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Updated: June 27, 2025
In less time than that Wilfrey Lawson was riding hard towards Newcastle. Next morning after Rotha's struggle with Mrs. Garth at the bridge, the rumor passed through Wythburn that the plague was in the district. Since the advent of the new preachers the people had seen the dreaded scourge dangling from the sleeve of every stranger who came from the fearsome world without.
"And what of that? Here's your room, sirs. Peradventure it will serve until you take every room." "Remember the breakfast," cried the little man, after Rotha's retreating figure. "We're as hungry as as " "Hold your tongue, and come in, David. Brush the mud from your pantaloons, and leave the girl to herself." "The brazen young noddle," muttered David.
"I shall stay," he said. The girl's grief-worn face left no doubt in his mind of her purpose. They parted. When Rotha re-entered the sick-room a candle was burning on a table by the bedside. Mrs. Garth still crouched before the fire. The blacksmith was awake. As he lifted his eyes to Rotha's face, the girl saw that they wore the same watchful and troubled expression as before.
Rude daughter of a rude age, in a rude country and without the refinements of education, still how pure and sweet she was; how strong, and yet how tender; how unconscious in her instinct of self-sacrifice; how devoted in her loyalty; how absolute in her trust! But deep and rich as was Rotha's simple nature, it was yet incomplete.
How vague and vacant was the look in those dear eyes! how mute hung the lips that were wont to say, "God bless you!" how motionless lay the fingers that once spun with the old wheel so deftly! The old spinning-wheel here it was, and Rotha's right hand still rested upon it. Ah! the wheel surely that was, the sign she wanted.
There was not even visible at this moment the troubled expression which, to Rotha's mind, denoted the baffled effort to say, "God bless you!" Thank God, she at least was unconscious of what had happened and was still happening! It was with the thought of her alone the weak, unconscious sufferer, near to death that Rotha had said that worse might occur.
Mrs. Garth curled her lip. The night of the day on which the officers of the Sheriff's court of Carlisle visited Shoulthwaite, the night of Simeon Stagg's departure from Wythburn in pursuit of Ralph, the night of Rotha's sorrow and her soul's travail in that solitary house among the mountains, was a night of gayety and festival in the illuminated streets of old Lancaster.
Willy had not thought of this before; that Rotha's mind had been running on the possible dangers to his mother of the threatened eviction had never occurred to him until now. He had been wrong entirely so. His impulse was to take the girl in his arms and confess the injustice of his reflections; but he shrank from this at the instant, and then his mind wriggled with apologies for his error.
He tried again, and stopped once more. Then he took Rotha's hand and put it into Ralph's, and turned away in silence. And now these two, long knit together, soul to soul, parted by sorrow, purified by affliction, ennobled by suffering, stand in this white moonlight hand in hand. Hereafter the past is dead to them, and yet lives.
The woman was angry at Rotha's silence, and, failing to conciliate the girl, she was determined to hold her by other means. Rotha perceived the purpose, and wondered within herself why she did not go. "But he's gone on a bootless errand, I tell ye," continued Mrs. Garth. "What errand?" It was impossible to resist the impulse to probe the woman's meaning. Mrs. Garth laughed.
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