CHAPTER XV.

NATHAN BLYTH IS THE VICTIM OF A GUNPOWDER PLOT.

“As woods, when shaken by the breeze, Take deeper, firmer root, As winter’s frosts but make the trees Abound in summer fruit;

So every bitter pang and throe That Christian firmness tries, But nerves us for our work below, And forms us for the skies.”

_Henry Francis Lyte._

A few days after the evening when Lucy Blyth was rescued from the unpleasant attentions of Black Morris by her own true knight, the scapegrace in question once again met Lucy in the twilight; and, though sufficiently sober now, he was inclined to force his imaginary and unappreciated claims upon her notice. This time, however, Lucy, whose patience had been fully tried, held her ground, and summoned all her courage for resolute resistance and a final dismissal of her persistent wooer.

“John Morris,” said she, “why will you not let me alone? Surely you can see clearly enough that I don’t want you, that I won’t have you, and that your conduct is downright persecution. I shall be compelled to seek means to protect myself, if you have not manliness enough to desist and leave me alone.”

In vain the hot-headed victim of a fruitless passion pleaded for “a trial.” In vain he promised instant and absolute reformation in conduct and character. In vain he told her that he should be ruined, body and soul, if she turned him totally adrift.

Lucy felt that an uncompromising firmness was her only chance of escape from him, and that she must not even seem to yield one jot.

“Once for all,” said she, “I will not--I never will! and, if you follow me till I die, you’ll get no answer but that. I shall soon hate you if you harass and annoy me any more.”

Then Black Morris lost command of his temper, if, indeed, he could be said ever to have control of it, and said, with an oath,--

“I see how it is: that cursed young squire has played his cards too well for me. He’s a sly beggar; but I’ll be even with him. I hate him, as I hate his father. One robbed us of our farm, and the other has robbed me of you! Let him look out, for I’ll be revenged on him either with bullet or knife!”

Turning on his heel, and leaving Lucy as white as a sheet, he set off at a rapid pace towards Midden Harbour. By and bye he turned back, and overtaking her, glared in her face with a passion simply diabolical, and said,--

“That proud fool of a father of yours thinks a precious deal about you. I asked him, like a man, to let me court you, and he said he’d rather see you dead and in your grave. Tell him he may live to do it. Let him look out,” said he, stamping with rage. “Curse him! I’ll have my revenge;” and again he dashed away, this time in the direction of the Red Lion.

Lucy, more dead than alive, sped homeward on the wings of fear, and on reaching her threshold fell into a dead swoon in her father’s arms.

When she had recovered she told Nathan Blyth all the events of the night. He vainly wished he could recall his needlessly angry words to Black Morris, for he saw to what danger and trouble he had exposed his darling, from the hands of one who threatened to be such a reckless and implacable enemy.

That self-willed and headstrong young fellow found at the village alehouse a number of suspicious characters, with whom he had already had too great an intimacy. Just now he was ripe and ready for any extreme of lawlessness to which they could tempt him; so, after plying him with strong liquors, they promised to aid him in his revenge. The last remnant of his self-control was gone. He became the repository of criminal confidences from which in many a sober moment afterwards he found no way of escape. His descent was now rapid; his harsh and ungenial father often quarrelled with him; even his mother--the only being who had any moral control over him--was unable to exert any restraining influence, and Black Morris was fairly launched on that sea of depravity which, except for God’s miracles of mercy, will engulf all who embark on its treacherous flood.

By and bye his name began to figure often and definitely as one of a lawless gang. It was soon rumoured abroad that certain local deeds of outrage and wrong had Black Morris for an aider and abettor, and it is to be feared that there was, in some cases at least, sufficient ground for the report.

Soon afterwards Nathan Blyth began to find that he was being made the victim of a series of annoying and harmful persecutions. His flower-beds were crushed and trampled on; his fruit-trees were hacked and hewed; his limited store of live stock were stolen or poisoned. Roused to the utmost pitch of indignation, the stalwart blacksmith sat up o’ nights to watch his premises and guard his property; but in vain, as far as the discovery of the perpetrators was concerned, though it broadened the intervals between the visits of his unknown and malicious foes. Then he found that the most cruel rumours were afloat affecting the character of his darling, coupling her name with that of the young squire in a way that was utterly unwarrantable and untrue; rumours which were innocuous as far as her friends were concerned, but which were greedily seized on by a godless and unprincipled few, who were glad to seize any occasion to bespatter the “Methodies.”

Poor Lucy had to drink of the bitterest cup that can be lifted to the lips of virtuous and sensitive modesty. The roses left her cheek and the light forsook her eye, and Nathan sorrowed because he knew not how to shield his girl from the poisoned arrows shot by an unseen hand.

At length, however, “the wicked that rose up against them” overshot the mark, and an event transpired that opened the eyes of the villagers to the fierce and vindictive plot which had gathered round Nathan and his darling child, and turned the full flood-tide of their sympathies toward those who had been so cruelly aspersed.

One morning, when Nathan went into his shop, he began to make the smithy fire, but had scarcely applied the match when a loud explosion followed, his face was scorched by the blinding flame, and his eyes were filled with fine, sharp particles of dust from the smithy hearth. Groping in darkness and pain, he found his way to the slake-trough and plunged his head into the water. The sense of relief was brief, and Natty, still unable to see, was compelled to feel his way indoors, and present his scorched locks, blackened face, and fiery eyes, to his distressed and startled daughter.

In a case like this, however, Lucy showed her remarkable tact and skill--characteristics which made her presence and assistance invaluable by every sick-bed in Nestleton. Calm, firm, and skilful, she applied oil and flour and cotton wool to the burns, and then dispatched her little maid to Farmer Houston’s. In a few moments a messenger had ridden off post-haste to Kesterton to fetch Dr. Jephson, the most noted medico in all the country-side. Lucy’s resources, meanwhile, were tested to the utmost, for her father was suffering the severest pain, especially in the eyes. At length the doctor arrived, made careful examination of his injuries, and cheered them and Mrs. Houston and Judith Olliver, who had come to render what help they could, with the gratifying announcement that his eyesight was uninjured, and that no permanent harm was done. A few days of bandaging and darkness, of embrocation and patience, would put him to rights, the doctor said, especially with such a nurse as Lucy by his side. It was a narrow escape, however, and the wonder was that he had not been blinded for life.

“Thank God,” said Blithe Natty, who was blind Natty too for a season, “thank God for sparing us that sorrow. Things are never so bad but they might be worse!” and even in his pain Blithe Natty could joke about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, for we may depend upon it he was not called Blithe Natty for nought.

Tenderly, lovingly, patiently, Lucy nursed her father night and day. Tenderly, lovingly, patiently, Nathan bore his pain and enforced blindness for her sake, and went so far as to say, though it must be taken _cum grano salis_, that it would be worth while for Guy Fawkes to come again, that he might have another course of nursing and syllabubs from the same gentle hands.

When Nathan appeared again in public, with his scars not yet healed, and a large green shade over both eyes, he was met with universal congratulations on his escape, and universal anathemas on the dastardly villains who had done the shameful deed.

Now, Nathan Blyth and his daughter were quite persuaded that the rough and cruel treatment which they had received was the result of the malice and jealousy of Black Morris. So far they were right; at the same time it is fair to him to say that he was innocent of this crowning outrage. The fact is, that in his first fierce and unrestrained paroxysm of vexation he had enlisted his alehouse chums in his wicked crusade of vengeance; and in the hope of more fully winning him over to their bad confederacy, and partly out of sheer love of mischief, they had espoused his cause with an energy that surpassed all that in his cooler moments he desired to inflict. His disreputable cronies enjoyed the surreptitious “fun” of “taking a rise” out of “Parson Blyth,” as they called him; their horse-play grew on what it fed on, and hence the shameful extremes I have had to chronicle. The gunpowder was secreted by Bill Buckley, a beetle-browed rascal, with whom we shall have to make a closer acquaintance by and bye. He inserted it in the nozzle of the smithy bellows not only without Black Morris’s permission, but utterly without his knowledge, and so far, although it grew out of his conduct, he must be acquitted of so vile and cowardly a deed. It is far easier to set the ball rolling down hill than to stop it on its course; and spirits like those which he had called from the vasty deep to serve his purpose, were not to be laid again, without doing a little extra devilry on their own account.

When Black Morris heard of Nathan Blyth’s misfortune he was not only genuinely sorry, but, suspecting it was some of his set who had done it, he went off straightway into a frenzy of rage against them, altogether as hot as that which had been directed against Nathan Blyth himself. This man was an oddity, and it took all the power and subtlety of the devil to spoil him--whether he succeeded remains to be seen.

After Nathan’s recovery he had returned to his old post at the anvil, and had tuned up again as merrily as ever, for the gunpowder wasn’t manufactured which could blow his “sing” out of him, without dislodging either his tongue or his life. In fact he was one of the Mark Tapley genius with a higher inspiration, and his spirits always seemed to rise towards boiling point as his surroundings sank towards zero. Nathan was fashioning harrow teeth, and the quick rap-tap of his hammer on the heated iron bar kept capital time to his song:

Oh, Love is a clever magician; His rod is a conjuror’s wand; And this is his heavenly mission-- To bind in his magical band The hearts of all men to each other In amity, friendship, and peace, That each may to each be a brother, And hatred and envy may cease.

This, this was the way of the Saviour, His enemies eager to bless: Repaying their evil behaviour With pardon and gift and caress. Like Him on all hate will I trample, And every foe I’ll forgive; And copy His holy example As long as on earth I may live.

If my enemy hunger I’ll feed him, If he thirst I will give him to drink; With a smile and a blessing I’ll speed him, Nor leave him in trouble to sink. Here’s my hand and my heart for each comer, Be he stranger or foeman or friend; For love brings a genial summer, A summer that never shall end.

Oh, Love is a clever magician, His rod is a conjuror’s wand; Good speed to his heavenly mission, Alike on the sea and the land. He binds human hearts to each other, That hatred and envy may cease, That each may to each be a brother, And the earth be an Eden of peace.

In this strain of high philanthropy, Blithe Natty was merrily singing away, when who should darken the smithy door but Black Morris, whom the honest blacksmith had rarely seen since the night when his hasty and wrathful speech anent his daughter, sowed dragons’ teeth, whose painful harvest he had already partly reaped.

“Good mornin’, Nathan Blyth; I reckon you are blamin’ me for that gunpowder business?”

“Yes, I am,” said Nathan, candidly. “Can you look at my scarred face and say you didn’t do it?”

“I did _not_” said Black Morris, with much emphasis; “I never knew of it till my sister Mary told me. Nathan Blyth, believe me, I not only could not do so beastly a thing, but I could and would fell to the ground the man who did.”

Nathan had kept his eyes on him, “looking him through and through.”

“Morris!” said he, “give me your hand. I believe you didn’t. I am sorry I spoke to you that day as I did. Let bygones be bygones”----

“Nay,” said Black Morris, as his head dropped to his bosom, “I don’t say I haven’t brought you mischief, an’ if you knew all I’d said and done against you, I don’t suppose you would be so free with your hand; but I never was brute enough for that last business, an’ now that you believe it, I’ll bid you good-morning.”

“Stop,” said Nathan, “stop a minute. I’ve been singing this morning about love and forgiveness, and I mean to do as I sing. Whatever you’ve done against me or mine, I forgive freely and fully, and now or then, here or yonder, you’ll never hear any more of it from me--give us your hand.”

Black Morris stood awhile looking hard at the man he had injured, then holding out his hand, permitted Natty to shake it, and then suddenly and without a word shot through the doorway and disappeared.

That’s right, Nathan Blyth! Sing your song over again as the anvil rings, and the bright sparks fly, for though there is still a cloud on the horizon whose sombre shadows shall gloom your hearthstone, your kindly deed and Christly spirit done and evinced to-day, will largely help to lift the shadow, and bring back the sunshine of abiding peace!