"It's very good. Read on, Betty, my lass."
"Oh, fayther, I didn't think you could hear me! What shall I read?"
"Read about some poor sinner like me, that got his sins pardoned by Jesus Christ."
"I can't justly say where it is, fayther; but I know there's one place where it tells of a sinful man as had his sins pardoned by Jesus Christ, even when he hung upon the cross. I know well it was when the Lord were a-dying. Ah, here it is;" and she read,--
"`And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.'"
"Do you think, Betty," asked Johnson very earnestly, "I should go to be with Jesus, if I were to die now? Oh, if this pain's so bad, what must hell-fire be?"
"Fayther," replied his daughter quietly, "the Lord's spared you for summat. I prayed him to spare you, and he'll not cast you off now as he's heard my prayer. If you take him at his word, he'll not tell you as you're mistaken--he'll not say he hasn't pardon in his heart for you."
"I believe it, I will believe it," said the poor man, the tears running down his cheeks. "O God, be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus Christ's sake,"--there was a pause; then, after a while, he added, "I think as he'll hear me, Betty."
"I am sure he will," she answered; "but you must lie still, fayther, or maybe you'll do yourself harm. The doctor'll be here just now."
It was a night of darkness and terror, yet even on that sad night there was glorious light which man's eye could not see, for there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over at least one penitent sinner in Langhurst. But how full of gloom to most! Many had been cut off in the midst of their sins, and those who mourned their loss sorrowed as those who have no hope. Two of poor Johnson's persecutors were suddenly snatched away in their impenitence and hardness of heart, a third was crippled for life. Yet the drink kept firm hold of its victims--the very night of the explosion the "George" gathered a golden harvest. Death in its ghastliest forms only seemed to whet the thirst for the drink. At one house, while the blackened corpse lay in its clothes on the outside of the bed, preparatory to its being laid out, the dead man's widow and her female helpers sat refreshing themselves, and driving away care, with large potations of tea, made palatable with rum, and that so near the corpse that any one of the party could have touched it without rising from her seat.
