Adèle Dubois | Page 6

Dubois had poured when preparing the stimulating dose for the invalid. Mr. Norton observed this performance with a twinkle of the eye, but making no comment, the worthy woman retired from the room.
That night Mr. Norton slept indifferently, being disturbed by exciting and bewildering dreams. In his slumbers he saw an immense cathedral, lighted only by what seemed some great conflagration without, which, glaring in, with horrid, crimson hue upon the pictured walls, gave the place the strange, lurid aspect of Pandemonium. The effect was heightened by the appearance of thousands of small, grotesque beings, all bearing more or less resemblance to the little man of the clock, who were flying and bobbing, jerking and grinning through the air, beneath the great vault, as if madly revelling in the scene. Yet the good man all the while had a vague sense of some awful, impending calamity, which increased as he wandered around in great perplexity, exploring the countenances of the various groups scattered over the place.
Once he stumbled over a dead body and found it the corpse of the invalid in the room above. He seemed to himself to be lifting it carefully, when a lady, fair and stately, in rich, sweeping garments, took the burden from his arms, and, sinking with it on the floor, kissed it tenderly and then bent over it with a look of intense sorrow.
Farther on he saw Mr. and Mrs. Dubois, with Adèle, kneeling imploringly, with terror-stricken faces, before a representation of the Virgin Mary and her divine boy. Then the glare of light in the building increased. Rushing to the entrance to look for the cause of it, he there met Mrs. McNab coming towards him with a wild, disordered countenance,--her white cotton headgear floating out like a banner to the breeze,--shaking a brandy bottle in the faces of all she met. He gained the door and found himself enwrapped in a sheet of flame.
Suddenly the whole scene passed. He woke. A glorious September sun was irradiating the walls of his bedroom. He heard the movements of the family below, and rose hastily.
A few moments of thought and prayer sufficed to clear his healthy brain of the fantastic forms and scenes which had invaded it, and he was himself again, ready and panting for service.

CHAPTER III.
MR. NORTON.
In order to bring Mr. Norton more distinctly before the reader, it is necessary to give a few particulars of his previous life.
He was the son of a New England farmer. His father had given him a good moral and religious training and the usual common school education, but, being poor and having a large family to provide for, he had turned him adrift upon the sea of life, to shape his own course and win his own fortunes. These, in some respects, he was well calculated to do.
He possessed a frame hardened by labor, and, to a native shrewdness and self reliance, added traits which threw light and warmth into his character. His sympathies were easily roused by suffering and want. He spurned everything mean and ungenerous,--was genial in disposition, indeed brimming with mirthfulness, and, in every situation, attracted to himself numerous friends. He was, moreover, an excellent blacksmith.
After leaving his father's roof, for a half score of years, he was led into scenes of temptation and danger. But, having passed through various fortunes, the whispers of the internal monitor, and the voice of a loving wife, drew him into better and safer paths. He betook himself unremittingly to the duties of his occupation.
By the influence of early parental training, and the teachings of the Heavenly Spirit, he was led into a religious life. He dedicated himself unreservedly to Christ. This introduced him into a new sphere of effort, one, in which his naturally expansive nature found free scope. He became an active, devoted, joyous follower of the Great Master, and, thenceforward, desired nothing so much as to labor in his service.
About a year after this important change, a circumstance occurred which altered the course of his outward life.
It happened that a stranger came to pass a night at his, house. During the conversation of a long winter evening, his curiosity became greatly excited, in an account, given by his guest, of the Miramichi region. He was astonished at the moral darkness reigning there. The place was distant, and, at that time, almost inaccessible to any, save the strong and hardy. But the light of life ought to be thrown into that darkness. Who should go as a torch-bearer? The inquiry had scarcely risen in his breast, before he thought he heard the words spoken almost audibly, Thou must go.
Here, a peculiarity of the good blacksmith must be explained. Possessed of great practical wisdom and sagacity, he was yet easily affected by preternatural influences. He was