Yet he had been bred up in the somewhat stern Puritan tenets, and it was not in his creed to speak so much of the everlasting mercy as the everlasting judgment.
Tom put the cup of cordial to his father's lips, himself somewhat sobered by the words heard and the visions called up.

He was neither callous nor hard-hearted; and his father was dying.

In that moment he really longed to turn over a new leaf, and cut adrift from former temptations.
"Then, father, let me go," he said; "let me try afresh in a new place.

I could not do it here perhaps; but I think I could elsewhere." "If that be so, my son, then thou hadst better go," said the dying man.

"I would that thou couldst have remained to be the stay and support of thy mother; but if not, then it may be thou wilt be better elsewhere.