<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
<h3>MISS NANCY SAWYER.</h3>
<p>In a little old cottage in Lewisburg, on one of the streets
which was never traveled except by a solitary cow seeking pasture
or a countryman bringing wood to some one of the half-dozen
families living in it, and which in summer was decked with a
profusion of the yellow and white blossoms of the
dog-fennel—in this unfrequented street, so generously and
unnecessarily broad, lived Miss Nancy Sawyer and her younger sister
Semantha. Miss Nancy was a providence, one of those old maids that
are benedictions to the whole town; one of those in whom the
mother-love, wanting the natural objects on which to spend itself,
overflows all bounds and lavishes itself on every needy thing, and
grows richer and more abundant with the spending, a fountain of
inexhaustible blessing. There is no nobler life possible to any one
than to an unmarried woman. The more shame that some choose a
selfish one, and thus turn to gall all the affection with which
they are endowed. Miss Nancy Sawyer had been Ralph's Sunday-school
teacher, and it was precious little, so far as information went,
that he learned from her; for she never could conceive of Jerusalem
as a place in any essential regard very different from Lewisburg,
where she had spent her life. But Ralph learned from her what most
Sunday-school teachers fail to teach, the great lesson of
Christianity, by the side of which all antiquities and geographies
and chronologies and exegetics and other niceties are as
nothing.</p>
<p>And now he turned the head of the roan toward the cottage of
Miss Nancy Sawyer as naturally as the roan would have gone to his
own stall in the stable at home. The snow had gradually ceased to
fall, and was eddying round the house, when Ralph dismounted from
his foaming horse, and, carrying the still form of Shocky as
reverently as though it had been something heavenly, knocked at
Miss Nancy Sawyer's door.</p>
<p>With natural feminine instinct that lady started back when she
saw Hartsook, for she had just built a fire in the stove, and she
now stood at the door with unwashed face and uncombed hair.</p>
<p>"Why, Ralph Hartsook, where did you drop down from—and
what have you got?"</p>
<p>"I came from Flat Creek this morning, and I brought you a little
angel who has got out of heaven, and needs some of your motherly
care."</p>
<p>Shocky was brought in. The chill shook him now by fits only, for
a fever had spotted his cheeks already.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" said Miss Nancy, as she unwrapped him.</p>
<p>"I'm Shocky, a little boy as God forgot, and then thought of
again."</p>
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