He knelt where she lay on the ground.

‘Hear the boy,’ cried the father, in a rage equally terrible and far less noble.  ‘Hear the boy go on about the baggage!’

The boy still knelt, unheeding anything save the senseless form beside him.

’Wasn’t it enough that you should wanton with a young woman in this style, but you must do it on the holy Sabbath day?’ the old man continued.  ‘Mother,’ he cried, jerking the words over his shoulder at his wife, who stood behind him, ’do you bring such profligates as this into the world, to disgrace a pious man’s fame and bring his house to sorrow?  Let him go forth—­my oldest and youngest born, and eat husks with the swine; he shall have no portion, and there shall be no fatted calf killed when he returns!’

Still the youth knelt, and now his head had fallen upon the prostrate body, and he was covering her cold hand with kisses.

‘Look here, young man,’ the father cried, ’leave go that girl’s hand and come into the house; as true as there’s a God in Israel I’ll teach you what a stout rawhide is made of!’

Just at this juncture neighbor Hopkins and his wife, warned by quick-flying little Martha that something terrible was going on at Deacon Fletcher’s, appeared, hurrying towards the spot.

Peter Hopkins was considered a somewhat ungodly but a very just man, and while the Deacon most highly disapproved of his spiritual state, and doubted that he and ‘vital piety’ were strangers, he still respected Peter’s rugged honesty and directness of purpose, and ranked him foremost among the ‘world’s people.’  He was a man of powerful frame and strong impulses, and when his feelings were aroused he stood in awe of no man, high or low.  When he forced his way into the arbor, therefore, the Deacon paused in his invective and made no remonstrance.

Peter Hopkins at once put the worst construction on the scene before him.  He saw in the son of Deacon Fletcher only a seducer, in poor Hannah Lee only a victim, and his blood rose to boiling heat.  Without pausing to ask any question, grasping at one guess, as he supposed, the whole sad history, he seized Jason by the collar, and, lifting him up, dashed him violently down again, the boy’s head striking a corner of the bench as he fell.

Then he took the girl tenderly up and faced about upon the father, actually foaming with wrath.

‘This comes of psalm singing,’ he cried.  ‘Clear the way there!’ and he bore the still unconscious maiden toward his own house.

Then a sudden and strange revulsion came over Deacon Fletcher.  For the first time, perhaps, in twenty-one years, the father’s heart triumphed over the Deacon’s prejudices.  As he saw his son—­his only son—­lying pale and bleeding on the ground, all recollection of his offense, all thought of sinfulness or godliness in connection with his conduct, vanished, and he only considered whether this pride of his, this strong and beautiful son, were to die there, or to live and bless him.  He stooped, sobbing, over the boy, reconciled, at last, to humanity, and conscious of a strong human love.