The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and Other TalesMore, Hannah
General
The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and Other Tales
More, Hannah
Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Short stories
The little sleep she had that night was disturbed with dreams of
graves, and ghosts, and funerals, but as they were morning dreams,
she knew those always went by contraries, and that a funeral denoted
a wedding. Still a sigh would now and then heave, to think that in
that wedding Jacob would have no part. Such of my readers as know
the power which superstition has over the weak and credulous mind,
scarcely need be told, that poor Sally's happiness was soon
completed. She forgot all her vows to Jacob; she at once forsook an
honest man whom she loved, and consented to marry a stranger, of
whom she knew nothing, from a ridiculous notion that she was
compelled to do so by a decree which she had it not in her power to
resist. She married this Robert Price, the strange gardener, whom
she soon found to be very worthless, and very much in debt. He had
no such thing as "money beyond sea," as the fortune teller had told
her; but alas! he had another wife there. He got immediate
possession of Sally's twenty pounds. Rachel put in for her share,
but he refused to give her a farthing and bid her get away or he
would have her taken up on the vagrant act. He soon ran away from
Sally, leaving her to bewail her own weakness; for it was that
indeed, and not any irresistible fate, which had been the cause of
her ruin. To complete her misery, she herself was suspected of
having stole the silver cup which Rachel had pocketed. Her master,
however, would not prosecute her, as she was falling into a deep
decline, and she died in a few months of a broken heart, a sad
warning to all credulous girls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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