Story

life, left by the loved who have deserted us! These are the vacant places we water
with our bitterest tears. Had sophy died, Andrew would have said, “it is the
lord; let him do what seemeth right in his sight. “but the manner and the
means of his loss filled him with a dumb sorrow and rage; for in spite of his
mother’s and sister’s urginig, he would do nothing to right his own self-respect
at the prince of giving sophy the slightest trouble or notoriety. Suffer! Yes, he
suffered at home, where janet and christina continually reminded him of the
insult he ought to avenge; and he suffered also abroad, where his mates looked
at him with eyes full of surprise and angry inquiries. But though the village
was ringing with gossip about sophy and young braelands, never a man or
women in it ventured to openly question the stern, sullen, irritable man who
had been so long recognized as her accepted lover. And whether he was in the
boats or out of them, no one dared to speak sophy’s name in his presence.
Indeed, upon the whole, he was during these days what janet binnie called
“an ill man to live with--a man out of his senses, and falling away from his
meat and his clothes. “this misery continued for about two weeks without any
abatement, and janet’s and christina’s sympathy was beginning to be tinged
with resentment. If seems so unnatural and unjust, that a girl who had
already done them so much wrong, and who was so far outside their daily life,
should have the power to still darken their home, and infuse a bitter drop into
their peculiar joys and hopes.
“I am glad the wicked less isn’t near by me,” said janet one morning, when
Andrew had declared himself unable to eat his breakfast and gone out of the
cottage to escape his mother’s pleadings and reproofs. “I’m glad she isn’t near
me. If she was here, I could not keep my tongue from her. She should hear the
truth for once, if she never heard it again. They should be words as shapes as
the birch rod she ought to have had,...