lm she
had been wronged and forsaken.

Again and again she had offered, in the humblest manner, to ease his
wife's burden by sitting with him at night; and at last, finding she
could hold up no longer, Mrs. Crathie consented. But even after a week
she found herself still unable to resume the watching, and so, night
after night, resting at home during a part of the day, Lizzy sat by the
sleeping factor, and when he woke ministered to him like a daughter. Nor
did even her mother object, for sickness is a wondrous reconciler.
Little did the factor suspect, however, that it was partly for Malcolm's
sake she nursed him, anxious to shield the youth from any possible
consequences of his righteous vengeance.

While their persecutor lay thus, gradually everything at Scaurnose, and
consequently at the Seaton, lapsed into its old way, and the summer of
such content as before they had possessed returned to the fishers. I
fear it would have proved hard for some of them, had they made effort in
that direction, to join in the prayer--if prayer it may be called--put
up in church for him every Sunday. What a fearful canopy the prayers
that do not get beyond the atmosphere would make if they turned brown
with age! Having so lately seen the factor going about like a maniac,
raving at this piece of damage and that heap of dirt, the few fishers
present could never help smiling when Mr. Cairns prayed for
him as "the servant of God and his Church now lying grievously
afflicted--persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed."
Having found the fitting phrases, he seldom varied them.

Through her sorrow Lizzy had grown tender, as through her shame she had
grown wise. That the factor had been much in the wrong only rendered her
anxious sympathy the more eager to serve him. Knowing so well what it
was to have done wrong, she was pitiful over him, and her ministrations
were none the less devoted that she knew exactly how Malcolm thought and
felt about him; for the affair, having taken place in open village and
wide field and in the light of mid-day, and having been reported by
eye-witnesses many, was everywhere perfectly known, and Malcolm
therefore talked of it freely to his friends--among them both to Lizzy
and her mother.

Sickness sometimes works marvelous changes, and the most marvelous on
persons who to the ordinary observer seem the least liable to change.
Much apparent steadfastness of nature, however, is but sluggishness,