worm within its clod is diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds. Let us go as far as the chapel.'

As they walked along the narrow, winding roadways, broken by projecting gables, and fenced by irregular rows of palisades, the old pastor began to re-live the long-departed days. Objects, once familiar, on which his eye again rested, restored faded and forgotten colours, and opened page after page in the books of the past. Many cottages mutely welcomed him, their time-stained walls memorials of generations with whom he held sacred associations. There was the Old Fold Farm, with its famous fruit-trees, on which, in spring evenings, he used to watch the blanching blossoms blush beneath the glowing caress of the setting sun; and Alice o' th' Nook's garden, with its beds of camomile, the scent of which brought back, as perfumes are wont to, forms and faces long since summoned by the 'mystic vanishers.' There, too, stood the old manse--now tenantless--so long the temple of his studies and domesticities, the shrine of joys and sorrows known to none save himself. How the history of a life lay hidden there, each wall scored with fateful characters, decipherable only to the eye of him who for so many ears sought the shelter which they gave.

On the summit of the hill in front of him was the chapel, its sagging roof silhouetted against the blue of the morning sky, the tombstones, irregular and rude, rising from the billowy sea of grave-mounds that lay around their base. Beyond him, in grandly distant sweeps, rose the moors. How well he knew all their contours, their histories, their names! How familiar he used to be with all their moods--moods sombre and gladsome--as now they were capped with mist, now radiant in sunlight, their sweeps dappled with cloud shadows, moving or motionless, or white in the broad eye of day. Thus it was, within the distance of a half-mile walk, his past life, like an open scroll, lay before him; and he remarked to Mr. Penrose that he had that morning found the book of memory to be a book of life and a book of judgment also.

As the three men passed through the chapel-gates they were met by old Joseph, who was hearty in his welcome of Mr. Morell.

'Eh! Mr. Morell,' he said, grasping his hand in a hard and earthy palm, 'aw'm some fain to see yo'. We've hed no gradely preachin' sin yo' left Rehoboth. This lad here,' pointing to Mr. Penrose, 'giz us a twothree crumbs betimes; but some on us, I con tell yo', are fair clamming for th' bread o' life. None o' yo'r hawve-kneyded duf (dough), nor your hawve-baked cakes, wi' a pinch o' currants to fotch th' fancy tooth o' th' young uns. Nowe, but gradely bread, yo' know.'

Mr. Morell tried to check the brutal volubility and plain-spokenness of Joseph, but in vain. He continued the more vehemently.

'It's all luv naa, and no law. What mak' o' a gospel dun yo' co it when there's no law, no thunerins (thunderings), Mr. Morell, no leetnins? What's th' use o' a gospel wi'out law? No more use nor a chip i' porritch. Dun yo' remember that sarmon yo' once preached fro' "Jacob have I luved, but Esau have I hated"? It wur a grand un, and Owd Harry o' th' Brig went straight aat o' th' chapel to th' George and Dragon and geet drunk, 'cose, as he said, he mud as well ged drunk if he wor baan to be damned, as be damned for naught. Amos Entwistle talks abaat that sarmon naa, and tells bits on it o'er to th' childer i' th' catechism class, and then maks 'em ged it off by heart.'

How long old Joseph would have continued in this strain it is hard to say, had not Mr. Morell, who did not seem to care to hear more of his pulpit deliverance of other days, silenced him by demanding the vestry keys.

As the three men entered the vestry a close, damp atmosphere smote them--an atmosphere pervading all rooms long shut up from air, and with foundations fed by fattened graves.

Nor was the vestry itself more inviting. Gloomy and low-ceiled, the plaster of its walls, soddened and discoloured from the moisture of the moors, lay peeling off in ragged strips, while its oozing floor of flags seemed to tell of sweating corpses in their narrow beds beneath.

Through a small window, across which a spider had woven its web, a shaft of sunlight lay tremulous with the dance of multitudinous motes; and, falling on the dust-covered table, lighted up with its halo a corroded pen and stained stone jar, half filled with congealed ink.

On the right of this window stood a cupboard, with its panels of dark oak, behind which lay the parchments and papers of the Rehoboth Church--parchments and papers whose inscriptions were fast fading, whose textures were fast rotting--companioning in their decay the decay of the creeds they sought to preserve and proclaim.

It was to this cupboard Mr. Morell turned, taking therefrom two time-stained, leather-bound volumes--the one a record of the interments of the past hundred years, the other containing the roll of Rehoboth communicants since the establishment of the Church. Laying the former aside, he took up the latter with a tenderness and devoutness becoming one who was touching the sacred books of some fetish of the East. It was, indeed, to him a book to be reverenced; and as he slowly and sadly turned over its time-stained pages, his eye rested on many names entered in his own small handwriting--names which carried him back to companionship with lives for ever past. Some he had known from birth to death, blessing them in their advent, and committing them at the grave to Him who is the sure and certain hope. There were those, too, whom he piloted along the rocky coasts of youth--those with whom he once wept in their shadowed homes, and from whom he never withheld his joy in their hour of triumph. As name after name met his eye, it was as though he travelled the streets of a ruined city--a city with which in the days of its glory he had been familiar. Memories--nothing but memories--greeted him. He heard voices, but they were silent; he saw forms, but they were shadowy.

As he turned over page after page he read as never before the record of his half-century's pastorate--his moorland ministry among an ever-changing people, and there passed before him the pageant of a life--not loud in blare, nor brilliant in colour--but sombre, stately, and true.

Continuing to turn over the pages, he came to where a black line was drawn across the name of Amanda Stott, and where against the cancelled name a word was written as black as the ink with which it was inscribed.

Again there came a pause. Long and tearfully the old pastor looked at that name disfigured, as she, too, who bore it had been, by the hand of man. Then, taking up the corroded pen and filling it, he re-wrote the name in the space between the narrow blue-ruled lines, and, looking up with smiling face, said:

'Yet there is room.'

And the shaft of sunlight that fell in through the cobwebbed window of the Rehoboth vestry lay on the newly-inscribed name, as though heaven sealed with her assent the act of the old man who felt himself the servant of the One who said, 'I will in no wise cast out.'

IV.

SAVED AS BY FIRE

It was a narrow, gloomy yard, paved with rough flags dinted and worn by the wheels of traffic and the tread of many feet. On one side stood the factory, cheerless and gray, with its storied heights, and long rows of windows that on summer evenings flamed with the reflected caresses of the setting sun, and in the shorter days of winter threw the light of their illuminated rooms like beacon fires across the miles of moor. Flanking the factory were sheds and outbuildings and warehouses, through the open doors of which were seen skips and trollies and warps, and piles of cloth pieces ready for the market in the great city beyond the hills. Within a stone's-throw the sluggish river crept along its blackened bed, no longer a stream fresh from the hills, but foul with the service of selfish man.

It was breakfast hour, and the monotonous roar of machinery was hushed, no longer filling the air with the pulsations of mighty manufacture. The thud of the ponderous engines had ceased; the deafening rattle of the looms was no more heard; a myriad spooming spindles were at rest. A dreamy sound of falling waters floated from the weir, and the song of birds in a clump of stunted trees made music in the quiet of the morning light--it was Nature's chance to teach man in one of the brief pauses of his toil, had he possessed the ear to hearken or the heart to understand.

Beneath the shelter of a 'lean-to' a group of men sat, hurriedly gulping their morning meal, finding time, all the same, for loud talk and noisy chaff. They were prosaic, hard-faced men, with lines drawn deeply beneath their eyes, and complexions sallow, despite the breezes of the hills among which they were reared. From childhood they had been the slaves of labour; the bread they ate was earned by sweat and sorrow, while their spare hours were given to boisterous mirth--the rebound of exacting toil. Two or three were conning the betting news in a halfpenny paper of the previous evening, and talking familiarly of the chances of the favourites, while others disputed as to sentiments delivered in the last great political speech.

In one corner sat Amos Entwistle, the butt of not a little mirth from a half-dozen sceptics who had gathered round him. They addressed him as 'Owd Brimstone,' and made a burlesque of his Calvinistic faith, one going so far as to call him 'a glory bird,' while another declared he was 'booked for heaven fust-class baat payin' for his ticket.'

'Why should he pay for his ticket,' asked an impudent-looking youth, 'when th' Almeety's gan it him? Th' elect awlus travels for naught, durnd they, Amos?'

'Thaa's more Scripture larning abaat thee nor I thought thaa had,' said Amos, withdrawing his wrinkled face from the depths of a can out of which he was drinking tea. 'But it's noan knowledge 'at saves, Dan; th' devils believe and tremble.'

'But I noan tremble, Amos; I geet too mich brimstone i' yon fire hoile to be flayed at what yo' say is "resarved" for them as isn't called.'

(Dan's occupation was to feed the boiler fires.)

'If thaa'rt noan flayed, that doesn't say thaa hasn't a devil,' replied Amos, again raising the can to his lips.

'Well, I'm noan to blame if a' cornd help miself, am I?'

But Amos remained silent.

'Aw say, Amos,' said a thoughtful-looking man, 'aw often wonder if thaa'll be content when thaa geets up aboon to see us lot in t'other shop.'

'Yi! and when we ax him, as th' rich mon axed Lazarus, for a sooap (drink) of summat cool, it'll be hard lines, wirnd (will not) it, owd lad, when thaa cornd help us?' asked the man who sat against him.

'Happen it will,' replied Amos. 'But thaa knows there'll be no sharin' baggin (tea or refreshment) there. Them as hed oil couldn't gi' it to them as hed noan.'

'Then thaa'll not come across the gulf and help us, Amos?'

'Nowe!' cried Dan. 'He'd brun (burn) his wings if he did.'

And at this all laughed, save the thoughtful man who put the first question to the old Calvinist.

'Thaa knows, Amos,' said he, 'I look at it i' this way. Supposin' th' factory geet o' fire this mornin', an' yo' hed th' chance o' savin' that lass o' mine that back-tents for yo', yo'd save her, wouldn't yo'?'

'Yi, lad, if I'd th' _chance_,' replied Amos.

'Then haa is it yo're so mich better nor Him, as yo' co th' Almeety, for yo' reckon He'll noan save some o' us?'

'I tell thee I'd save th' lass if I hed th' chance. We con nobbud do what we're permitted to do. We're only instruments in th' Almeety's honds.'

'But isn't th' Almeety His own Measter?'

'So He is, but His ways are past findin' out.'

'An' thaa means to say thaa'd save my lass, and th' Almeety wouldn't save me?'

'It's decrees, thaa knows, lad, it's decrees,' said Amos, unshaken by the argument of his friend.

'Then there's summat wrang with th' decrees, that's all, Amos. There's been a mistak' somewhere.'

'Hooist, lad! hooist! durnd talk like that. Woe to th' mon that strives wi' his Maker.'

'If thi Maker's th' mon thaa maks Him aat to be, I'm noan partic'lar abaat oather His woes or His blessin's.'

'No more am I,' cried Dan, as he stood up and stretched himself with a yawn. 'We mud as well mak' most o' life if we're booked for t'other shop, though mine's a warm un i' this world, as yo' all know.'

'It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy,' said Amos, in solemn tones.

And the whistle sounded for the renewal of work, and the men dispersed.

* * * * *

The clock in the factory yard pointed to the hour of ten, and four hundred toilers were sweating out their lives in one of Manufacture's minting-shops of wealth. Overhead the shafting ran in rapid revolutions, communicating its power and speed by lengths of swaying, sagging belts to the machinery that stood so closely packed on the vibrating floors, and between which passed, and behind which stood, the operatives, unconscious of danger, and with scarce a care than how to keep pace with the speed of steam and the flying hours. Every eye was strained, and every nerve as highly strung as the gearing of the revolving wheels, the keen glances of the overlookers seeing to it that none paused until the hour of release.

The atmosphere was heavy, the temperature high, and flecks of 'fly' floated on the stifling air, wafted by the breath born of whirring wheels, and finding rest on the hair of women and the beards of men until the workers looked as though they were whitened by the snows of a premature decay.

Women and girls sang snatches of songs, and bits of old familiar airs, with no accompaniment but the roar and rattle around, their voices unheard save when some high-pitched note was struck; and others found odd moments when by lip-signs and dumb show they communicated with their fellow-workers.

Men and women, boys and girls, passed and repassed one another in narrow alleys and between revolving machinery, crushing together without sense of decency, and whispering hastily in one another's ear some lewd joke or impure word, the moisture from their warm flesh mingling with the smell of oil and cotton, and their semi-nude forms offering pictures for the realistic pen of a Zola or a Moore.

It was but one of the laps in the great race of competition where steam contends with human breath, and iron is pitted against flesh and blood. Over the hills were other factories where the same race was going on, where other masters were competing, and other hands were laying down life that they themselves and their little ones might live--examples of the strange paradox that only those can save their lives who lose them. Outside was pasturage and moorlands, and the dear, sweet breath of heaven, the flowers of the field, the song of birds, the yearning bosom of Nature warm with love towards her children. Yet here, within, was a reeking house of flesh--not the lazar ward of the city slum, but the sweating den of a competitive age.

In the top story of the factory Amos was walking to and fro among his roving frames, and dividing his time between hurried glances at his workers and a small greasy tract he held in his hand, entitled 'An Everlasting Task for Arminians.' Turning aside for a moment to drive some weary operative with a word as rough as a driver uses to his over-driven horse, he would return to the 'Everlasting Task,' and cull some choice sentence or read some twisted text used to buttress up the Calvinistic creed. Reading aloud to himself the words--'Real Christian charity is swallowed up in the Will of God, nor is it in its nature to extend itself one step beyond, nor desire one thing contrary to, the glory of Jehovah. All the charity we possess beyond this may be properly called fleshly charity'--he lifted his eyes to see two of his 'back-tenters' playing behind the frames, and his real Christian charity displayed itself in pulling their ears until they tingled and bled, and in freely using his feet in sundry kicks on their shins. And yet, wherein was this man to blame? Was he not what commerce and Calvinism had made him?

The finger of the clock in the factory yard was creeping towards the hour of eleven, when a smell, ominous to every old factory hand, was borne into the nostrils of Amos. In a moment his 'Everlasting Task' was thrust into his shirt-breast, and he ran towards the door from which the stairway of the room descended.

No, he was not mistaken, the smell was the smell of fire, and scarcely had he gone down a half-dozen steps before he met a man with blanched face, who barely found breath to say:

'Th' scutchin' room's ablaze.'

Amos carried a cool head. His religion had done one thing for him: it had made him a fatalist, and fatalists are self-contained.

In a moment he took in the whole situation. He knew that the stairways would act as a huge draught, up which the flames from the room below would bellow and blaze. He knew, too, that all way of escape being cut off below, screaming women and girls, maddened with fright, would rush to the topmost room of the mill, where probably they would become a holocaust to commerce. He knew, too, that those who sought the windows and let themselves down by ropes and warps would lose their presence of mind, and probably fall mangled and broken on the flag floor of the yard, sixty or seventy feet below. All this passed through his mind ere the old watch in his fob had marked the lapse of five seconds.

In a moment his resolve was taken. He went back to the roving-room with steady step, and a face as calm as though he were standing in the light of a summer sun. By the time he reached the room the machinery was beginning to slow down, and a mad stampede was being made by the hands towards the door.

Raising his arm, he cried:

'Go back, lasses; there's no gate daan theer. Them of us as 'as to be brunt will be brunt, and them of us as is to escape will ged off wi' our lives. Keep cool, lasses; we'll do our best; and remember 'at th' Almeety rules.'

One thing turned out in the favour of Amos and of his rovers. The mad rush from below poured into the room under him, and not, as he expected, into his own, the lower room being one where there was a better chance of escape. Seeing this, he barred up his own doorway to prevent the girls and women swarming below, where they would have made confusion worse confounded. Then he beat out one of the windows, and proceeded to fix and lower a rope by way of escape.

'Now then, lasses,' said he, having rapidly completed his task, 'th' little uns fust,' and in a moment a girl of twelve was swinging seventy feet in the air, while a crowd of roaring humanity below held its breath, and gazed with dilating eyes on the child who hung between life and death. In a minute more the spell of silence broke, and a roar, louder than before, told that the little one had touched earth without injury, save hands all raw from friction with the rope along which she had slidden.

Child after child followed; then the women were taken in their turn, and lowered safely into the factory yard.

By the time it came to the turn of Amos, the roar of the fire sounded like the distant beating of many seas along a rock-bound coast. The hot breath was ascending, and thin tongues of flame began to shoot through the floor of the room where he stood. The pungent smell of burnt cotton stung his nostrils and blinded his eyes with pain, and the atmosphere was fevered to such a degree that with difficulty he drew his breath.

His turn had come, but was he the last in the room? Something told him that he was not, that he must look round and satisfy himself, otherwise his duty was unfulfilled.

The tongues of flame became fiercer; he saw them running along the joints of the boarding, and feeding on the oil and waste which had accumulated there for years. He felt his hour was come. But he was calm. God ruled. No mistake could be made by the Almighty--nor could any mistake be made by himself, for was he not under Divine guidance?

Calmly he walked along the length of the room, stepping aside to escape the flame, and searching behind each roving-frame in his walk, as though to assure himself that no one remained unsaved.

Coming to the last frame, he saw the fainting form of one of his back-tenters, the very child whose ears he had so savagely pulled but an hour before.

There she lay, with her pallid, pinched face across her arm, the flames creeping towards her as though greedy to feed themselves on her young life.

In an instant Amos stepped towards the child and raised her in his arms, intending to return to the window and so seek escape. He was too late, however; a wall of fire stretched across the room, and he felt the floor yielding beneath his feet.

He was still calm and self-contained. He thought of Him who was said to dwell in devouring flames, and was Himself a consuming fire. He thought of the three Hebrew youths and the sevenfold-heated furnace. He thought of the One who was the wall of fire to His people, and he was not afraid.

On swept the blaze. In a few moments he knew the roof must follow the fast-consuming floor. Still he was calm. He stepped on to one of the stone sills to secure a moment's respite, and he cried in an unfaltering voice, 'The Lord reigneth. Let His will be done.'

Frantic efforts were being made by the crowd below to recall Amos, who had been seen to disappear from the window into the room. His name was shouted in wild and entreating cries, and men reared ladders, only to find them too short, while women threw up their arms and fell fainting in excitement on the ground.

On swept the flame. Still Amos held his own on the stone ledge. Grand was his demeanour--erect, despite his seventy years, clasping with a death grip the fainting child. All around him was smoke and mingling fire; but the Lord reigned--what He willed was right; in Him was no darkness at all.

Suddenly he lifted his eyes, and saw above him a manhole that led into the roof. In a moment he sprang along the frames, and passed in with his burden, and beat his way through the slates which in another minute were to fall in with the final collapse of the old factory.

Creeping along the ridge, he made his way towards the great chimney-shaft that ran up at one end of the building, and bidding the girl, who by contact with the air was now conscious, cling to his neck, the old man laid hold of the lightning-rod, and began his dangerous descent to the ground.

But he knew no fear; there was no tremor in his muscles; steadily he descended, feeling that God held his hands, and he told his Rehoboth friends afterwards, when he recounted his escape, that he felt the angels were descending with him.

When he reached the ground amid wild and passionate cries of joy, he disengaged the child from his neck, and wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt, said:

'The Lord's will be done.'

Dr. Hale, who was standing by the side of Mr. Penrose, and who heard the saying of old Amos, turned and said:

'Calvinism grows strong men, does it not?'

'Yi, doctor, yo're reet,' exclaimed old Joseph; 'theer's no stonning agen God's will.'

V.

WINTER SKETCHES.

1. THE CANDLE OF THE LORD.
2. THE TWO MOTHERS.
3. THE SNOW CRADLE.

I.

THE CANDLE OF THE LORD.

Through the summer months the old Bridge Factory stood in ruins; the only part that remained intact being the tall chimney-shaft, down which Amos Entwistle had brought the fainting child from out the flames. The days were long and the weather warm, and the inhabitants of Rehoboth spent the sunny hours in wandering over the moors, never dreaming of hard times and the closing year. A few of the more frugal and thrifty families had secured employment in a neighbouring valley, returning home at the week end. The many, however, awaited the rebuilding of the mill and the recommencement of work at their old haunt. But when the autumn set in chill and drear, and the October rains swept the trees and soaked the grass--when damp airs hung over the moors morning by morning, and returned to spread their chill canopy at eventide--faces began to wear an anxious look, and hearts lost the buoyancy of the idle summer hours.

There is always desolation in the late autumn on the moors. The great hills lose their bold contours, now dying away in a cold gray of sky, through which a blurred sun sheds his watery ray; while the bracken, with its beaten fronds, and the heather with its disenchanted bloom, change the gorgeous carpet of colour into wastes and wilds of cheerless expanse. The wind sobs as though conscious of the coming winter's stress--sad with its prophecy of want, and cold, and decay. Little rivulets that ran gleaming like silver threads--the Pactolian streams of childhood's home and lover's whisperings--now swell and deepen and complain, as though angry with the burdens of the falling clouds. Bared branches and low-browed eaves weep with the darkened and lowering sky, and withered leaves beat piteously at the cottage windows they once shadowed with their greenery, or lie limp and clayey on the roadside and the path. Then, in the silent night, there falls the first rime, and in the morning is seen the hoary covering that tells of the year's ageing and declining days. At the corner of the village street the hoarse cough is heard, and around the hearth the children gather closely, no longer sporting amid the flowers, or peopling the cloughs with fairy homes. A dispiriting hand tones down the great orchestra of Nature, and all her music is set to a minor key, her 'Jubilate' becoming a threnody--a great preludious sob.

It was in autumn hours such as these--and only too well known in Rehoboth--that old Mr. Morell used to discourse on the fading leaf, and tell of a harvest past and a summer ended, and bid his flock so number their days that they might apply their hearts unto wisdom. It was now, too, that the dark procession used to creep more frequently up the winding path to the Rehoboth grave-yard, and the heavy soil open oftener beneath old Joseph's spade, and the voice of the minister in deeper and more measured tones repeat the words, 'We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.' It was now also that the feeble and the aged shunned the darkening shadows of the streets, and crept and cowered over the kindling hearth in the sheltered home. In Rehoboth October and November were ever drear; and now that the old Bridge Factory was in ruins, and work scarce and food scant, the minds of the people were overcast with what threatened to be the winter of a discontent.

On an afternoon in mid-November, Mr. Penrose forsook his study for what he hoped might be an exhilarating walk across the gloomy moors. The snow--the first snow--was beginning to descend, gently and lazily, in pure, feathery flakes, remaining on earth for a moment, and then merging its crystals into the moisture that lay along the village street.

Turning a corner, he met Dr. Hale, who, after a hearty greeting, said:

'What is this I hear about your resignation, Mr. Penrose?'

'I don't know what you've heard, doctor, but I am resigning.'

'Nonsense! Running away from ignorance, eh? What would you say if I ran away from disease?'

'Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?' was Mr. Penrose's sharp retort.

'No, I cannot. But you can, and it's your duty to do so.'

'You're mistaken, doctor. I cannot go to the root of the moral disease of Rehoboth. If it were drink, or profligacy, or greed, I might; but self-righteousness beat Jesus, and no wonder it beats me.'

Taking Mr. Penrose by the arm, Dr. Hale said:

'You see that falling snow. Why does it disappear as soon as it touches earth?'

'Because the earth is higher in temperature than the snow, and therefore melts it,' replied the young man, wondering at the sudden change in the conversation.

'And if it keeps on falling for another hour, why will it cease to disappear? Why will it remain?' continued the doctor.

'Because its constant falling will so cool the earth that the earth will no longer melt it,' said Mr. Penrose, growing impatient with his examination in the rudiments of science.

'Well said, my friend. And therein lies a parable. You think your teaching falls to disappear. No; it falls to prepare. You must continue to let it fall, and finally it will remain, and lodge itself in the minds of your people. There, now, I have given you one of the treasures of the snow. But here's old Moses. Good-morning, Mr. Fletcher; busy as usual?'

'Yi, doctor, aw'm findin' these clamming fowk a bit o' brass.'

'How's that, Moses?' asked the minister.

'Why, yo' know as weel as aw do, Mr. Penrose. Sin' I yerd yo' talk abaat Him as gies liberally, I thought aw'd do a bit on mi own accaant.'

'There, now,' said Dr. Hale, 'the snow is beginning to stay, is it not?'

As the doctor and Moses said 'Good-day,' the pastor continued his walk in a brooding mood, scarce lifting his head from the ground, on which the flakes were falling more thickly and beginning to remain. Lost in thought, and continuing his way towards the end of the village, he was startled by a tapping at the window of Abraham Lord's cottage, and, looking up, he saw Milly's beckoning hand.

Passing up the garden-path and entering the kitchen, he bade the girl a good-afternoon, and asked her if she were waiting for the 'angel een.'

'Nay,' said Milly; 'I'm baan to be content wi' th' daawn (down) off their wings to-day.'

'So you call the snow "angels' down," do you?'

'Ey, Mr. Penrose,' cried her mother. 'Hoo's names for everythin' yo' can think on. Hoo seed a great sunbeam on a bank of white claads t' other day, and hoo said hoo thought it were God Hissel', because th' owd Book said as He made th' clouds His chariot.'

'But why do you call the snow "angels' down," Milly?'

'Well, it's i' this way, Mr. Penrose,' replied the girl. 'I've sin th' birds pool th' daawn off their breasts to line th' nest for their young uns. And why shouldn't th' angels do th' same for us? Mi faither says as haa snow is th' earth's lappin', and keeps all th' seeds warm, and mak's th' land so as it 'll groo. So I thought happen it wur th' way God feathered aar nest for us. Dun yo' see? It's nobbud my fancy.'

'And a beautiful fancy, too, Milly.'

And all that waning afternoon, as Mr. Penrose climbed the hills amid the falling flakes, he thought of Milly's quaint conceit, and looking round amid the gathering gloom, and seeing the great stretch of snowy covering that now lay on the undulating sweeps, he asked himself wherein lay the difference between the vision of John the Divine when he saw the angels holding the four winds of heaven, and Milly when she saw the angels giving of their warmth to earth in falling flakes of snow.

As the darkness deepened, Mr. Penrose--fearless of the storm, and at home on the wilds--made his way towards a lone farmstead known as 'Granny Houses,' and so-called because of an old woman who lived there, and who, by keeping a light in her window on dark winter nights, guided the colliers to a distant pit across the moors. She was the quaint product of the hills and of Calvinism, but shrewd withal, and of a kind heart. Indeed, the young minister had taken a strong liking to her, and frequently called at her far-away home.

'Ey, Mr. Penrose, whatever's brought yo aat a neet like this?' she cried, as the preacher stood white as a ghost in the doorway of the farmstead. 'Come in and dry yorsel. Yo're just i' time fur baggin (tea), and there's noan I'm as fain to see as yo'.'

'Thank you, Mrs. Halstead; I'm glad to be here. It's a grand night.' And looking through the open doorway at the great expanse of snow-covered moor, he said, 'What a beautiful world God's world is--is it not?'

'I know noan so mich abaat its beauty, but I know its a fearful cowd (cold) world to-neet. Shut that dur afore th' kitchen's filled wi' snow. When yo're as owd as me yo'll noan be marlockin' i' snow at this time o' neet. What's life to young uns is death to owd uns, yo' know. But draw up to th' fire. That's reet; naa then, doff that coite, and hev a soup o' tay. An' haa 'n yo' laft 'em all daan at Rehoboth? Clammin', I reckon.'

'You're not far from the word, Mrs. Halstead. Many of them don't know where to-morrow's food and to-morrow's fire is coming from.'

'Nowe, I dare say. Bud if they'd no more sense nor to spend their brass in th' summer, what can they expect? There's some fo'k think they can eyt their cake and hev it. But th' Almeety doesn't bake bread o' that mak'. He helps them as helps theirsels. He gay' five to th' chap as bed five, and him as bed nobbud one, and did naught wi' it--why, He tuk it fro' him, didn't He? I'll tell yo' what it is, Mr. Penrose, there's a deal o' worldly wisdom i' providence. Naa come, isn't there?'

Mr. Penrose laughed.

'Theer's that Oliver o' Deaf Martha's. Naa, I lay aught he's noan so mich, wi' his dog-feightin' and poachin'. His missis wur up here t'other day axin' for some milk for th' childer. An' hoo said ut everybody wur ooined (punished for want of food) at their house but Oliver an' th' dog. Theer's awlus enugh for them.'

'Yes, I believe that is so.'

'It wur that dog as welly killed Moses Fletcher, wurnd it?'

'I think it was,' replied Mr. Penrose.

'And haa is owd Moses sin yo' dipped him o'er agen? It 'll tak' some watter and grace to mak' him ought like, I reckon. But they tell me he's takken to gien his brass away. It 'll noan dry th' een o' th' poor fo'k he's made weep, tho'--will it, Mr. Penrose?'

'Perhaps not, Mrs. Halstead; but Moses is an altered man.'

'And noan afore it wur time. But what's that noise in th' yard? It saands like th' colliers. What con they be doin' aat o' th' pit at this time? They're noan off the shift afore ten, and it's nobbud hawve-past six.'

In another moment the door of the cottage was thrown open and a collier entered, white with falling snow, and breathless. When he had sufficiently recovered, he said:

'Gronny, little Job Wallwork's getten crushed in th' four-foot, and it's a'most up wi' him. They're bringin' on him here.'

'Whatever wilto say next, lad? Poor little felley, where's he getten hurt? On his yed?'

'Nay; he's crushed in his in'ards, and he hasnd spokken sin'. They're carryin' him on owd Malachi's coite' (coat).

A sound of shuffling feet was heard in the snow, and four men, holding the ends of a greatcoat, bore the pale-faced, swooning boy into the glare of Mrs. Halstead's kitchen. His thin features were drawn, and a clayey hue overspread his face--a hue which, when she saw with her practised eye, she knew was the shadow of the destroyer.

'Poor little felley!' she cried; 'and his mother a widder an' all.'

And then, bending down over the settle whereon they had placed the mangled lad, she pressed her lips on the pale brow, clammy with the ooze of death--lips long since forsaken by the early blush of beauty, yet still warm with the instinct which in all true women feeds itself with the wasting years. Tears fell from her eyes--tears that told of unfathomed deeps of motherhood, despite her threescore years and ten; while with lean and tremulous hand she combed back the dank masses of hair that lay in clusters about the boy's pallid face. Her reverence and love thus manifested--a woman's offering to tortured flesh in the dark chamber of pain--she unbuckled the leathern strap that clasped the little collier's breeches to his waist, and, with a touch gentle enough to carry healing, bared the body, now discoloured and torn, though still the veined and plastic marble--the flesh-wall of the human temple, so fearfully and wonderfully made.

The boy lay immobile. Scarce a pulse responded to the old woman's touch as she placed the palm of her hand over the valve of his young life. Nor did her fomentations rouse him, as feebler grew the protest of the heart to the separation of the little soul from the mangled body. At last the watchers thought the wrench was over, and Death the lord of life.

Then the clayey hue, so long overshadowing the face, faded away in the warmth of a returning tide of life, as a gray dawn is suffused by sunrise. The beat became stronger and more frequent, there was a movement in the passive limbs, and, opening his eyes dreamily, then wonderingly, and at last consciously, the lad looked into the old woman's face and said:

'Gronny!'

'Yi! it's Gronny, lad. And haa doesto feel?'

The boy tried to move, and uttered a feeble cry of pain.

'Lie thee still, lad. Doesto think thaa can ston this?' and the old woman laid another hot flannel on the boy's body.

At first he winced, and a look of terrible torture passed over his face. Then he smiled and said:

'Yi! Gronny, aw can bide thee to do ought.'

Mr. Penrose, helpless and silent, stood at the foot of the settle on which lay the dying boy, the colliers seeking the gloomy corners of the large kitchen, where in shadow they awaited in rude fear the death of their little companion. The old woman, cool and self-possessed, plied her task with a tenderness and skill born of long years of experience, cheering with words of endearment the last moments of the sufferer.

The boy's rally was brief, for internal hæmorrhage set in, and swiftly wrought its fatal work, sweeping the vital tide along channels through which it no longer returned to the fount of life, and leaving the weary face with a pallor that overmastered the flush that awhile before brought a momentary hope. His eyes grew dim, and the light from the lamp seemed to recede, as though it feared him, and would elude his gaze. The figures in the room became mixed and commingled, and took shapes which at times he failed to recognise. Then a sensation of falling seized him, and he planted his hands on the cushion of the settle, as though he would stay his descent.

Looking at Mr. Penrose through a ray of consciousness, he said:

'Th' cage is goin' daan fearfo quick. Pray!'

The old woman caught the word, and, turning to the minister, she said:

'He wants thee to mak' a prayer.'

Mr. Penrose drew nearer to the boy, and repeated the grand death-song of the saints: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.'

The boy shook his head--for him the words had no meaning. Then, raising himself, he said:

'Ax God O'meety to leet His candle. I'm baan along th' seam, an' it's fearfo dark!'

To Mr. Penrose the words were strange, and, turning to the colliers, he asked them what the boy wanted.

Then Malachi o' the Mount came towards the minister and said:

'Th' lad thinks he's i' th' four-foot seam, and he connot find his road, it's so dark, and he wants a leet--a candle, yo' know, same as we use in th' pit. He wants the Almeety to leet him along.'

Still Mr. Penrose was in darkness.

Then the boy turned to old Malachi, and, with a farewell look of recognition and a last effort of speech, said:

'Malachi, ax Him as is aboon to leet His great candle, and show me th' road along th' seam. It's some fearsome and dark.'

And Malachi knelt by the side of the lad, and, in broken accents and rude vernacular, said:

'O God O'meety, little Job's baan along th' four-foot seam, an' he connot see his gate (way). Leet Thy candle, Lord--Thy great candle--and mak' it as leet as day for th' lad. Leet it, Lord, and dunnot put it aat till he geds through to wheere they've no need o' candles, becose Thaa gies them th' leet o' Thysel.'

The prayer over, every eye was turned to the boy, on whose face there had broken a great light--a light from above.

II.

THE TWO MOTHERS.

The royal repose of death reigned over the features of little Job as his mother entered the kitchen of the Granny Houses Farm. She had been summoned from Rehoboth by a collier, fleet of foot, who, as soon as the injured boy was brought to the pit-bank, started with the sad news to the distant village. No sooner did the woman catch the purport of the news, than she ran out wildly into the snowy air--not waiting to don shawl or clogs, but speeding over the white ground as those only speed who love, and who know their loved ones are in need.

A wild wind was blowing from the north, and the fleecy particles fell in fantastic whirls and spirals, to drift in treacherous banks over the gullies and falls that lay along the path; while here and there thin black lines, sinuous in their trend, told where moorland waters flowed, and guided the hurrying mother to her distant goal. The groaning trees, tossed by the tempest, flung off showers of half-frozen flakes, that falling on her flaming cheeks failed to cool the fever of her suspense, while the yielding snow beneath her feet became a tantalus path, delaying her advance, and seeming to make more distant her suffering child.

Ploughing her way through the Green Fold Clough, she climbed the steeps at the further end, and stood, breathless, on the bank of the great reservoir that lay dark in the hollow of the white hills. Her heart beat savagely and loud--so loud that she heard it above the din of the storm; and cruel pain relentlessly stabbed her heaving side, while her breath was fetched in quick respirations.

As she thus stood, tamed in her race of love by the imperative call of exhausted nature, Dr. Hale loomed through the snowy haze, and, reading instinctively who she was and whither she was bound, proffered his assistance for the remaining half of the journey.