Meadows was ambidexter.  The two hands he gathered coin with were Meadows and Crawley.  The first his honest, hard-working hand; the second his three-fingered Jack, his prestidigital hand; with both he now worked harder than ever.  He hurried from business to business—­could not wait to chat, or drink a glass of ale after it; it was all work! work! work!—­money! money! money! with John Meadows, and everything he touched turned to gold in his hands; yet for all this burning activity the man’s heart had never been so little in business.  His activity was the struggle of a sensible, strong mind to fight against its one weakness.

“Cedit amor rebus; res age tutus eris,” is a very wise saying, and Meadows, by his own observation and instinct, sought the best antidote for love.

But the Latins had another true saying, that “nobody is wise at all hours.”

After his day of toil and success he used to be guilty of a sad inconsistency.  He shut himself up at home for two hours, and smoked his pipe, and ran his eye over the newspaper, but his mind over Susan Merton.

Worse than this, in his frequent rides he used to go a mile or two out of his way to pass Grassmere farmhouse; and however fast he rode the rest of his journey he always let his nag walk by the farmhouse, and his eye brightened with hope as he approached it, and his heart sank as he passed it without seeing Susan.

He now bitterly regretted the vow he had made, never to visit the Mertons again unless they sent for him.

“They have forgotten me altogether,” said he bitterly.  “Well, the best thing I can do is to forget them.”

Now, Susan had forgotten him; she was absorbed in her own grief; but Merton was laboring under a fit of rheumatism, and this was the reason why Meadows and he did not meet.  In fact, farmer Merton often said to his daughter, “John Meadows has not been to see us a long while.”

“Hasn’t he, father?” was Susan’s languid and careless reply.

One Sunday, Meadows, weakened by his inner struggle, could not help going to Grassmere church.  At least he would see her face.  He had seated himself where he could see her.  She took her old place by the pillar; nobody was near her.  The light from a side window streamed full upon her.  She was pale, and the languor of sorrow was upon every part of her face, but she was lovely as ever.

Meadows watched her, and noticed that more than once without any visible reason her eyes filled with tears, but she shed none.  He saw how hard she tried to give her whole soul to the services of the church and to the word of the preacher; he saw her succeed for a few minutes at a time, and then with a lover’s keen eye he saw her heart fly away in a moment from prayer and praise and consolation, and follow and overtake the ship that was carrying her George farther and farther away from her across the sea; and then her lips quivered with earthly sorrow even as she repeated words that came from Heaven, and tried to bind to her heavy heart the prayers for succor in every mortal ill, the promises of help in every mortal woe, with which holy Church and holier Writ comfort her and all the pure of heart in every age.