Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher : a tale of the war of 1812Withrow, W. H. (William Henry)
History
Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher : a tale of the war of 1812
Withrow, W. H. (William Henry)
Clergy -- Fiction; United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Fiction
"Tell her," said the dying man, but he faltered in his speech.
Then, with difficulty opening the book, he turned to a passage
where the leaf was turned down and a hymn was marked with the
letters "H.V.," the initials of Herbert Villiers. The hymn was
that sublime one beginning--
"Now I have found the ground wherein
Sure my soul's anchor may remain:
The wounds of Jesus, for my sin
Before the world's foundation slain;
Whose mercy shall unshaken stay,
When heaven and earth are fled away."
The dying eyes looked eagerly at Neville as the latter read the
words; but when he replied, "Yes, I will tell her, and give her
hack her book enriched with such a sacred recollection," a look of
infinite content rested on the pallid face.
"I bless God I ever met her," faltered the failing voice. "Tell
her," it continued with a final effort, "Tell her--we shall meet
again--where they neither marry--nor are given in marriage--but
are as the angels of God in heaven!" And with a smile of ineffable
peace the happy spirit departed from the carnage of earth's
battles to the everlasting peace of the skies.
Tears of pity fell fast from the eyes of the tender-hearted
Katharine as she listened to the touching narration. As soon as
she could sufficiently command her feelings she wrote a
sympathetic letter to the now doubly-bereaved widow of the stately
Melton Hall, amid the broad ancestral acres of Berkshire. She
enclosed therewith the jewelled cross, which had been committed to
her keeping; but the blood-stained hymn-book she placed in her
little cabinet, beside the Prayer-Book with its leaves of rosemary
for remembrance and pansies for thoughts.
The fellow-officers of Captain Villiers erected over the grave in
which their comrade was buried, beneath the walls of the humble
Methodist Church, a marble slab commemorating his valour and his
heroic death. With the lapse of five-and-sixty years, however, its
brief inscription has become well nigh illegible through the
weathering of the elements, and the grave has become
indistinguishable from the mouldering mounds on every side around
it. But beneath the funeral hatchment of his father, on the
chancel walls of Melton-Mowbray Church, is a marble shield charged
with a cross enguled and a wyvern volant; and a record of the
untimely death of the hope and last scion of the house on the
banks of the far-off Niagara.
CHAPTER XX
CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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