Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round minister to poor Hannah Lee.  The story of her love, of her bravery, of her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends.  So widely did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to comfort her.

What could be done for them was done, and they both lived.

When Jason Fletcher arose from his sick bed, he arose another man than the Jason Fletcher who was thrown down in the arbor by Farmer Hopkins.  He went sick, a dependent, simple, good-hearted, though impatient boy, worn out by the constraints of twenty years, but capable of future cultivation and improvement; he arose from his sickness a moody, cross-grained, dogged and impatient man, whose only memories were tinged red with wrong, and made bitter by thought of what he had endured.  It was little matter to him that all his father’s broad acres were now his own—­the thought of the horrible death his parents had died only suggested a question in his mind, whether it were not a ‘judgment’ on them:  they having lived to persecute him too long already.  Through all the vista of his past life he saw only gloom and shadows, and no ray of brightness cheered the retrospective glance.

No ray?  Yes, there was one.  He saw a fair young girl, loving and innocent, whose sweet face scarce ever left his thoughts.  She reigned where father and mother held no sway; and she made, with the sunshine of her love, a clear heaven for him even in the purgatory of the past.  So he lay, slowly gathering strength, dreaming about her.  And presently they told him—­gently as might be—­how she had saved him.  And they nearly killed him in the telling.

When he was well enough to be about, it was strange that they would not allow him to see her.  She was still very ill, they said, and the doctor, a reasonable man enough usually, utterly refused him admission to her chamber.  He fretted at this, and as he gained strength he ‘went wrong.’

Mingled with the memory of his old privations was a full assurance of his present liberty.  He was of age, and he owned, by right, all the extensive property the Deacon, his father, had so laboriously amassed.  During all his boyhood he had never had a shilling, at any one time, that he could call his own; now hundreds of pounds stood ready at his bidding, and he proceeded very speedily to spend them.  During all his boyhood he had been cut off from the amusements common to the youth of that day; now he launched out into the most extravagant pleasures his money could procure.  Money was nothing, for he had it in plenty; character was nothing, for he had none to lose; only love remained to him of all the good things he might have held, and love lay bleeding while he was denied access to Hannah.  Love lay bleeding, and he turned for comfort to the wine-cup, and raised Bacchus to the place Cupid should have occupied.  Alas for Jason Fletcher!