The Argosy — page 380: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Village Blacksmith. 359 “You are a good man, Reuben; a deal better than I gave you credit for.” Reuben smiled, for he had a vein of humour in his composition, and his sister’s criticism struck him as quaint when he had just been trying to prove how wicked he was. His nature was a noble one, therefore his lapse into sin made him more watchful than before. True it is that the highest natures fall the lowest, but then they rise to a higher level than that from which they fell, by their penitence : they rebound after their contact with the earth. On the following Sunday Reuben felt rather nervous when he entered his chapel; but he need not have done so; he was treated with as much reverence as ever, only when he came to take his Bible- class he found the young men and boys who attended it less reserved than formerly. They seemed to feel there was a bond of sympathy: between them and their teacher which, if it had previously existed,. they had been unconscious of. Reuben, upright, pious, stern as he was, was after all like them; liable to the same temptations, liable- also to fall; and this knowledge drew them nearer to him ; so true is it that to a man’s friends his faults sometimes endear him more than his virtues. It is easier to talk to a man on the same platform with ourselves than to one standing on a pedestal above us. From that time Reuben’s influence over his class was stronger than.. before ; for sympathy is a very great power for good; it is a rope which has saved many a drowning soul. The next evening Reuben was at the forge rather later than usual, . having some work to finish after his men had left at six; and he was. _ still at his anvil when he received a visit from a tramp, who stopped: at the door and looked in as he passed through the village. He was. tidily dressed in corduroy trousers, a velveteen coat and a sealskin: cap, but his appearance nevertheless struck the blacksmith as some- what suspicious, for the man had a young face and yet his hair and beard were almost white. He made a few commonplace remarks, and Reuben, who was always on the look out for a soul to save, encouraged him to talk, hoping to direct the conversation into a con- venient channel for his purpose. The blacksmith had just remarked that his furnace was almost out and was about to follow up this leading observation with a reference to another furnace whose fire will never be quenched, when the man somewhat suddenly asked if Reuben could tell him where Captain Raleigh was staying. “Maybe I can; but why do you want to know?” said Reuben. ‘He is the lover, isn’t he, of Miss Tempest up at the Rectory? Ah! She’s a plucky lady, she is ; and as handsome as she’s plucky,” returned the man. ‘Well, I don’t know that there is any harm in saying he and Miss Vera do walk together, but I don’t see what business it is of yours, my man,” said Reuben. “Perhaps not, but I have some very particular business with the. GoOmilGaooks (SO) am