"And will ta do whatever he tells thee to do?"
"Ay, will I."
"Well, I believe thee, Jonathan."
God giveth his beloved in their sleep. Surely some swift and subtle intelligence visited Jonathan one night in the Christmas week. His affairs had not apparently changed in any way for the better, yet he rose in a restful, passive mood, feeling only the patient care of a submissive heart. Softly as a chidden yet forgiven child he dressed himself, facing, as he did so, the consequences of his rash, self-willed temper.
For the very first time it struck him consciously that others would suffer in his ruin quite as much as himself. How hard it would be for the daintily reared Eleanor to bear the limitations of actual, bare, cramping poverty. And Sarah! And all the hands, to whom he had ever been a just and kind master! He remembered this morning that the closing of Burley's Mill would mean, to most of them, the breaking up of their homes, and perhaps the scattering of their effects, the separation of families, and the beginning of new lives in unknown places and among strange people.
