So he flung it on the fire; there was a shrivelling, smouldering, guilty sort of blaze, and the shawl was burnt.

Roger Acton, you are falling quickly as a shooting star; already is your conscience warped to connive, for lucre’s sake, at some one’s secret crimes.  You had better, for the moral of the matter, have burnt your right hand, as Scaevola did, than that shawl.  Beware! your sin will bring its punishment.

CHAPTER XI.

Sleep.

Grace, in her humble truckle-bed, lay praying for her father; not about his trouble, though that was much, but for the spots of sin she could discern upon his soul.

Alas! an altered man was Roger Acton; almost since morning light, the leprosy had changed his very nature.  The simple-minded Christian, toiling in contentment for his daily bread, cheerful for the passing day, and trustful for the coming morrow, this fair state was well-nigh faded away; while a bitterness of feeling against (in one word) god—­against unequal partialities in providence, against things as they exist; and this world’s inexplicable government—­was gnawing at his very heart-strings, and cankering their roots by unbelief.  It is a speedy process—­throw away faith with its trust for the past, love for the present, hope for the future—­and you throw away all that makes sorrow bearable, or joy lovely; the best of us, if God withheld his help, would apostatize like Peter, ere the cock crew thrice; and, at times, that help has wisely been withheld, to check presumptuous thoughts, and teach how true it is that the creature depends on the Creator.  Just so we suffer a wilful little child, who is tottering about in leading-strings, to go alone for a minute, and have a gentle fall.  And just so Roger here, deserted for a time of those angelic ministrations whose efficiency is proved by godliness and meekness, by patience and content, is harassed in his spirit as by harpies, by selfishness and pride, and fretful doublings; by a grudging hate of labour, and a fiery lust of gold.  Temptation comes to teach a weak man that he was fitted for his station, and his station made for him; that fulfilment of his ignorant desires will only make his case the worse, and that

  Providence alike is wise
  In what he gives and what denies.

Meanwhile, gentle Grace, on her humble truckle-bed, is full of prayers and tears, uneasily listening to the indistinct and noisy talk, and hearing, now and then, some louder oath of Ben’s that made her shudder.  Yes, she heard, too, the smashing sound, when the poacher flung the money down, and she feared it was a mug or a plate—­no slight domestic loss; and she heard her father’s strange cry, when he gave that wondering shout of joyous avarice, and she did not know what to fear.  Was he ill? or crazed! or worse—­fallen into bad excesses?  How she prayed for him!

Poor Ben, too, honest-hearted Ben; she thought of him in charity, and pleaded for his good before the Throne of Mercy.  Who knows but Heaven heard that saintly virgin prayer?  There is love in Heaven yet for poor Ben Burke.