During my stay with these people something occurred to cause
them a very deep disquiet. The reader will probably smile
when I tell them what it was. Awaking one night after
midnight I heard the unusual sound of voices in earnest
conversation in the room below; this went on until I fell
asleep again. In the morning we noticed that our landlady had
a somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale
faces, with purple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept
their mother company in some sorrowful vigil. We were not
left long in ignorance of the cause of this cloud. The good
woman asked if we had been much disturbed by the talking. I
answered that I had heard voices and had supposed that friends
from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat up
talking to a late hour. No--that was not it, she said; but
someone had arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and
who had been absent for some days on a visit to relations in
another county. When they gathered round him to hear his news
he confessed that while away he had learnt to smoke, and he
now wished them to know that he had well considered the
matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong nor harmful to
smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco. They
had talked to him--father, mother, brothers, and sisters
--using every argument they could find or invent to move him,
until it was day and time for the woodman to go to his woods,
and the others to their several occupations. But their
"all-night sitting" had been wasted; the stubborn youth had
not been convinced nor shaken. When, after morning prayers,
they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon
them, they had made a last appeal with tears in their eyes,
and he had refused to give the promise they asked. The poor