Salem Chapel

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ... calling her thoughts to her own patient whom she had left so long. She quickened her tremulous steps as Dr Rider disappeared in the darkness; but almost before she had got beyond the last echoes of the Salem meeting, that shadow of darker woe and misery than any the poor mother wist of, was again by Mrs Vincent's side. CHAPTER XXXVII. "You are not able to walk so fast," said Mrs Hilyard, coming up to the widow as she crossed over to the darker side of Grove Street, just where the house of the Miss Hemmings turned its lighted staircase-window to the street; " and it will not harm you to let me speak to you. Once you offered me your hand, and would have gone with me. It is a long long time ago-- ages since--but / remember it. I do not come after you for nothing. Let me speak. You said you were a--a minister's wife, and knew human nature," she continued, with a certain pause of reverence, and at the same time a gleam of amusement, varying for a moment the blank and breathless voice in which she had spoken. " I want your advice." Mrs Vincent, who had paused with an uncomfortable sensation of being pursued, recovered herself a little during this address. The minister's mother had no heart to linger and talk to any one at that moment, after all the excitement of the evening, with her fatigued frame and occupied mind ; but still she was the minister's mother, as ready and prepared as Arthur himself ought to have been, to hear anything that any of the flock might have to say to her, and to give all the benefit of her experience to anybody connected with Salem who might be in trouble. "I beg your pardon," said Mrs Vincent; "my daughter is ill--that is why I was making so much haste ; but I am sure, if I can be of any use to any member of--I mean...