Chapter I: ‘o, Let My Joys Have Some Abiding!’

Placid and happy, after its quiet fashion, was the Sabbath which followed. The scene of Joshua Haggard’s life was so rarely shifted, that he may be pardoned by the hearth goddess for feeling a certain satisfaction in finding himself away from home. The novelty of Sunday at Penmoyle was pleasing. It was a relief not to receive exactly the same greetings he had received last Sunday; not to hear precisely the same speeches, accompanied by the same tones and looks and becks and nods, and even the same oratorical flourishes of a stout green-cotton umbrella or a neatly-polished oak sapling; and a relief perhaps to the eye not to see those particular coal-scuttle bonnets or bottle-green spencers which adorned his own Bethel. The differences between Combhaven and Penmoyle were only differences of detail; but he felt that he was in a strange land, farther west, among people still more simple than his own flock, and people who loved him no less.

His sermon was a success. Sixpences and shillings rattled into the metal platters which the smug-faced deacons, in their glossy Sunday coats, held at the doors of the chapel. The temple was crowded to its utmost capacity, and handkerchiefs were used freely for fanning ruddy faces or for mopping perspiring foreheads, while peppermint lozenges and smelling-salts were interchanged among friends.

In a corner of the Miss Weblings’ narrow deal pew sat Cynthia, in a straw gipsy-hat, her head thrown back a little as she looked up at the preacher. He saw those spiritual blue eyes gazing upward--saw and was moved by that unknown passion of joy or pain which had thrilled him last night. He tried to forget that intent face--tried to thrust every earthly influence out of his thoughts as he pleaded for his Creator’s glory, for due honour to be paid to the Lord of heaven and earth, as he urged with warmth the duty of sacrifice and unselfishness upon that open-mouthed bucolic flock--the duty of surrendering something of earth’s enjoyments, some portion of their temporal blessings, to render homage to Him who gives them all.

‘If we had a friend who was always showering gifts upon us,’ he urged in his familiar way, ‘should we begrudge him some small offering now and then in return? Should we take all and give nothing? Should we not be miserly and mean if we did? Should we not secretly despise our own meanness, even if we contrived to hide it from the eyes of men? And we have a Benefactor who is always giving. Our sleeping and our waking, our uprising and our downsitting, our health, our strength, our household joys, our homes, our fields, our gardens,--all are gifts from Him. Shall we offer nothing for all these things, not even a house in which to worship the universal Giver of good? My brethren, the pagans, whose gods were foolishness, made their temples so beautiful, that the beauty of the tabernacle has preserved the memory of the god. Yes, for two thousand years these childish fables have lived in the memory of men, because those who believed them spared neither gold nor silver to testify to their belief. The gods of the Greeks were as real to the Greeks as your God is to you, and the splendour of their temples has remained to posterity as a testimony to the reality of their faith. These were foolish heathens, the children of darkness. Shall we, the children of light, leave nothing behind us upon earth to show our descendants that we too were in earnest--that the God of Truth has had as faithful followers as the god of lies?’

Verse by verse he read them--commenting as he went along--the description of Solomon’s temple, his picturesque mind revelling in the gorgeousness of the record. He was asking for funds for a chapel, which might be built for three or four hundred pounds; and as he enlarged in glowing language on the glories of that Jewish shrine--the carven cherubim and palm-trees and flowers overlaid with gold, the door-posts of olive-tree and the doors of fir, the floor overlaid with gold within and without, the pillars of brass and the chapiters of molten brass, the nets of checker-work and wreaths of chain-work, the lily-work and pomegranates, and that mighty sea of molten brass standing upon twelve sculptured oxen--his hearers thought within themselves that it behoved Penmoyle to do something; not to be behind the Jews of old, people with hook-noses, and perhaps old-clothes bags and a plurality of hats, whom folks looked down upon nowadays. And Solomon, who at his best was only a Jew, had been able to build this sublime temple, nay, if tradition were to be credited, sent as far as Penzance for tin and copper ore wherewith to accomplish this great work. This moved them much more than any idea about the Greeks, whom they depictured to themselves vaguely and variously, according to their several imaginations.

To Cynthia this sermon, which might have seemed trite and commonplace to that mordant modern intellect which, like the Athenian mind, spends itself wholly in going after every new orator, from Monsignor Capel to Moody and Sankey,--to Cynthia this sermon was full of colour and meaning. Of romance she knew nothing; poetry was a dark language to her, save the mute poetry of stars or flowers, earth’s loveliness or heaven’s sublimity. She had never heard fine music or seen a stage-play, except the rude representations of showmen at a fair; eloquence, pictures painted in words, were new to her, and she listened spellbound. She could have given you no definition of greatness, yet in her mind she was assured that Joshua was a great man. She thought of St. Paul holding a vast and adverse throng by the magic of his discourse, and it seemed to her no blasphemy to compare Joshua with that saint and apostle. Her youth, her ardour, had nothing on which to fasten except this ideal of a good and perfect man. She was grateful to her mistresses for their small kindnesses and indulgences; but she vaguely felt the element of ridiculousness in the little fidgety ways and petty particularities of these elderly damsels, and the flowers of her fancy did not entwine themselves around the images of Miss Deborah and Miss Priscilla. The garden of her young mind was a fertile soil, however, and the flowers that sprung there must have something about which to cling and blossom, so they wreathed their ductile tendrils round that sturdy oak Joshua.

The afternoon was occupied by a second service, in which the mild exhortations of Mr. Martin had a somewhat sleepy sound to those who had dined heavily. Spirits weighed down by roast meat and potatoes, and a regretful conviction that the Sunday joint had been a thought too greasy, joined languidly in prayers and hymns; and there was a sense of relief when the lengthy service came to a close, and the congregation poured out of the oven-like chapel into the sweet fresh air.

Several friends dropped in upon the Miss Weblings after service: some who had known Joshua of old, others who were eager to be presented to him. Mrs. Gibbs, the butcher’s wife, in her green watered silk, and with a gold watch--one of the few gold watches known to be extant in Penmoyle--reposing on her portly side, almost the grandest lady in the village. Miss Toothy, from the general shop, who was somewhat eccentric in her attire, but reported wealthy. Mr. and Mrs. Pamble, tenant-farmers of some importance, occupying a square stone house on the outskirts of Penmoyle--large people both, and given to pomposity, as conscious that they had never been a day behind with the half-year’s rent, and could afford to trust in Providence when times were bad, having laid by a small fortune before the Peace.

These filled Miss Webling’s parlour to overflowing, and taxed the resources of the household in the way of teapots. If Cynthia had been less handy, things could not have gone off so genteelly; and the sisters might have been lowered in the esteem of Mrs. Pamble, who really condescended somewhat in visiting them, by sloppy tea; but Cynthia contrived to have a fresh brew in the every-day crockery teapot ready to replenish that silver vessel which adorned the tray. She brought in the rock-cakes hot, and nestling in a clean napkin, and she was never behindhand with bread-and-butter of the genteelest thinness.

‘That’s a handy girl of yours, Miss Webling,’ said Mrs. Pamble approvingly, when the chapel and the day’s sermons and the possibilities of the building-fund had been amply discussed.

‘And an uncommon good-looking one too,’ added the farmer, in his beefy voice. ‘You won’t have her long, miss, I fancy; some of the young chaps will be wanting her to get married. These here pretty ones go off the hooks so soon.’

The spinsters bridled, taking this as in somewise a personal affront. They had been accounted personable in their time, they could have informed Mr. Pamble, though they had not gone off the hooks.

‘If she’s as sensible as I give her credit for being, she’ll be in no hurry to get married,’ replied Deborah, bridling. ‘Single life is not without its advantages.’

Miss Webling knew that Mrs. Pamble was one of those disagreeable women who are as proud of having secured a husband and added largely to the population as if those achievements were novel and remarkable facts in the history of womankind.

‘Ah, but they’re all glad to get a husband; even the sensiblest of them,’ chuckled the farmer. ‘They’re all ready to say snip to the first as says snap. It’s a feminine failing.’

At which vulgar speech Mrs. Pamble and Mrs. Gibbs laughed until their silk gowns, or the rigorous corsets under the gowns, creaked ominously.

Miss Toothy looked daggers. She had never said snip to any one’s snap, and she felt that the conversation was becoming odiously personal.

‘Of course I’m not eluding to ladies like you,’ said the farmer, perchance perceiving that he was on dangerous ground, and accenting his speech by a slap on Priscilla’s spare shoulder. ‘You’ve had your offers and throwed over your sweethearts--you and Miss Deborah and Miss Toothy yonder; but servant-gals and suchlike ain’t so partickler. A husband’s a husband to their mind, so long as he’s got a hat, and ain’t blind or deaf. They wouldn’t object to his being dumb, I daresay, for the sake of havin’ all the talkin’.’

This being an old-established joke, everybody except Joshua laughed heartily.

‘She’s got very uncommon-coloured hair, that gal of yours, Miss Webling,’ said Mrs. Pamble. ‘I don’t know as I call it pretty for a young woman, though it’s very winning in a baby. My Jimmy has hair just that colour; and when he’s naughty it goes more against me to slap him than it does the dark-haired ones--he’s got such an innercent look with him. But I think flaxen hair’s rather too simple-like for a young woman; it gives her a foolish look.’

‘What matter looks if she is not foolish?’ said Joshua almost sternly. ‘If you can bring up your daughters to be as sensible and as pious as that servant-girl, you will be a happy woman, Mrs. Pamble; and if God makes them as lovely, pray to Him to give them hearts as pure and minds as innocent as hers.’

From any one else such freedom of speech would have offended the farmer’s wife; but she had come to see Joshua as a great preacher, and one must expect hard sayings from prophets and privileged persons of that kind. She only sniffed dubiously, and looked at her watch, which, a homely silver one, compared disadvantageously with that shining golden timekeeper pendent from Mrs. Gibbs’s waistband.

‘I’m afraid we must be going,’ said Mrs. Pamble, as if loth to pronounce a sentence which must naturally afflict the company. ‘There’s the dairy never gets properly looked after unless I’m standing behind that girl of mine.’

‘Ah,’ grunted Mr. Pamble, ‘you women can do nothing without a lot o’ cackle. Missusses and maids is pretty much alike. There’s so much scolding goes on in the dairy I wonder it don’t turn the milk; no need for rennet, I should think, where there’s women’s tongues.’

‘It isn’t the women that sit arguing about nothing for three hours at a stretch in a public-house,’ observed Mrs. Pamble, as she drew her white Paisley shawl across her robust shoulders, and skewered it on her breast with a large mosaic brooch representing St. Peter’s at Rome; and after this home-thrust, she rose to depart, the farmer meekly following.

These magnates of the land being gone, after leave-takings at once friendly and ceremonious, Miss Toothy discovered that she was wanted at home, having promised her girl an evening out; and Mrs. Gibbs pronounced herself pledged to her domestic in the like manner. So there was a clearance of the smart little parlour, and the Miss Weblings folded their hands and leaned back in their chairs, feeling as exhausted after this unwonted assembly as a lady of fashion when her reception of three or four hundred of the upper ten thousand is over, and life’s green curtain falls on the social comedy.

‘I hope I was polite to them all, Priscilla,’ said Deborah somewhat anxiously; ‘but I felt a little confused in my head by their all dropping in together. I’m afraid Miss Toothy might feel herself passed over. She’s rather hard to draw out; and the Pambles are so lively.’

‘Miss Toothy hasn’t seen much company,’ replied Priscilla excusingly. ‘You can’t expect her to be very conversable. But she’s a great reader, and knows more about politics and the Royal Family than anybody in Penmoyle. She has friends in London that send her a newspaper every week; and she’s got some nice books too, Mr. Haggard; she lent me the _Romance of the Forest_ last winter, and I read it aloud to Debbie in the long evenings. I don’t see any harm in a good novel once in a way, if you take your time over it, and don’t loll by the fireside half the day, poking your nose into a book and letting your house go to rack and ruin.’

‘I have forbidden my daughter to read novels,’ replied Joshua, finding himself thus directly appealed to, ‘lest the unrealities she would find in them should give her a false picture of life, and encourage her to form baseless hopes or foolish desires. But when she is married and the mother of a family she may seek amusement for an evening hour in some innocent fiction, and be none the worse for it. And, of course, at your discreet age, Miss Priscilla, an appeal to the imagination can do no harm.’

‘There never was a more particular man than my father,’ said Deborah. ‘He couldn’t abide the sight of a book, when once his children had learned to read, except the Bible on Sundays and Dr. Watts’s Hymns. He said books about a place were just an encouragement to idleness, and that as long as women had the use of their hands they ought never to waste time in reading. Yet, you see, Priscilla and I wouldn’t be as independent as we are if Providence hadn’t given us a taste for learning.’

Joshua bowed assent. He had been somewhat wearied by the tea-drinking, the fulsome compliments which Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Pamble had paid him, the stuffy parlour smelling of toast and bread-and-butter. He was yearning for a breath of fresh air.

‘I think I’ll take a turn in that neat little garden of yours,’ he said, as if asking permission of the sisters, who both had a drowsy look, and regarded him blinkingly, like owls in a zoological collection.

‘Do, dear Mr. Haggard; and try and get an appetite for your supper. You made a very poor dinner.’

It was a minor duty of hospitality with the Miss Weblings to pretend to think that their guests had fared badly, just as it was the major duty to press the viands upon a visitor’s consideration until he was so obliging as to over-eat himself.

There was no way of reaching the garden save through the kitchen, so to the kitchen Joshua went. The door at the end of the narrow little passage stood open, and the westward-fronting casement was shining like a jewel at the end of the vista. The kitchen was newly swept and garnished; no sign of unwashed tea-things or broken victuals; the polished grate winking and twinkling in the red light from a neat little fire; the red-brick floor spotless as if it were a floor in a picture; every pot and pan arranged with the grace that belongs to perfect order; a dark-brown jug of roses and seringa on the window-sill; but the figure Joshua had expected to see by the casement was not there. Cynthia had gone for a walk, he thought; had gone to meet and mingle with those other handmaidens whose privilege it was to enjoy a Sabbath-evening ramble; perhaps to keep company--odious phrase--with some rural swain. The idea was repulsive to him. It seemed to him that there was pollution in such contact.

He went through the tiny scullery and out into the garden, which he had surveyed from the window that midsummer evening just a year ago when he bade Cynthia good-bye. There was not much to admire in the garden, perhaps, save for those eyes which are in the habit of looking at all rustic things as pictures, and which can see a study in brown in an old well and an empty bucket, or a nocturne in purple and gold in a cottage thatch steeped in moonlight. To Joshua, whose only experience of landscape-painting had been derived from tea-trays, that sloping bit of garden seemed commonplace enough; even for politeness’ sake he would not have gone so far as to say that he thought it pretty, and yet it charmed him somehow; there was a beauty in this vulgar rusticity which he felt, although he could not recognise or understand it. The picture of grassplot and flower-bed and crooked old apple-trees spreading their gray branches against the yellow sky; the sweet-pea hedge, the stocks, the sweet-williams, the blush-roses, the thymy potherbs; the little thatched shed for the pig yonder in an angle of the hawthorn hedge; the steep bank where the strawberries grew,--the homely charm of this picture crept into his heart unawares. He walked slowly across the little grassplot, where a self-sufficing bantam was pecking at imaginary worms in dignified solitude; he ascended the narrow path, which had been cut into steps where the slope was steepest; and on the higher ground by the hedge discovered Cynthia standing by the pigsty, and actually exchanging endearments with the pig, whose black head lolled across the edge of his sty, and who expressed the gratification he derived from having his ears pulled in a series of confidential grunts.

‘I thought you had gone for a walk, Cynthia,’ said Mr. Haggard.

‘No, sir. I go across the fields sometimes, and as far as the copse’--pointing to a dark waving line against the sunset--‘and gather a bunch of wild flowers, when the ladies give me leave.’

‘You go with your friends, I suppose; some of the young women in service here?’

‘No, sir. I have no friends except my mistresses.’

‘And no sweetheart, Cynthia?’

‘No,’ she answered, with a curious little smile.

What a relief it was to find that her girlish fancy had not idealised some boor!

‘Ah, the time will come when you will begin to think of a sweetheart, I daresay; but I’m glad it hasn’t come yet. I am going for a stroll across the fields, as far as that wood, perhaps. Will you come with me, and show me where your wild flowers grow?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And are you quite happy here, Cynthia?’ asked Joshua, when they had walked a little way. There were sheep in the meadow, and the sheep-bell was ringing with a pleasant sound in the twilight.

‘Yes, sir; quite happy; most of all when you come here.’

‘That is not often, Cynthia,’ he answered, his dark eyes softening to tenderness as they looked at her. Why did she say these things in her thoughtless innocence, and why should words so simple, a mere childish expression of grateful affection, set his heart beating?

‘No,’ answered Cynthia; ‘it isn’t often you come, sir. But it is something to think of, and something to remember.’

‘I cannot tell you what pleasure your progress has given me,’ said Joshua gravely, but with a tenderness in his voice that was quite involuntary. ‘I have thought of you often in the year that has gone, and have supplicated for you in my prayers every day of my life. But I never hoped to reap so rich a harvest. I never thought God would reward me so bounteously--to find your intelligence so bright, your heart so pious, your conduct so exemplary. It is very sweet to me; sweeter than words can say.’

There was a mist before his eyes as he looked away to the broken line of wood yonder, not trusting himself to look at his protégée.

‘Could I do less than strive to learn what you wished me to learn, sir?’ asked Cynthia. ‘Can I ever forget what you have done for me? I was a heathen, as bad as those poor creatures the missionary told us about last winter. I was left outside in the darkness. I must have gone to the habitation of the lost but for you. I pray for you night and day; but my prayers are so little, they can never repay you. I wish I could be your servant, that I might work my fingers to the bone to prove my gratitude. I pray for you, I think of you, I dream of you sometimes; and I see your face all shining, with a glory upon it, like Stephen’s when the wicked Jews stoned him.’

‘Foolish dreams, my dear. I am neither saint nor hero; only a common man, with all our common infirmities; prone to sin when tempted, and chiefly blest in having led a life exempt from temptation to do wrong. Providence has been very good to me, Cynthia; my lines have been cast in pleasant places. I have never known hardships or ill-usage as you have, poor fragile child. No dark shadow has ever fallen across my path.’

‘It would be hard if you had sorrows to bear, sir; you who are so good,’ said Cynthia. ‘Miss Priscilla has told me about you: how you used to preach to the rough miners--men almost as wild as savages--and how their hearts were melted; how you used to walk many miles and suffer hardships, for the sake of doing good and teaching God’s word, though you had a comfortable home, where you might have stayed if you had chosen. She told me that you offended your father by field-preaching, and that you were likely to have lost all the money he had to leave you, yet you never gave way. Was not that being a hero?’

‘No, my dear; it was only being steadfast. The man who is without steadfastness will neither do good to others nor to himself. I saw that there were waste lands to be made ready for harvest, and I put my hand to the plough. God gave me health and strength, and love of the work. It would have gone much harder with me to stay at home behind my father’s counter than to bear the worst hardships that ever befell me in my wanderings.’

‘Yes, I can understand that,’ said the girl, looking up at him full of enthusiasm; ‘that is because you are good and great. It was sweeter to you to help others than to be happy yourself. Every soul snatched from darkness and death was a rich harvest. Some of those you have saved are in heaven now. How sweet it must be for you to think that they are pleading for you at the throne of God!’

‘My dear child, you let your affection carry you too far. I have but done a humble share of a great work; I only tread in the footsteps of greater men who have gone before. I am but one of many.’

‘The Bible does not say that,’ replied Cynthia. ‘“The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.”’

‘That was in the beginning, Cynthia, when God’s light was but dawning on the darkness of this world. The prayer has been heard, and the labourers now are many. Let us pray that they may labour aright. You have a lively and ardent mind, my dear; God grant it may never be led astray. For a nature so fervent, so ready to admire and believe, an evil world is full of snares and springes; but so long as you are content to remain at Penmoyle with our kind friends, I feel assured you will be safe and happy. The life is somewhat monotonous, I daresay, but I hope you will not grow weary of it.’

‘I shall have your coming to look forward to,’ said Cynthia.

‘And perhaps in time, if you advance steadily with your education, the Miss Weblings will let you teach in the school; and by and by, as they get into years, they may give you the entire management of their pupils; and you will be doing a holy and useful work, and occupying an important place in your little world. So you see, Cynthia, you have something better than domestic service to look forward to, if you go on improving yourself.’

‘I shall try to do that, to please you,’ replied Cynthia. ‘I never forget anything you say to me. I think I could tell you every word you have said, from the time you first spoke to me on the common.’

Joshua was silent. There are some emotions whose ineffable sweetness is akin to pain--there are thrilling moments in which the soul burns with a rapture that is almost agony. How was he to construe these innocent expressions of regard, these little gushes of grateful feeling? Could they, did they, mean something warmer than regard, something deeper than gratitude?

They had crossed a couple of meadows and come to the edge of the copse by this time. It was only a narrow strip of wood, pine-trees for the most part, dividing one farm from another--a ragged edge of wilderness upon the skirts of cultivation and fertility; but to Joshua, that Sabbath evening, it was solemn as that darksome dell Dante walked in--a forest full of mystery and awe. He could scarcely see his companion’s face under the pine-trees. It was shadowy as the face of a spirit.

‘It is too late to find any flowers,’ said Cynthia; ‘but this was a lovely place in the spring. There were violets and wild crocuses, and bluebells and wind flowers. There are rabbits too; look--do you see them flashing past that dark-red trunk yonder?’

Joshua was too preoccupied in spirit to look at rabbits. He walked with his head bent, his hands clasping his stout oak stick, his lips tightly drawn, as if he were trying to solve some problem. One might suppose that he had forgotten the existence of his companion.

He was putting curious questions to himself: ‘If I were so foolish--if I, who have thought myself so strong, should be weak enough to lay down my life at this girl’s feet, to set all my hopes on her, to give her the remnant of my days--would there be any going backward in such an act? Is it sinful to love her for her youth and her beauty, her sweet tones and looks and fond winning ways? Is the attraction that draws me to her despite myself sensual or devilish, a snare of Satan set to catch me in my pride, or is the charm as innocent as it seems to me to-night? God enlighten me and give me grace to be wise; for, whether it be for good or ill, I love her.’

Silver arrows of pale summer moonlight pierced the feathery pine-branches, evening’s breath crept through the wood with a plaintive sound that was half whisper, half sigh. It was time that Joshua and his companion should go back to the white cottage yonder on the lower ground across the meadows.

‘It is getting late, sir,’ said Cynthia; ‘the ladies will be wanting me.’

‘Yes, Cynthia; but I have a question to ask before we go. Soon after daybreak to-morrow I shall be on my way home--for I mean to walk the best part of the way--and then, unless you wish, I shall not see you for a year--perhaps never again; for who can tell how your mind may change in a year?’

‘It can never change so as to forget your goodness, sir.’

‘Child, you make too much of my goodness. What I did for you I would have done for the lowest, the ugliest, a leper standing outside the gate and crying, Unclean, unclean! I would have gathered a weed by the wayside, my dear, and cared for it as truly as I cared for the flower. But God chose that I should gather the fairest flower that ever grew in His earthly garden, and keep and cherish it to adorn His heavenly paradise. And this sweet flower, unawares, has grown very dear to me. Cynthia, in your childlike gratitude you have said many words of which perchance you have not weighed the meaning. You have spoken lightly out of the innocence of your mind, but your words have gone deep into my heart. You have talked of being my servant, of working for me all the days of my life. Look up at me, love, with those sweet eyes; look at me, my cherished one, my darling, with the straight look that goes from soul to soul, and tell me if you could love me well enough to be my wife--love me well enough to live with me, and be a part of my life, the blessedest, brightest, fairest part of life, all that this earth holds for me of human happiness. I have given my daughter to her lover; henceforth I hold the second place in her heart. O Lord, let me have something that shall be all my own! I have tasted but little of temporal joys; I have given my hopes and desires for others. Before age creeps on, before my day is done, let me have something on which to pour forth my treasure of earthly love; let me be blessed like Abraham and Thy chosen ones of old, in the sacred joys of home. Child, child, it is the cry of a strong man’s heart that goes forth to thee. Answer, and answer faithfully. Do you love me well enough to be my wife?’

He held her in his arms, held her to his heart, looking down into her eyes. They had both grown accustomed to the half light of the wood by this time, and saw each other’s faces very clearly; hers looking upward, pale, earnest, full of sweetness and a rapturous content, as of one in sight of her earthly heaven; his blanched with suppressed feeling, the mouth firmly set, the eyes grave and sombre.

‘Answer, love, answer; and as God sees us here in this wood, under this evening sky, answer truly.’

‘I love you well enough to be your servant all the days of my life,’ she said in a low voice--‘and to be made happy by one kind look from your eyes now and then when you stooped to remember me. I could never be your equal--could never feel myself good enough to sit by your side, to be called by your name; but I love you with all my heart and strength and mind, as I have been taught to love God.’

She slipped from his breast to his feet before he was aware, and knelt there with clasped hands, looking up at him--a lovely image of devotion.

‘Not at my feet, but next my heart, dearest,’ he cried, raising her from that humble posture. ‘You have made me happy beyond the limit of man’s earthly blessedness. If I could have known, when the path seemed most difficult, that behind the curtain of long years God held this joy in store for me, it would have been like a star shining on me, and beckoning me on. How light all present labours, all present perplexities would have seemed, measured against this reward!’

The moon shone full on the face lying on his breast. Purity, innocence, truth, a childlike love, were written there--love so blended with reverence that it had something devotional in its character. Why should the young heart ever change or fall away from affection so pure in its beginning, so holy in its growth? Why, indeed, save for the reason spoken of by the Prophet: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’

A moment never to be forgotten--a solemn crisis in life’s history to be remembered with awe in all the years to come--a moment in which earth and earthly things seem to fall away, and spirit speaks to spirit.

They went back through the dewy fields together, Cynthia’s hand in Joshua’s--the hand which was his own henceforward--a symbol of their life-long union. The sheep were running about the field, and the bell ringing. The church-clock struck nine with a sonorous knell, like the bell of Time counting the measure of man’s years. A little while, a little while, and the end shall come. While your heart beats so passionately, while your hopes build so boldly, while your fancy makes palaces and earthly paradises to dwell in, time is passing, and the end is at hand. Life is but a journey, and the home where you are happiest is only an inn, from which you must be gone to-morrow.

* * * * *

‘Dear heart alive!’ cried Deborah, waking from her gentle nap to find herself in darkness; ‘what’s become of Cynthia, and why hasn’t she brought candles and the supper-tray? We must have been asleep ever so long.’

‘The heat quite overcame me,’ said Priscilla, ‘and Mr. Pamble is so noisy; his coarse jokes and loud vulgar laugh gave me the headache. I’m afraid Mr. Haggard must have been shocked with him.’

‘I could see it in his face,’ replied Deborah.

Cynthia came in with a pair of mould candles in shining brass candlesticks and snuffer-tray to match. Joshua followed, grave of countenance, and paler than usual.

‘How tired you look, dear Mr. Haggard!’ cried Priscilla. ‘I’m afraid the sermon this morning and those noisy Pambles have wearied you. You must have a glass of cowslip wine this minute; it’s very reviving.’

Joshua consented, absently, to be revived, and sipped the home-made nectar with a dreamy look, while the sisters watched him curiously. He looked like one whose spirit has detached itself temporarily from the flesh. The body was there, but the eyes saw not, the lips spoke not; it was a mere automatic body.

‘I’m afraid he’s ill,’ whispered Priscilla to Deborah, ‘and not a drop of brandy in the house.’

Joshua looked up presently, and saw two pairs of affrighted eyes gazing at him as at a spectre.

‘I am ready to read and pray with you, dear friends, at the close of this peaceful day,’ he said.

‘It has been a day that will be remembered in Penmoyle for many a year to come,’ exclaimed the ardent Priscilla.

In the placid monotony of her life the advent of such a man as Joshua made an event of mark. She was not likely to forget his rare appearances in that remote village. She had indeed cherished his image for these fifteen years past--ever since his widowhood made it a lawful thing to worship him with a more individual regard than that reverent affection which the flock gives its shepherd.

Joshua opened his pocket Bible, and read the second chapter of Ruth; Cynthia seated meekly in her accustomed place by the door. In his commentary on the text he spoke of that instinct of the heart which has been called love at first sight, but which is rather an inspiration, a divine prompting of the spirit, which leads man to his fittest helpmate. He touched tenderly on the favour which the gentle Moabitess found in the sight of the stranger; how his heart went forth to her at the very first, even before his servants had told him her pathetic story. He dwelt on the blessedness of such an union, and how God had crowned this marriage with richest honour, His chosen servant David being descended from this stem.

Priscilla wept copiously, her sentimental soul moved deeply by Joshua’s discourse; and after he had said his evening prayer, she approached him with a little gush of rapture, and exclaimed:

‘Dear Mr. Haggard, it has been my privilege often to hear you eloquent, but your words were never so melting as they have been to-night. The hardest heart must have shed tears,’ added Miss Priscilla, too enthusiastic to care for anatomical truth.

Joshua blushed; yes, through the dark clear skin there glowed an actual blush, as he looked at the Miss Weblings almost sheepishly.

‘I thought that tender story would win your sympathy,’ he said; ‘and I am glad, for I want you to look with increasing favour upon my Ruth.’

He put his arm round Cynthia and drew her to his side. The fair-haired child nestled there, looking up at her mistresses half shyly, half proudly.

‘What!’ cried Priscilla, with a shrill scream; ‘you don’t mean--’

‘I am like Boaz,’ he said; ‘I have no need to tarry any longer in doubtfulness of my own heart. This damsel has found grace in mine eyes, albeit she is a stranger. Heaven gave her to me that summer day, on Springfield Common. Heaven has given me new thoughts and new hopes since I have known her. I am more blessed in having found her than if all the riches of all the mines in Cornwall had been poured into my lap. May God give me grace to love and cherish her, and to make the life she has trusted to me happy!’

‘You are going to marry that child!’ cried Priscilla, plucking at the velvet circlet on her brow in the wild agitation of the moment. ‘You, a sober serious man of forty and upwards, a chit younger than your daughter!’

‘If I am not too old to find a place in her heart, I care not how young she is. It will be all the sweeter duty to protect and cherish her.’

Priscilla cast away her velvet head-band, reckless of the little mourning brooch, with her father’s silver hairs behind a tiny square of crystal, which confined it on her intellectual brow. She looked wildly round the best parlour, gave a stifled shriek, a gurgle or two, flung herself on the chintz-covered sofa, grasping the hard bolster convulsively in her agony, and went into vehement hysterics.

She lay there gurgling and choking, with occasional bursts of shrill laughter, for the next ten minutes, while cold water was sprinkled over her head and face, to the detriment of her Sunday toilet and the sofa-cover.

‘You shouldn’t have told her quite so suddenly,’ said Deborah, somewhat ashamed of this emotional display. ‘She has such a mind. The shock has been too much for her. She hasn’t had such a fit of hysterics since father died.’

Priscilla recovered sufficiently to be led up the corkscrew staircase, and before departing cast a piteous look at the minister.

‘I should be the last to fling a shadow on your happiness,’ she said, ‘but I thought you’d never marry again. I thought your mind was lifted above it; or that if you did, it would be some one of a suitable age, and with a mind fit to mate with yours. But the human heart is a mystery.’

And with a strangled sob Priscilla drooped her disordered head upon her sister’s shoulder, and suffered herself to be assisted up the corkscrew staircase, an operation which occasioned some bumping of heads and rapping of elbows at awkward turns in the stair.

This was the beginning of evils that came out of Joshua Haggard’s second marriage; an event in the life of man to which his kindred in particular and his friends in general are especially apt to take objection; and yet the responsibility of the act is all his, and the good or ill thereof is a cup which his lips alone can drink. Whether he chains himself to a fury who shall make his days and nights miserable, or wins to his side an angel who shall shed upon his pathway the sunshine of domestic bliss, and make his progress to the grave pleasant as a noontide ramble through a rose-garden, it is he who shall pay the penalty of a foolish choice or reap the reward of a wise one.