bankrupt ( part 9)

"I can't come to Sunday-school, to-day," called Dorcas, stridently. "You

tell them to give Phoebe my class. And ask her if she'll keep it. I sha'n't

teach any more."

"Ain't your father so well?" asked Mrs. Rivers, sympathetically, bending

forward and smoothing her mitts. Dorcas caught at the reason.

"I sha'n't leave him any more," she said. "You tell 'em so. You fix it."

Caleb drove on, and she went back into the house, shrinking under the

brightness of the air which seemed to quiver so before her eyes. She

went into her father's room, where he was awake and wondering.

"Seems to me I heard the bells," he said, in his gentle fashion. "Or have

we had the 'hymns, an' got to the sermon?"

Dorcas fell on her knees by the bedside.

"Father," she began, with difficulty, her cheek laid on the bedclothes

beside his hand, "there was a sermon about women that are lost. What

was that?"

"Why, yes," answered the parson, rousing to an active joy in his work.

"'Neither do I condemn thee!' That was it. You git it, Dorcas! We must

remember such poor creatur's; though, Lord be praised! there ain't many

round here. We must remember an' pray for 'em."

But Dorcas did not rise.

"Is there any hope for them, father?" she asked, her voice muffled. "Can

they be saved?"

"Why, don't you remember the poor creatur' that come here an' asked

that very question because she heard I said the Lord was pitiful? Her baby

was born out in the medder, an' died the next day; an' she got up out of

her sickbed at the Poorhouse, an' come totterin' up here, to ask if there

was any use in her sayin', 'Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!' An' your

mother took her in, an' laid her down on this very bed, an' she died here.An' your mother hil' her in her arms when she died. You ask her if she

didn't!" The effort of continuous talking wearied him, and presently he

dozed off. Once he woke, and Dorcas was still on her knees, her head

abased. "Dorcas!" he said, and she answered, "Yes, father!" without

raising it; and he slept again. The bell struck, for the end of service. The

parson was awake. He stretched out his hand, and it trembled a moment

and then fell on his daughter's lowly head.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ--" the parson said, and went clearly

on to the solemn close.

"Father," said Dorcas. "Father!" She seemed to be crying to One afar.

"Say the other verse, too. What He told the woman."

His hand still on her head, the parson repeated, with a wistful tenderness

stretching back over the past,--

"'Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.'"

The end~~

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