That self-willed and headstrong young fellow found at the village alehouse a number of suspicious characters, with whom he had already had too great an intimacy. Just now he was ripe and ready for any extreme of lawlessness to which they could tempt him; so, after plying him with strong liquors, they promised to aid him in his revenge. The last remnant of his self-control was gone. He became the repository of criminal confidences from which in many a sober moment afterwards he found no way of escape. His descent was now rapid; his harsh and ungenial father often quarrelled with him; even his mother--the only being who had any moral control over him--was unable to exert any restraining influence, and Black Morris was fairly launched on that sea of depravity which, except for God’s miracles of mercy, will engulf all who embark on its treacherous flood. By and bye his name began to figure often and definitely as one of a lawless gang. It was soon rumoured abroad that certain local deeds of outrage and wrong had Black Morris for an aider and abettor, and it is to be feared that there was, in some cases at least, sufficient ground for the report. Soon afterwards Nathan Blyth began to find that he was being made the victim of a series of annoying and harmful persecutions. His flower-beds were crushed and trampled on; his fruit-trees were hacked and hewed; his limited store of live stock were stolen or poisoned. Roused to the utmost pitch of indignation, the stalwart blacksmith sat up o’ nights to watch his premises and guard his property; but in vain, as far as the discovery of the perpetrators was concerned, though it broadened the intervals between the visits of his unknown and malicious foes. Then he found that the most cruel rumours were afloat affecting the character of his darling, coupling her name with that of the young squire in a way that was utterly unwarrantable and untrue; rumours which were innocuous as far as her friends were concerned, but which were greedily seized on by a godless and unprincipled few, who were glad to seize any occasion to bespatter the “Methodies.” Poor Lucy had to drink of the bitterest cup that can be lifted to the lips of virtuous and sensitive modesty. The roses left her cheek and the light forsook her eye, and Nathan sorrowed because he knew not how to shield his girl from the poisoned arrows shot by an unseen hand. At length, however, “the wicked that rose up against them” overshot the mark, and an event transpired that opened the eyes of the villagers to the fierce and vindictive plot which had gathered round Nathan and his darling child, and turned the full flood-tide of their sympathies toward those who had been so cruelly aspersed.