When Rover died, several years after the tragedy of which he was a witness, Hannah felt that she had lost all that made life endurable, and mourned for him as for a human friend. With all the faithful sagacity of his race the noble brute had clung to her, seldom quitting her side, and frequently, when her heart was saddest, and she was weeping by herself, licking her face and hair, and uttering a kind of low cry, as if he understood her perfectly; and when at last he died, it was with his head in her lap, and her tears falling upon his shaggy face. Even to the last he was faithful to the charge he had so long assumed. A neighbor had come into the kitchen, and dragging himself from the mat on which he was lying, Rover crawled to the door of the bedroom, and stretched himself in front of it, while in the dying eyes lifted to Hannah's face, there was an expression of unutterable love and regret for the mistress he was leaving forever. When the visitor left the house, Hannah tried to coax the dog back to his mat near the stove, but he was too weak to move, and so she placed a blanket under him and kneeling by his side, put his head in her lap, and held it there until he ceased to breathe.
After his death there was nothing to relieve the tedium of Hannah's life, and but for her trust in God her reason must have given way under the strain, for it was not only her own sorrow, but her father's as well, which she had to bear. With him there was no rest, day or night, and every breath was a prayer for mercy and forgiveness.
At first he was continually haunted with a fear of detection, and frequently in the night he would steal noiselessly to Hannah's room, and awakening her with a whisper, tell her there were men about the house, come to arrest him, and charge her with having broken her oath and betrayed him into the hands of the law. Every possible precaution against a surprise was taken. Iron bolts were put on the doors, the windows were nailed down, and the house was never for an hour left alone. The people said the man was deranged, and pitied the young girl who, from daily association with him, was becoming almost as peculiar as himself.
After a few years the aged pastor, who had so long officiated in the stone church on the common, died, and the Rev. Charles Sanford, fresh from the Theological Seminary, was called to take his place. Full of energy and zeal in his work, the young rector soon made himself acquainted with all his parishioners, and seemed to find a peculiar attraction in the inmates of the farm-house, where he spent a great deal of time, arguing with the father on the nature of the unpardonable sin, and answering the many questions his host propounded to him upon the subject of genuine repentance and its fruits, and how far confession to man was necessary that one might be saved.