The breakfast was prepared and eaten, such as it was. Sophy made all things neat, and kept the baby while her mother dressed herself, and then she prepared for her walk to the village. But she was not to struggle through the snow that day. Just as she was bidding her good-bye, they were startled by the sound of voices quite near, and the boys rushed out in time to see a yoke of oxen plunging through the drift that rose like a wall before the door. The voice of Stephen Grattan fell like music on their ears. The things were come at last, and plenty of them. There were bags and bundles manifold, and a great round basket of Dolly Grattan's, well known to the little Morelys as capable of holding a great many good things, for it had been in their house before.

"I don't know as you would speak to me, if you knew all, mother," said Stephen at last, approaching Mrs Morely, who was sitting by the fire with her baby in her arms. "You are all alive, I see,--at least the boys are. How is baby, and my little Sophy? Why, what ails the child?"

He might well ask; for Sophy was lying limp and white across the baby's cot. Poor little Sophy! The reaction from those terrible fears--the doubt that her father had forgotten them, and the fear of what might become of them all--was too much for her, weakened as she was by anxiety and want of food. She had borne her burden well, but her strength failed her when it was lifted off. It was only for a moment. As Stephen lifted her on the bed, she opened her eyes, and smiled.

"Mother, dear, it is nothing,--only I'm so glad." Her eyes closed again wearily.

"That ain't just the way my folks show how glad they be," said Stephen, as she turned her face on her pillow to hide her happy tears.

"She's hungry," said Ned, gravely. "There wasn't much; and she didn't eat any dinner yesterday--nor much supper."

"Now I know you'll have nothing to say to me," said Stephen. "These things--the most of them, at least--might have been here, as well as not, the night your husband went away, if I had done my duty, as I promised."

"Thank G.o.d!" she murmured as she grasped Stephen's hand. "He did not forget us. The rest is as nothing."

"And," continued Stephen with a face which ought to have been radiant, but which was very far from that, "the very last word he said to me that night, when I bade him good-bye, was, 'I'll hold on to the end.'"

And, having said this, Stephen seemed to have nothing more to say. He betook himself to the preparation of dinner with a zeal and skill that put all Sophy's attempts to help him quite out of the question. How the dinner was enjoyed need not be told. Breakfast the boys called it, in scornful remembrance of the gruel. There were very bright faces round the table. The only face that had a shadow on it was Stephen's; and that only came when he thought no one was looking at him. He was in a great hurry to get away, too, it seemed.

"For the roads are awful; and you may be thankful, little Sophy, that you hadn't to go to Littleton to-night. I started to bring the things on a hand-sled, but would never have got through the drifts if it hadn't a' been for Farmer Jackson and his oxen. Don't you try it yet a while.

I'll be along again with Dolly one of these days."

Stephen Grattan's face might have been brighter, as he turned to nod to the group of happy children watching his departure at the door of the log cottage. The "good-byes" and the "come agains" sent after him did make him smile a little, but only for a moment. The shadow fell darker and darker on his face, as he made his way through the scarcely-open road in the direction of the village. For Stephen's heart was very heavy, and with good cause. Sad as had been his first sight of the sorrowful mother and her children, he had seen a sadder sight that day.

In the dim grey of the bitter morning he had caught a glimpse of a crouching, squalid figure hurrying with uncertain yet eager steps-- whither? His heart stood still as he asked himself the question, "To the foot-bridge over Deering Brook? To the gaping hole beyond?"

Stephen Grattan had not what is called "a rapid mind." He was not bold to dare, nor strong to do. But in the single minute that pa.s.sed before he found himself on Deering Bridge he realised all the miserable circ.u.mstances of Morely's fall, balanced the chances of life and death for the poor wretch, and took his own life in his hand for his sake. He knew that one more wicked deed had been added to the tavern-keeper's catalogue of sins,--that the children's bread had been stolen, and the father brutalised and then cast forth in the bitter cold, to live or die, it mattered little which.

"To live, it must be," said Stephen; "at least for repentance--perhaps for a better life. He must be saved. But how?"

Stephen could have touched him with his hand as he asked the question.

Could he win him by persuasion and gentle words, or must he master him by force, and save him from the death on which he was rushing? Must he wrestle with the madman's temporary strength?--perhaps yield to it, and share his fate?

If these two men knew just what happened, when, by a sudden movement of Stephen, they were brought face to face, they never spoke of it, even to each other. Dolly's brief "Thank G.o.d!" as she opened the door to let them in, was like heavenly music to Stephen's ear, he told her afterwards; but never, even to Dolly, would he go beyond the opening of the door in speaking of that day.

After three terrible hours, Stephen left Morely in a troubled sleep, and set out for the log-house on the hill with the help so much needed. All the way there he had been going over the question in his mind whether or not he should tell Mrs Morely of her husband's situation. His first thought had been that she must not know it; but, seeing Morely as he had seen him for the last few hours, he feared to take upon himself the responsibility of concealment. Should his troubled sleep grow calm and continue, a few days' rest and care would suffice to place him where he was when he left home; but, otherwise, none could tell what the end might be. Weakened by illness, by want of food, and by his late excess, Stephen well knew the chances were against his recovery; and ought not his wife to be made aware of his situation? The first glance at Mrs Morely's pale face decided him. She must not know of this new misery that had befallen her husband, at least not now.

So it was no wonder that Stephen turned towards home with a sad face and a heavy heart, knowing all this. He had not been so downcast for a long time. It broke his heart to think of poor Morely. Even the misery and dest.i.tution that seemed to lie before the poor wife and children were nothing to this; and, as he dragged himself through the heavy snow, panting and breathless, he was praying, as even good men cannot always pray, with an urgency that would take no denial, that this poor soul might have s.p.a.ce for repentance,--that he might not be suffered to go down into endless death. He did not use many words. "Save him, Lord, for Thy Name's sake--for Thine own Name's sake, Lord!" These were nearly all. But his hand was on the hem of the Lord's garment.

Hundreds of times the cry arose. Sometimes he spoke aloud in his agony, never knowing it, never seeing the wondering looks that followed him over the bridge and up the street to his own door.

"Well, Dolly!" he said, faintly, going in.

Dolly was never a woman of many words; she nodded her head towards the closed door and said, "A leetle quieter, if anything."

"Thank G.o.d!" said Stephen, and the tears ran down his brown old face with a rush that he could not restrain. Dolly did not try to comfort him. She did better than that; she took from the stove a vessel containing soup, and having poured some into a basin and broken some bread into it, she set it before him, saying, "It's no wonder you feel miserable. Eat this."

"Can I, do you suppose?" said Stephen.

"You've got to!" said Dolly, taking such an att.i.tude as a hen-sparrow might be supposed to a.s.sume should she see fit to threaten a barn-yard fowl. And he did eat it, every drop.

"I feel better," he said, with a grateful sigh.

"I expect so," said Dolly, briefly, as she removed the basin. It was Mrs Grattan's acknowledged "object in life," her recognised "mission,"

to provide her husband with "something good to eat." In the old days, when Stephen's reformation was new, she had many a time satisfied herself with a crust, that he might have food to strengthen him to resist the old fierce craving for stimulants, and thus doing, she helped, more than she knew, G.o.d's work of grace in him.

"Did you tell the poor creetur?" she asked.

Stephen shook his head, and told her of poor Mrs Morely's illness, and of all that had been happening at the little log-house during the days of the storm. "It seemed as though it was more than she could bear to hear: so I told her what he said to me the other night, and nothing at all of to-day."

They were both silent for a while, thinking. It was a great responsibility for them to take thus to conceal Morely's situation from his wife, for it might be that he was in real danger. But it was not of this they were thinking. Even if he were not in danger--if, after a few days' nursing, they were able to send him to Montreal as though nothing had happened--their troubles would not be at an end.

For they were very poor people. By the utmost economy they had been able, during the last five years, to buy and pay for the little house in which they lived; but they had nothing laid up for the future; and now that Littleton was growing to be a place of some importance, as the new railway was nearly completed to it, there were new shops of all kinds to be opened in it, and Stephen's business would be interfered with; for he could not make good boots and shoes as cheaply as other people could buy and sell poor ones, and his custom was dropping off. It would all come right in the end, he told Dolly; but in the meantime a hard winter might lie before them.

CHAPTER FIVE.

WORKING AND WAITING.

So, as they sat there in silence, Dolly was thinking with some anxiety that they were making themselves responsible for all the food needed in the little log-house for the next two months at least, and Stephen was thinking the same. Dolly could see no possible way of doing this without putting themselves in debt, and there were few things that Dolly dreaded more. Stephen saw his way clear without the debt, but it was a way almost as much to be regretted as the running up of a long bill at Smith's would be. The little sum that he had collected with much effort, and kept with much self-denial, which was to purchase a supply of leather at the cheapest market in Montreal, must be appropriated to another purpose, for nothing but ready money would do now. Morely's expenses must be paid to Montreal, and, indeed, in Montreal till he could get employment; and the children must in the meantime be cared for as well; and therefore Stephen's leather must be purchased piece by piece as before; and how could he ever compete with the cheap shoe-shops that had taken away some of his customers already? His face took an anxious look, and so did Dolly's, till she caught sight of the wrinkles on her husband's forehead, and then she thought best to brighten up immediately.

"It ain't best to worry about it," said she.

"No, worry never helped n.o.body yet." said Stephen; but his face did not change.

"And there's nothing we can do about it, to-day, but wait," continued his wife.

"Nothing but wait--and pray," said Stephen, quietly.

"If you could go to work now, you'd feel a sight better; but the noise--" and her voice sank into a whisper.

"Yes; I promised young Clement that I should have little Teddy Lane's boots ready for him to-night," said Stephen. "It's too late now, I'm afraid; you'll have to keep all the doors shut for the noise," he added, going; and then he turned back to say in a whisper:

"I wish I could have that Bigby in my hands for just two minutes? Eh, Dolly?"

Dolly shook her head.

"You might do him good," said she, gravely. "But then, again, you might not."

It never came into these people's minds that they could shirk this care that had fallen on them. To keep Morely's fall a secret would save his wife from terrible grief and pain, and would give the poor broken man a better chance to retrieve the past; and kept from her it must be, at whatever cost and trouble to them.

"For don't I remember how worse than death to me was my old man's falling back after my hopes were raised? The poor creetur shan't have this to bear, if I can help it," said Dolly to herself, as she went to Morely's door.

"And don't I remember the hole of the pit from which I was drawn time and again by G.o.d's mercy?" said Stephen, as he sat down on his bench.

"I'll do what I can; and when I can't do no more, then the Lord will put His hand to it Himself, I expect."

It would not be well to enter the wretched man's room, or lift the curtain which hid from all but these kind people the next few miserable days. It was enough to say that, at their close, John Morely, weak as a child in mind and body, found himself with the old battle before him again. If he could have had his choice, he would have had it all end there. There was nothing but shame in looking backward--nothing but fear in looking forward. He was helpless and hopeless. Why had Stephen Grattan troubled himself to save him from deeper sin and longer misery?

There was no help for him, he thought, in his utter despondency.