CHAPTER XI.

A TERRIBLE TIME.

OF course my going back to Grassbourne, to carry the infection with me, was out of the question. I wrote to my mistress, and told her the state of the case, and then I was able to relieve my poor mother very much, by taking entire charge of Salome.

She was very ill, and as the days went by she grew worse. The doctor was proved right in his opinion of the complaint, for the very day after I arrived Bartholomew and Jude were both taken ill with the fever, and two days after that Thomas fell ill, and about a week after, Matthew and Simon were also smitten.

It was a terrible time. As I look back upon it now, I wonder how we ever bore up as we did. We had six of them ill at once, so ill that the doctor shook his head each time he saw them, and said he was afraid they would none of them pull through. My poor mother was up night and day, going from one bed to another with a white and anxious face.

My father said little, as was his nature under all circumstances, but he felt it deeply. He would wander about the house sighing loudly, and would stand beside the doors of the two sick-rooms for hours together, that he might be at hand to fetch or to carry anything, or to help us in any way he could. He felt it all the more, I think, from his having so little to do. He was a very honorable man, and he made no secret of our having the fever in the house. As soon as the doctor had told him that it was a case of malignant scarlet fever, he had let all his customers know, for he thought that concealment in such a case was both cruel and wicked.

So few came to the shop, and the till was very empty during that time of sorrow.

I had much time for thought during the weeks which followed. As I was sitting up at night, watching beside Salome and Jude and Simon, my mind was very busy, and my heart was very much troubled. And yet I could not pray. I felt as if there were a great wall between me and God, and if I tried to pray, the words seemed to come back to me, as if they could not pierce the separating wall. It was my sin which had come between me and my Master. I knew that well enough, and I was very miserable when I thought of it.

But one night I took up Salome's Testament, the one I had given her on her fifth birthday, which was lying on a table near her bed. I opened it to see if I could get any word of comfort, and my eyes fell upon these words:

"The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter."

If an angel had said them to me, they could not have seemed to come more direct from heaven.

I had sinned against my Lord, the Lord who had loved me so much, yet now He was turning His face not away from me, but towards me; He was looking at me, not with anger, nor with scorn, but with tender, sorrowful love. Oh! How could I ever grieve such a Master as that. Like Peter in the Gospels, as I sat in that quiet sickroom, I wept bitterly.

And then came comfort; I could pray now. That look of the Lord Jesus had taken away the wall. I could call on Him now and ask Him to forgive me, and never to let me leave Him again.

If I had not come back to the Lord Jesus that night, and had the comfort of feeling His presence very near me, I do not know how I should have gone through the next terrible week. Sickness and sorrow had been in our home before; but now the angel of death drew near.

I had felt sure from the very first that Salome would die. She seemed to me so unlike every one else, and so fit for heaven, that I had no doubt whatever in my own mind that the Master's voice would call her to Himself.

"'One shall be taken, and the other left,'" I said to myself over and over again, as I sat beside her at night, "Salome taken—Peter left."

Even the sound of her breathing seemed to be saying the same words to me in the dark, silent night. "'One taken, another left; one taken, another left.'" And the steps of the passers-by in the street, when morning dawned, echoed the same words, "'One taken, another left.'"

But the words were to come true in a different way from what I had expected.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]