Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

TWO SECRETS

AND

A MAN OF HIS WORD

BY

HESBA STRETTON

AUTHOR OF "JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER," "ALONE IN LONDON,"

"NO PLACE LIKE HOME," "THE CHRISTMAS CHILD," ETC.

London
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4, BOUVERIE STREET AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD

BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME, AND LONDON.

STORIES BY HESBA STRETTON

The Children of Cloverley | The King's Servants
Enoch Roden's Training | Little Meg's Children
Fern's Hollow | The Lord's Purse-Bearers
In the Hollow of His Hand | Alone in London
Pilgrim Street | Lost Gip
A Thorny Path | Max Kromer
Cassy | The Storm of Life
The Crew of the "Dolphin" | Jessica's First Prayer
Jessica's Mother | Under the Old Roof
Left Alone | No Place Like Home

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 4 BOUVERIE STREET

CONTENTS

TWO SECRETS

A MAN OF HIS WORD

CHAP. I. HIS ONLY CHILD

" II. "CAST OUT"

" III. HIS GRANDSON

" IV. HIS OWN WAY

" V. A CRITICAL MOMENT

" VI. A TRUE MAN

TWO SECRETS

AND

A MAN OF HIS WORD

TWO SECRETS

ABOUT a stone's throw from the last house in the small country town of Armitage stood a cottage which had scarcely changed in aspect since it had been built two hundred years ago. The gambrel roof was high-pitched and closely thatched, with deep eaves, under which the swallows built their nests; the little elbow in the slope of the gable gave it a quaint look, as if the cottage had drawn a hood over its head. Along the top of the roof grew a row of purple flags, which contrasted well with the brown thatch and golden lichens. Casements, with small diamond windows, glistened in the light. A garden full of old-fashioned flowers ran down from the road to the little porch, which sheltered the door from rough weather, and made a pleasant and shady seat in the summer. It was certainly the most picturesque dwelling in the neighbourhood.

"What is the name of your cottage?" asked an artist, who had just finished a sketch of it.

"Oh! It hasn't any name, sir," answered Joanna Terry—"it's nothing; only our home."

She had been born there, and had not been away from it for a whole week at a time for fifty-five years. She hardly knew any other house. The ground floor of the cottage contained a large, old-fashioned living-room, with two very small ones opening out of it, one of which was a kind of scullery, and the other the bedroom in which she had been born, and where she had slept all her life. Under the gable of the thatched roof there was a large attic covering the whole area of the cottage, with sloping ceiling and two windows, one at each end, looking east and west. Joanna's mind could not grasp the idea of any improvement in the arrangement of her little homestead.

The tall, spare old woman was still very active and alert, with an eye keen to detect every weed venturing to grow in the garden, and every speck of dust that might blow in through the open window and door. Scarcely a bud opened on the roses and clematis climbing up the half-timber wall without her notice. The hollyhocks and sunflowers, standing as erect as herself, were every one known to her. The potato-patch behind the cottage, which her husband, Amos Terry, cultivated in his leisure time; the long rows of peas and beans; the beds of onions and lettuce; the fruit-trees which paid their rent—they were almost like children to her. Indoors, the old oak settle by the fireside, the oak table and dresser, all shining with the active work of her own hands, teemed with associations and memories which formed the sum and substance of her life. The roof-tree was not more planted to the spot than Joanna was.

Still more firmly rooted there, if possible, was her only child, Charlotte, who lived in the pleasant attic under the roof. She was lame, and an invalid from a spinal complaint, the result of a fall when she was a little child. It was very seldom that she felt well enough to creep painfully down the rude staircase to the ground floor. But from her two windows her eye could overlook both of the garden patches lying before and behind the house; and she knew everything growing in them as well as her mother did. Eastward her view was bounded by a low ridge of hill, above which the morning clouds hung tinged with lovely hues some time before the sun showed itself over the wooded outline. To the west there was a wide stretch of undulating land, with meadows and coppices and scattered cottages, ending far-off in a glimpse of the sea, which often glittered like gold under the setting of the sun. Charlotte seldom missed seeing both sunrise and sunset.

She was thirty years of age now, pallid and emaciated, with the pathetic look in her eyes which cripples and deformed people so often have. She looked almost as old as her mother. The mother and daughter had been slowly changing places for the last fifteen years. Charlotte was the adviser now, the head of the little household, the referee to whom every question was brought. She was always brooding over schemes for her father and mother's comfort, and suggesting gently what their actions should be from day to day. Joanna was still young in spirit, apt to act impetuously; occasionally giving way to almost girlish fits of temper, which she confessed and repented of by Charlotte's bedside. It did not seem possible there could ever come a secret between these two.

Amos Terry, who was two years older than his wife, had been a rural postman for thirty-seven years. The daily routine of his work had never altered. At six o'clock, summer and winter, he presented himself at the post-office in the town, and received the various letter-bags which he had to convey along a route, the farthest point of which was seven miles away. As it was out of the question for him to return home and walk the same distance again, he remained at this farthest point all day, and hired a small out-building, where he occupied his time profitably in mending the boots and shoes of a considerable circle of customers who valued his careful work. At four o'clock he started homeward, collected the bags he had distributed in the morning, and was timed to be at the post-office again at half-past six, soon enough to make up the evening mail. The old church clock never struck seven before he was at home, going first thing upstairs to his daughter's attic. The sight of her face, wan and drawn as it was with pain, but always lit up with a smile of welcome, was the most precious sight in the world to him. He had never had a secret from her in his life. His whole heart and mind and soul lay open to her as absolutely as it is possible for one human being to be open to another.

"I don't think there's anybody in the world as happy as me," said Amos, perfectly convinced of the truth of his assertion, "at least, not one bit happier; they couldn't be."

"Not if Charlotte was strong and well?" suggested Joanna, with a sigh. It was she who had let her child fall when a baby.

"Maybe I should have gone away and left you," said Charlotte; "it 'ud never have done for me to live idle here. Or I might have been married, you know," she added, with a faint blush and a smile.

"Anyhow, it is as the Lord has willed it," Amos answered, "and sometimes I think He'll be weary of me sayin' how happy I am."

There was very little to disturb that happiness. Ambition was unknown to them. No religious or political questions perplexed their humble souls. Care was a long way off, for they had more than enough for their simple wants. They needed neither fine clothes, nor dainty food, nor costly furniture. A few old-fashioned books, gathered together by Joanna's forefathers, were enough for their mental requirements. The "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Holy War," the "Vicar of Wakefield," the "Fool of Quality," and "Paradise Lost," were ranged on a little hanging shelf in Charlotte's attic, and with their Bible and a hymn-book provided amply for Joanna and Amos, whilst more modern books were now and then lent to Charlotte by friendly visitors from the town. They had beautified their little home, and cultivated their garden according to their own fancy; and if three wishes had been given to them, they would have been puzzled to fix upon one.

If Joanna knew and loved her house almost as her own soul, Amos also knew and loved the route he traversed daily in all weathers. More than six hundred times a year he passed the same cottages, tramped along the same lanes between high hedgerows, and looked up to the same constantly changing sky overhead. He loved it ardently though dumbly, possessing no language that could express his feelings. He was fond of singing, but he sang somewhat as the birds sing, that know only a strain or two. Amos knew only a few hymns, and he generally sang them through again and again as he went to and fro, until the cottagers on his route knew when he was drawing near, and hastened to their doors or windows to give him a friendly nod.

It was getting well on In October. The low-lying hills were covered with coppices of beech-trees, now wearing the loveliest tints of autumn. Down each valley ran a little rivulet, joining a broad and rapid but shallow stream, which hurried along a stony channel to the sea. Amos seldom went home without taking some flower or leafy branch for Charlotte; and he was gathering a cluster of crimson berries from a climbing bryony, when a young man, the eldest son of Squire Sutton, of Sutton Hall, where he had just called for the letter-bag, came running quickly, though cautiously, after him. He did not shout or call to Amos; and he was almost out of breath when he reached him.

"Amos," he gasped, "here's a letter. It's a matter of life or death to me. Let me put it into father's bag."

He had brought the key with him, and Amos watched him unlock and lock the bag again. He had recovered his breath now, and he looked at Amos with a world of anxiety in his face.

"You are never too late, I suppose?" he said.

"Now, Master Gerard, you've known me all your life," answered Amos, "and you might almost as well ask if the sun 'll set at the right time. I have come and gone on this road nigh on forty year, and never missed yet. Nobody ever gave me a letter for life or death afore; and it 'ud be odd indeed if I missed tonight."

As Amos trudged on the sun went down behind the sweet round outline of one of the low hills, and the sky looking nearer than in the summer, seemed about to close, like brooding wings, over the quiet woods. Two or three robins were chirping cheerfully among the thinning leaves, which came down with a rustle as the cool evening breeze blew up the valley from the sea. A profound peace rested on all the silent lanes and meadows he traversed, which would have been too solemn if he had not loved it so profoundly.

But all in a moment a tumult of children's voices scattered the silence, and Amos saw a troop of terrified little ones running towards him and screaming for help. Looking beyond them he saw that one of their playfellows had fallen into the stream, which was carrying the child swiftly away towards the sea. He had no time to deliberate; there was not a moment to lose. In another minute the drowning child would be abreast of the spot where he stood. He laid his bags down safely on the bank, and waded into the shallow river, which, a few minutes ago, was running like a thread of gold between its banks in the radiance of the setting sun.

There was no great risk in what Amos was doing. The river, unless it was swollen by rain, was never more than breast-high. He caught the child in his hands as the current bore it past him, and carried it in safety to the bank. But there was no one in all the band of its companions old enough to take care of the little creature. The child's head had struck against a stone, and it lay a heavy load in his arms. He must carry it himself to the nearest cottage, which was almost a mile away. With his letter-bags slung across his shoulders, and his clothes heavy with water, Amos could not make very rapid progress. The cottagers were not very willing to take in a strange child, belonging to nobody but gipsies, and he had some trouble to get them to relieve him of his charge. More than an hour was gone before he could hasten on his ordinary way.

And he did hasten. In spite of his wet clothes and sodden boots, he pushed on along the darkening lanes, and across the dusky meadows, not losing a moment. It was always Charlotte's custom during the summer to be at the window about the time he was due, to give him a smile as he passed by; and when the evenings closed in early she placed a candle on the window-sill, that its feeble glimmer should show him a welcome. The candle was shining through the diamond panes, but he hardly saw it as he rushed past. What Amos did see was the world of anxiety in the young squire's face, as he said, "You are never too late, I suppose?"

The postmaster was standing out on the pavement, looking down the quiet street, and the gaslight was turned low in the office, usually so busy a scene till the time for closing, when Amos staggered, breathless and worn out, up to the familiar door.

"Why, Amos, my man!" exclaimed the postmaster. "However is this? We waited till the last moment, and the mail has gone down to the station these ten minutes. Hark! There's the whistle! The train's off!"

Amos reeled up against the door, as if struck by a gun-shot. He was too late! It was some minutes before he could tell his story; and the postmaster, with a good deal of sympathy and approbation, tried to console him.

"Nobody could blame you, Amos," he said. "I must report the matter to headquarters, of course, and there will be some inquiry about it, no doubt. Ten to one there is no letter of importance in your bags."

"Oh, sir!" cried Amos. "Is there nothing can be done? Think if there is anything can be done."

"Well," he answered, after a moment's pause, "you might catch the express at Norton Junction. It's perhaps worth trying, but I'm afraid the department will not allow the expenses. We'll see about that. A light cart and a good horse would run you into Norton in two hours."

"I'll try for it," said Amos. "Please send word to my wife and Charlotte, or they'll be fretting all night."

It was an anxious night to Joanna and Charlotte, even though the postmaster called himself to tell them all that had happened, and to praise Amos to them. The praises were very gratifying; but the two women could not help thinking of him driving through the chill October night in his wet clothing. How sharp the air felt, when they opened the window to see if there was any rain or fog! The hours wore slowly away. Joanna kept up a good fire, and had the kettle boiling, and put the old brass warming-pan ready to warm the bed as soon as Amos came in cold and famished. But no one came.

"Mother," said Charlotte, towards four o'clock in the morning, "of course they'd never drive straight there and back again. The poor horse 'ud have to rest, you know."

"Ay, dear love," answered Joanna; "but Amos might come home by the mornin' mail, and that's just due, I'm thinkin'."

Still the time crept on slowly, and there was no click of the garden gate, and no step coming down the gravel walk. At the first dawn Joanna looked out on the garden, with its tall hollyhocks and sunflowers still bearing a little blossom; but all appeared dull, and grey, and gloomy to her sleepless, aching eyes. If anything should happen to Amos, even the Garden of Eden would be a desert to her.

But the worst that happened was a sharp attack of rheumatic fever for Amos, following upon a kind of fainting fit, which seized him just as he delivered up his letters to the clerks in the travelling post-office at Norton Junction. He was promptly carried to the Norton Cottage Hospital; and there Joanna found him the following afternoon; and she wept tears of mingled joy and sorrow as she sat at his bedside and listened to the tale of his remarkable adventures.

"We shall never leave off talkin' of them," he said with a smile, "when I come home to you and Charlotte."

It was six weeks before he came home. The doctors told him he was quite well again and might resume his work, but he must take care of himself. Amos knew this even better than they did. The old buoyant strength, the careless, untiring delight with which he had been wont to stride along the old familiar roads, were gone for ever. He loved them as much as ever; but he did not go out of his way now to look into some secluded dingle, and he could not afford to pause and listen to any strange cry in the wintry woods. It was as much as he could do to accomplish his task. He was even compelled to hire a substitute when the snow lay heavy on the road, or when torrents of rain were falling. He had paid a heavy price for saving the life of a tramp's child. No one had thanked him for it; and he had not even the satisfaction of knowing whom or where the little creature was.

When he first called at Sutton Hall after his long illness, the servants told him how the young squire had made a runaway match, much to his father's displeasure. The young squire and his bride had gone to foreign parts, nobody knew where; and his father refused to continue his allowance, though he could not cut off the entail. This was the matter of life or death; and Amos was not sure that he would have driven off to Norton in his wet clothes if he had known the secret of the young squire's anxiety.

"But what's done is done," said Amos to himself; "and I thought I was doin' what the Lord set for me."

As time went on it became the custom for Joanna to take her husband's bags, at least every other day, and always in bad weather. The postmaster, who was friendly to them both, winked at this irregularity; and none of the great people on the road complained of it. It was little to Joanna to walk the seven miles out and back again; and the load was never very heavy. But the long wait of seven or eight hours at the farthest village was a severe trial to her. She took some sewing or knitting; but her heart was at home, wondering how Amos and Charlotte were going on, and longing after her accustomed work in the house and the garden. Her home seemed, if possible, to grow dearer to her every day; and her love was heightened by these enforced absences. There was no other real place in the world to her; it was her world. The joy of going back to it, and to those who lived in it, was the deepest earthly joy her soul could feel.

This home was held on a peculiar tenure, which she had all but forgotten. Joanna's father and uncle had clubbed their money together to buy it for three lives: their own, and the life of Joanna's cousin, a lad fifteen years younger than herself, whose probable term of existence was so far longer than hers. But as her father paid the larger share of the purchase money, he had stipulated that Joanna should have the right of inhabiting the cottage on payment of a low rent to her cousin. When the three lives were ended the freehold went back to the original owner.

It was nearly three years after Amos met with those adventures, which had formed the topic of endless conversations, before the postmaster succeeded in persuading him to resign his post and take the small pension due to him for his forty years' service. This step would make a radical change in their lives, and it was as important to him personally as the resignation of a prime minister.

"We shall get along rarely," said Joanna, though with a shade of anxiety in her voice; "the garden is worth £12 a year to us; and when you're at home to help, we shall make more of it. We can hire a bit o' land, and grow more things, and your pension 'll be a grand help."

"Surely! Surely!" assented Amos.

"And, mother," said Charlotte gently, "let us remember the words of our Lord Jesus, how He said, 'Take no thought for the morrow—'"

"Ay; but somebody must take thought," Joanna interrupted, "or how 'ud the work get done? How 'ud the seeds get sown, and the house minded, and food bought in? Thee and Amos mayn't take thought, but it falls upon me to do it."

"But, mother," said Charlotte, "it means, 'Be not anxious for your life.' I used to puzzle over it hours and hours, because one must use forethought, till Mr. Seaford told me the words meant, 'Never be anxious.' Our Lord says, 'Your Father knows ye have need of these things'—food, and clothing, and shelter—and He will provide them. Yes, we shall get along finely."

The question troubled no more any of the three simple souls. Amos was to give up his work at Christmas, when he would complete the fortieth year of daily work as a rural letter-carrier, and until then he or his wife would carry the letter-bags along the familiar roads. One morning late in October, after a night of heavy rain, Joanna set out for the post-office, leaving Amos at home in bed, bearing his rheumatic pains courageously and patiently. She made the fire up with a huge lump of coal which would smoulder for hours, until Amos got up.

It was still dusk when she passed the cottage on her journey out, and the beloved roof, with its deep eaves, stood darkly against the cold grey dawn. A thin column of smoke wavered upward in the dank air. Joanna held a letter in her hand, directed to herself, which she had got at the post-office; and the temptation was strong to go in and strike a light and read it before she went on her way. She received a letter so seldom! But then every other letter entrusted to her would be delayed; and who could tell what might be the consequences if she was unfaithful to her charge? Besides, Amos would be worried. She passed by steadily, giving a loving nod to the old home under whose roof her only two beloved ones were sleeping.

It was not until she reached the end of her journey, and had delivered the last bag at the village post-office, that she sat down in the shed where Amos was wont to work as a cobbler, and took up the letter. She read the outer inscription to herself solemnly, and carefully opened the blue envelope. It was dated from Norton, and began with the word "Madam!"

"Oh, it's a mistake," cried Joanna, half aloud. "Nobody never called me Madam!"

But the address was plainly "Mrs. Amos Terry."

"There's nobody else of that name in our place," she reflected, and went on slowly spelling her way through the letter.

It was to the effect, expressed in formal phraseology, that her cousin, the third beneficiary under the tontine by which her cottage was held, being now dead, the freehold fell to the original owner; and the writer of the letter, being his agent, was instructed to give her immediate notice to deliver up the cottage in good and tenantable repair.

Joanna read and re-read the letter. She was an intelligent woman, but at first she could not grasp the meaning in its full bitterness. No word had come to her of her cousin's illness and death. It was true they did not correspond except on the quarter-days when she sent the rent and he acknowledged it. By-and-by her brain began to act clearly. If her cousin was really dead, a man not much more than forty years of age, then, of course, the tontine was ended, and the cottage was hers no longer. At the thought of it, her heart died within her.

She leaned her trembling grey head against the wall, and shut her aching eyes. A phantasmagoria of the beloved home passed swiftly through her mind. She saw it in winter with snow upon the thatch, and long icicles fringing the eaves, all the garden round it sleeping in wintry sleep, and nursing the roots and seeds in its frozen bosom; in spring-time, with the young, fresh green of the lilacs and roses and honeysuckles budding out around it; in summer, almost smothered in blossoms; and in autumn, as she had seen it this morning, dank with rain, but snug and dry as a nest within. Every flower that had bloomed during the last summer, the fruit-trees laden with fruit, the long rows of beans and peas—all seemed to stand up clearly before her eyes, asking if it was possible for them to grow out of that soil under any other care than hers.

Then she had visions of herself: a baby crawling over the low door-sill; a little child running in and out with her prattle to the father and mother; a tall girl going to school and winning prizes to take home to them; and then, when Amos came courting, how the click of the garden gate sent her in trembling and blushing to her mother's side. And all the years since—the long stretch of nearly forty peaceful happy years—lived under the old roof, until every lifeless thing had become alive with memories. Not a nail had been knocked in any wall, not a patch put into the thatch, but she knew all about it: and having not much else to think about, she could remember how and when and why each slight change had been made.

Joanna did no work that day. She sat still in the little shed, oblivious of cold and damp and hunger, brooding over the terrible letter. She forgot to eat the dinner she had brought with her. One decision only she could come to—to keep her secret as long as she could. Why should Amos and Charlotte suffer as she was suffering, until she had done all she could do?

It was hard to go in home that night. She must be her usual self, cheery, and a little talkative, asking trifling questions about what they had done all day, whilst her heart felt breaking at the sight of every familiar object. But she did her best, not daring to complain of any ache or pain, lest Amos should insist upon going out in the continued bad weather. At last, the first fine day, when he could undertake his duty, Joanna found some excuse for going to Norton. She had learned to know the place well while Amos lay ill in the hospital.

The agent who had written to her was in his office; and after a little delay she was admitted to see him. He was a busy man, pompous in his manner, and he could see nothing to interest him in a plain, ill-clad country woman, whose homely face was no more eloquent than her words. She had but little language in which to plead for what was a matter of life or death to her.

"My good woman," he said at last, rather angrily, "I have no time for further discussion. I am instructed to sell the property; and £150 has been offered for it. If you can make me a better offer, I am willing to take it. If not, you must be out before Christmas."

It was like listening to a death-sentence. The house was going to be sold! Could she offer more than £150? She might as well think of buying one of the crown jewels. Leave before Christmas! Why, that was only six weeks off; and Amos and Charlotte had no thought of such a thing yet. She went home stunned, not knowing what to do. It was as if Fate had put a dagger in her hand, and bade her pierce the hearts of her two beloved ones. She did her best to shake off the feeling of doom which was crushing her; and for some days she went about her daily work with a Spartan-like cheerfulness. But the bitterest anxiety and despondency were gnawing at her heart. The only relief was when Amos was obliged to stay at home, and she could trudge along the wintry lanes, unseen by eyes that loved her homely face and watched it.

But the time came at last when she could no longer delay to strike the blow which would wound Amos and Charlotte as her own heart was wounded. It was necessary to seek some other roof to shelter them; for December was come, and on Christmas Eve they must leave the old home.

"Amos," she said, in a tremulous voice one cold, dark night, after she had come in from her long tramp, "my cousin's dead."

"Ah! Dear heart!" he answered her. "And did he die happy?"

She had never thought of that.

"I don't know," she cried, bursting into tears, "but oh! Amos, we shall have to lose our old place!"

He had been stirring up the fire to make a cheerful blaze, but now he sat himself down beside her on the oak settle, and put his old arm round her, drawing her closely to him. He was trembling too with the suddenness of the shock her words had given to him. The firelight played upon their wrinkled faces, and upon the hard and withered hands which clasped each other so fast. Both of them were silent for a few minutes. Amos knew full well the anguish that filled his wife's heart.

"Let us go and tell Charlotte," he said at last.

It was one of her bad days, and she had not left her bed. A patchwork counterpane, made by Joanna, covered her, and patchwork curtains sheltered her from the draught of the window. Her aching head and pallid face lay on a down pillow, with a linen slip spun and woven by Joanna's mother. The attic looked like a home that had been long and intimately occupied. Joanna sank down on her knees, with a deep moan, beside the bed; whilst Amos, in a faltering voice, told the sad news briefly.

"Then that's what it means!" cried Charlotte, lifting up her head, and looking at him with shining eyes. "All day long, for the last five or six days, there's been a whisperin' in my mind, 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' It's God's voice, father. He's spoken beforehand to me, to comfort you and me."

Joanna raised her care-worn and tearful face, and Amos laid his rough hand tenderly on his daughter's head. Neither of them doubted that God had indeed spoken to her.

"A father couldn't do anything to his child that seems worse than slaying it," continued Charlotte, "but I've read of fathers, loving fathers, that have done it rather than let them fall into the hands of wicked men that would kill them cruelly. The children would trust their fathers to kill them. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'"

"Ah! Dear heart! We'll trust in Him," Amos answered.

They sat up late that night talking over the utter change in their future life, and trying to face the calamity from every point of view. But, after all their discussion, there was nothing for it but to accept the sorrow as God's will, to which they must meekly submit their own.

The trouble fell most lightly on Amos. His home was where his wife and daughter were; and he had lost neither of these. All his days had been passed away from the cottage, and his life had not been so closely interwoven with it. Besides, he was almost as ignorant as a child about ways and means. His weekly wages had always been handed over, as soon as he received them, to Joanna, who provided for him everything he needed, leaving him only a few pence in his pocket to meet any unforeseen contingency. The faculty of dealing with money, which is one of the latest we acquire, and one of the earliest we lose, had never been developed in Amos. No anxious foreboding troubled him as to food, shelter, and clothing. Joanna was there; she would see to all that.

Charlotte, also, had never had the spending of five shillings in her life. All she needed came to her as the air and the light came, without care and without thought. Joanna had shielded her always from all anxiety. It would be a great grief to quit the old home; but there rose in her something of the self-sustaining spirit of a martyr. If she must suffer, she would suffer with rejoicing. There had been women who trusted in God whilst they were wandering about in deserts, and mountains, and caves, and holes in the earth, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. This trial of her faith was nothing compared with theirs. God should find her trusting Him through sorrow and trouble, as she had trusted Him in peace and tranquility. She would take up the cross willingly, and follow the Lord whithersoever He pleased to lead her.

Was the burden lighter to Joanna because the others bore it lightly? All her life had been spent laboriously in providing for and shielding her two beloved ones. Every shilling, for their sakes, had been made to do the duty of thirteenpence. She had diligently practised industry, and thrift, and forethought every hour of every working day; and now she could not enter into the Sabbath rest of Charlotte and Amos. The future loomed very dark and dreary. There would be no immediate distress; for had not she scraped painfully together as much as £50, which was safely deposited in the post-office savings bank? But she always regarded that as a nest-egg for Charlotte, if she should happen to outlive her and Amos. As she sought for some cheap and comfortless lodging in the town, she wondered how she could manage where there was no garden where she could grow vegetables and savoury herbs, and where she could keep a few fowls. Every egg, every potato even, would have to be bought; and the only money coming in would be the small pension due to Amos. She foresaw herself spending, with a constant heart-pang, the nest-egg laid by for Charlotte.

Joanna fought hard against distrust of God. She listened, with a ghost of a smile, to Charlotte's consoling and courageous thoughts, but she could not enter into them. It was strange how this new misery made everything about her start into greater vividness. Every object about the cottage, and within it, seemed to be almost alive and thrusting itself into her notice. Even the old cracks in the window-panes impressed themselves upon her mind. Still more keenly did she see and read afresh the familiar faces of her husband and daughter. Perhaps we see least those whom we love most. They live so closely beside us that, though their voices are in our ears, and the sense of their presence is always with us, we hardly look at them, and time leaves traces on their beloved features undetected by us. Joanna was startled to recognise how Amos was looking an old man, and how pallid and worn was Charlotte's face. Oh! If the blessed Lord would only let them all pass away together from this world before the great sorrow came!

A few days before Christmas the postmaster handed a foreign letter to Amos when he came at six o'clock in the morning for the bags. He read it, as Joanna had read hers, in his cobbler's shed. It came from Madeira, and was written by young Squire Sutton, whose runaway marriage he had unconsciously helped. There were only a few words, for in it was enclosed a letter to Joanna, which was not to be opened or spoken of till Christmas Day. Amos put the letter carefully aside, smiling a little sadly to himself as he thought he had a secret as well as Joanna. But he did not dwell upon his secret much. The dreaded crisis had come, and his old home was being dismantled. These few days were full of slow, suppressed anguish to Joanna, as one by one she carried the smaller treasures of her home to the dreary lodgings in the town.

Each night when Amos came in some familiar household goods were missing, and their empty places stared him eloquently in the face. Forebodings of the immediate future began to peer at him through the shadow of the coming event. He almost forgot he had any secret, and he ceased to smile when it crossed his mind.

Christmas Eve came at last—the dreaded day. Heaven had not interfered to prevent their exile. Only the heavier pieces of furniture remained to be moved—the oak settle from the hearth; the old four-post bedstead on which they had slept so peacefully all their married life, on which Joanna's forefathers had died, and on which she and Amos had expected to lie down and die as peacefully as they had slept. The tall clock in the corner, which had stood there over a hundred years, must be taken down. It was to Joanna as if she saw the roof-tree give way when she watched their old friends touched by strange hands. Every stroke of a hammer stunned her; every creak of the old furniture pierced her to the heart.

The doctor came in the middle of the day, and kindly carried Charlotte away in his carriage to their new abode. Joanna was left alone, for she had insisted upon Amos going this last day of all upon his round. He would come back rich with Christmas boxes; but what were any gifts to Joanna just then? She watched the cart-load of heavy goods start off, and then she looked round with bitter despair at the dismantled rooms. She went outside and paced mournfully round the beloved garden, dearer to her than any other spot on earth. It was a clear wintry day, with a blue sky, and a white frost which silvered over every leaf of the evergreen bushes and every bare branch and twig of the trees. A fringe of icicles hung from the eaves, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. But there was no smoke rising from the chimney, no face at any window, no sign of habitation. The cottage seemed to feel itself deserted. Such forlornness had not befallen it for uncounted years. It and Joanna were going to part, and it had already a forsaken look, which brought a burst of bitter tears to her old eyes.

She walked feebly away, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, and the neighbours had compassion on her, leaving her alone with her grief. The two rooms which formed their new home were in a state of utter confusion. The men who had removed the heavy furniture were putting up the bedstead in the room which must now be bed-chamber, kitchen, and all. A little room at the back, opening on to walls, and chimneys, and roofs, was to be Charlotte's.

Joanna set to work at putting things to rights a little; but she was bewildered and confused, and Charlotte, with a tender and gentle voice, told her what to do, as if she had been in the habit of directing household matters. Joanna obeyed her as if in a dream.

Amos came in at his usual hour, and gave Charlotte a kiss, as he had done each night ever since she came into the world. Then he looked hesitatingly and shyly at his wife's sad face, and his old arm went round her neck, and her head sank upon his breast. There was something sacred and sacramental in the unwonted caress. It was the first moment of consolation that had come to Joanna, and her face was brighter when she lifted it up. At any rate, she had lost neither Amos nor Charlotte, she said to herself.

There was little sleep for any of the three that night. The unaccustomed noises in the street, the closer air, the sense of being in a strange place, all kept them awake. Joanna got up early in the dark Christmas morning, and pottered about with a candle among their littered goods to find the articles necessary for breakfast.

"A happy Christmas to you, mother!" called Charlotte from the inner room.

A lump rose in Joanna's throat, and for a minute or two she could not bring herself to speak. Fifty-seven happy Christmases had found her in her old home; but now! Then she said in a whisper, "Lord, forgive me!"

"A happy Christmas to you, Charlotte!" she called back in a shrill and strained voice.

It was a comfortless breakfast amid their disorderly possessions; but Amos kept making light of it, and apologizing, as if in some way it was his fault. As soon as it was ended, he and Joanna went into Charlotte's room to reckon up the presents which had been given to him the day before. He was an old man, and a favourite, and his Christmas boxes amounted to more than five pounds.

"But good sake!" he cried suddenly. "I've got a Christmas letter for you, mother, and I shouldn't wonder if there weren't a pretty card or something in it. It's from young Squire Sutton, and it came to me a week ago, but I weren't to speak a word of it till Christmas Day in the morning. Here, Charlotte; it's for your mother, my dear, but you'll read the writin' the easiest."

The young Squire began his letter by saying that but for Amos Terry's promptitude in carrying on the letters entrusted to him he would himself have missed the happiness of his life. He had heard the whole story from a friend in the neighbourhood.

"We were sorry to hear Amos was ill with rheumatism, and now we hear that he is obliged to give up being postman. We have often wished to share our happiness with you two old friends, and as soon as we heard your cottage was for sale we commissioned an agent to buy the freehold for you, and we ask you both to accept it as our Christmas gift. With all our hearts we wish you a happy Christmas."

Joanna fell down on her knees, and bowed her grey head upon her hands. "Lord, forgive me! Lord, forgive me!" she sobbed. A positive pang of gladness ran through her; it was like a rush of life poured into dying veins. All the anguish and forlornness, all the dread and foreboding were gone. The old home, dearer to her than ever, was hers again, and by no uncertain tenure. Not only hers, but Charlotte's, if she should outlive her. There was no danger now that Charlotte would ever be homeless. When she lifted herself up and looked at her two beloved ones, Charlotte's pale face had a tinge of colour, and Amos was looking almost frightened at his fortune.

"Amos!" cried Joanna. "We must go and look at it this minute!"

They stood together, the old man and woman, at the garden gate, gazing down on the paradise they had almost lost. It looked more lovely, more desirable, more home-like than it had ever done, and now it was their own. It seemed almost as if God had sent them the gift direct from heaven.

"If it hadn't been for that tramp's child,"' said Amos slowly, "I shouldn't ha' missed the mail that evenin'. And if I hadn't missed the mail, the young Squire 'ud never have thought o' buyin' the house for us. I've often and often wondered about that tramp's child; but there now! 'Ye are of more value than many sparrows.'"

"Ay! That's true," said Joanna, with a sob of happiness.

A MAN OF HIS WORD