It was very doubtful if he would
recover,--more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with
such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness.
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.
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