"Jem!" repeated he, arresting his attention before he spoke. Jem
turned round, the little motion causing the tears to overflow and
trickle down his cheeks. "Thou must trust in God, and leave her in
His hands." He spoke hushed, and low; but the words sank all the
more into Jem's heart, and gave him strength to tear himself away.
He found his mother (notwithstanding that she had but just regained
her child through Mary's instrumentality) half inclined to resent
his having passed the night in anxious devotion to the poor invalid.
She dwelt on the duties of children to their parents (above all
others), till Jem could hardly believe the relative positions they
had held only yesterday, when she was struggling with and
controlling every instinct of her nature, only because HE wished it.
However, the recollection of that yesterday, with its hair's-breadth
between him and a felon's death, and the love that had lightened the
dark shadow, made him bear with the meekness and patience of a
true-hearted man all the worrying little acerbities of to-day; and
he had no small merit in doing so; for in him, as in his mother, the
reaction after intense excitement had produced its usual effect in
increased irritability of the nervous system.
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