'Your son is a fine lad,' he said, 'and Hannah is fit to be queen anywhere; and if you don't give her a fitting out when he's well enough to marry her, hang me if _I_ won't! I owe the boy something for the ill trick I played him in my hot-headedness, and he shall have it, too! Say, now, that they shall be man and wife!' Deacon Fletcher astonished the hot-hearted man beyond measure by quietly telling him that, God willing, his dear son should marry Hannah as soon as the visitation that now kept him on a bed of raving illness was taken away. He added meekly that he hoped God would forgive him if he had abused the trust placed in him, and, misled by a vanity of holiness, had done his son great wrong, these many years. 'Give us your hand, Deacon,' cried the delighted pleader; 'you are a good man, if you _are_ a Deacon, and that's more'n I'd have said a week ago! You _have_ hurt that boy, and no mistake! You've either beaten the spirit all out of him, or you have shut up a devil in him that'll break out one o' these days, worse'n them that went into the pigs that we read about! But 'tain't too late to mend, an' if a stitch in time _does_ save nine, it's better to take the _nine_ stitches than to wait till they are ninety times nine. You've got to be a thousand times kinder to the boy than you would if you hadn't been so hard on him all his life.' It was agreed that while the fever held its course nothing should be said to poor Hannah, and so the two men parted--warm friends for the first time in their lives. And poor Hannah Lee went droopingly and patiently about her duties, asking quietly from day to day as to the health of Jason, and telling no soul how her heart seemed breaking within her, and how all the future looked to her like a dreary waste. Mrs. Hopkins threw out gentle hints that the Deacon might relent, and that if he did the wish that was ever in Hannah's heart might be realized. But the poor child paid little heed to her suggestions, a foreshadowing of some direful calamity constantly enfolding and saddening her. Still she kept bravely and quietly about her duties, and it was only when she was alone in her chamber at night that she gave way to the terrible wofulness that oppressed her, and prayed, and wept, and wrestled with her sorrow. And this sweet and lovely creature was the same pious and patient soul who was afterwards taunted by rude village boys, and pointed at as one who had sold herself to Satan.