Margaret would gladly have read the holy book to her lover, but she might as well have had a Hebrew edition before her, for not a word could she decipher. He could read, and her only way of inducing him so to do was by expressing her desire to hear him read. She found this, however, a difficult and dangerous task, for, independently of the distaste which the old woman had to the Bible, she found her lover very restless and feverish after any exertion of the kind. Where the spirit is unwilling, how irksome is the task! "How plain is that description you read to me this morning of our first parents' fall," said Margaret one day, when the enemy was absent: "how plainly it shows us the necessity of our denying ourselves anything and everything which God has forbidden us!" "It does, indeed, Margaret; but no man can help sinning!" "I doubt that--I think Adam could have done so." "Then why did he sin, Margaret?" "You read to me, that the woman tempted him or persuaded him, and that the serpent beguiled her into sin: so that the serpent was the author of sin." "Yes: and the woman was first deceived, and then deceived her husband. You must admit that she was the worst of the two." "I own that she was, and is the weakest; but her sorrows appear to have been the greater, and she has been little better than a slave to man ever since." "Well, Margaret, well, you have been very kind to me, and I know now that you are a good girl, and wish me to be good. I wish I may be better." "Do not only wish it, dear William, but pray to God to make you so, and I do think that He will." "Well, well, I will be better--yes, I will, if I get over this blow on the head; but oh, how it aches! You must not bewilder me too much." So did this interesting conversation cease, by the man's appeal to his want of strength, when he was asserting a will of his own, which, though bold in words, was but fickle in actions. Every day, as her patient advanced towards recovery, was poor Margaret more and more convinced that Laud wanted stability of purpose to resist evil,--he was, like every passionate man, self-willed and wicked. Margaret, though at this time uneducated, had been a very attentive listener to all good instruction--she was far from being ignorant of right and wrong. Her principles were good, and through her most eventful years she exhibited but one great error, which was her blind passion for the unhappy man whom she would have made, if she could, a better being; and every day she found a more persevering enemy in Mrs. Mitchel, who counteracted all her salutary influence with Laud. Silent and morose as this woman was at times, she could be loquacious enough when it suited her own purpose.