He half-rose from his chair.
"My brothers," said the preacher, "if two sparrows, that are sold for
a farthing, are not too little for the care of this infinite
Providence--"
A scream rang out and drowned the sentence. It was followed by a
torrent of vile words, shouted by a man who had seen, now for the
second time, the form that clothed his wife's soul shrivelled in
unthinking flames. All that was left of the white moth lay on the
altar-cloth, among the fruit at the base of the tallest candlestick.
And because the man saw nothing but cruelty in the Providence of
which the preacher spoke, he screamed and cursed, till they
overpowered him and took him forth by the door. He was wholly mad
from that hour.
THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE.
Few rivers in England are without their "Lovers' Leap"; but the
tradition of this one is singular, I believe. It overhangs a dark
pool, midway down a west country valley--a sheer escarpment of
granite, its lip lying but a stone's throw from the high-road, that
here finds its descent broken by a stiff knoll, over which it rises
and topples again like a wave.
I had drawn two shining peel out of the pool, and sat eating my lunch
on the edge of the Leap, with my back to the road. Forty feet
beneath me the water lay black and glossy, behind the dotted foliage
of a birch-tree. My rod stuck upright from the turf at my elbow,
and, whenever I turned my head, neatly bisected the countenance and
upper half of Seth Truscott, an indigenous gentleman of miscellaneous
habits and a predatory past, who had followed me that morning to
carry the landing-net.
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