Truly she had wronged and wounded him in an intolerable manner, but his great love could look beyond the wrong to her repentance and to his forgiveness.
Walking restlessly about his room or lost in sorrowful broodings an hour passed, and then he began to tell himself that he must not for the indulgence of even his great grief desert his lawful work.

If things went wrong at the mill, because of his absence, and gain was lost for his delay, he would be wronging many more than John Hatton.

Come what might to him personally, he was bound by his father's, as well as his own, promise to be "diligent in business, serving the Lord." That was the main article of Hatton's contract with the God they served--the poor, the sick, the little children whom no one loved, he could not wrong them because he was in trouble with his wife.
Such thoughts came over him like a flood and he instantly rose up to answer them.

In half an hour he was at his desk, and there he lost the bitterness of his grief in his daily work.

_Work_, the panacea for all sorrow, the oldest gospel preached to men! And because his soul was fit for the sunshine it followed him, and the men who only met him among the looms went for the rest of the day with their heads up and a smile on their faces, so great is the strengthening quality in the mere presence of a man of God, going about his daily business in the spirit of God.
He found no wife to meet him at the end of the day.