Part 76 (2/2)

'Then,' remarked the former speaker, 'there's a chance for old Moll and me yet. King David was a saint, wasn't he? Ha! ha!'

'Yes, and you might be one too, if you were as sorry for your faults as he was for his.'

'Sorry, indeed! I'll be d.a.m.ned if I be sorry. What have I to be sorry for? Where's the harm in turning an honest penny? I ha' took no man's wife, nor murdered himself neither. There's yer saints! He was a rum 'un. Ha! ha!'

Falconer approached her, bent down and whispered something no one could hear but herself. She gave a smothered cry, and was silent.

'Give me the book,' he said, turning towards the bed. 'I'll read you something better than that. I'll read about some one that never did anything wrong.'

'I don't believe there never was no sich a man,' said the previous reader, as she handed him the book, grudgingly.

'Not Jesus Christ himself?' said Falconer.

'Oh! I didn't know as you meant him.'

'Of course I meant him. There never was another.'

'I have heard tell--p'raps it was yourself, sir--as how he didn't come down upon us over hard after all, bless him!'

Falconer sat down on the side of the bed, and read the story of Simon the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner. When he ceased, the silence that followed was broken by a sob from somewhere in the room.

The sick woman stopped her moaning, and said,

'Turn down the leaf there, please, sir. Lilywhite will read it to me when you're gone.'

The some one sobbed again. It was a young slender girl, with a face disfigured by the small-pox, and, save for the tearful look it wore, poor and expressionless. Falconer said something gentle to her.

'Will he ever come again?' she sobbed.

'Who?' asked Falconer.

'Him--Jesus Christ. I've heard tell, I think, that he was to come again some day.'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because--' she said, with a fresh burst of tears, which rendered the words that followed unintelligible. But she recovered herself in a few moments, and, as if finis.h.i.+ng her sentence, put her hand up to her poor, thin, colourless hair, and said,

'My hair ain't long enough to wipe his feet.'

'Do you know what he would say to you, my girl?' Falconer asked.

'No. What would he say to me? He would speak to me, would he?'

'He would say: Thy sins are forgiven thee.'

'Would he, though? Would he?' she cried, starting up. 'Take me to him--take me to him. Oh! I forgot. He's dead. But he will come again, won't he? He was crucified four times, you know, and he must ha' come four times for that. Would they crucify him again, sir?'

'No, they wouldn't crucify him now--in England at least. They would only laugh at him, shake their heads at what he told them, as much as to say it wasn't true, and sneer and mock at him in some of the newspapers.'

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