Bessie's Fortune

To these discourses Hannah was always an attentive listener, and there came gradually a new light into her dark eyes, and a faint color to her white cheeks, when she saw the rector coming up the walk, and met his winning smile. But all this was ended at last; for, after a night in June, when she walked with the young clergyman through the pasture land under the row of chestnut trees which grew upon the hill-side, he came less frequently to the farm-house, and when he did come his discourse was mostly with her father, whom he was laboring to convince that it was his duty to be confirmed. But Peter always answered him: "No, you don't know what you ask. I am too vile, too great a sinner for that. The very stones would cry out against me."

The clergyman thought him crazy, and after a time abandoned the effort, and went but seldom to the farm-house, where Hannah had again entered the dark cloud in which his coming had made a rift, and which now seemed darker than ever, because of the momentary brightness which had been thrown upon it. She, too, had labored with her father as Mr. Sanford had done, telling him of the peace which was sure to follow a duty performed, but he answered her: "Never, child, never; for, don't you see, I must first confess, and that is to put the halter around my own neck. They would hang me now, sure, for the concealment, if for nothing more. It might have been better if I had told at first, as you advised. I believe now they would have been lenient toward me. A few years in prison, perhaps, and then freedom the rest of my life. Oh, if I had done it. But now it is forever too late. God may forgive me. I think he will, but I can never join his church with this crime on my soul."

After this Hannah said no more to him upon the subject, but bent all her energies to soothe and rid him of the morbid, half-crazy fancies which had taken possession of him.

And so the wretched years went on, until Peter Jerrold had numbered more than three score years and ten, and suffered enough to atone many times for crimes far more heinous than his had been. But nature at last could endure no more, and on the Thanksgiving night, thirty-one years after the event which had blighted his life, he felt that he was dying, and insisted upon confessing his sin not only to his son, but also to his clergyman, who has been his friend and spiritual adviser for so many years.