COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1092.
SALEM CHAPEL BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
Chronicles of Carlingford
———
SALEM CHAPEL
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
I N T W O V O L U M E S.
VOL. II.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1870.
The Right of Translation is reserved.
SALEM CHAPEL.
CHAPTER I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV., XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., XIX., XX., XXI., XXII., XXIII.
CHAPTER I.
MRS. VINCENT rose from the uneasy bed, where she had not slept, uponthat dreadful Sunday morning, with feelings which it would be vain toattempt any description of. Snatches of momentary sleep more dreadfulthan wakefulness had fallen upon her during the awful night—moments ofunconsciousness which plunged her into a deeper horror still, and fromwhich she started thinking she heard Susan call. Had Susan called, hadSusan come, in any dreadful plight of misery, her mother thought shecould have borne it; but she could not, yet did, bear this, with themingled passion and patience of a woman; one moment rising up againstthe intolerable, the next sitting down dumb and steadfast before thatterrible necessity which could not be resisted. She got up in the dimwintry morning with all that restless anguish in her heart, and took outher best black silk dress, and a clean cap to go under her bonnet. Sheoffered a sacrifice and burnt-offering as she dressed herself in hersnow-white cuffs, and composed her trim little figure into its Sundayneatness; for the minister’s mother must go to chapel this dreadfulday. No whisper of the torture she was enduring must breathe among theflock—nothing could excuse her from attending Salem, seeing her son’speople, and hearing Mr. Beecher preach, and holding up Arthur’s standardat this dangerous crisis of the battle. She felt she was pale when shecame into the sitting-room, but comforted herself with thinking thatnobody