Part 37 (1/2)

He thinks it is his only chance, and I believe he is right. He says that nothing but the thought of Nora, and the hope of one day being permitted to return to ask her forgiveness on his knees, enabled him to endure his long captivity with resignation. I do a.s.sure you, father, that it almost brings tears to my eyes to see the way in which that man humbles himself before his daughter. Nora's joy is far too deep for words, but it is written plainly in her face. She spent all her spare time with him at first, reading the Bible to him, and trying to convince him that it was not the thought of _her_, but G.o.d's mercy and love that had put it into his heart to repent, and desire to reform. He does not seem quite inclined to take that view of it, but he will come to it, sooner or later, for we have the sure promise that the Lord will finish the good work He has begun. We have hired a room for him in a little village within half a mile of us. It is small, but comfortable enough, and he seems to be quite content with it--as well he may be, with Nora and the children going constantly about him!

”I tell you what, father, the longer I live with Nora, the more I feel that I have got the truest-hearted and most loveable wife in all the wide world! The people of the village would go any length to serve her; and as to their children, I believe they wors.h.i.+p the ground she walks on, as Jerry MacGowl used to say.”

”Och, the idolatrous haythens!” growled Jerry.

”And the way she manages our dear youngsters,” continued the mate, reading on, without noticing Jerry's interruption, ”would do your heart good to see. It reminds me of d.i.c.k Moy's wife, who is about the best mother I ever met with--next to Nora, of course!”

”Humph!” said d.i.c.k, with a grim smile; ”wery complimentary. I wonder wot my old ooman will say to that?”

”She'll say, no doubt, that she'll expect you to take example by Jim Welton when speaking of your wife,” observed Jack Shales. ”I wonder, d.i.c.k, what ever could have induced Mrs Moy to marry such a fellow as you?”

”I s'pose,” retorted d.i.c.k, lighting his pipe, ”that it was to escape the chance o' bein' tempted, in a moment of weakness, to marry the likes o'

_you_.”

”Hear, hear,” cried MacGowl, ”that's not unlikely, d.i.c.k. An', sure, she might have gone farther an' fared worse. You're a good lump of a man, anyhow; though you haven't much to boast of in the way of looks.

Howsever, it seems to me that looks don't go far wid sensible girls.

Faix, the uglier a man is, it's the better chance he has o' gittin' a purty wife. I have a brother, myself, who's a dale uglier than the figurhead of an owld Dutch galliot, an' he's married the purtiest little girl in Ireland, he has.”

”If ye want to hear the end of Jim's letter, boys, you'd better shut up your potato-traps,” interposed Mr Welton.

”That's true--fire away,” said Shales.