Chapter IV: Part 4

Norah had passed several pleasant months in London, in the service of Mrs. Lowndes, with the consciousness that she was faithfully performing her duty and giving satisfaction to her mistress, when an incident occurred, which showed her more clearly than ever the importance of having a character for truthfulness and honesty.

"Why, there's your bell and my bell a-ringing together, and rung so loud, too! What can missus want us both for at once?" exclaimed Martha, the housemaid, to Norah, who was helping her, as usual, to make the bed in the little girl's room. Martha's manner was flurried and frightened.

"We'd better go and answer the bells directly," said Norah. "I hope and trust that nothing's the matter with dear little missy!"

The two maids entered the dining-room together. Mr. Lowndes was seated in his large red arm-chair, with his feet on the fender, and his spectacles on his nose, apparently engaged in studying the _Times_. Mrs. Lowndes, a large, tall, and rather formidable-looking lady, dressed in a very stiff silk, sat, even more erect than usual, at the breakfast-table, on which she was resting her folded hands. She had a peculiarly deep-toned voice, and the voice sounded deeper, her manners seemed sterner than Norah had ever thought them before, as she addressed the young maid with the question, "Did you enter my room this morning?"

"Yes, ma'am, to put by your comb and brush."

"And when?"

"Just the minute after you had left it."

"Did you see a sovereign on the dressing-table?" asked the lady, with the air of a magistrate questioning a witness.

"No, indeed, ma'am, I did not," said Norah.

"Did _you_ see one when you tidied my room?" Mrs. Lowndes turned her keen gray eyes upon Martha, to whom this last question was addressed.

"No, I never saw a sovereign, nor nothing like it, ma'am; I could take my oath that I did not. I did not so much as enter the room till Norah had been there, and gone out again."

Mrs. Lowndes looked very grave, and somewhat perplexed. "I certainly left a sovereign on that table when I came down to breakfast, and an hour afterwards it as certainly was gone. There are only two individuals who could have entered, and did enter, that room during my absence, and both deny having seen the money. I cannot doubt that one of them is uttering a falsehood, and that she who utters it is also the thief."

The idea of being suspected of such a crime as theft covered the face of Norah with crimson; she attempted to speak, but could not bring out a word.

"O ma'am!" exclaimed Martha, in alarm; "Norah went in first; you heard her own that she went in the first."

"I never saw the sovereign," gasped Norah.

Mr. Lowndes, who had every now and then been glancing up over the _Times_, which he held in his hand, now laid it down on his knee, and wheeled round on his arm-chair a little, so as to face the two maids.

"I'll be bound that Norah never touched the gold," said the gentleman, who had once been a magistrate. "When I was at B----, about three years ago, my poor sister placed in my hands a bag of money, which had been picked up by Norah, her maid, in the street, and given over into her charge. _A bag of sovereigns_," repeated Mr. Lowndes, emphatically. "Now, no one in his senses would believe that a girl, who would not take eight sovereigns dropped in the street by a stranger, would rob her mistress, betray her trust, and forfeit her own good character, by stealing _one_, which was certain to be missed and sought after." And, having thus given his decided opinion, Mr. Lowndes again took up his _Times_, and wheeled his chair round to the fire.

"And O mamma!" exclaimed little Selina, running forward from a corner of the room in which she had been standing, a deeply interested spectator of all that had passed, "Norah _could not_ have taken the money, because she says that she never saw it. Norah always tells the truth," pleaded the eager little witness, whose presence in the room had been until now forgotten by her mother. "When I broke the tumbler, Martha said, 'Never mind, miss, you need say nothing about it;' but Norah told me never to hide anything from you, for it was always best to speak out the truth boldly: and I did what Norah said, and you were not very angry, mamma."

"I am never very angry except where there is deceit and dishonesty," said the lady, fondly stroking back the light ringlets from the brow of her darling.

"And you are sure that Norah did not take the money, mamma, for she _said_ that she did not even see it."

"I am sure," answered the lady decidedly, "as sure of her innocence as I am of your own." Bending her keen eyes on Martha, she continued, sternly, "You had better do what you can to repair your fault by a frank confession."

"Indeed, indeed, ma'am, but I never saw, or touched, or thought of the sovereign; it's very hard that it should be put upon me," cried Martha, bursting into passionate tears. "I was not the first to enter into that room; I don't see why _I_ am suspected."

"And yet I cannot but feel suspicions so strong," said the lady, "that I cannot retain in my household one in whom my confidence is lost."

"I hope, I hope, ma'am, you are not going to send me away without a character!" sobbed Martha, while Selina's heart was so much touched by her sorrow, that the child could scarcely forbear from crying herself.

"I shall tell the exact truth to any lady who may inquire for your character. I shall mention why I send you away, but I shall add that you were not the first to enter the room, and that I have no proof that you touched the money."

"But, mamma, mamma, if she's sorry, if she will promise never to do it again, won't you try her a little longer?" cried the tender-hearted Selina.

"No, my child," replied Mrs. Lowndes; "had I no other cause for displeasure against her, I would never have any one near you on whose word I could not depend. A girl who would teach my daughter to hide anything from her parent is not likely to be very open when the fault committed is her own."

The maids were then dismissed from the dining-room. How different were the feelings of the two as they quitted it! Norah hurried upstairs to her own little chamber, and, falling on her knees, fervently thanked her heavenly Father for having preserved that character which was to her more precious than life. She remembered the struggle in her own mind about that very same bag of sovereigns to which Mr. Lowndes had referred. She had found it just at the time when her uncle's influence was beginning to tell powerfully upon her, when she was seeking with earnest prayer to give herself wholly to the Lord, and live as a child of God and heir of heaven should live. That had been a turning-point in the life of Norah. She had then by faith resisted the devil, and he had fled. Had she yielded to that temptation, and a very strong one it had been, the whole course of her life would have been altered. Now, against suspicious appearances, her word was trusted at once; her character was spotless in the eyes of her master and mistress, a great danger had safely been passed, and the heart of the young servant-maid overflowed with thanksgiving to God.

XV.

Norah's Story Continued.

_Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall._ Norah was soon to experience how much needed is this warning from the Scriptures.

A few days before the dishonest Martha left Mrs. Lowndes's service, as Norah was returning home after making some little purchases for her mistress, on turning a corner she came suddenly upon an old friend, and gave an exclamation of pleasure at a meeting so unexpected and so pleasant.

"Milly--Oh, I'm so delighted to see you!" cried Norah, shaking her friend by both hands. Had they not been in a street, she would have warmly embraced her. For had not Milly, when housemaid to Mrs. Lane, shown her kindness in many ways; had she not helped her to nurse Norah's dying mother, and sat up all night with Mrs. Peele when the girl's strength had given way? There were very few indeed whom Norah regarded with so much affection as she did the kind-hearted Milly.

"Who would have thought of seeing you here in London!" continued Norah, whose face was beaming with pleasure. "I have not met you since your marriage. What has brought you and your husband up to town?"

"My husband,--don't talk of him!" cried Milly, in a tone of anguish which startled Norah. Then looking closer into the face of her friend, Norah could see a sad change there. The features of Milly Bligh had grown sharper and thinner; there were furrows on her brow which Norah had never seen there before. She observed now, also, what in the excitement of first meeting her friend she had not noticed, that the dress of Milly looked shabby: though it was winter-time, she wore a thin shawl, which was quite insufficient to protect her from the cold.

"Why--what--has he"--a feeling of delicacy prevented Norah from finishing the sentence.

"_Deserted me!_" moaned Milly, as if to utter these two words was to wring blood from her heart. "O Norah, if you knew what I've had to bear! But it's all over now,--I don't know where he is,--I'm never like to see him again!"

The street chanced to be very quiet; Milly turned, and, as she walked by the side of her friend, in low earnest tones they went on with their conversation.

"Then what will you do, my poor dear Milly?" asked Norah, with heartfelt sympathy and pity.

"I must go into service again. I've come up to London to look out for a situation. My difficulty is that Mrs. Lane, with whom I lived all my years of service, is somewhere abroad, I don't know where, and, as I left her to be married, I did not so much as secure a written character from her."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" exclaimed Norah, suddenly.

"What,--glad that I've not a corner to turn to?" asked Milly.

"Oh, no, not glad of that, but glad that I may be able to help you. Mrs. Lowndes--she's my mistress--asked me only this morning if I knew of any nice housemaid who could take Martha's place. My lady had nearly fixed on one yesterday, but the character did not suit, so she's in a hurry to find another."

"Mrs. Lowndes is not likely to take a servant on your recommendation, I should fear."

"You don't know what confidence she has in me, what trust she puts in my word," said Norah, with a little natural pride. "If I tell her that you have been five years in one place, and that I have known you all the time, and that I'm certain that if your mistress were not abroad, she would give you a first-rate character, I'm sure--at least I'm almost sure that she'll take you."

"O Norah, you're like a comforting angel!" cried poor Milly; "if you only knew what a service you're going to do me! I've been almost in despair; half of my clothes are in pawn; I thought that I'd never succeed in getting a respectable place!"

"And this is such a good one!" cried Norah, quite excited with pleasure; "and how delightful it will be for us both to be always together! A companion whom I could love as a friend was the only thing wanting to make me perfectly happy, and there is no one on earth whom I should so gladly have as my Milly." Norah could hardly refrain from skipping for joy as she walked.

A thought, however, occurred to her mind, which somewhat damped her pleasure. "The only thing that makes me afraid that you may not get the place," she said, "is that I know that Mrs. Lowndes objects to married servants. I have heard her say myself that she will never engage one, the husbands give so much trouble."

"I do not even know where mine is," sighed Milly; "but I don't see why anything at all need be said about my being married."

Norah became very grave. "Would it be right to hide such a fact?" she said; "would it not be like deceiving my mistress?"

"Well, if you're going to let out a poor friend's secrets, and deprive her of her best chance of earning her bread in an honest way, you're not the girl that I took you for," said Milly, with bitterness.

There is no need to relate all the conversation that passed, nor to tell how Milly tried to persuade Norah, and how Norah tried to persuade herself, that to suppress the truth was no falsehood; that it was not in the least necessary that Mrs. Lowndes should ever know that her housemaid was married. Norah promised to do all that she could to procure the situation for Milly, and on reaching home at once went to her lady, and pleaded the cause of her friend.

"Five years in one place,--that looks well," observed Mrs. Lowndes; "there would at any rate be no harm in my seeing the girl. You have known her, you say, all your life. You may tell her to call this evening, and I will judge for myself. It's hard for good servants when they lose their places by a mistress going abroad."

Norah knew that Milly had not lost her place on account of Mrs. Lane's going abroad, but she was only too glad that her lady should think so. We may always suspect that we are in danger of striking against the iceberg of deceit, when we allow ourselves to _wish_ something to be believed which we _know_ to be quite untrue.

"Stay," said Mrs. Lowndes, as the eager Norah was about to retire from the room; "of course your friend is not married?"

Norah was taken by surprise; in an unguarded moment the false "no" slipped from her tongue, and she passed through the doorway biting her lip, and wishing--fervently wishing that she had not been betrayed, even by friendship, into uttering a lie. "But I cannot go back now. Oh, no!" thought the conscience-stricken girl.

Mrs. Lowndes saw Milly that evening, liked her appearance and manner, and engaged her as housemaid at once. Norah could not feel as happy as she would have done had her mind been at rest, but dared not confess her fault, as she deemed that to do so would be cruelly wronging Milly. She resolved to be more careful in future; she hoped that this would be the very last time on which she would be guilty of speaking untruth. Alas! lies link themselves on one to another like the rings of a chain; and who that harbors one unconfessed, unforgiven sin dare hope that it will be _the last_?

Months passed quietly over. Norah now seldom thought of her falsehood. If she was colder in prayer, if she was less able to lift up her heart to God, if she took less pleasure in recalling the counsels of her uncle, she hardly traced these effects to their real cause,--_peace of conscience forfeited by sin_.

One morning Norah found Milly in her room weeping violently, and trembling with agitation. An open letter lay on her knee.

"What has happened?" cried Norah, anxiously.

"He's found,--my poor, poor lost one is found!" sobbed Milly; "but he's in the hospital dying; he wants to see me at once. O Norah, I must go to him this day! Ask mistress to give me leave for an hour; she's kind, she'll not have the heart to refuse it!"

"Do you wish me to ask her to let you go to the hospital to see your _husband_, when she does not know that you have one?" asked Norah, feeling extremely uneasy at the idea of her falsehood being found out at last.

"No, no; that would never do, that would get us both into trouble, and, oh, I've trouble enough already! Go and ask her to let me go to the hospital to visit a dying _mother_."

Oh! what a tangled web we weave,
When once we practise to deceive!

Norah found herself now in a position of greater temptation than ever. Milly was in such a state of misery and excitement that Norah dreaded that any opposition might throw her into a nervous fever. The poor, anxious wife would listen to no objection, had patience for no scruple, and was almost wild when Norah showed hesitation about doing her bidding. Miserable, and hating herself for the deceit into which she was drawn, Norah went to her mistress and told the falsehood put into her mouth by Milly.

Mrs. Lowndes was all kindness. Day after day the housemaid was permitted to go and see her sick mother, carrying sometimes little delicacies sent from her mistress's table. When Milly, from the effect of distress and excitement, herself fell ill, Mrs. Lowndes sent Norah instead of her to the hospital two or three times to see "the poor old lady," and questioned her on her return as to the sufferer's state. Thus Norah was led deeper and deeper into deceit. She had to speak of _her_ illness, _her_ danger, _her_ thanks, when coming from the death-bed of a young man, and she felt that her whole character was becoming gradually lowered and degraded. Never since she had first sought the Lord had Norah been in so low a spiritual state; even to speak of religion to little Selina appeared to her to be an act of hypocrisy now. Norah had sometimes a terrible doubt as to whether she had ever been a Christian at all!

Happily for Norah she was suddenly to be stopped in this downward path. It was a mercy to be arrested even by a blow.

One afternoon in April the bell summoned Norah to the presence of her mistress. She went down the stairs with a sinking at the heart, a feeling of misgiving from which she now very frequently suffered. What was her alarm, on opening the drawing-room door, to see, seated near her mistress, the chaplain of the hospital, whom she had met before on one of her visits to Doyle! Norah dared not even glance at her lady, but the sound of that terrible, deep-toned voice, so expressive of subdued indignation, made the wretched Norah guess but too well what was coming.

"Mr. Chancie has called to ask me to break to my housemaid the news of the death of her _husband_." There was a marked emphasis on the last word. "Am I to understand that this is the person whom she, and whom you have visited again and again, and spoken of repeatedly to me under the name of her _mother_?"

Norah pressed the nails of her right hand so tightly into the flesh of the left that traces were left for days!

"Am I to understand," continued the lady, speaking in the same low, terrible tone, "that you and Milly have deliberately conspired together for months to deceive the mistress who trusted you?"

Norah wished that she could sink down anywhere out of sight, into the cellar, or into the grave.

"You leave this house to-morrow," said the lady, who could not but read confession in the silence of her maid, and her aspect of misery and shame. "If your family were in London, you should not stay here for another hour. To think that I should have entrusted my child to the care of such a"--Norah could not catch the concluding word, perhaps none was uttered, but her own conscience supplied the blank with "viper." "Of course you can expect no character from me; your vile deceit has done much to shake my faith in all my kind; I shall never trust a servant again as you were trusted by me. I could no more answer for your honesty now, wretched girl, than I could for your truth. She who could deliberately carry on such a course of deceit would be capable of taking my money."

Norah was utterly unable to speak a word in her own defence; she was miserable, crushed, almost in despair. Milly was, of course, involved in the same disgrace as herself, though not so hastily sent out of the house. Mrs. Lowndes found it more easy to show some indulgence to her, because she had never placed in her the same absolute trust; she had never given to Milly the charge of an only, a much-loved child.

Norah wrote off a hasty note to her uncle at Colme, and made her preparations for leaving her place with an almost bursting heart. One of her keenest pangs was that caused by the distress of little Selina, who could not at first be persuaded to believe her dear Norah to be capable of speaking an untruth.

"You never did tell a story. Oh, I'm sure that you _could not_! Say, only say that it's all a dreadful mistake!" cried the child, bursting into tears.

Norah was too wretched to weep; she did not close her eyes all that night; the house in which she had once been so happy had become to her now like a stifling prison. Yet she dreaded returning to her native village; she shrank from meeting the clear blue eye of her uncle; she felt herself unworthy of any kindness,--she who had sinned against light, she who had stained her soul with falsehood! Norah's only comfort was in the thought that at least her course of deception was over; she need play the hypocrite no longer; prayer was not now a mockery as it had seemed lately to be. Sin is in itself a thing more dreadful than the sharpest punishment for sin.

XVI.

Passing Events.

Norah had finished her sad story in tears. Neither Ned Franks nor his wife had interrupted the thread of it by a single question; they had sat grave and silent listeners. When all had been confessed, the sailor gently laid his hand on the shoulder of his sobbing niece. His manner was subdued and kind.

"Norah, my girl," he said, "let's be thankful that all was brought to daylight at last. I'd rather have you coming here, even in trouble and disgrace, than seeming to prosper in a course so dangerous to your soul. I only wish that your lady had known all through your own confession, instead of--but let that pass; I trust and believe that henceforth you will always be true as steel, and avoid the slightest approach to deceit all the more carefully because of your sufferings now. I need not say that we will never mention the subject to you again; you are heartily welcome to stay here as long as you will; you'll live, please God, to be a comfort and credit to us yet."

Of course there was much gossip in the village as to the cause of Norah's sudden return. There was a succession of visitors to the school-house on the following day. Many questions were put to Ned Franks and Persis, by those who were more curious than kind, as to the cause of Norah's so unexpectedly leaving her place. Both husband and wife maintained a resolute silence; they made no evasions, threw out no hints to mislead.

"People need not trouble themselves about my niece's concerns," was Ned's rather impatient remark when hard pressed for an answer to some impertinent question. "She has come to us for quiet and peace, and no one shall annoy her whilst she is under my roof."

Of course curiosity was not satisfied nor gossip silenced in Colme. Some of the neighbors guessed that Norah had done something very foolish or wrong; some that she had had a disappointment in love; but as no one had the means of proving the truth of his guesses, it might be hoped that curiosity would at last die out like a fire unsupplied with fuel. To be exposed to painful remarks, to be viewed with some suspicion, was the heavy but just penalty which Norah must make up her mind to pay for her sin.

There were other subjects of interest at that time to divide the attention of the gossips of Colme,--the illness of the carpenter Stone, and the accident to Sands's wife, being constant topics of conversation. Day after day the cottagers saw the poor clerk plodding on his weary way to the town to visit his suffering Nancy. He looked neither to the right nor the left, nor even stopped to speak to a neighbor, and there was always the same unvarying expression of dull care on his sallow face. On Sundays alone his duties as clerk made it impossible for the anxious husband to go to the hospital at B----; and then, as the miller observed, Sands always looked at church like a condemned man, hearing the sermon preached before his own execution.

John Sands was not the only person to visit poor Nancy in the hospital at B----. Several times, at considerable inconvenience, Persis, with her babe in her arms, found her way to the ward, cheering it by her presence, like one of the rays of sunshine which streamed through the window to brighten the couch of pain. And more often yet, Mr. Leyton came to visit the poor afflicted member of his flock, who no longer scorned to listen to his words. The shyness of the young curate wore off in the presence of suffering and sin; he forgot himself in his work. Nancy, at first a silent, gloomy listener, began at last to look forward to the minister's visits. Mr. Leyton was wont to bring fruit to the sufferer during her tedious illness, and flowers from the vicar's gardens; but it was not this alone that made his visits welcome. Nancy, during the long, sleepless days and wearisome nights, had much time for thinking; her mind also was clear, for she had no longer the power to procure the fatal stimulants which had so nearly been her ruin. There was no sudden change in the violent, high-tempered woman; but influences were at work upon her, which, like the morning shower and the evening dew, were gradually softening the hardened soil so that it might receive the word of truth.

And so passed the month of April, that month of mingled sunshine and shower, when the fruit-trees burst into blossom, and the groves into music. To Persis and Ned it was a very happy and very busy time. They watched their own little blossom opening under the sunshine of their love, and felt that for them life had a new interest and delight. Poor Norah, who was in very low spirits, tried to hide her sadness, that she might throw no shadow over the cheerful home of the Frankses.

And in the meantime work proceeded briskly in Wild Rose Hollow. Never did nobleman, building a proud mansion for himself, watch the progress of its erection with more pleasure than did Ned Franks the repairing--with some almost rebuilding--of the old thatched dwellings. He threw his heart and soul into the work, and infected even the money-making miller with some of his own enthusiasm. We usually take an interest in that which has cost us a sacrifice, and the more men do for any cause the more they are apt to be ready to do. Pleasant to the ears of Bat Bell were the sounds of labor from the direction of the almshouses which his money was helping to restore. He sometimes would take his little Bessy to the spot to see the one-armed sailor and his boys hard at work,--and a goodly quantity of straw for thatching found its way from the mill. Bat Bell had begun to taste the luxury of doing good; he was realizing the truth of that divine declaration, _It is more blessed to give than to receive_.

Ned Franks, on his way to Wild Rose Hollow, had daily to pass the cottage of Sands and the workshop of Stone the carpenter. The door of the first was always closed, and the place wore an air of desolation and neglect, which often drew a sigh from the kind-hearted sailor. It was equally sad to him to pass the empty shop, to hear no more from it the sound of the hammer or saw, or the whizzing hum of the lathe, mingled perhaps with snatches of jovial song. Ben Stone was so well known in the village where he had spent all his days that his illness could not but cause a blank there. The portly form, so familiar to all, was missed from the accustomed place in church; the voice, rather loud than tuneful, from the music of the hymns in which it had so constantly joined. The responses of Ben Stone had been almost as clearly heard as those of the clerk. Even the children of Colme missed the sight of the carpenter in his Sunday clothes, with his wife, rather showily dressed, resting on his strong arm, as with his big prayer-book in hand he used to walk through the porch into the church-yard with a smile or a nod, or a cheerful greeting to every one whom he met, all being his neighbors, and many his friends. Ben Stone was a man who had known very little of trouble, and even when trouble had come, it had no more rested on his soul than rain on a sloping roof. He had hitherto been prosperous, healthy, and strong; and though a kind husband to a wife who often was sickly, Stone never let his easy serenity of soul be disturbed by the pains and aches of his partner. Now, illness, serious and sudden, had come upon himself, and the question was, how would he bear it? The trial would not be sharpened by poverty, for Stone had, as he was wont to say, laid by for a rainy day, and his wife had money of her own. He was in no distress for the necessaries, nor even for the comforts of life; but how would the carpenter bear to have his working-days brought to so unexpected a close? Above all, how would he look forward to the great change which was slowly and painlessly, but not the less surely, approaching? Would not the current of a life, lately so smooth and shallow, become both rougher and more deep when near the point where the great final leap must be made, and the small concerns, the petty interests of this life, be swept away into eternity's ocean?

XVII.

Perilous Peace.

In a quiet and peaceful nook stands the vicarage of Colme, almost in the village, yet entirely screened from it by extensive shrubberies. High, green walls of luxuriant laurel, and rhododendra, with their thick buds swelling into blossoms, border the winding drive, and girdle the lawn, on whose smooth slope lies the shadow of a lofty cedar, the pride of the place. The vicarage itself is not large, but exceedingly pretty, with its rural porch and picturesque gables, and mullioned windows overhung with honeysuckle and clematis. If we were to pass over that velvet lawn, and glance in through the window at the right of the porch, we should see the vicar himself resting in his arm-chair, very pale and very thin from recent dangerous illness, but looking calm and serene. Though this is Saturday, there is no sign of preparation for the morrow's service; there is no desk open, no book on the table save the well-worn Bible. The vicar has been called into the "wilderness" of sickness to "rest for a while," and he may not yet venture to enter the church even as a worshipper, far less as a preacher. It is only to-day that his wife has been able to leave his side for a long round of visits amongst his parishioners. Mr. Curtis is anxious to hear of each and all of those amongst whom the good pastor has lived for twenty years as a father among his children; so his wife has set out this afternoon with a large basket on her arm, to visit half the cottages in Colme.

Mr. Curtis is not sitting alone; his wife's nephew, the young curate, Mr. Leyton, is beside him, giving him an account of his own work on that day. Claudius Leyton is, as has been before mentioned, of extremely youthful appearance; the smooth cheek, small features, and slight, delicate frame of the curate might induce a stranger to guess his age as scarcely beyond eighteen years. Summoned immediately after his ordination to take entire charge of the parish of Mr. Curtis, then alarmingly ill, the curate, whose life had been spent in London, Eton, and Cambridge, and who had scarcely ever so much as entered a cottage, had found himself at first almost overwhelmed by the sense of responsibility. Mr. Leyton had felt somewhat as a landsman might feel should he be called to take the command of a vessel on the very first occasion on which he ever entered one. The curate lacked neither talent nor devotion, but he had no experience in the peculiar work of a village pastor, and with a tender sensitive disposition and natural shyness, it seemed as if he had undertaken a task beyond his strength. The change was great from the easy luxury of home and college life to the position of a hard-working curate, with long church-services to tax a weak voice, and the various needs of a parish, in which almost every one was to him a stranger, to try his energies and test his discretion. Mr. Leyton had prayerfully resolved to do his very best to be a faithful minister to his flock, and overcome the difficulties before him. He had, some time before his ordination, left off some of his favorite pursuits, that he might devote himself to his duties; he had given away his cigar-case, had parted with his books of light literature, locked up his flute, and left his paint-box untouched for months. Claudius Leyton had resolutely turned his thoughts to sermons and schools, and other matters connected with parish business. But it had been a great trial to the young clergyman to have, as it were, to find his way almost alone in, to him, a new country. He was unable for weeks to avail himself of the experience of the vicar, and but for the information and help always cheerfully given him by Ned Franks, the curate would often have felt utterly discouraged by the difficulties attending his charge. It was no small relief to the young man to be at last able to consult the vicar, receive his sympathy, and ask his advice; for Claudius had none of the proud self-confidence which too often accompanies inexperience and youth; he was not one of those who need to be taught modesty by a number of failures.

"And where have you been this day, Claudius?" asked the vicar, as the curate, tired with a long, hot walk, seated himself beside him, and wiped his own heated brow, where the pressure of the hat had left a reddened line on the smooth, fair skin.

"I have been to the hospital to see Mrs. Sands."

"Ah! the poor creature who nearly lost her life by falling into the mill-stream."

"When in a state of intoxication," gravely added the curate.

"And who has had to endure the loss of her right arm,--a terrible loss to any one, especially to a working woman," said the vicar, in a tone of compassion.

"It is a mercy that she did not lose her life," observed Claudius; "but for the gallant conduct of Ned Franks, who risked his own to save it, the unhappy creature must have perished, a victim to that horrible vice of intemperance. Bad as it is in a man, it is doubly disgusting in a woman."

"It seems almost like a possession by a devil," said the vicar; "but we have the encouragement of knowing that our Master has power even to cast out devils. Does poor Nancy seem conscious of her sin before God? Does she show any sign of repentance?"

"I do not know what to think," replied the curate, undecidedly. "The woman listens in silence to what I have to say; she does not fire up as she would have done a short time since at anything like reproof; her black eyes have lost their fierceness, but I fear that rather sullen gloom than humble contrition has taken its place. I cannot tell what to make of her manner; it is so difficult to read the human heart."

"Difficult, indeed," said the vicar; and he added, but not aloud, "especially for those who have but lately mastered even its alphabet."

"I have suggested to her total abstinence," continued Claudius Leyton. "I have read and heard that where there is a passion for strong drink, the only chance of overcoming that passion is by never tasting a drop."

"You are right; there are cases where temperance is impracticable without total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. The enemy is so determined to gain admission, that the door must be, as it were, bolted and barred against him, for, if the smallest opening were left, he would rush in with irresistible force. But how did Nancy take your suggestions?"

"In sullen silence, as usual," replied Mr. Leyton. "She stares fixedly at the wall before her, and I scarcely know whether she is listening or not to what I say. I fear that it shows a want of charity in myself," continued the young clergyman, "but I own that that woman inspires me with a feeling of repulsion."

"Hers is a case which needs much prayer and patience," observed the vicar.

"I certainly should never go to see her but from a sense of duty," said the young man, who had scarcely yet acquired the grace of patience, and to whom a violent-tempered woman, addicted to intoxication, was rather an object of disgust than of pity. "How different was my next visit to a sick-bed! How refreshing to the spirit it was to sit by that excellent man, Ben Stone, and see how calmly and cheerfully a Christian can bear sickness, and look forward to death!"

"Ah! so you have been with our poor friend, the carpenter? How did you find him?" asked the vicar, with interest.

"Perfectly peaceful, perfectly happy; not a cloud over his soul!" replied Mr. Leyton.

The curate's fair young face brightened as he spoke, but its brightness was not reflected in the countenance of the vicar. It was in a grave, rather anxious tone, that he inquired, "Is he resting on the Rock? Has he found true peace through Christ?"

"Surely, I should have no hesitation in saying so," answered Claudius Leyton. "His manner, however, was not quite so decided as his words; it seemed rather to convey an idea that an unpleasant doubt had been unexpectedly suggested to his mind. Stone is evidently glad to receive spiritual comfort; he listens, he agrees to everything."

"Agrees! yes, he always listens, always assents. How glad I should often have been to have heard a question from him,--I had almost said a contradiction; that would have served to show, at least, that some interest in spiritual things had been aroused."

"You surprise me, my uncle," said the curate. "I thought that Stone was a very good man; everybody speaks well of him; everybody seems to like him."

"_I_ like him," replied the vicar, emphatically; "but it is because I like him so much that I am the more anxious about him. If my only desire for my flock was to have them moral, respectable, regular in church-going, quiet citizens, kind neighbors, honest men, I should be well pleased if all in the village were like the carpenter Stone. And yet, during my twenty years of labor at Colme, there is not one of my parishioners on whom those labors have, I fear, made less impression than on him. Stone has not only heard thousands of sermons in church, but I have repeatedly conversed with him in private on the concerns of his soul, and I have always left him with the discouraging conviction that he is not so much as grounded in the first principles of our religion; that he has always the same assurance of going to heaven, because such an honest, respectable, sober man as he is must by a kind of necessity go there. Satisfied with this false assurance, he has never been induced to make the slightest effort to examine whether it have any safe ground to rest on. I have felt myself, when conversing with Stone, like one firing cannon at a thick earthwork. There is no strong resistance, such as is made by a stone wall, but the balls sink into the soft mud and are lost, and the fortification, seemingly so easy to be assailed, remains as firm and unmoved as if no efforts at all had been made to shake it. I have found, in the course of my long ministry," continued the vicar, "that it is easier to impress a profligate or to convince an infidel, than to lead to true faith and repentance a self-satisfied, self-sufficient soul like that of poor Stone."

Claudius Leyton gave a sigh of disappointment. "I fear that I have been doing harm, then, where I meant to do good," he observed, "saying, _peace, peace, where there is no peace_. I took it for granted that such a kind-hearted, respectable man as Stone must be a Christian indeed."

"My dear boy," said the silver-haired vicar, kindly, "yours was a most natural mistake, especially for one so young in the ministry. It is extremely difficult to distinguish mere outward good conduct and amiability from that which results from the hidden life of faith in the heart. The sad thing is," continued the pastor, "that the individual who misleads us is usually himself misled; while in danger he believes himself to be perfectly safe, and may approach even the hour of death without the slightest fear or misgiving. With him there is no cry for mercy to the Saviour of sinners, no looking unto him who was lifted up, as the brazen serpent in the wilderness, as the one only means of salvation offered to the perishing sons of men."

The invalid had spoken with animation, and a sensation of exhaustion immediately followed. He leaned wearily back on his pillow, and closed his eyes. Claudius Leyton, aware that the interview had lasted too long for his uncle's strength, quietly arose and quitted the study. The young minister sought his own room, feeling more strongly than ever how difficult it is to be a good physician to souls, and not give an opiate to a conscience already too much inclined to sink into dangerous sleep. Mr. Leyton unclosed his Bible with a sigh, but the promise on which his eye rested came with comfort to his soul: _If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering._

XVIII.

Self-Reproach.

"Are you going to see poor Stone to-morrow?" said Persis Franks to her husband on the evening of that same Saturday.

"Ay, Sunday is the only day when I can find time now to visit a sick friend."

"I am sure that in this case it is 'the better day the better deed,'" observed Persis, as her fingers briskly plied the needle, while the pile of unmended stockings on her right hand was gradually growing small, as pair after pair, neatly darned and folded, were transferred to the left. "Mrs. Stone was saying to me to-day how much her husband enjoys your calls. You will never regret these visits, Ned."

"Now it's odd enough, wife, that at the moment when you spoke to me I was thinking of these same visits of mine to poor Stone, and thinking of them _with_ regret. I might use a stronger word," continued Franks, as his wife glanced up with mild surprise; "I've been taking myself to task for these same Sunday visits."

"Surely, dearest, _it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day_; that is what our Lord himself has told us."

"Ay, _to do good_," repeated Franks; "but I'm not clear that I've not rather done Ben Stone harm. You and I are alone, wifie, and I don't mind saying to you what I wouldn't say to any one else." Franks lowered his voice as he went on. "Stone's voyage through life has been a very easy one; it seems almost as if his vessel had been one that could guide itself without any pilot at all; he has never met a storm that I've heard of,--all has been smooth sailing with him. And yet, wifie, I fear that Stone has not had his eye fixed on the Pole-Star, nor his finger tracing the right course on the Bible-chart. Self-righteousness is a sunken rock, none the less dangerous for being sunken, and if a poor bark go to pieces upon it, we know that it's just as surely lost as if it had gone down in the whirlpool of drunkenness, or of any other open vice."

"But I do not exactly see what _you_ have to reproach yourself with if poor Stone think himself a better Christian than he actually is," observed Persis.

"Don't you see I've a kind of credit in the village for hanging out my colors boldly, and trying at least to sail by the chart? When I go Sunday after Sunday and sit with a sick, I fear a dying man, and join with him in cheerful talk, as if I'd never an object but to make the time pass pleasantly, I only cause him to think, 'There's Ned Franks, a dreadfully strict and precise old tar; he must be sure that I'm steering all right, for if he saw danger he'd be certain to bid me _sheer off_.'"

"But I have no doubt that your conversation often takes a religious turn," observed Persis.

"A religious turn!" repeated Franks, in a rather sarcastic tone; "ay, a kind of sop to my conscience, and, perhaps, poor fellow, to his. We talk, maybe, of the sermon, and the way in which busy hands are getting on with repairing the almshouses, and what a good minister the vicar is, and how glad we shall be if the Lord lets him fill the pulpit again. There's a text put in here and there, and Stone says something about being thankful for having no pain, and having been given a good wife and a comfortable home, and such peace in his mind. But I know that such conversations as these held with one who, in a few months, will probably suffer that great change for which I cannot in charity think him prepared, is but a kind of idle beating and tacking about; it is not going to the heart of the matter; it never makes him ask himself when I leave him, 'Am I in the right course? Is this peace of which I talk the peace of a converted or of a dead soul? What shall I plead when I stand, as I soon must, in the immediate presence of a heart-searching God?'" Franks rose from his seat, and paced up and down his little room, as he was wont to do when anything disturbed or perplexed him.

"Do you intend then," asked Persis, laying down her work, "to speak faithfully to our poor friend when you visit him to-morrow?"

Ned passed his hand through his curly hair; he looked perplexed and undecided. "I wish I were fit for such speaking," said he. "If Mr. Curtis were able to get about, he'd go right to the point with Stone at once; but I don't think there's anything in life so hard as to convince a self-righteous man that he's a sinner in need of a Saviour."

"Surely," said Persis, very softly, "it is the Holy Spirit alone that can convince of sin; it is only God himself who can open the eyes of the blind."

"Then to God we must turn for the blessing, wife, but we must not neglect the means. I'll try to drop in a word of warning to-morrow, though it's just such an office as I'd gladly make over to any one else if I could; but I really care for poor Ben, and I can't help thinking of the lines,--

"'Who speaks not needed truth lest he offend,
Hath spared himself--but sacrificed his friend.'

I hope that my visit to Stone to-morrow may not be as utterly profitless as I fear that the three last have been."

XIX.

The Test.

While Persis and Ned Franks are conversing together in their little parlor, we will turn for a short time to Norah, whom we shall find in their little garden, with a full glow of the setting sun around her, as she is stooping over a flower-bed busily engaged in weeding.

Even in the bright season of spring, even in the cheerful home of the Frankses, since her return from London, the time had passed wearily and anxiously to Norah. She shrank from notice, she dreaded questions, and, though nothing was said to make her feel that it was so, she knew that her maintenance must be a burden on the slender income of her uncle. The accommodation in the school-house was small. Persis, at some inconvenience, had given up her only store-closet to serve as a sleeping-room for Norah; and if the good housewife cheerily laughed over her own little difficulties in finding a place where she might stow away jams and bacon, and Franks declared that the closer people were packed together, the less danger there was of their chafing one another, Norah felt that the little domestic circle had been complete without her, and that her pale, sad face could not add to the cheerfulness of a married pair. Even the food of which the orphan guest was so kindly pressed to partake freely must make a sensible difference in the household expenses of those who had so little to spare. Norah longed for the means of earning her own bread; but employment in needle-work, even had she been clever at sewing, could scarcely be procured in the retired neighborhood of Colme. The young girl would gladly have gone again into service; but to whom could she apply for a character? How often, with bitter regret for the past, did Norah ask herself that question? Her only resource was prayer. She entreated him whose mercy, as she trusted and believed, had forgiven her sin, to open for her some door of usefulness, to give her some means of honestly earning a livelihood. Norah was ready to take the lowest place, the hardest work, the smallest wages, if she might but struggle back to a position in which she could again maintain herself by her labor.

As Norah rose from her stooping posture, she saw Mrs. Curtis, the vicar's wife, approaching towards her. The lady, who was the general counsellor and friend of the villagers of Colme, had always shown kindness to Norah, and to be spoken to by her would, in former times, have called up a beaming smile in the face of the girl; but Norah now met the vicar's wife with a feeling of shame and fear.

"Good-evening to you, Norah Peele; I am glad to find you alone, for I wish a little quiet talk with you," said Mrs. Curtis. "Let us go to yon arbor at the end of the garden, where we shall be undisturbed."

Norah followed the lady along the narrow gravel path which Franks had bordered with box. The poor girl dreaded the interview before her, but silently prayed, as she walked along, that she might be enabled to answer truthfully whatever painful questions might be asked her.

When the arbor was reached, Mrs. Curtis seated herself on the rustic bench, which was the handiwork of the one-armed sailor. No one could approach the spot unseen; the lady had chosen it in order that the conversation between herself and Norah might not be interrupted or overheard.

"Norah," said Mrs. Curtis, "my housemaid is about to leave me to be married to Rob Gates, the nephew of the miller. I am therefore looking out for a trustworthy girl to take her place. Knowing both you and your family for so long as I have done, it is natural that my thoughts should turn towards you."

The girl's heart throbbed fast with a newly awakened hope which she yet scarcely dared to indulge.