oughtn't to make my life any heavier. They say that you have paid
attention to a great many girls. I don't know why you should want to
trifle with me."

Ralph answered her this time. He spoke low. He spoke as though he were
speaking to God. "If any man says that I ever trifled with any woman, he
lies. I have never loved but one, and you know who that is. And God
knows."

"I don't know what to say, Mr. Hartsook." Hannah's voice was broken.
These solemn words of love were like a river in the desert, and she was
like a wanderer dying of thirst. "I don't know, Mr. Hartsook. If I was
alone, it wouldn't matter. But I've got my blind mother and my poor
Shocky to look after. And I don't want to make mistakes. And the world
is so full of lies I don't know what to believe. Somehow I can't help
believing what you say. You seem to speak so true. But--"

"But what?" said Ralph.

"But you know how I saw you just as kind to Martha Hawkins on Sunday
as--as--"

"Han--ner!" It was the melodious voice of the angry Mrs. Means, and
Hannah lifted her pail and disappeared.

Standing in the shadow of his own despair, Ralph felt how dark a night
could be when it had no promise of morning.

And Dr. Small, who had been stabling his horse just inside the barn,
came out and moved quietly into the house just as though he had not
listened intently to every word of the conversation.

As Ralph walked away he tried to comfort himself by calling to his aid
the bulldog in his character. But somehow it did not do him any good.
For what is a bulldog but a stoic philosopher? Stoicism has its value,
but Ralph had come to a place where stoicism was of no account. The
memory of the Helper, of his sorrow, his brave and victorious endurance,
came when stoicism failed. Happiness might go out of life, but in the
light of Christ's life happiness seemed but a small element anyhow. The
love of woman might be denied him, but there still remained what was
infinitely more precious and holy, the love of God. There still remained
the possibility of heroic living. Working, suffering, and enduring still
remained. And he who can work for God and endure for God, surely has
yet the best of life left. And, like the knights who could find the Holy
Grail only in losing themselves, Hartsook, in throwing his happiness out
of the count, found the purest happiness, a sense of the victory of the
soul over the tribulations of life. The man who knows this victory
scarcely needs the encouragement of the hope of future happiness. There
is a real heaven in bravely lifting the load of one's own sorrow and
work.

And it was a good thing for Ralph that the danger hanging over Shocky
made immediate action necessary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: The total absence of the word _pail_ not only from the
dialect, but even from cultivated speech in the Southern and Border
States until very recently, is a fact I leave to be explained on further
investigation. The word is an old one and a good one, but I fancy that
its use in England could not have been generally diffused in the
seventeenth century. So a Hoosier or a Kentuckian never _pared_ an
apple, but _peeled_ it. Much light might be thrown on the origin and
history of our dialects by investigating their deficiencies.]




CHAPTER XX.

GOD REMEMBERS SHOCKY.


At four o'clock the next morning, in the midst of a driving snow, Ralph
went timidly up the lane toward the homely castle of the Meanses. He
went timidly, for he was afraid of Bull. But he found Bud waiting for
him, with the roan colt bridled and saddled. The roan colt was really a
large three-year-old, full of the finest sort of animal life, and
having, as Bud declared, "a mighty sight of hoss sense fer his age." He
seemed to understand at once that there was something extraordinary on
hand when he was brought out of his comfortable quarters at four in the
morning in the midst of a snow-storm. Bud was sure that the roan colt
felt his responsibility.

In the days that followed, Ralph often had occasion to remember this
interview with Bud, who had risked much in bringing his fractured arm
out into the cold, damp air. Jonathan never clave to David more
earnestly than did Bud this December morning to Ralph.

"You see, Mr. Hartsook," said Bud, "I wish I was well myself. It's hard
to set still. But it's a-doing me a heap of good. I'm like a boy at
school. And I'm a-findin' out that doing one's best licks fer others
ain't all they is of it, though it's a good part. I feel like as if I
must git Him, you know, to do lots for me. They's always some sums too
hard fer a feller, and he has to ax the master to do 'em, you know. But
see, the roan's a-stomping round. He wants to be off. Do you know I
think that hoss knows something's up? I think he puts in his best licks
fer me a good deal better than I do fer Him."

Ralph pressed Bud's right hand. Bud rubbed his face against the colt's
nose and said: "Put in your best licks, old fellow." And the colt
whinnied. How a horse must want to speak! For Bud was right. Men are
gods to horses, and they serve their deities with a faithfulness that
shames us.

Then Ralph sprang into the saddle, and the roan, as if wishing to show
Bud his willingness, broke into a swinging gallop, and was soon lost to
the sight of his master in the darkness and the snow. When Bud could no
more hear the sound of the roan's footsteps he returned to the house, to
lie awake picturing to himself the journey of Ralph with Shocky and the
roan colt. It was a great comfort to Bud that the roan, which was almost
a part of himself, represented him in this ride. And he knew the roan
well enough to feel sure that he would do credit to his master. "He'll
put in his best licks," Bud whispered to himself many a time before
daybreak.

The ground was but little frozen, and the snow made the roads more
slippery than ever. But the rough-shod roan handled his feet dexterously
and with a playful and somewhat self-righteous air, as though he said:
"Didn't I do it handsomely that time?" Down slippery hills, through deep
mud-holes covered with a slender film of ice he trod with perfect
assurance. And then up over the rough stones of Rocky Hollow, where
there was no road at all, he picked his way through the darkness and
snow. Ralph could not tell where he was at last, but gave the reins to
the roan, who did his duty bravely, and not without a little flourish,
to show that he had yet plenty of spare power.

A feeble candle-ray, making the dense snow-fall visible, marked for
Ralph the site of the basket-maker's cabin. Miss Martha had been
admitted to the secret, and had joined in the conspiracy heartily,
without being able to recall anything of the kind having occurred at the
East, and not remembering having seen or heard of anything of the sort
the time she was to Bosting. She had Shocky all ready, having used some
of her own capes and shawls to make him warm.

Miss Martha came out to meet Ralph when she heard the feet of the roan
before the door.

"O Mr. Hartsook! is that you? What a storm. This is jest the way it
snows at the East. Shocky's all ready. He didn't know a thing about it
tell I waked him this morning. Ever since that he's been saying that God
hasn't forgot, after all. It's made me cry more'n once." And Shocky
kissed Mrs. Pearson, and told her that when he got away from Flat Creek
he'd tell God all about it, and God would bring Mr. Pearson back again.
And then Martha Hawkins lifted the frail little form, bundled in shawls,
in her arms, and brought him out into the storm; and before she handed
him up he embraced her, and said: "O Miss Hawkins! God ha'n't forgot me,
after all. Tell Hanner that He ha'n't forgot. I'm going to ask him to
git her away from Means's and mother out of the poor-house. I'll ask him
just as soon as I get to Lewisburg."

Ralph lifted the trembling form into his arms, and the little fellow
only looked up in the face of the master and said: "You see, Mr.
Hartsook, I thought God had forgot. But he ha'n't."

And the words of the little boy comforted the master also. God had not
forgotten him, either!

From the moment that Ralph took Shocky into his arms, the conduct of the
roan colt underwent an entire revolution. Before that he had gone over a
bad place with a rush, as though he were ambitious of distinguishing
himself by his brilliant execution. Now he trod none the less surely,
but he trod tenderly. The neck was no longer arched. He set himself to
his work as steadily as though he were twenty years old. For miles he
traveled on in a long, swinging walk, putting his feet down carefully
and firmly. And Ralph found the spirit of the colt entering into
himself. He cut the snow-storm with his face, and felt a sense of
triumph over all his difficulties. The bulldog's jaws had been his
teacher, and now the steady, strong, and conscientious legs of the roan
inspired him.

Shocky had not spoken. He lay listening to the pattering music of the
horse's feet, doubtless framing the footsteps of the roan colt into an
anthem of praise to the God who had not forgot. But as the dawn came on,
making the snow whiter, he raised himself and said half-aloud, as he
watched the flakes chasing one another in whirling eddies, that the snow
seemed to be having a good time of it. Then he leaned down again on the
master's bosom, full of a still joy, and only roused himself from his
happy reverie to ask what that big, ugly-looking house was.

"See, Mr. Hartsook, how big it is, and how little and ugly the windows
is! And the boards is peeling off all over it, and the hogs is right in
the front yard. It don't look just like a house. It looks dreadful. What
is it?"

Ralph had dreaded this question. He did not answer it, but asked Shocky
to change his position a little, and then he quickened the pace of the
horse. But Shocky was a poet, and a poet understands silence more
quickly than he does speech. The little fellow shivered as the truth
came to him.

"Is that the poor-house?" he said, catching his breath. "Is my mother in
that place? _Won't_ you take me in there, so as I can just kiss her
once? 'Cause she can't see much, you know. And one kiss from me will
make her feel so good. And I'll tell her that God ha'n't forgot." He had
raised up and caught hold of Ralph's coat.

Ralph had great difficulty in quieting him. He told him that if he went
in there Bill Jones might claim that he was a runaway and belonged
there. And poor Shocky only shivered and said he was cold. A minute
later, Ralph found that he was shaking with a chill, and a horrible
dread came over him. What if Shocky should die? It was only a minute's
work to get down, take the warm horse-blanket from under the saddle, and
wrap it about the boy, then to strip off his own overcoat and add that
to it. It was now daylight, and finding, after he had mounted, that
Shocky continued to shiver, he put the roan to his best speed for the
rest of the way, trotting up and down the slippery hills, and galloping
away on the level ground. How bravely the roan laid himself to his work,
making the fence-corners fly past in a long procession! But poor little
Shocky was too cold to notice them, and Ralph shuddered lest Shocky
should never be warm again, and spoke to the roan, and the roan
stretched out his head, and dropped one ear back to hear the first word
of command, and stretched the other forward to listen for danger, and
then flew with a splendid speed down the road, past the patches of
blackberry briars, past the elderberry bushes, past the familiar red-haw
tree in the fence-corner, over the bridge without regard to the threat
of a five-dollar fine, and at last up the long lane into the village,
where the smoke from the chimneys was caught and whirled round with the
snow.




CHAPTER XXI.

MISS NANCY SAWYER.


In a little old cottage in Lewisburg, on one of the streets which was
never traveled except by a solitary cow seeking pasture or a countryman
bringing wood to some one of the half-dozen families living in it, and
which in summer was decked with a profusion of the yellow and white
blossoms of the dog-fennel--in this unfrequented street, so generously
and unnecessarily broad, lived Miss Nancy Sawyer and her younger sister
Semantha. Miss Nancy was a providence, one of those old maids that are
benedictions to the whole town; one of those in whom the mother-love,
wanting the natural objects on which to spend itself, overflows all
bounds and lavishes itself on every needy thing, and grows richer and
more abundant with the spending, a fountain of inexhaustible blessing.
There is no nobler life possible to any one than to an unmarried woman.
The more shame that some choose a selfish one, and thus turn to gall all
the affection with which they are endowed. Miss Nancy Sawyer had been
Ralph's Sunday-school teacher, and it was precious little, so far as
information went, that he learned from her; for she never could conceive
of Jerusalem as a place in any essential regard very different from
Lewisburg, where she had spent her life. But Ralph learned from her what
most Sunday-school teachers fail to teach, the great lesson of
Christianity, by the side of which all antiquities and geographies and
chronologies and exegetics and other niceties are as nothing.

And now he turned the head of the roan toward the cottage of Miss Nancy
Sawyer as naturally as the roan would have gone to his own stall in the
stable at home. The snow had gradually ceased to fall, and was eddying
round the house, when Ralph dismounted from his foaming horse, and,
carrying the still form of Shocky as reverently as though it had been
something heavenly, knocked at Miss Nancy Sawyer's door.

With natural feminine instinct that lady started back when she saw
Hartsook, for she had just built a fire in the stove, and she now stood
at the door with unwashed face and uncombed hair.

"Why, Ralph Hartsook, where did you drop down from--and what have you
got?"

"I came from Flat Creek this morning, and I brought you a little angel
who has got out of heaven, and needs some of your motherly care."

Shocky was brought in. The chill shook him now by fits only, for a fever
had spotted his cheeks already.

"Who are you?" said Miss Nancy, as she unwrapped him.

"I'm Shocky, a little boy as God forgot, and then thought of again."




CHAPTER XXII.

PANCAKES.


Half an hour later, Ralph, having seen Miss Nancy Sawyer's machinery of
warm baths and simple remedies safely in operation, and having seen the
roan colt comfortably stabled, and rewarded for his faithfulness by a
bountiful supply of the best hay and the promise of oats when he was
cool--half an hour later Ralph was doing the most ample, satisfactory,
and amazing justice to his Aunt Matilda's hot buckwheat-cakes and warm
coffee. And after his life in Flat Creek, Aunt Matilda's house did look
like paradise. How white the table-cloth, how bright the coffee-pot, how
clean the wood-work, how glistening the brass door-knobs, how spotless
everything that came under the sovereign sway of Mrs. Matilda White! For
in every Indiana village as large as Lewisburg, there are generally a
half-dozen women who are admitted to be the best housekeepers. All
others are only imitators. And the strife is between these for the
pre-eminence. It is at least safe to say that no other in Lewisburg
stood so high as an enemy to dirt, and as a "rat, roach, and mouse
exterminator," as did Mrs. Matilda White, the wife of Ralph's maternal
uncle, Robert White, Esq., a lawyer in successful practice. Of course no
member of Mrs. White's family ever stayed at home longer than was
necessary. Her husband found his office--which he kept in as bad a state
as possible in order to maintain an equilibrium in his life--much more
comfortable than the stiffly clean house at home. From the time that
Ralph had come to live as a chore-boy at his uncle's, he had ever
crossed the threshold of Aunt Matilda's temple of cleanliness with a
horrible sense of awe. And Walter Johnson, her son by a former marriage,
had--poor, weak-willed fellow!--been driven into bad company and bad
habits by the wretchedness of extreme civilization. And yet he showed
the hereditary trait, for all the genius which Mrs. White consecrated to
the glorious work of making her house too neat to be habitable, her son
Walter gave to tying exquisite knots in his colored cravats and combing
his oiled locks so as to look like a dandy barber. And she had no other
children. The kind Providence that watches over the destiny of children
takes care that very few of them are lodged in these terribly clean
houses.

But Walter was not at the table, and Ralph had so much anxiety lest his
absence should be significant of evil, that he did not venture to
inquire after him as he sat there between Mr. and Mrs. White disposing
of Aunt Matilda's cakes with an appetite only justified by his long
morning's ride and the excellence of the brown cakes, the golden honey,
and the coffee, enriched, as Aunt Matilda's always was, with the most
generous cream. Aunt Matilda was so absorbed in telling of the doings of
the Dorcas Society that she entirely forgot to be surprised at the early
hour of Ralph's arrival. When she had described the number of the
garments finished to be sent to the Five Points Mission, or the Home for
the Friendless, or the South Sea Islands, I forget which, Ralph thought
he saw his chance, while Aunt Matilda was in a benevolent mood, to
broach a plan he had been revolving for some time. But when he looked at
Aunt Matilda's immaculate--horribly immaculate--housekeeping, his heart
failed him, and he would have said nothing had she not inadvertently
opened the door herself.

"How did you get here so early, Ralph?" and Aunt Matilda's face was
shadowed with a coming rebuke.

"By early rising," said Ralph. But, seeing the gathering frown on his
aunt's brow, he hastened to tell the story of Shocky as well as he
could. Mrs. White did not give way to any impulse toward sympathy until
she learned that Shocky was safely housed with Miss Nancy Sawyer.

"Yes, Sister Sawyer has no family cares," she said by way of smoothing
her slightly ruffled complacency, "she has no family cares, and she can
do those things. Sometimes I think she lets people impose on her and
keep her away from the means of grace, and I spoke to our new preacher
about it the last time he was here, and asked him to speak to Sister
Sawyer about staying away from the ordinances to wait on everybody, but
he is a queer man, and he only said that he supposed Sister Sawyer
neglected the inferior ordinances that she might attend to higher ones.
But I don't see any sense in a minister of the gospel calling
prayer-meeting a lower ordinance than feeding catnip-tea to Mrs. Brown's
last baby. But hasn't this little boy--Shocking, or what do you call
him?--got any mother?"

"Yes," said Ralph, "and that was just what I was going to say." And he
proceeded to tell how anxious Shocky was to see his half-blind mother,
and actually ventured to wind up his remarks by suggesting that Shocky's
mother be invited to stay over Sunday in Aunt Matilda's house.

"Bless my stars!" said that astounded saint, "fetch a pauper here? What
crazy notions you have got! Fetch her here out of the poor-house? Why,
she wouldn't be fit to sleep in my--" here Aunt Matilda choked. The bare
thought of having a pauper in her billowy beds, whose snowy whiteness
was frightful to any ordinary mortal, the bare thought of the contagion
of the poor-house taking possession of one of her beds, smothered her.
"And then you know sore eyes are very catching."

Ralph boiled a little. "Aunt Matilda, do you think Dorcas was afraid of
sore eyes?"

It was a center shot, and the lawyer-uncle, lawyerlike, enjoyed a good
hit. And he enjoyed a good hit at his wife best of all, for he never
ventured on one himself. But Aunt Matilda felt that a direct reply was
impossible. She was not a lawyer but a woman, and so dodged the question
by making a counter-charge.

"It seems to me, Ralph, that you have picked up some very low
associates. And you go around at night, I am told. You get over here by
daylight, and I hear that you have made common cause with a lame soldier
who acts as a spy for thieves, and that your running about of night is
likely to get you into trouble."

Ralph was hit this time. "I suppose," he said, "that you've been
listening to some of Henry Small's lies."

"Why, Ralph, how you talk! The worst sign of all is that you abuse such
a young man as Dr. Small, the most exemplary Christian young man in the
county. And he is a great friend of yours, for when he was here last
week he did not say a word against you, but looked so sorry when your
being in trouble was mentioned. Didn't he, Mr. White?"

Mr. White, as in duty bound, said yes, but he said yes in a cool,
lawyerlike way, which showed that he did not take quite so much stock in
Dr. Small as his wife did. This was a comfort to Ralph, who sat
picturing to himself the silent flattery which Dr. Small's eyes paid to
his Aunt Matilda, and the quiet expression of pain that would flit
across his face when Ralph's name was mentioned. And never until that
moment had Hartsook understood how masterful Small's artifices were. He
had managed to elevate himself in Mrs. White's estimation and to destroy
Ralph at the same time, and had managed to do both by a contraction of
the eyebrows!

But the silence was growing painful and Ralph thought to break it and
turn the current of talk from himself by asking after Mrs. White's son.

"Where is Walter?"

"Oh! Walter's doing well. He went down to Clifty three weeks ago to
study medicine with Henry Small. He seems so fond of the doctor, and the
doctor is such an excellent man, you know, and I have strong hopes that
Wallie will be led to see the error of his ways by his association with
Henry. I suppose he would have gone to see you but for the unfavorable
reports that he heard. I hope, Ralph, you too will make the friendship
of Dr. Small. And for the sake of your poor, dead mother"--here Aunt
Matilda endeavored to show some emotion--"for the sake of your poor dead
mother--"

But Ralph heard no more. The buckwheat-cakes had lost their flavor. He
remembered that the colt had not yet had his oats, and so, in the very
midst of Aunt Matilda's affecting allusion to his mother, like a
stiff-necked reprobate that he was, Ralph Hartsook rose abruptly from
the table, put on his hat, and went out toward the stable.

"I declare," said Mrs. White, descending suddenly from her high moral
stand-point, "I declare that boy has stepped right on the threshold of
the back-door," and she stuffed her white handkerchief into her pocket,
and took down the floor-cloth to wipe off the imperceptible blemish left
by Ralph's boot-heels. And Mr. White followed his nephew to the stable
to request that he would be a little careful what he did about anybody
in the poor-house, as any trouble with the Joneses might defeat Mr.
White's nomination to the judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas.




CHAPTER XXIII.

A CHARITABLE INSTITUTION.


When Ralph got back to Miss Nancy Sawyer's, Shocky was sitting up in bed
talking to Miss Nancy and Miss Semantha. His cheeks were a little
flushed with fever and the excitement of telling his story; theirs were
wet with tears. "Ralph," whispered Miss Nancy, as she drew him into the
kitchen, "I want you to get a buggy or a sleigh, and go right over to
the poor-house and fetch that boy's mother over here. It'll do me more
good than any sermon I ever heard to see that boy in his mother's arms
to-morrow. We can keep the old lady over Sunday."

Ralph was delighted, so delighted that he came near kissing good Miss
Nancy Sawyer, whose plain face was glorified by her generosity.

But he did not go to the poor-house immediately. He waited until he saw
Bill Jones, the Superintendent of the Poor-House, and Pete Jones, the
County Commissioner, who was still somewhat shuck up, ride up to the
court-house. Then he drove out of the village, and presently hitched his
horse to the poor-house fence, and took a survey of the outside. Forty
hogs, nearly ready for slaughter, wallowed in a pen in front of the
forlorn and dilapidated house; for though the commissioners allowed a
claim for repairs at every meeting, the repairs were never made, and it
would not do to scrutinize Mr. Jones's bills too closely, unless you
gave up all hope of renomination to office. One curious effect of
political aspirations in Hoopole County, was to shut the eyes that they
could not see, to close the ears that they could not hear, and to
destroy the sense of smell. But Ralph, not being a politician, smelled
the hog-pen without and the stench within, and saw everywhere the
transparent fraud, and heard the echo of Jones's cruelty.

A weak-eyed girl admitted him, and as he did not wish to make his
business known at once, he affected a sort of idle interest in the
place, and asked to be allowed to look round. The weak-eyed girl watched
him. He found that all the women with children, twenty persons in all,
were obliged to sleep in one room, which, owing to the hill-slope, was
partly under ground, and which had but half a window for light, and no
ventilation, except the chance draft from the door. Jones had declared
that the women with children must stay there--"he warn't goin' to have
brats a-runnin' over the whole house." Here were vicious women and good
women, with their children, crowded like chickens in a coop for market.
And there were, as usual in such places, helpless, idiotic women with
illegitimate children. Of course this room was the scene of perpetual
quarreling and occasional fighting.

In the quarters devoted to the insane, people slightly demented and
raving maniacs were in the same rooms, while there were also those utter
wrecks which sat in heaps on the floor, mumbling and muttering
unintelligible words, the whole current of their thoughts hopelessly
muddled, turning around upon itself in eddies never ending.

"That air woman," said the weak-eyed girl, "used to holler a heap when
she was brought in here. But Pap knows how to subjue 'em. He slapped her
in the mouth every time she hollered. She don't make no furss now, but
jist sets down that way all day, and keeps a-whisperin'."

Ralph understood it. When she came in she was the victim of mania; but
she had been beaten into hopeless idiocy. Indeed this state of incurable
imbecility seemed the end toward which all traveled. Shut in these bare
rooms, with no treatment, no exercise, no variety, and meager food,
cases of slight derangement soon grew into chronic lunacy.

One young woman, called Phil, a sweet-faced person, apparently a
farmer's wife, came up to Ralph and looked at him kindly, playing with
the buttons on his coat in a childlike simplicity. Her blue-drilling
dress was sewed all over with patches of white, representing ornamental
buttons. The womanly instinct toward adornment had in her taken this
childish turn.

"Don't you think they ought to let me go home?" she said with a
sweetness and a wistful, longing, home-sick look, that touched Ralph to
the heart. He looked at her, and then at the muttering crones, and he
could see no hope of any better fate for her. She followed him round the
barn-like rooms, returning every now and then to her question. "Don't
you think I might go home now?"

The weak-eyed girl had been called away for a moment, and Ralph stood
looking into a cell, where there was a man with a gay red plume in his
hat and a strip of red flannel about his waist. He strutted up and down
like a drill-sergeant.

"I am General Andrew Jackson," he began. "People don't believe it, but I
am. I had my head shot off at Bueny Visty, and the new one that growed
on isn't nigh so good as the old one; it's tater on one side[24]. That's
why they take advantage of me to shut me up. But I know some things. My
head is tater on one side, but it's all right on t'other. And when I
know a thing in the left side of my head, I know it. Lean down here. Let
me tell you something out of the left side. Not out of the tater side,
mind ye. I wouldn't a told you if he hadn't locked me up fer nothing.
_Bill Jones is a thief_! He sells the bodies of the dead paupers, and
then sells the empty coffins back to the county agin. But that a'n't
all--"

Just then the weak-eyed girl came back, and, as Ralph moved away,
General Jackson called out: "That a'n't all. I'll tell the rest another
time. And that a'n't out of the tater side, you can depend on that.
That's out of the left side. Sound as a nut on that side!"

But Ralph began to wonder where he should find Hannah's mother.

"Don't go in there," cried the weak-eyed girl, as Ralph was opening a
door. "Ole Mowley's in there, and she'll cuss you."

"Oh! well, if that's all, her curses won't hurt," said Hartsook,
pushing open the door. But the volley of blasphemy and vile language
that he received made him stagger. The old hag paced the floor, abusing
everybody that came in her way. And by the window, in the same room,
feeling the light that struggled through the dusty glass upon her face,
sat a sorrowful, intelligent Englishwoman. Ralph noticed at once that
she was English, and in a few moments he discovered that her sight was
defective. Could it be that Hannah's mother was the room-mate of this
loathsome creature, whose profanity and obscenity did not intermit for a
moment?

Happily the weak-eyed girl had not dared to brave the curses of Mowley.
Ralph stepped forward to the woman by the window, and greeted her.

"Is this Mrs. Thomson?"

"That is my name, sir," she said, turning her face toward Ralph, who
could not but remark the contrast between the thorough refinement of her
manner and her coarse, scant, unshaped pauper-frock of blue drilling.

"I saw your daughter yesterday."

"Did you see my boy?"

There was a tremulousness in her voice and an agitation in her manner
which disclosed the emotion she strove in vain to conceal. For only the
day before Bill Jones had informed her that Shocky would be bound out on
Saturday, and that she would find that goin' agin him warn't a payin'
business, so much as some others he mout mention.

Ralph told her about Shocky's safety. _I_ shall not write down the
conversation here. Critics would say that it was an overwrought scene.
As if all the world were as cold as they! All I can tell is that this
refined woman had all she could do to control herself in her eagerness
to get out of her prison-house, away from the blasphemies of Mowley,
away from the insults of Jones, away from the sights and sounds and
smells of the place, and, above all, her eagerness to fly to the little
shocky-head from whom she had been banished for two years. It seemed to
her that she could gladly die now, if she could die with that flaxen
head upon her bosom.

And so, in spite of the opposition of Bill Jones's son, who threatened
her with every sort of evil if she left, Ralph wrapped Mrs. Thomson's
blue drilling in Nancy Sawyer's shawl, and bore the feeble woman off to
Lewisburg. And as they drove away, a sad, childlike voice cried from the
gratings of the upper window, "Good-by! good-by!" Ralph turned and saw
that it was Phil, poor Phil, for whom there was no deliverance[25]. And
all the way back Ralph pronounced mental maledictions on the Dorcas
Society, not for sending garments to the Five Points or the South Sea
Islands, whichever it was, but for being so blind to the sorrow and
poverty within its reach. He did not know, for he had not read the
reports of the Boards of State Charities, that nearly all alms-houses
are very much like this, and that the State of New York is not better in
this regard than Indiana. And he did not know that it is true in almost
all other counties, as it was in his own, that "Christian" people do not
think enough of Christ to look for him in these lazar-houses.

And while Ralph denounced the Dorcas Society, the eager, hungry heart of
the mother ran, flew toward the little white-headed boy.

No, I can not do it; I can not tell you about that meeting. I am sure
that Miss Nancy Sawyer's tea tasted exceedingly good to the pauper, who
had known nothing but cold water for years, and that the bread and
butter were delicious to a palate that had eaten poor-house soup for
dinner, and coarse poor-house bread and vile molasses for supper, and
that without change for three years. But I can not tell you how it
seemed that evening to Miss Nancy Sawyer, as the poor English lady sat
in speechless ecstacy, rocking in the old splint-bottomed rocking-chair
in the fire-light, while she pressed to her bosom with all the might of
her enfeebled arms, the form of the little Shocky, who half-sobbed and
half-sang, over and over again, "God ha'n't forgot us, mother; God
ha'n't forgot us."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Some time after this book appeared Dr. Brown-Séquard
announced his theory of the dual brain. A writer in an English magazine
called attention to the fact that the discovery had been anticipated by
an imaginative writer, and cited the passage in the text as proving that
the author of "The Hoosier School-Master" had outrun Dr. Brown-Séquard
in perceiving the duality of the brain. It is a matter for surprise that
an author, even an "imaginative" one, should have made so great a
discovery without suspecting its meaning until it was explained by some
one else.]

[Footnote 25: The reader may be interested to know that "Phil" was drawn
from the life, as was old Mowley and in part "General Jackson" also.
Between 1867 and 1870, I visited many jails and poor-houses with
philanthropic purpose, publishing the results of my examination in some
cases in _The Chicago Tribune_. Some of the abuses pointed out were
reformed, others linger till this day, I believe.]




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN.


The Methodist church to which Mrs. Matilda White and Miss Nancy Sawyer
belonged was the leading one in Lewisburg, as it was in most county-seat
villages in Indiana. If I may be permitted to express my candid and
charitable opinion of the difference between the two women, I shall have
to use the old Quaker locution, and say that Miss Sawyer was a Methodist
and likewise a Christian; Mrs. White was a Methodist, but I fear she was
not likewise.

As to the first part of this assertion, there was no room to doubt Miss
Nancy's piety. She could get happy in class-meeting (for who had a
better right?), and could witness a good experience in the quarterly
love-feast. But it is not upon these grounds that I base my opinion of
Miss Nancy. Do not even the Pharisees the same? She never dreamed that
she had any right to speak of "Christian Perfection" (which, as Mrs.
Partington said of total depravity, is an excellent doctrine if it is
lived up to); but when a woman's heart is full of devout affections and
good purposes, when her head devises liberal and Christlike things, when
her hands are always open to the poor and always busy with acts of love
and self-denial, and when her feet are ever eager to run upon errands of
mercy, why, if there be anything worthy of being called Christian
Perfection in this world of imperfection, I do not know why such an one
does not possess it. What need of analyzing her experiences _in vacuo_
to find out the state of her soul?

How Miss Nancy managed to live on her slender income and be so generous
was a perpetual source of perplexity to the gossips of Lewisburg. And
now that she declared that Mrs. Thomson and Shocky should not return to
the poor-house there was a general outcry from the whole Committee of
Intermeddlers that she would bring herself to the poor-house before she
died. But Nancy Sawyer was the richest woman in Lewisburg, though nobody
knew it, and though she herself did not once suspect it.

How Miss Nancy and the preacher conspired together, and how they managed
to bring Mrs. Thomson's case up at the time of the "Sacramental Service"
in the afternoon of that Sunday in Lewisburg, and how the preacher made
a touching statement of it just before the regular "Collection for the
Poor" was taken, and how the warm-hearted Methodists put in dollars
instead of dimes while the Presiding Elder read those passages about
Zaccheus and other liberal people, and how the congregation sang

"He dies, the Friend of sinners dies"

more lustily than ever, after having performed this Christian act--how