FullReads

“It’s three miles you say?”

“Yes, good three miles, if not more; and it will be dark in half an hour.”

“What direction must I take?” required the stranger.

“You keep along the road until you come to the meeting house on the top of the hill, half a mile beyond this, and then you strike off to the right, and keep straight on.”

“What meeting house is it?”

“The D–Methodist Meeting House.”

“You are expecting the minister, I think you just now said?”

“Yes. Mr. N–, our new Presiding Elder, is to preach to-morrow, and he was to have been here this afternoon.”

“He is to stay with you?”

“Certainly he is. The ministers all stay at my house.”

The man got up, and went to the door and looked out.

“Couldn’t you give me a little something to eat before I go,” he said, returning. “I havn’t tasted food since this morning, and feel a little faint.”

“Jane, can’t you give him some cold meat and bread?” Mr. Wade turned to his wife, and she answered, just a little fretfully, “Oh, yes, I suppose so;” and going to the cupboard, brought out a dish containing a piece of cold fat bacon that had been boiled with cabbage for dinner, and half a loaf of bread, which she placed on the kitchen table and told the man to help himself. The stranger did not wait for another invitation; but set to work in good earnest upon the bread and bacon, while the farmer stood with his hands behind him, and his back to the fire, whistling the air of “Auld Lang Syne,” while he mentally repeated the words of the hymn of “When I can read my title clear,” and wished that his visitor would make haste and get through with his supper. The latter, after eating for a short time with the air of a man whose appetite was keen, began to discuss the meat and bread with more deliberation, and occasionally to ask a question, or make a remark, the replies to which were not very gracious, although Mr. Wade forced himself to be as polite as he could be.

The homely meal at length concluded, the man buttoned up his old coat and drew on his coarse woolen gloves again, and thanking Mr. and Mrs. Wade for their hospitality, opened the door and looked out. It was quite dark, for there was no moon, and the sky was veiled in clouds. The wind rushed into his face, cold and piercing. For a moment or two, he stood with his hand upon the door, and then closing it he turned back into the house, and said to the farmer

“You say it is still three miles to D–?”

“I do,” said Mr. Wade coldly.

“I said so to you when you first stopped, and you ought to have pushed on like a prudent man. You could have reached there before it was quite dark.”

“But I was cold and hungry, and might have fainted by the way.”

The manner of saying this touched the farmer’s feelings a little, and caused him to look more narrowly into the stranger’s face than he had yet done. But he saw nothing more than he had already seen.

“You have warmed and fed me, for which I am thankful. Will you not bestow another act of kindness upon one who is in a strange place, and if he goes out in the darkness may lose himself and perish in the cold?”

The peculiar form in which this request was made, and the tone in which it was uttered, put it almost out of the power of the farmer to say no.

“Go in there and sit down,” he (sic) answed, pointing to the kitchen, “and I will see my wife, and hear what she has to say.”

And Mr. Wade went into the parlor where the supper table stood, covered with a snow-white cloth, and displaying his wife’s set of bluesprigged china, that was only brought out on special occasions. Two tall mould candles were burning thereon, and on the hearth blazed a cheerful hickory fire.