Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
Mytton, never so much as raising his eyes from his occupation,
went on as if life depended on success,
setting one little scrap by another.
THE
BATTLE OF LIFE
OR
What is a Christian.
BY
A. L. O. E.
AUTHORESS OF "THE WHITE BEAR'S DEN," "SHEER OFF,"
"THE HARTLEY BROTHERS," ETC.
London:
GALL AND INGLIS, 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE;
AND EDINBURGH.
CONTENTS.
[A PILGRIM; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN DAILY WALK.]
[CHAPTER V. Sickness and Sorrow.]
[CHAPTER VI. The Mother's Errand.]
[CHAPTER VII. Thinking over it.]
[AN HEIR OF HEAVEN; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN PRIVILEGE.]
[A SAINT; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN CHARACTER.]
[CHAPTER I. The Patient Restored.]
[CHAPTER V. Darkness and Night.]
[A CONQUEROR; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN LIFE'S STRUGGLE.]
[CHAPTER I. A Storm Down Below.]
[CHAPTER V. A Brother to the Rescue.]
[A LIGHT; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN INFLUENCE.]
[CHAPTER I. The Young Stepmother.]
[CHAPTER II. Off to the Station.]
[CHAPTER III. A Dinner-Party.]
[CHAPTER IV. Battle in the Nursery.]
[CHAPTER V. Silver Turned into Gold.]
[A THANKFUL GUEST; OR, A CHRISTIAN IN COMMUNION.]
[CHAPTER III. A Service of Obedience.]
[CHAPTER IV. A Service of Hope.]
[CHAPTER V. A Service of Love.]
THE
BATTLE OF LIFE.
OR,
A CHRISTIAN IN DAILY WALK.
[CHAPTER I.]
A Blessing.
"THERE'S no use in talking more over the matter, mother; when I says a thing—I does it!" cried John Carey, striking his fist upon the table, to give emphasis to his words. "I've told Dick Brace that as soon as I gets the thirty pounds of my uncle's legacy, I'll club it with his, and we'll start in business together, and make a good thing, I don't doubt, out of the 'Jolly Ploughboys,' now the brickmaking is begun so near to the place."
"I don't like your keeping a public, John; and I don't like your joining in anything with Dick Brace," observed Widow Carey, with an anxious shake of the head.
"He's a jolly good fellow," said John.
"He's not a God-fearing man," rejoined the widow. "I doubt there will be a blessing upon anything in which you are mixed up with him."
"I shouldn't care to have him for a brother, but he's just the fellow for a partner in business," cried John; "sharp as a fox, and merry as a cricket. You'll see we'll get on like a house on fire, mother, and I'll be able to pay your coal club for you every week, and maybe your rent too, if you don't care to have the little back-room at the 'Jolly Ploughboys.'" And John bent his tall form, and looked with a merry, kindly smile into his parent's face as he added, "There's a bribe for ye, mother!"
Mrs. Carey returned the smile; indeed it would have been hard not to have done so, so pleasant, at least to a parent's eyes, looked that fine strong young peasant, in the prime of life, with the fresh hue of health on his cheek.
There was something in the appearance of John, with his tawny hair and whiskers, broad and somewhat flat face, and bold decided manner, that made his companions sometimes call him in sport "the young lion:" but he was a very good-humoured lion, for though self-willed and sometimes hasty, there was nothing savage in the nature of the widow's only son.
Mrs. Carey smiled indeed, but she was thoroughly in earnest as she replied, "Were the sacks full of gold sovereigns instead of coals, they wouldn't be bribe enough for me; and as for taking your back parlour—let alone that I'd not choose to end my life in a public—maybe you'll want a younger companion one of these days to keep house for ye, my boy."
John threw back his head and laughed. "I've been a-thinking of that," said he. "If matters go right, and the money come in, there's Dinah Dealtry at the farm—she'd make a trim little wife."
Again the widow shook her head. "I hope you'll never put the ring on her finger, John. She's not a girl to make a good man happy, nor to bring up a family in the right way. There wouldn't be a blessing, I fear, on such a marriage as that."
"Mother, you're always thinking about a blessing," cried John, with a little impatience.
"Because I've always found God's blessing to be the one thing needful, my son, and I never feel myself safe in doing anything upon which I cannot ask it. We may plough and sow a field, but not a blade will grow, unless God's blessing come in the rain and the sunshine. And so it is with everything in life: we spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labour for that which satisfieth not, unless God's blessing crown all."
"I don't see that," said John, bluntly.
"Look at your Bible, my boy; Jacob left home with nothing but his staff and the blessing, and came back with his children, his flocks, and his herds. 'Twas the blessing on Joseph that brought him from prison to palace, and made all things to prosper in his hand. David was hunted like the partridge on the mountains, but the blessing brought him at last to the throne."
"Those lived in old times," cried John Carey; "but we don't look now for palaces or thrones, or, if we did, we shouldn't get 'em! What does the blessing do for us now?"
"John, John, I'm an old pilgrim, and maybe I'm getting nigh the end of my journey, so I may speak the more boldly about it. I've found the blessing like a staff to lean on all the way through; and if I hadn't grasped it, there's many and many a time I'd just have lain down, and given myself up to despair."
"I think you've had more troubles than most folk, mother," observed John, more gravely; "and if there was a blessing on dear good father, how was it that he suffered for years?"
"There was a blessing on him, yes, in his illness, and through his illness," said Mrs. Carey, fervently, while the tears started to her eyes; "no one could have been with him day and night as I was, and not have seen that there was one! Your father had peace, and hope, and joy, and patience—oh! Wonderful patience! And hard as we were put to it sometimes, God always raised up some friend to help us, and opened a way before us when it seemed as if we could not got on. God's blessing was sought by my dear husband from his youth, and I'm sure it went with him wherever he went, prospered him in his honest labour, brought him through troubles, temptations, and trials, cheered him in sickness, made his deathbed at last like the very gateway of heaven! And now he's gone where all is blessing—for ever!" Mrs. Carey closed her sentence with a little stifled sob, as she looked at an empty chair which was now never moved from its place in the corner.
"I didn't mean to make ye sad, mother," said John, laying his broad hand with rough kindliness upon the shoulder of the widow; "and I don't want to worry ye about either the public-house or the girl, but I can't look at matters just as ye do, and, ye see, about that there business with Dick Brace—I've made up my mind. Don't ye be a-vexing yourself about me—all will go right, never fear!"
Then, turning and taking down his cap from its peg, John said, in a merrier tone, "I'm going to old Justice Burns, to get him to pay me uncle's legacy as he promised he would, and then I'm off to London to buy a few things as I want, but I hope to be back soon after dark."
Mrs. Carey saw that expostulation was useless, so she made no further opposition.
"You've a long trudge before you," said she, "take your father's good staff;" and she rose to bring it from its place in the corner just behind the arm-chair.
"Leave it there, mother, I don't want it," cried "the lion." "'Tain't twenty miles to London and back; and were it forty, 'twould not be much to young limbs like mine. Only mind you've a good supper ready for me, for I'll come back hungry as—as a lion!" And nodding a good-bye to the widow, the young man quitted the cottage, whistling merrily as he walked down the hill.
Mrs. Carey watched him fondly as long as his tall form continued in view, and listened to the sound of that whistle which was so pleasant to her ears.
"God bless the lad!" said the mother. "Bless him in his work and his ways, bless his going out and his coming in, bless him now and for ever! He mayn't know the worth of the blessing now, but since my eyes first looked on my babe, there's not been a day, scarce a waking hour, but I've asked it for him from my heart. God will hear a poor mother's prayers, though I'm afraid just now that this legacy hardly comes as a blessing. My dear husband's brother never gave him so much as a shilling to help him through all his long illness, and now leaves to his son thirty pounds, money which seems likely to set the lad against the steady work by which he has gained his bread, to bring him amongst bad companions, and perhaps lead him to marry a girl whose mind is set on flirting and finery, who is not worthy of the true love of a noble-hearted fellow like John! It's a care and trouble to me the thought of this money—but, like all other cares, I must just bring it to my Lord; if pilgrims but set their faces towards Zion, God will direct all their path!"
[CHAPTER II.]
No Blessing.
"WHAT an odd view mother takes of life!" thought John, as he went whistling along the road towards the house of Justice Burns, to whom his uncle had been butler, and in whose hands he had left his savings. "Mother always seems to feel as if she were on a journey, with her staff in her hand, and her bundle on her back, though she has bided these thirty years in that little cottage where I was born. She's always a-thinking of getting on to another world, and perhaps since father has gone there that's natural enough, for he was the light of her eyes. But I take it this world is a very good world, and I'm in no hurry to leave it. I mean to settle down and thrive in that little public-house which is to be let at such a bargain, drive a good business, make plenty of money, and then ask little Dinah to come and share my home. A lucky legacy that of my uncle's, and come at a lucky time. Mother may say what she likes, there's nothing better in life than a little hard cash—except a great deal of it!" And John Carey laughed gaily to himself as he pulled the bell at the Justice's door.
"What do you want here?" asked the liveried servant who answered the bell.
"I want to see Justice Burns. I'm the nephew of his late butler, and he has money of mine in his hands."
"Ah! You're the nephew of poor old Carey, are you?" said the footman, relaxing into an easy sociable manner. "Come in and sit down in the hall. You can't see master yet, for he's taking his breakfast."
As John entered the hall, he might have guessed that a meal was going on in the house, from the very savoury scent which proceeded out of the dining-room.
"Breakfast! Why it's nigh noonday!" cried honest John, who had already taken his dinner, "It's plain the Justice ain't up with the lark."
"You wouldn't be up with the lark neither, if you had such nights as he has," said the servant, who was inclined for a gossip. "The Justice is a martyr to gout—suffers misery, he does, and makes every one about him miserable too, I suppose to keep him company."
"I should say his gout doesn't take away his appetite," observed John, glancing at a steaming dish which the butler was carrying in at that moment to his master.
The footman shrugged his shoulders. "There's the mischief," said he. "The more the Justice suffers, the more he eats; the more he eats, the more he suffers; but he can't do without his turtle and venison, his sauces and wines. Doctor and cook, he keeps both of them at work. I'd not have such legs as he has for ten thousand pounds a year; they're swelled as big as two, and he can hardly get up from his chair; we've to wheel him from one room to another."
"'Twould have been better, maybe, for the Justice if he'd had to follow the plough at sunrise, and get a good appetite for his bread and cheese," observed John, glancing down with some satisfaction at his own active powerful limbs, that had never suffered from an hour's disease.
"Oh! I often say that it would have been a good thing for him, if he'd had to work hard for his bread, clip hedges or break stones on the road," said the talkative footman. "But there's his bell, I must answer it at once, for he's mighty easily put out when a fit of the gout is upon him."
"Well, maybe hard cash, even a great deal of it, is not always a blessing," was the thought which John Carey had leisure to turn well over in his mind during the half-hour which he had to wait while the Justice was eating and drinking in misery and pain, wasting on gluttonous indulgence that money for which he would one day have to render a strict account.
At last the Justice was ready to see John Carey in the study. The young countryman, as he trod the Turkey-carpet of that luxurious room, looked with mingled pity and contempt on the owner of so much wealth, bolstered up with cushions, and swathed in flannels, with the peevishness of suffering written upon his red bloated face. John could not help thinking of the cheerful patience of his own father during sickness, and the thankful pleasure with which he had received every little comfort, as a direct gift from his God.
"What's this you want—your uncle's legacy? I don't know why he should have bothered me with a petty matter like this," said the Justice peevishly, when John had explained his business.
"Thirty pounds—is that the sum? Yes, I remember; I was writing out a cheque for it last night when I was taken so ill that I could scarcely hold the pen in my fingers."
The Justice looked as if it were a labour and pain to him now to open the desk before him with his swollen gouty hands, and he had hardly taken out the cheque when his servant ushered in the doctor.
"There—go, they'll cash it for you in Argyll Street; I can't be plagued with business," said the Justice hastily, motioning to John to quit his presence.
Young Carey hurriedly put the cheque into his pocket-book and left the house, feeling that he would not change places with that wretched Dives, who lived but for self, even if there were no danger of the "place of torment" succeeding the state of luxury of him who fared sumptuously every day.
"I'm thirsty, and I've a long trudge before me," said John to himself. "I'll just step into the little inn yonder, and refresh myself with a tumbler of beer."
John found in the "White Hart," Sam Soames, a man with whom he had but a slight acquaintance, "the less the better," as Mrs. Carey often had said. No one who looked at Sam as he sat with his elbows rubbing through his sleeves, with his battered hat, dirty shirt, and poverty-stricken aspect, would have guessed that he was a skilled workman, who could win two guineas a week. Sam had earned a great deal of money in his time, but as fast as he made it, the gold seemed to slip through his fingers. It might be said of him in the forcible language of Scripture, "he earneth wages to put into a bag with holes." *
* Haggai i. 6.
Never had John's father, through all his long sickness, when he had no power to earn a shilling, known the actual want which was staring in the face of this man, who had no one to blame but himself that he was not one of the most thriving workmen in the town where he lived. Money had come—and had gone—a blessing was not upon it!
John Carey was of a kindly, sociable temper, such as scarcely suited his nickname of "young lion." Worthless as he knew Sam Soames to be, he pitied his wretched condition, and was willing to do him a kindness. He treated Soames to beer, and while the two men drank together, John chatted freely with his companion over his own affairs. Carey told Soames of the legacy which had been left by his uncle, and of the cheque for thirty pounds which he was going to get cashed in London. In his openness of heart, the "young lion" told him moreover of his own plan of partnership with Brace, and invited Sam to come and look in on him sometimes when he should be landlord of the "Jolly Ploughboys." This Sam Soames very readily promised to do, hoping, no doubt, that his easy-tempered friend would not be hard upon him when the time for reckoning should come.
"It was too bad in me to talk about my good-luck to that poor ruined fellow," thought honest John, as, after paying for what he and his companion had taken, he started off on his long walk to London; "it was like making a hungry dog look in through the window at a well-filled larder, when he has not so much as a bone to grind between his jaws. Well, well, if Sam Soames had my thirty pounds to-day, there would not be thirty pence of it left by Sunday. He's one of them chaps that no one can help; hard cash—much or little of it—would be no blessing to him."
And with this reflection John dismissed the subject from his mind, and took to whistling again.
The "young lion" was scarcely at all tired by his ten miles' walk to London. He was puzzled, however, to find his way through its labyrinth of streets, crossing each other in every direction, and found the noise and bustle of the mighty city very distracting.
"I've heard of some one who said that he'd rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak," muttered John to himself, "and I'm much of his mind. I'd think a fortune dearly earned if I'd to go moiling and toiling all my days in a racket like this. But different folk have different tastes; maybe there are some who like it, and would rather see carriages rolling along, than a field of fine wheat bending as the wind blows across it. I'm not one of that sort—that's all."
John had some trouble in finding Argyll Street, and it was an hour later than he expected when he reached the bank at last. The young peasant felt a little shy on entering the large room in which were so many clerks at their desks.
"Here be a lot of fine gentlemen," thought John, "who have nothing to do from morning till night but count up money, and shovel out gold. How tired one would get of the clink of it, and the endless summing and reckoning! I'd rather by far sow beans!"
John's rough jacket and hob-nailed shoes seemed to himself out of place in the bank. Anything like transacting business was new to him, and the "young lion" looked awkward and shy as he advanced, cap in hand, to the front of one of the desks, behind which stood a clerk, who appeared to John to be a very fine gentleman indeed.
The clerk inquired what was his business.
"I want to get this here cheque cashed," said John, pulling his pocket-book from his breast-pocket, and then fumbling in it to find his valuable paper. It was some little time before he could lay his strong clumsy fingers upon it, and put it down on the desk.
"Who gave you this?" asked the clerk.
"Justice Burns, it's for thirty pounds; you see my uncle, he left me a legacy, and—"
The man of business cut the speech of the countryman short.
"This cheque is of no use," he said, pushing it back towards John, "there is no signature on it."
Carey stared in blank amazement, first at the speaker, then at the cheque. What the clerk had said was true enough; the gouty Justice in drawing out the cheque had forgotten to sign his name.
John rubbed his heated forehead, and looked perplexed. "What's to be done?" said he.
"You must take back the cheque and get it signed, of course," said the clerk; "as it is, it is of no more use than blank paper." And having thus summarily dismissed the business, the clerk turned away to attend to a gentleman who had just entered the office.
"This ben't the First of April, or I should have thought the Justice had chosen to play me a trick," thought John, as, somewhat mortified and provoked, he replaced the cheque in his pocket-book, and then quitted the bank.
"He'd no right to send me on such a fool's errand as this because he'd a twinge in his gouty foot. I'll tell him my mind when I see him to-morrow. I'll just go and refresh myself now a bit; for an hour of walking about this Babel takes more out of a fellow than a day spent in hedging and ditching. I'll buy the few things I want, and then get home as fast as my legs will carry me. I shall be ashamed to tell Dick Brace that I've lost a day's work, and had a twenty miles' walk for my pains; 'twill always be a-coming up as a joke against me."
[CHAPTER III.]
In the Dark.
JOHN CAREY had enjoyed his walk to London, and had never so much as thought if he were tired or not; but whether from the noise and excitement to which he had been unaccustomed, or whether from the damp on his spirits telling on his bodily frame, the road which he retraced on his return seemed to him a weary long one. The sun set in a bank of clouds, a heavy mist filled the air; it appeared to John as if he should never get beyond the line of streets and villas which stretch, mile after mile, along the suburbs of London. The country was reached at last, but the evening mist lay so heavy upon it, that John could see nothing of the fields, and the hedges and trees which bordered the road loomed dim and indistinct through the increasing darkness. John had no inclination to whistle.
"Somehow, everything looks dull to me this evening, and I feel a bit down-hearted," muttered John, as he dragged his weary limbs along. "Mother says as how there's nothing ever comes to us by chance, that there's never a brier thrown across a pilgrim's way but he may pluck a blessing from it. I don't see how that can be, but mayhap that's because I ain't a pilgrim, and don't ask or look for the blessing. I can see nothing in this here matter about the cheque but the stupid blunder of a lazy old glutton, and all I get from it is a waste of shoe-leather, and a loss of time and temper. I suppose that I shall have another trudge up to London to-morrow; no, that there Justice should pay for the coach, if there's anything of justice in him but the name."
Darker and darker grew the night, weary and more weary the traveller; one of his shoes hurt his foot, and he painfully limped along.
"If I didn't know every foot of the road here," said John to himself, as he turned down the lane which led to his home, "I'd be a-losing myself in the darkness. I wish I'd done as my mother bade, and taken my father's good oaken stick; one doesn't think, when setting out fresh and hearty in broad daylight, how glad one may be of a staff before the journey is done."
John was to have need of that staff in more ways than one. Scarcely had the thought passed through his mind, when he was suddenly startled by a violent blow on the back of his head, which knocked off his cap, and stretched him on the road. Up the young lion sprang in a moment, facing the cowardly assailant who had attacked him from behind, and receiving as he did so, another heavy blow, which made him stagger backwards, while the blood gushed from his wound. John was bold and strong, and not one to be easily mastered in a struggle, but he had been taken by surprise, he was weary, and had no weapon but his own bare fists.
In vain John tried to close with his assailant, another blow laid him prostrate again, and the highwayman kicked him with his heavy boot, when attempting again to rise. Lights seemed flashing in the young man's eyes, there was a rushing sound in his ears, he had a confused sense of pain and of a struggle for life, and then all consciousness left him—John Carey lay senseless and bleeding.
While Sam Soames, stooping over him, rifled him of the pocket-book, which the ruffian expected to find full of money obtained by cashing the cheque. Soames made off at once with his booty, without attempting to take anything else, or to ascertain whether his victim yet breathed.
It was not long before the guilty Soames discovered that he had hazarded soul and body for that of which he could make no use. But had the pocket-book, instead of an unsigned cheque, contained hundreds of bank-notes, worse than worthless had been that which bore on it the stain of blood, and carried with it a curse like that which rested upon Cain, a fugitive and vagabond upon the face of the earth.
John Carey lay for some time apparently lifeless, perhaps it was the drizzling rain which awoke him at last; he opened his eyes on the darkness, but was utterly unable to move from the damp ground on which he was lying. He could scarcely collect his senses sufficiently to remember anything that had happened, or to imagine how he came to be stretched there, helpless upon the road.
Gradually there dawned upon his mind some recollection of a struggle, then a desire to get home, then a belief that he should never be found till the morning, when his corpse would be carried to his mother. So confused was John's brain from the shock which it had sustained, that even this idea was more like a half-waking dream, than an actual effort of reasoning powers. The sufferer could not fix his thoughts upon anything, not even on the awful probability that he was on the very verge of an eternity for which he was not prepared. Here lay the only son of the widow, the child of so many fond prayers, likely, before the night should have passed away, to be summoned before his Maker, yet unable even to utter the cry—
"God be merciful to me, a sinner!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
The Watcher.
IN the meantime, Widow Carey sat hour after hour in her little cottage, watching and waiting for the return of her son. She had laid the supper ready, the home-made loaf on the spotless cloth, the red herrings which she had bought that afternoon as a dainty for John after his long tiring walk. Though Mrs. Carey had had no refreshment since noon but a cup of weak tea, she would not taste the food before her, till John should be present to share it.
Many a time Widow Carey rose, went to the door, and looked down the lane, hoping to see the tall form which she knew so well ascending the hill; many a time she fancied that she heard his blithe whistle in the distance, and stirred her little fire, and put on the kettle, that John might have something warm to drink after being out so long in the damp night air.
A very long time Widow Carey waited, and it was to her all the longer from the anxious thoughts which were her companions. Hard as she tried to draw comfort from prayer, to assure herself that God would direct her and her son, and bring everything right in the end, the shadow of approaching troubles lay heavy that night on the widow. She could not help picturing to herself John at the bar of the "Jolly Ploughboys," constantly associating with a man of Brace's loose and dangerous views, and a girl who never so much as gave a thought to religion. Mrs. Carey pictured John gradually becoming more careless and worldly, more cold in his affection towards herself, more neglectful of his duty towards God. The widow dreaded her son's being exposed to temptations from which she had no power to guard him, temptations to which his easy, unsuspicious nature would especially expose him.
"Oh! If I could but have the comfort of knowing that my boy had given himself, heart and soul, to his God—I think I could bear any hardship or trial!" sighed the widow, as she sat thinking, with her hand pressed over her eyes.
"He's such a loving son, such a brave, noble, generous man, he has kept so steady, he has worked so hard, I don't wonder that he feels less than others might feel the need of a Saviour to forgive, and of the Holy Spirit to guide him. But there's only one path that leads us to Heaven, and the Lord Himself has told us that that path is a narrow one. We can't walk on it, yet go on our own way, we can't follow two guides at once who would take us in opposite directions; and oh! If we wilfully stray but ever so little from the path which God has marked out, 'tis in the nature of things that we should wander off farther and farther. There's no standing still in the journey of life; our course each day must be upward or downward, and I'm afraid, how sorely afraid, that my darling is entering upon one that will not have a blessing upon it."
Time passed on, midnight was near; Mrs. Carey grew a little alarmed. Certainly John might have been tempted to tarry for the night in London, which offered so many amusements, but she had never known him do so before. He might have been persuaded by Dick Brace to join some jovial party, and sit drinking to a late hour; the widow had never known John give way to intemperance, but the doubt which would rise in her mind, made her more uneasy and restless than ever.
At last the poor mother could no longer stop in her cottage, suspense was more than she could bear; she could not sleep, she could not rest, she lighted her little lamp and went forth into the darkness, in the faint hope of meeting her son.
Chill fell the night rain upon the slight form of the widow. Even to herself, it seemed as if she were bound on a useless errand, and yet her heart impelled her to go on. Her steps were on withered autumn leaves which the night wind blew over her path; their rustle as they fell was the only sound which reached the ear of the mother. Twice she stopped and half resolved to go back, then went on her dark dreary way.
Presently the gaze of the widow fell on a dark object indistinctly seen on the road; Mrs. Carey's heart throbbed faster, and she quickened her steps. The light of her lamp fell on something which seemed at once to stop the beating of that heart altogether, and to curdle the very blood in her veins!
Then from her lips burst a loud wild cry for help, a cry which startled and aroused sleepers in the cottage next to her own, so piercing and shrill it sounded on the still midnight air. In a few minutes, but to the mother they seemed like hours, forms were seen hurrying through the darkness, and kindly voices answered the repeated cry for aid. Widow Carey was found kneeling on the road by the senseless body of her son, supporting his head upon her knees, and, with trembling fingers, trying to staunch the blood which flowed from a deep gash in the young man's brow.
[CHAPTER V.]
Sickness and Sorrow.
A TIME of heavy tribulation to the widow followed the horrors of that night. John Carey was not indeed killed, the spark of life glimmered still, but he lay for weeks in a dangerous state, sometimes buried in stupor, sometimes raving with fever, never able to give a clear account of what had occurred.
It was evident that he had been the victim to violence; the fact of his having gone to London to cash a cheque for a considerable sum was soon known far and wide, and it was, of course, concluded that the "young lion" had been waylaid on his return home, and robbed of the money.
Search was made at once for the man who had committed the crime, a reward was offered for his apprehension. Suspicion fell upon Soames, who was proved to have heard from John's own lips of the cheque, and whose character and wretched circumstances made him appear one not unlikely to have committed an act of violence to save himself from destitution. The sudden disappearance of Soames from the neighbourhood confirmed the suspicion; but the wretched man succeeded in eluding pursuit; he was reserved to suffer, at a later period, the punishment due for other crimes.
In anguish, the widow watched and prayed by the bedside of her suffering son, imploring God, day and night, to spare his life and his reason. The crisis was over at length; the fever was subdued, consciousness returned, but the once powerful young man lay weak and helpless as a child. His tawny locks shorn away, the bandage over his brow, his eye dim, his cheek hollow, who, in that languid invalid, would have recognised the "young lion!"
The doctor forbade any subject being mentioned to John that could produce excitement; he must be kept as quiet as possible, and have as much good wine and generous nourishment as he could take to restore his exhausted strength. Good wine, generous nourishment! How were they to be procured? That question which she could not answer, went to the mother's heart. Mrs. Carey had earned her livelihood by charing and washing, but during her son's illness she had been unable to earn a sixpence by either, nursing him had engaged all her time, and taxed her utmost strength.
During the first fortnight, his mother had felt the press of poverty but little; John could hardly touch food, the doctor had not sent in his bill, much interest was excited in the neighbourhood, little presents were received, and the few tradesmen who supplied necessaries let their accounts run up, without troubling the afflicted mother for immediate payment. Thus for a while, as has been said, Mrs. Carey, watching by the sick-bed of John, and absorbed by the anxiety caused by his critical state, felt no actual want of money. But this did not last very long.
When John was once known to be likely to recover, interest in his case grew weaker, while the need for help grew greater. The hunger of convalescence began just when the shelf was empty; and bills came dropping in when not a sixpence was left in the purse. The baker, who had at first been all sympathy and bustling kindness, shrugged his shoulders, and threw out hints that a man in receipt of wages was bound to subscribe to a club, and not leave the burden of his support during sickness to a widowed mother, and neighbours who were willing enough to help, but who had to care for families of their own.
Dick Brace, over his glass of foaming ale, observed that John Carey had been a simpleton to travel at night with thirty pounds in his pocket, and doubly a simpleton for having given notice in a low inn that he intended to do so.
Mrs. Carey, worn out with anxiety and watching, her nerves shaken by lack of sleep, her spirits depressed by debt and difficulties which thickened around her, found it hard indeed to let patience have its perfect work, and to place firm trust in the changeless love of Him who so sorely tried her.
There are times in the experience of most Pilgrims to Heaven when darkness seems to be above and around them, and the Tempter whispers into their troubled ears, "God hath forgotten to be gracious." The feeble body weighs down the soul, the spirit can scarcely rise in prayer. In such seasons of weakness and gloom, how soothing these words of Scripture! "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh, in darkness and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." *
* Isaiah l. 10.
The widow could better have borne her outward trials, her son's illness, and the poverty which it brought with it, had she been able to see any spiritual good arising from them to one who was dearer to her than life. But it did not seem to Mrs. Carey that affliction had brought John nearer to God. When his brain had been excited by fever, it was about Dinah that he had raved; and now, though he spoke but little, John had more than once dropped words which shewed that he had not given up his scheme of partnership with Brace, that he still looked forward to being joint-landlord with him of the little public-house near the brick field. This grieved the widow beyond everything else.
She did not, indeed, fear that either Dick or Dinah would have much to do with a penniless man who might—and probably would—be unable to work for months yet to come; but that John after all that had happened—after what seemed to his mother like a solemn warning from Heaven—should persist in going on his own wilful way against the wishes of a parent who had almost broken down her health in nursing him, nearly crushed his mother with grief.
One day (it was the first day on which John had been able to sit up in a chair), Mrs. Carey placed before him the little dinner which she had obtained with difficulty, and had prepared with the greatest care. The pale, gaunt man, who looked the wreck of what he had been, felt that strong craving for food which often follows long illness, and the slender repast which his mother brought excited his impatience and scorn.
"Why, mother, you must think me a baby still," exclaimed the invalid almost with anger. "Is that spoonful of minced meat a dinner to put before a man who could devour a sirloin of beef? And where is the wine which the doctor said I must have?" added John, glancing impatiently round him.
"My son," answered the widow meekly, "I give you what I can, not what I would?"
She had herself not tasted meat for a fortnight.
"What do you mean?" cried John. "You know as well as I do that I've plenty of money—there's all the legacy left by my uncle."
Another pang to the heart of the mother! She had often noticed before that John's illness had affected his memory, but she had hoped of late that this was improving. It was a bitter disappointment to find him thus, as she thought, forgetting the fact that he had been robbed as well as almost murdered.
"What do you mean?" repeated the sick man with petulance. "And why do you look so sad?"
"My boy, you know that you were robbed of your all six weeks ago," said the widow.
"Not of a farthing!" cried John. "Surely you cannot have gone on all this time without asking for the money?"
He looked eagerly into the face of his mother, who could hardly bear to meet his excited gaze.
"You applied for it yourself, dear John, on that dreadful Monday," said she.
"And got a cheque—but the cheque was not signed, I could not cash it, I could not get a farthing of the money!" exclaimed John, with unusual animation. "Go, mother, go directly to the Justice, ask him for the legacy which he has in charge—tell him that the cheque was not worth a nettle-leaf!"
John's manner was becoming more excited, for he read in his mother's face that she either did not understand, or did not believe him.
"I cannot go to Justice Burns and ask him for—for—" Mrs. Carey did not finish the sentence aloud, but thought "for money which he doubtless has paid already."
The simple widow knew nothing about cheques, had never seen one in her life, and she feared that her son's fever was returning upon him.
"If you do not go, I must, and will!" exclaimed John, by a desperate effort starting to his feet, and then sinking back exhausted on his seat.
"Oh! My son, I will do what you wish, anything that you wish!" cried the anxious mother. "Only promise that you will keep quiet, and I will go at once to the Justice."
[CHAPTER VI.]
The Mother's Errand.
NEVER had Mrs. Carey gone more unwillingly on an errand. It was not merely that—after being long shut up in a sick-room, weakened by watching and fasting, the fresh air made her feel giddy, so that, but for her husband's good staff, she could scarcely have gone on her way; but that she shrank with extreme dislike from making what she feared to be an unjust claim, and naturally dreaded that, by so doing, she would arouse the anger of the Justice, whose irritable temper was well known in the village.
"I'm sure that I shall never have the face to give him my poor son's message," murmured the widow, as she at last reached the Justice's door, and timidly rang the bell, so timidly that the sound was not heard, and she had to ring again.
"Would the Justice be so kind as to see me, just for two minutes," said the poor woman, when the butler at last appeared at the door.
The man glanced at the thin, anxious face, the shabby but decent mourning; he felt pity for a widow who, as he believed, had come to ask for charity, and who was not likely to receive it.
"Master does not care to see poor folk," observed he; "there's no use coming to him."
"Perhaps if you were so kind as to give him my name, Widow Carey, he might let me have just a word with him; I bring a message from my son."
"Your son, what, the poor fellow who was almost battered to pieces in the lane!" cried the butler. "Just you wait here a little—there's no harm in taking in your name."
The butler was scarcely absent a minute, but in that minute the poor widow had found time for a silent, fervent prayer.
"The Justice will see you," said the kindhearted man, and Mrs. Carey was ushered into the study.
The knees of the widow trembled under her, partly from weariness, partly from fear; she grasped her staff more tightly, and leant more heavily on it. Timidly she glanced at the Justice as she entered his presence. He was, as when John had seen him, bolstered with cushions and swathed with wraps, but his fat swollen face looked more grave and annoyed than when young Carey had come for his money.
"How shall I ever dare to tell him what brings me here!" thought the widow.
Justice Burns was the first to speak, which he did in a sharp decided tone. "I know what you've come for, Mrs. Carey."
"He's clever—for I scarce know myself," was the poor woman's silent reflection.
"When a man's ill, and worried with sleeplessness and pain," continued the Justice, knitting his brows, "no one has a right to find fault, if for once, he make a stupid blunder."
"I'm so glad—so thankful that you think so, Sir, I'm sure you're very good," began John's mother, amazed that the Justice should guess beforehand what she had come to say. "I hope then, that you'll kindly forgive—"
"Forgive—I've nothing to forgive!" cried the Justice, surprised in his turn. "I never dreamed that the cheque had not been signed, till two days ago I glanced over my bank-book, and found that the thirty pounds had never been drawn by your son. As I had concluded—like the rest of the world—that he had been robbed of that sum, I wrote up to London to make inquiries, and heard this morning that a countryman had presented an unsigned cheque in Argyll Street, which, of course, had not been cashed. I'll not trouble you again with cheque; here's the money in good hard cash; I'd have sent it, had you not called;" the Justice pushed across the table a canvass bag heavy with gold. "I suppose that you can give a receipt; just count out the money, and see that all's right."
To the surprise of the Justice, the poor widow, instead of taking up the bag, burst into tears. The relief was so great, so unexpected, that, weak as she was, it quite overcame her.
"Well, I see nothing to cry about," said Justice Burns, in a softened tone, for, selfish as he was, even he had a kindly corner in his heart; "it was odd enough that I should have made such a blunder for the first time in my life, but it was the rarest piece of luck for your son that I neglected to sign that cheque."
"It was a blessing," faltered the widow, drying her eyes. "Oh! Sir—it was all through God's blessing!"
[CHAPTER VII.]
Thinking over it.
WHILE his mother was putting on her bonnet before setting out on her errand, John Carey had finished the slender meal which appeared to leave him more hungry than before. He had watched the widow as she had taken his father's staff from the corner to stay her feeble steps, and it had then struck John, for the first time, how much his mother had aged since his illness, how pale and weary she looked.
"Stay, dear mother," John had cried, with a feeling of self-reproach; "you look so tired, I can't bear to see it. Wait, and we'll find some one else to send."
But the widow's only reply had been a faint smile, as she had left the cottage on her errand for her son.
"My mother has been half-killing herself for me, ungrateful dog that I am," muttered John, his self-reproach growing stronger and stronger. "Why, what can she have been living on all these six weeks, while I've been lying like a log in my bed? I can see well enough in her face what she's been a-suffering for me, without grudging, without complaining, bearing with all my ill temper, nursing me night after night! And what kind of a return do I make for it all? Did I not say to mother this very morning that I wanted to speak to Dick Brace about our little piece of business? She only sighed—I could see she was vexed; but I let her be vexed rather, than give up what I'd set my heart on.
"I've sometimes thought," continued John Carey, still muttering to himself, "I've sometimes thought that if I ever get well again—and now it's like as I may—I'd turn to God, serve Him as my parents have served Him, and begin what mother calls a pilgrim's life in good earnest. But if I did so—ah! The first steps are those as be so hard to take! If I did so—I must honour and obey my mother, as the Bible tells me I should; I must give up this pleasant plan of starting in business with Brace, I must give up the 'Jolly Ploughboys.' 'Twould be a hard pull—it would!"
John rubbed his chin; thinking wearied him, but he could not throw the subject off his mind.
"I might give up Dick Brace and the business, but that would not be the worst of it. Dinah Dealtry!" thought John. "She would not look at a mere day-labourer—she would not live in a cottage like this with my mother!"
He glanced with something like discontent around him at the humble home in which he had been born.
"Dinah has as good as told me that she'd ha' nothing to say to a man who could not offer her a house of her own. If she wouldn't choose to live with mother, mother wouldn't care to live with her; them two could never get on together, they've such different notions and ways."
John heaved a sigh of perplexity and vexation.
"It seems as if I must choose between the two, for I can't have both—that's clear; and I must choose between the two paths also; I know well enough which is the right one, but—but—how thinking does make one's head ache—and one's heart too for the matter of that!"
There are many who, like John Carey, are quite convinced that the pilgrim's path is the right one, the only path which can end in peace; many who are almost persuaded to try it, and who yet shrink back from the sacrifice of what conscience tells them that they must leave behind, if they decide on following the Lord fully in their daily walk through life. It was from this hesitation, from this indecision, so dangerous to the soul, that our Lord would warn His servants when He spoke those solemn words: "If thy hand offend thee (cause to offend) cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell." * Things dear as a hand or an eye must be given up through God's helping Grace, if they keep us back from the narrow way which leads unto life eternal.
* Mark ix. 43.
John Carey thought long, and thought sadly; his brain grew weary, his mind confused, till at length he could do no more than simply lift up his heart to God, and ask for His Spirit to guide him. The once strong, self-willed man was becoming more like the little child who knows his own weakness, and turns to a parent for help and support.
John's solitude was suddenly broken by the sound of tramping footsteps without, and then a loud rap from some one's knuckles on the outer door of the cottage. The latch was lifted, and Dick Brace entered with a quick, bustling air. He threw down a newly-killed pigeon on the table, and greeted John in a loud hearty tone, such as had not been heard for many weeks in that sick-room.
"Ha! Old fellow, glad to see you about again, though," he added with an oath, "you look like one who's had to swim hard for life—they've cropt your mane, and not left much of the 'young lion' about you. I've brought a pigeon I've shot with a new gun I've been trying—no, it's not worth talking about," he added, with a blustering awkwardness of manner, as John seemed about to thank him for the bird.
And Brace seated himself opposite to the invalid, looking fidgety and somewhat embarrassed, as John might have perceived, had he not been too busy with his own thoughts to notice the manner of his companion.
"You are just the man as I was a-wanting to see," said young Carey, his pale face flushing with the effort of speaking; "I've something to say to ye, Dick, and I'd better out with it at once. You see, I don't want to deal unhandsome by you—but about that partnership we meant to set up—"
"Of course that affair went to smash when you were robbed of your tin," interrupted Dick Brace; "one can't set up in business with only a shovel, a spade, and a hammer!"
"But I was not robbed," began Carey, when again his companion cut him short.
"Besides, I've been thinking," said Dick, "that two landlords would be one too many for the 'Jolly Ploughboys'—a landlady would be quite another thing; so," he added, with an awkward little laugh, "I'm going to enter into partnership for life, and I've found Dinah Dealtry quite willing to set up in business with me."
John's flushed face turned very pale; this was the only sign of emotion which he gave. He let not a word escape that might betray his secret to Dick, who, having told his tale, soon afterwards took his leave.
When Widow Carey came home, full of thankful joy, with the money, she only thought her son unusually silent and grave—she believed that this was because he was weary, but she did wonder not a little that his appetite should have so suddenly left him.
When Mrs. Carey heard afterwards from the baker of Dick's engagement to Dinah, the mother guessed what it had been that had cast a gloom over her son. She never mentioned the girl's name to John, and it never once passed his lips. The young man felt that his prayer for guidance had been answered in wisdom and goodness, but he could not feel thankful then for the blighting of earthly hopes.
But a time was coming when John Carey could not only submit, but rejoice that he had been kept from the path that he had wished to pursue; when he could be grateful from the bottom of his heart for the blows which had nearly cost him his life, for the sickness which had wasted his strength, the disappointment which had wounded his heart.
This was when, about a year afterwards, he brought a bright, happy young bride to his home, and saw his mother's eyes beaming with pleasure almost as great as his own; for Jane was the girl of all others whom the pious widow would have chosen to dwell with her as the wife of her son.
"You'll give us your blessing, mother, won't you?" asked John.
The widow took the strong hand which was held out to her, joined it to Jane's, and pressed both to her happy heart.
"Oh! My children," she cried, "may God—your father's God—give you both grace to go on as you have begun, walking hand in hand, as pilgrims to a better home—cheering each other, and helping each other on the way! Never forget that all earth can give is nothing without God's blessing; that blessing gives peace and hope in this life, to be followed by perfect bliss with Him in whose presence is fulness of joy, and in whose right hand are pleasures for evermore!"
OR,
A CHRISTIAN IN PRIVILEGE.
[CHAPTER I.]
The Lonely Cot.
LONELY was the little cottage in which dwelt Silas Mytton, the hewer and chopper of firewood. It stood in a corner of a heath, with not another house near it, and all the winds could sweep over it unchecked from every quarter. It was a small patched-up place, with one little window at the side of the door, and above it another peeping from under the low thatched roof. The cottage had been scarcely large enough to hold Silas, his wife, and their five children; but now Mrs. Mytton was dead, and the eldest boy had gone to sea.
The common looked pleasant enough in the summer, when the blossoms on the flags showed like white feathers round the patches of water, and the heather purpled the ground, and yellow furze dotted it with gold, and geese fed there, and donkeys browsed, and butterflies fluttered over the honied wild-flowers.
But a very dreary place looked the common in winter, when the heath was brown, and the blossoms dead, and the patches of water grew broader and larger, and all around them was swamp, till sharp frost turned the water into ice, and the north wind rushed wildly across the waste, and covered it with snow. Mytton's cottage was then a dreary abode indeed, for seldom did any one care to go near it, and the wind not only swept over but through it, at least so it seemed to the dwellers therein.
There was a little thatched out-house or shed in front of the cottage, and from thence, hour after hour, as long as daylight lasted, might be heard the sound of chopping up wood. It was by this, that Mytton gained his living; for, except in harvest-time, and then rarely, he never worked as a day-labourer for any of the farmers around. Wood-chopping seemed to come as natural to the Mytton family as flying does to birds, or swimming to fishes. Mrs. Mytton had been chopping in the shed but the day before she died, and on the evening after the poor woman's funeral, when her sorrowing family returned from the churchyard, they set to chopping again. Mytton might be seen constantly at work, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing his hairy freckled arms as he steadily plied the hatchet.
He was a hard-featured, stern-looking man, with rough grizzled chin, and cheeks shaven but once a month, and his appearance was that of one who had had a long struggle with want and care. Mytton's trials, however, had rather soured than subdued him; he was a prouder man in his cottage than Sir Marmaduke in his castle. The wood-chopper was wont to tell his children on winter evenings how his grandfather's grandfather had been a gentleman, and a mighty rich one too, who had owned more acres of land in Shropshire than there were sedges round the pool; who had kept twenty hunters in his stables, and had gone up to London once every year in a family coach drawn by six fine grey horses.
The little Myttons, shivering in their cold cottage, used to listen to their father's accounts of such grandeur in bygone days, much as they would have listened to fairy stories. They knew that they neither fared better, nor worked the less hard, because they bore the name of some grand squire who had lived at a time which seemed to them as far back as that of the Deluge. The fine family coach was to the young wood-choppers much the same kind of thing as that which Cinderella's fairy in the story made out of a pumpkin. When the tale had been told, the cottage children went to their beds, and thought very little more about the grandeur of olden times.
All but Amy, the eldest girl, a shy and thoughtful child, with large forehead and earnest brown eyes, which seemed never to rest on the objects near her, but to be looking for something beyond. As Amy's eyes, so was her mind; in her secluded cottage home, the girl was living in a little world of her own.
When scrubbing the tile-floor, or mending the linen, or chopping wood (for girls as well as boys passed most of their time at this work), Amy's thoughts were full of fancies suggested by her father's winter tales. She was imagining the grand times come again—her father living in a turreted castle ten times as large as Sir Marmaduke's dwelling, and her brothers—Silas, Ned, and Joe—each mounted on a prancing white horse with trappings of gold; and her dear mother dressed out in satin and gems, giving out loaves every Sunday to hundreds and hundreds of the poor. These were but foolish fancies, and Amy would have been ashamed to have told them to any one but little May, her youngest sister, who would open wide her blue eyes and think how delightful it would be to ride in a carriage, and eat roast meat every day in the week!
Amy's foolish day-dreams only lasted till the time when, at a lady's request to her parents, she attended a village school, which was nearly two miles from her home. Then every day the little pale girl, with her bag on her arm, might be seen crossing the common. Amy was the quickest and most willing of scholars, her lessons were always well learned, she was ever ready with her answers, and the teacher regarded as her best pupil, the thin, stunted, sickly child, who seemed to take in the meaning of everything with her eyes.
These were very happy times for poor Amy, though the walk to and from the school was almost too much for her strength, and wearily she dragged her limbs along before she reached her father's cottage. Amy was ill-clad and ill-fed, her frame had never been hardy; with her nothing seemed to grow but her mind. At the age of twelve, which was hers when my story opens, Amy was little taller, and scarcely as heavy, as her sister May, who was but half that age.
Amy's happy school-days had not lasted for long. After the sudden death of her mother, the eldest girl of Mytton could no longer be spared from home. She must, young and fragile as she was, do the cleaning and cooking, the washing and mending, and help with the chopping besides.
Amy never complained, and seldom cried except at night when every one else was sleeping, but she felt her mother's loss keenly. She felt also her own weak health, for her strength was ebbing away day by day. Still the poor child went on with her labour as long as her small thin fingers could work; till one day she almost fainted in the shed, and never more was the chopper to be lifted by Amy Mytton. She did what she could in the cottage, but that little grew less and less; a terrible cough racked her frame; her head drooped as if its weight were too much for her strength to support, her appetite totally failed her, and Amy could never keep herself warm.
Mytton did not appear to see the change in his daughter, or, if he did, it aroused his impatience, not his tenderness; indeed there was little of tenderness in the nature of Silas Mytton.
"I wish that you would get rid of that trick of barking, child!" would be the almost angry exclamation of the father, when disturbed by the cough which had broken Amy's rest half through the night.
If, when he drove his bundles of wood in a donkey-cart to the town, any one who knew poor Amy inquired after her health, "Oh! she's well enough," he would say. Or, if he could not say that, Mytton's answer would be, "The child's a bit pinched with the cold, but she'll be all right in the spring."
But spring came, and Amy was not all right: the March winds seemed to chill her slight frame, even more than the hard frosts of winter. With a bitter spirit Mytton saw his pale, patient little girl gradually fading away.
"If she'd common comforts, she would do well enough," he would mutter. "If she had a rich man for her father, she'd not live in a cottage which lets the wind in like a sieve, she'd be wrapped up in velvets and shawls, and have a score of doctors, and they'd soon get the little one round."
Mytton fell into the common mistake of thinking that money could do everything, and this had the effect of filling his soul with malice and envy towards those better off in the world than himself, as if what the rich possessed were something taken from the poor.
Mytton had the savage feelings of a man who thinks that he has been pushed out of a place which is his by right, and Amy learned to dread anything recalling to her parent what his grandfather's grandfather had been in the past, for it always put him out of humour with everything in the present. Mytton would growl at his hard fare, abuse every one above him in social position, or, if he were in a silent mood, hack savagely at his wood, looking as if it were by no means the only thing which he would willingly chop into pieces.
Amy's brothers and little sister were so much accustomed to hear her cough, and see her feeble and sickly, that it never entered their minds that her illness might end in death. They had never known Amy strong, and the change in her was so gradual, that the children who were with her day after day scarcely noticed it at all.
One March morning, however, little flaxen-haired May came to her sister with a perplexed and rather troubled expression on her round, chubby face.
"Amy," she said, laying her thick sun-browned fingers on the wasted hand of her sister, "when Mrs. Gapp was here about the wood, what do you think I heard her a-saying to her husband 'bout you?"
"What was it, dear?" asked Amy.
"She looked at you sad-like and said, (she didn't know I was a-hearing,) 'She's not long for this world,' says she, and Gapp, he answered nothing, but he nodded his head so gravely. Amy, what did she mean?"
A light delicate flush rose on the pale cheek of Amy, and a strange brightness came into her eyes. She raised them for a moment towards the blue sky, and then turned them earnestly, not sadly, on her young sister.
"Did she say that?" asked Amy, softly.
"What did it mean?" repeated May.
"That I may soon go—where dear another has gone," murmured Amy, folding her thin little hands, and again glancing up at the sky.
May, child as she was, was startled at the words and the look; for the first time it flashed across her mind that her sister must be very ill.
"You must not go—you shall not go—we can't spare you—we can't do without you!" cried May, throwing her arms around her sister, as though to imprison her in their tight, loving embrace.
One thought possessed the mind of the little rustic for all the rest of that day, how could she make Amy well? The child was chidden by her father for being hours absent from the wood-shed, "after some mischief," as he said, when poor May had only been employing her clumsy fingers in stitching up her own pinafore into a pillow-case, and tearing up paper to stuff it, so that Amy's languid head—that head which so often was aching—might have a cushion to rest on. It was with great triumph that May carried her pillow to Amy in the evening; to have made it all by herself was a feat, to have invented it was an effort of genius, and the child thought that her cushion must work a wonderful charm on her suffering sister.
"Is it not nice—does it not make you feel so comfy?" asked May, as she placed her somewhat flat and limp paper cushion over the back of the wooden chair upon which Amy was seated.
"It is very nice, very comfy, I shall prize it so dearly, for it is stuffed with love," replied the sick girl, with a faint but pleasant smile.
[CHAPTER II.]
Treasure Found.
ON a bright sunny morning in the beginning of April, Silas Mytton harnessed his donkey to the cart, and led it to the shed, where he and his two younger sons loaded the cart with the bundles of wood on the sale of which their livelihood depended. The air was mild; Amy's chair was dragged by May to the doorway, where the sunbeams came streaming in; and there the little invalid sat watching her father and her brothers, Joe, the elder of the two boys, standing in the cart to receive the bundles that were tossed up to him, and pile the firewood in something like order. It was always with goodwill that the boys helped to load the wood-cart, for on the days when it went to the town, the noise of chopping was silenced, and the axe and knife might lie still on the block in the shed.
"Hard work they've cost us, and little enough they'll bring us!" muttered Mytton, as the last bundle was put on the top of the rest. He gave a blow with his stick to the patient donkey to make it move on, and slowly the wood-cart creaked along the rough road across the common, Silas Mytton walking beside it.
May followed it awhile with her eyes, and then ran up to her sister.
"Amy, you're better, much better!" cried the affectionate child. "I know you'll soon be quite well."
"What makes you think so?" asked Amy.
"Oh your eyes are so bright, and you look so happy—happier than you ever have looked since mother died, and Silas went off to sea."
"I am happy, I was having such pleasant thoughts," said Amy.
"I daresay you was telling yourself a nice story, such as you used to tell me," observed May, "about our being very rich and grand, and wearing—oh I such fine clothes! Very different from this old thing!" added the child, laughing, as she touched her father's fustian jacket, which lay across Amy's knee.
The sick girl had been attempting to put a patch on one of the sleeves, but the weight even of an old garment wearied her wasted arms, and she had put it down on her lap.
"I was thinking of royal robes—white and shining, like those beautiful clouds up yonder," said Amy, softly, "and crowns all glittering like the dew on the grass, when the sun is shining upon it."
"For us to wear?" asked May.
"Yes, for us to wear," replied Amy; and again that expression of peace and joy which, had struck her little sister before, lighted up the sick girl's sunken features.
"Oh! Amy, I want you to tell me a story, like as you used to do," cried May, with eager pleasure. "There's father gone away with the cart, Joe and Davy are off to see if they can't find a bird's nest in some hedge-row, there's no one here but you and me, and won't we be cosy together! I'm going to make another pillow, for that one's got a bit flat;" (rather flat it had been from the first, notwithstanding being often beaten up by the thick little fingers that had made it.)
"Look, I'll bring the three-legged stool and sit at your feet," continued the child; "but first I'll run and get some paper to tear up into bits—I know where I can find some, quite enough for a tiny pillow."
Away ran the little cottager, cheerful and blithe as the bee that was humming over the common on that sweet morning in early spring. Her fears for her sister had quite passed away—childhood is seldom long burdened with cares. And the discovery of an old bag which might, with very little trouble, be turned into a tiny pillow-case had sufficed to make May quite happy.
The child soon returned to Amy, holding up with one hand her print dress, so as to enable her to early in it a supply of loose pieces of paper, which she intended to tear into fragments for stuffing, while with the other hand she dragged the three-legged stool which was to serve as her seat.
"I must take care that the wind does not blow all my paper away!" cried May, as the breeze which she met at the cottage door sent some fragments fluttering behind her. "I'll sit with my back to it—just here; or, stay—please hold my papers for me, Amy, while I run for the bag to put the little bits into as fast as I tear them up, or they'll be blown all over the common."
When May returned with the bag, she found Amy eagerly looking over the papers which had been left in her charge.
"Oh! May, darling, where did you find these?" exclaimed Amy, without raising her eyes from her occupation, as soon as she heard the step of her little sister.
"In the boys' room," replied May; "them papers was all turned out of the old box that Joe made into the hen-roost; it was full of dirty old papers that warn't no use to nobody."
"No use!" exclaimed Amy, with unwonted energy. "Oh! May, look—look—here are leaves from a Bible, from God's own Word! I am so happy, so thankful to get them!" And the sick girl pressed a fragment, yellow with age, to her lips.
"I thought you'd a whole Bible of your own—what you got at the school as a prize," said May, who did not share, nor understand the pleasure of her sister on finding a few torn leaves.