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.
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.
"I gave it to Silas, 'twas my parting present, and oh! How I've longed for a sight of a Bible since!" exclaimed Amy, whose affection for her brother had led her to make what had been to her a sacrifice indeed. "And now God sends me these precious papers! Let's gather out every piece, May, that has any of the Word printed upon it."
"Not such a little scrap as this surely," said May, picking up a small fragment that had fallen on the ground.
"Let us see what that little scrap holds," said Amy, and taking it from May she read aloud, "'an inheritance undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for'—" *
Here the paper was torn, it contained but a part of a verse. But the gaze of Amy rested on it with joy as she cried, "May, May, these few words describe what we look for, long for, the Home prepared up above!"
* 1 Peter i. 4.
"I don't know what they mean," said May; "what is that long word ''heritance?'"
"It has something to do with coming into property, I think," replied Amy. "Don't you remember what father said yesterday evening about the great inheritance in Shropshire which some one of our name had a long long time ago?"
"Oh! That meant the great house, with all the hundreds and thousands of acres about it that we hear about, but never see!" laughed May.
"But we believe—we believe that there is such place," said Amy.
"I don't care much about it, for I know I shall never have it!" cried May.
"But if you believed that you might have it, that you certainly would have it one day, that it had been bought and was reserved—that means kept for you, would you care then?" asked Amy, with an eagerness which brought on a violent fit of coughing.
It was some time before she had recovered her breathing sufficiently to enable her to go on with the conversation. As soon, however, as Amy could speak, she continued, but in a fainter tone, "Now, May, this is just what I believe about the inheritance in Heaven, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. I believe that there is a bright, happy, glorious Home which the Lord Jesus bought for us, for me, for you, with His own precious blood, and which He is keeping for us, until He has made us ready to enter in, and dwell there for ever."
"You mean when we die?" said May very gravely, looking full into the pallid face of her sister; the fear which she had dismissed was rising up again in the mind of the child.
"Oh! What is dying to a Christian! It is going home—getting possession," cried Amy, faintly but joyfully. "His treasure is in Heaven, and he is going to enjoy it! You should have heard, May, how our teacher used to speak of the beautiful land above!
"'There fairer bowers than Eden bloom,Nor sin nor sorrow see—'"
Again the cough interrupted the words of the young invalid. Amy, after the fit was over, leaned back on her pillow in a state of exhaustion.
May ran and brought her some water; Amy drank it, and smiled.
"You must not speak, it makes you cough so," said May.
"I mayn't have much time left for speaking, darling," faltered Amy; "and I wish so much to tell you things that may make you happy, as I am, when God has taken me up to my Home. May, what does it matter now to that Mytton who lived so long long ago that he was so rich and so great, had servants and horses in plenty, and all else that money could get! He had his inheritance, but he could not keep it, he could not take anything with him into his grave."
"But he may have been a good man," observed May, "some rich people are good, you know."
"If he was a real, true Christian, as I hope he was," said Amy, "then he left his earthly inheritance for one ten million times better! See, May, see, here is another description of it in this leaf torn from the Bible; listen how beautiful it is:
"'The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.'" *
* Rev. xxi. 21, 22, 23.
"Who is the Lamb?" asked May, who had listened with a kind of wondering awe.
"The Lord Jesus Christ," replied Amy, pronouncing the sacred Name with reverence. "He is called the Lamb, because as a lamb was killed by the Jews in the old-old times as a sacrifice for sin, so the Blessed Saviour was killed as a Sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. He is 'the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.' † That is the wonderful history which I used to read in my Bible. May, the Lord suffered, willingly suffered all the pain that cruel men could inflict, that He might wash away our sins, and make us the heirs of Heaven. Was not that wonderful love! He lay, as a Babe, in a manger, and died, as a Man, on a cross, that we might dwell in glorious mansions and live for ever and ever. Was not that love—oh! Such love!"
† John i. 29.
Amy closed her eyes, and May, glancing up at her sister, could see that their lashes were moist with tears.
The little child laid her hand upon Amy's. "We will love the Lord too," said she.
Amy opened her eyes, and, smiling on May, softly murmured, "'We love Him because He first loved us.' * It is so sweet to love the Lord Jesus, and rest on His love; to serve Him now, and then see Him, as I hope to do—very soon."
* 1 John iv. 19.
There was nothing more said on the subject at that time. May busied herself in carefully separating every fragment of the torn Bible from the rest of the papers which she had brought, putting "the holy words," as she called them, into her bag.
Amy intended to stitch them all carefully together, to keep as a treasure, when she should have strength to sort and arrange them. In the meantime, the few verses which she had read to May were as manna for her soul to feed on.
In her coarse, faded black print dress, seated at the door of her humble home, with deadly sickness upon her, the cottager's child felt happy and rich; was she not, through redeeming love, an heir of the kingdom of light and glory? Yea, far firmer than the mountains stands the promise of Christ to the lowly believer, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." †
† Matt. v. 3.
A Search.
"HOW late father is of coming back," cried Joe, as he entered the cottage, flushed and heated, after a long ramble with his brother. Sunburned little peasants were they, clad in coarse garments which, with their rough wear, gave plenty of work to Amy's thin fingers.
"You've been a-clamberin' and scrambling about," observed little May. "Joe, your smock is torn right down the side, and, David, the brim is nigh off your straw hat—a bit o' yer hair is sticking through."
"You'll give a stitch or two, and make the old thing hold together!" cried David, tossing the hat to Amy. "It ain't fit for a scarecrow. That rich old Mytton, as father talks on, he'd ha' stared could he ha' seen what his grand-grand-children would ha' come to!"
"Oh! That old Mytton, I think he was the man in the moon!" laughed Joe. "I don't believe a word about that big carriage and six grey horses. But I say, what's become of father, I thought he'd ha' been back afore now."
"I hope father's sold the wood, or won't he be in a way, and won't we catch it!" cried May.
"He was going not only to sell but to buy at the town," observed Amy. "Father promised to get a nice new bit of print for you, May, for I told him I'd mended and patched that frock of yours as long as I could, but that now it's all coming to pieces, let me do what I will, it's so old."
"I don't think as how it ever was new!" cried Joe. "You wore it at first yourself as long back as I can remember, Amy."
"Ah! There's father coming! I can see him over the common!" exclaimed May eagerly, for the purchase of a new frock was a great event to the child.
"And there's no wood left in the cart, I'm glad of that," observed David. "But sure Dobbin must be lame, he's a-going so slow. There's father a-whacking him well; but he don't go much the faster."
The sound of Mytton's blows on the back of the patient, plodding creature always gave pain to Amy's kindly heart. She would never have willingly inflicted pain on any of God's creatures, least of all upon one that had long and faithfully served her.
The children went out to meet their father, all but Amy, who was so feeble that to rise unaided from the chair upon which she was seated was an effort almost beyond her strength. The poor girl could tell from the tone of Mytton's voice before he entered the cottage that he was out of temper, and inclined to quarrel with all the world.
"Take the beast out of the cart, boys; he's not worth the thistles that he crops! I don't believe I could get five shillings for the lazy brute if I sold him to-morrow. And there was Sir Marmaduke, with his two spanking bays," continued Mytton, as he crossed the threshold of his humble little dwelling, "whirling along the highway, covering me with his dust, and nigh driving over cart, donkey, and all; a fellow whose grandfather was a manufacturer, and spun all his money out of sheep's wool!" Mytton threw himself down on a seat, pulled off his felt cap, and wiped his heated brow with his hand; a handkerchief was a thing of which he did not boast the possession.
"Did you buy the print for me, father?" cried May, who had followed Mytton into the cottage.
"No," the man answered sharply.
"Oh! You forgot it!" exclaimed May, in a tone of disappointment.
"I didn't forget it, I was in the shop, the fellow behind the counter was just going to serve me, when a fine open carriage pulls up at the door, and Sir Marmaduke flings the horses' reins to his liveried lackey and gets out. Of course, I had to stand back to let the fine gentleman pass, I whose ancestor kept a coach-and-six, when he, maybe, was a-running barefoot behind it!" Mytton looked unutterable scorn as he spoke. "He'd come to ask after the yellow satin he'd ordered for his drawing-room curtains; yellow satin, forsooth! Every yard of it costing as much as I'd earn in a week by my labour! I didn't choose to stand there waiting till a sneak of a shopman had done bowing and fawning and smiling to the great man, whose fortune had sprung up like a mushroom, so I turned on my heel and went out. I'm as good a man as Sir Marmaduke any day, for all his swaggering pride!"
Any one who had seen the sneer on the lip of the peasant might have guessed, and would have guessed truly, that there was more of pride under his blue smock, than swelled the heart of the wealthiest peer in the land. In a savage spirit of discontent, Mytton cut a thick hunch of bread from the loaf which Amy had spread ready for him, and a slice from the piece of stale cheese. There was no grace said before dinner by Mytton, indeed thanksgiving would have keen a mockery from one who looked upon himself as wronged, because he had been born in a station as lowly as that which the Lord of Heaven, when He came to visit earth, had chosen for His own.
Mytton ate his bread and cheese in gloomy silence, which his daughters were afraid to break; the two boys were lingering outside with the donkey. Presently Joe thrust in his flaxen poll at the door, and said, "There be a yellow post chaise coming 'cross the common."
And May ran out to look at it, either because any kind of conveyance was a rarity in that place, or because the presence of one stern irritable man made the cottage uncomfortable.
The thoughts of Amy had wandered far-away from the scene before her, when they were suddenly recalled to earth by an exclamation from her father, who was seated opposite to the open door.
"Why—the chariot is stopping here!" cried Mytton.
A bald-headed gentleman put his head out of the carriage window.
"Can you tell me, little girl, if any one of the name of Mytton lives in this neighbourhood?" said he, addressing himself to May, who stood with her chubby finger in her mouth, staring at instead of answering the stranger.
"That be my father," said Joe, grinning with wonder that any one coming in a yellow chariot should wish to see him.
"Is any one wanting me?" asked Silas, rising and going forth from his cottage, for in that quiet spot every word spoken had been heard in the dwelling.
Instead of replying, the gentleman opened the door of the chaise and got out.
"I thought, from the description given me, that this must be the place, Sharp," said he to a younger man who directly followed him.
Mytton looked a little surly, like an Englishman who feels that his cottage is his castle, and wishes to know on what errand strangers come, before he welcomes or admits them.
"Have you any business with me, sir?" he inquired.
"I have a little business, my good man, which can best be transacted within doors. My name is Garway—I am from London. Can I have a little talk with you?" asked the gentleman.
And, taking Mytton's silence for consent, he and his companion entered the cottage, followed by Silas and the wondering group of his children.
"Pray don't disturb yourself—an invalid, I fear," said Mr. Garway, motioning courteously to Amy, who had attempted to rise on his entrance to offer one of the strangers her chair.
The lawyers, for such they were, then seated themselves on high wooden stools which Mytton had made himself, and the younger man produced, to the surprise of the children, not only a large pocket-book, but an ink-bottle and steel pen, and pushing aside the fragments of bread and cheese on the table, placed his writing materials upon it, evidently preparing to take notes. This looked like business indeed.
"Can you inform me," said Mr. Garway to Silas, "whether you are in any way, however remotely, connected with the ancient family of the Myttons of Oaklands, in Shropshire."
The question brought the blood to the swarthy cheek of the hewer of wood.
"My grandfather's grandfather was the owner of the finest place in that county," said he.
The children glanced curiously at the strangers, half expecting them to laugh at such a boast from so poor a man as their father; but they both looked perfectly grave, and Mr. Sharp dipped his pen, and wrote something in his book.
"From what source do you derive your information—I mean, how do you know the fact which you assert?" inquired Mr. Garway.
"I have heard my grandfather speak about it often, when I was a boy," answered Silas; "he died afore I was ten years old."
Mr. Sharp set down the reply.
"But have you only oral—I mean, do you only draw upon your own memory?" asked the lawyer. "Can you trace up the family links which connect you with Hugh Mytton, who lived in the reign of Queen Anne? Have you any proofs to give that you are descended from him?"
"May I be bold, sir, to ask why you put these questions?" asked Mytton, the strong brawny fist which he was resting on the table actually trembling with nervous excitement.
"It may be of consequence to you, my good friend, that I should know all that you can tell me. I put these questions in no spirit of idle curiosity. The fact is, that the last inheritor of Oaklands, in the direct line, has died, and there is considerable difficulty in tracing out to whom the succession legally belongs."
The little rustics stared at each other; they could not understand the lawyer's long words, but they could see that they powerfully excited their father. The veins in his forehead swelled, his hand trembled more than before. A dim idea dawned on the minds of the young Myttons that the fairy tale of the coach and six horses might turn out to be true after all!
"Now, let me ask you again," continued Mr. Garway. "Have you any means of proving your descent from Hugh Mytton of Oaklands?"
"I remember my grandfather telling me all about him forty years ago, as well as if it were yesterday," stammered forth Mytton.
"Ah—you remember, but that's not quite enough. Can you tell me the names of your grandfather's parents, when they lived, and at what church they were married?"
Silas rubbed his brow, passed his fingers through his hair—looked first to the right, and then to the left—but could make no reply to the question. It was very clear that his memory could not go beyond his grandfather, and the tales which the old man had told. He was unable to declare, with certainty, even where his own parents had been married. Mytton could give no distinct evidence on any point, except as to his having heard in his childhood of the great property in Shropshire, owned by one of his ancestors, who used to go up to London once a year in a coach drawn by six fine grey horses.
"But have you no documents, no certificates, no family papers of any kind?" asked Mr. Sharp, upon whose steel pen the ink had dried, while his companion was vainly trying to draw information from Mytton.
Mytton caught at the lawyer's suggestion, as a drowning man might at a rope.
"There was a box holding papers somewhere," cried he.
"Yes, in our room," said Joe.
"Fetch it—bring it at once!" cried both the lawyers and Mytton, speaking together.
"Can't, it's a hen-coop now," muttered the boy, shrinking back, alarmed at the fierce expression on the face of his father.
"You little dog—" began the enraged man, but Mr. Garway stopped his explosion of rage with a gesture of the hand.
"Softly, friend, let me question the boy," he said. "If the box has been made into a hen-coop, what have you done, let me ask, with the papers it contained?"
"I han't done nothin' with 'em," faltered Joe, giving a timid sidelong glance at his father.
"Yes, you patched the window-pane," said little May, pointing to the casement in which more than one pane held more of paper than of glass.
Mr. Sharp instantly rose, went up to the window, and carefully examined the paper; then shook his head, and returned to his seat.
"It, is desirable that every fragment of old papers which the box contained should, if possible, be recovered," observed Mr. Garway. "I would have the strictest search made for them at once."
Off started Joe and David, almost before the sentence was finished; they were only too glad to make their escape from the room, and their ambitious hopes were awakened by the gentlemen evidently setting great value upon what had seemed worthless to them.
"I has," began May, and stopt short in fear.
"You have what, little woman?" asked Sharp.
"Bits in my bag," whispered the child.
Mytton eagerly snatched the bag from her arm, and emptied its contents on the table; turning-the bag inside out, to make sure that no scrap should escape his notice. He turned over the soiled printed leaves with evident disappointment.
"Only bits of an old Bible, no use at all," he muttered.
"I beg your pardon, my good man," said Mr. Garway; "it by no means follows that an old family Bible, of which these leaves appear to have formed a part, should be of no use to us in our search. Many persons keep family records of births and marriages in the blank page of their Bibles, and if this—"
"Ha! Look here!" interrupted Mr. Sharp, catching up a yellow three-cornered morsel of paper with writing upon it, which had got mixed up with the printed portions. "Here is '—ried June 1, 1714,' doubtless this is part of an old record of marriage."
"If we could only discover the rest of the page from which that was torn," cried Mr. Garway. "I should not wonder if we found that we had got hold of the right clue at last."
Diligent search was made amongst the papers which May had put into her bag, but not another scrap could be found to match that three-cornered bit. The whole cottage—upstairs and downstairs—was searched;—the shed, the yard, the dust-hole, the hen-coop, every likely and unlikely spot was hunted over for paper, and papers were found, but the lawyers, after examination, shook their heads at them all.
The Mytton family were in a state of violent excitement, all except one pallid girl who sat by the window, almost unnoticed, because too feeble to join in the search. The extreme anxiety to find a page taken from a family Bible, a page which might possibly help to prove a right to an earthly inheritance, sadly contrasted with the utter indifference felt as regarded the heavenly inheritance to which God's Word skews the believer's claim. But that indifference was not shared by Amy: the scene of bustle around her suggested holy thoughts to her mind. While Silas and the lawyers were eagerly peering over fragments of papers brought by the younger Myttons, the words of a hymn, like soft, low, music, were breathing peace into Amy's soul.
"When I can read my title clearTo mansions in the skies,I'll bid farewell to every fear.And wipe my weeping eyes."
Earthly Hope.
THE sun's red rim had just sunk over the common; evening would soon close in, nothing had been found, save that one little scrap, which could possibly help even a keen lawyer in finding a clue. The strangers rose to depart, sorry to have had their trouble for nothing; the boys were quaking at thoughts of what would follow after the gentlemen had left; for a thunder cloud of gloom had gathered on the face of their father, and the children could read that face too well to expect to escape a storm.
May was standing close by Amy's chair, when, after a severe fit of coughing, her sister bent down towards her and whispered, "May, I have just thought of something; is not my pillow stuffed with paper?"
"Oh! Please—please don't say nothing about it!" was the anxious whispered reply, "Father will whack me well for tearing it up into such little bits."
"I will try not to bring you into trouble; but I think that we ought to tell father," said Amy.
Mr. Garway had risen, and was putting on his hat, as he turned to nod a kindly good-bye to the sick young girl. Amy, with a painful effort, drew the pillow from under her head and said faintly, "Perhaps this had better be looked at, it is stuffed with pieces of paper."
"Why did you not tell that before?" exclaimed Mytton with anger.
And in a moment, his rough hand had torn up poor May's work from the top to the bottom, and scattered its contents in a little heap on the table.
"Plenty of fragments of old manuscripts here," said Garway, whose quick eye instantly detected the yellowish hue and the peculiar fabric of many of the morsels of paper.
"Ah! I should not wonder if this matched our three-cornered bit," cried Sharp, pouncing upon a tiny piece which held but three letters, "mar." He placed the two fragments together, they fitted exactly.
Mytton uttered an exclamation of triumph.
"We must carefully search over all these bits of paper," observed Garway, "and fit in the fragments, if we can, like pieces of a dissected map. But this tedious work will take hours, if not days, and we have already been here for a considerable time. We will take away this heap of little scraps, and pursue the occupation at our leisure."
"I beg your pardon, genl'men, but not one bit of paper shall go out of this cottage!" cried Mytton, to whom it seemed as if the fortunes of himself and his family had all been sewn up in that pillow. "Search here till doomsday, if you like it, but I'll not have a scrap of that there heap taken out of my sight."
Expostulation was in vain; the hewer of wood, feverish with ambitious hopes, would not trust his treasure to the care of the lawyers. The hunt for yellowish scraps, which were carefully collected and put together, went on till darkness closed in, and then the lawyers re-entered their conveyance, and drove off to take their dinner at the nearest inn, promising to return in an hour.
During the time of their absence, 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, and muttering savage words, which made Amy's blood run cold, about the folly which had torn into fragments that which might be of such priceless value. It was well for the children that Mytton was too busy with his heap of small scraps, to vent his anger in anything but words.
It was nearly two hours before the lawyers returned, and there they found Mytton, just where they had left him, bending over the table, and anxiously examining the stuffing of Mary's pillow by the dull light of a tallow dip. The children had all gone to bed, for Amy's cough had irritated her father, whose nerves were painfully on the strain. And May, after many a long, weary yawn, having fallen asleep on the floor, had been roughly wakened, and sent upstairs.
The lawyers brought clearer light and sharper intelligence to the work before them, which was pursued till far into the night. With the help of a little paste, all the scraps which could be made to fit into each other were arranged into something like order. At last, nearly half of the flyleaf of the family Bible, with its record in different handwritings of births, marriages, and deaths, stretching over more than a hundred and fifty years, was patched together—the rest of the leaf had been irrecoverably lost.
The lawyers left the cottage weary and sleepy; Mytton went to his pallet bed, weary, indeed, but so restless that he could not close an eye till the dawn. It seemed almost as if the labouring man were never again to enjoy a night of sound rest.
A lawsuit was commenced regarding the succession to the Mytton estate, which, for month after month, dragged its slow length along. Other evidence besides the mutilated fly leaf, but partly collected through clues which it gave, was brought forward in courts of law. Mytton awaited the conclusion of the suit with a restless impatience which deprived him of appetite and sleep. Daily labour to earn a scanty subsistence became intolerable to a man who hoped to find himself the possessor of several thousands a year.
Mytton and his family almost starved while awaiting the wealth which would, perhaps, never be theirs. Mytton twice sold part of the scanty furniture of his home to scrape up money to take him to London, to watch the progress of his suit. The very flesh wasted from his bones, the poor man grew haggard and wan, and his temper more savage than ever. From morning till night he could think of, speak of nothing but the inheritance which he hoped for, and the same theme haunted his dreams. And this was a man who had had placed within his reach a heavenly inheritance beyond all price, yet who had scarcely given it a thought! A man who had had in the Scriptures the very title deeds, as it were, of that inheritance, and yet had not taken the trouble to read them.
Stands he alone in his folly?
Heavenly Hope.
THE summer flowers came, and withered away; the days grew shorter and shorter. The swallows took their flight to warmer climes; winter was stealing on apace, and yet the lawsuit was not ended on which hung the succession to the Mytton estate!
Amy's feeble spark of life was growing fainter. It was a surprise to herself that she had survived to see the winter, with increasing cares and hardships around her. But the poor sufferer had not been left deserted; help had been sent her in time of need. The clergyman, who came from a considerable distance to visit the sick member of his flock in her lonely dwelling, interested other friends in her case; many a little comfort found its way to the cottage on the common, which Amy gratefully received as a gift from her Father in heaven.
A few days before Christmas, when the wide common looked like an almost unbroken sheet of snow, the rough and little used cart-track across it being entirely hidden from view, little May sat on her low wooden stool at the feet of her sister. The poor child looked thinner and more thoughtful than she had done in the spring, when this story opened. There was no sound of wood-chopping from the shed, which was itself falling into decay.
Mytton had now gone, as he often went, to the nearest public-house to get a sight of the papers, for the tedious suit was apparently at length drawing near to its close. The boys did not care to work unless their father's eye were upon them; they had run off to amuse themselves, no one exactly knew where. They had little to tempt them to stay near the cottage; the last bit of bread that was in it had been finished at breakfast.
"Oh! Amy," sighed poor May, "I wish—I wish we'd never heard of that Mytton estate, that those men in black coats had never come near our cottage, or found these scraps in your pillow! Looking for that inheritance, as father calls it, has been plague and worry to us ever since, and if he don't get it at last, 'twill drive him right out of his wits!"
"I fear that disappointment now would nigh break his heart!" murmured Amy.
"But if he does get it, won't it make him happy, oh! So very, very happy!" cried May.
"I don't know—I hope so; but one can't be quite sure with anything earthly," said Amy.
May looked surprised at the doubt. "I'm sure that it will, if father only gets the inheritance," she cried; "but 'tis so very long a-coming, I'm afraid it will never be his."
"I believe that I shall enter into mine first," said Amy very faintly, and her lips formed the words to which she had hardly strength to give breath, "far better—far better—undefiled and that fadeth not away!"
There was something in the countenance of Amy, sweet and placid as it was, that alarmed May, she could scarcely tell why. The child rose hastily and ran to the door, she felt more anxious than she had ever before been for her father's return.
Scarcely had May opened the door, when Mytton's shadow fell on the threshold; she had not heard his footsteps on the deep snow. The face of Silas was pale with excitement, even his lips were bloodless, and wild eagerness was in his eyes. He clutched in his hand a telegram paper, having met the bearer in the way. May saw at once that great tidings had arrived, but scarcely knew whether Mytton's strange manner betokened the excess of despair or of joy.
She was not long left in doubt!
With the loud exclamation, "I have it!" The inheritor of Mytton strode into the cottage up to the place where Amy was seated.
Perhaps she had heard the exclamation of triumph, for there was a smile on her lips, but it might have been left there by a thought of deeper, sweeter joy than any that his tidings could give. Amy's expectations had been realised, she had entered on her inheritance of life, and peace, and bliss!
Very often in succeeding years did May Mytton think on the doubt expressed by her dying sister as to whether the possession of an estate would make their father happy. It certainly never did so. The chopper of faggots, uneducated, unfitted to mix in the society of those now his equals, proud and shy, afraid of ridicule, and painfully conscious that his rustic manner must expose him to it, was more miserable in his fine old mansion than he had been in his lonely cottage.
The conduct of Joe and David planted his pillow with thorns. They were sent to a fashionable school, where they learned, indeed, much that gentlemen's sons are expected to know, but with it, acquired habits of reckless extravagance and folly. The boys thought themselves far more of gentlemen than their uneducated father could be, and Mytton bitterly felt that they did so. They wasted his money, despised his control, embittered his life by their excesses, and at last disgraced themselves in the sight of the world. To Mytton and his two younger sons, the inheritance so eagerly desired had brought sorrow, disappointment, and shame!
It was not so with May, or with Silas her eldest brother. They never set their hearts upon riches, nor chose their portion here. They made use of the wealth which they inherited as a trust confided to them by their heavenly Master, most enjoyed when most laid out to His glory.
For Amy's short life of suffering had not been spent in vain: the Bible which she had given, the words which she had spoken, had been of far more avail in ennobling the two who loved her best, than all the broad acres of Mytton.
May, amidst many family trials, pursued her course of usefulness in humble faith, cheered by the hope of rejoining her sister, and rejoicing with her for ever, in that bright inheritance above which the Lord hath prepared for them that love Him!
A SAINT
OR,
A CHRISTIAN IN CHARACTER.
The Patient Restored.
"I'M glad that you'll have your husband back again to-day, Mrs. Laver, and I hope that such a long time spent in the hospital will have set him up for good," said Mrs. Batten, the fishmonger's stout good-humoured wife, as she took up the little parcel of snuff which she had just been purchasing at Mrs. Laver's counter.
"It is time he was back indeed. I've had the shop on my hands these ten weeks, or rather, I may say, these six months, for Martin was, I may say, good for nothing long before he took to his bed," replied Mrs. Laver.
She was a thin care-worn woman, about thirty years of age, who had in her youth been good-looking; but the lines on the forehead, and at the corners of the lips, showed the trace of trouble, and perhaps also of temper. Mrs. Laver's manner of speaking was snappish and short, giving an impression, even to strangers, that her life was full of worries, and that she had not much patience to enable her to bear them. Mrs. Laver's dress was decidedly shabby, and was by no means improved by her attempt to make it look gay. Fringe, that did not match her gown in colour, had been sewn on to hide the patches; Mrs. Laver had stuck faded roses into her brown-black lace-cap, and dangling gaudy gilt drops were hanging down from her ears. The tobacconist's wife had a trick of jerking her head when anything annoyed her, which set these earrings quivering and shaking as if in anger or scorn. Altogether, with her sharp grey eyes, and tightly-drawn lips, Mrs. Laver looked a person with whom few would care to be very closely acquainted.
"Certainly it's hard upon a woman to have charge of a tobacconist's shop," observed the fishmonger's wife, glancing at the window, which was darkened with bundles of meerschaums, and boxes of cheap cigars, labels of "Government manillas," and "fine old shag," with pipes whose bowls were fashioned into all kinds of fanciful shapes to attract apprentice boys, and other juvenile customers. Mingled with these, prints and ballads, of a very low description, helped to block up the panes.
Mrs. Laver shrugged her shoulders at the observation; she quite agreed that her lot was a hard one.
"I'm sure," she said, "that if any one knew the moiling and toiling I've had, what with looking after the shop, and keeping things tidy and respectable like, minding the child, and—ah! You little brat!" exclaimed Mrs. Laver, interrupting her complaint, to make a sudden dash at her little girl, a child of about two years of age, who, having been placed by her mother on the counter, had stretched out her hand to the jar of snuff left upon it.
"You're always in mischief, you are!"
There was a sharp slap, and then a low sobbing cry; little Annie was not likely soon to forget the maternal lesson against meddling with goods on the counter.
"Poor little soul," said Mrs. Batten, glancing with pity at the child, whose cheek, usually pale, was reddened by the mother's blow, and wet with the tears running down. "How like she is to her father, to be sure! She does not look over strong either. You'll bring her with you to Greenwich to-morrow, and your husband too, I suppose."
"Yes, a breath of fresh air on the river would do any one good who had to live in this poky little street! Hold your noise, will you!"
These last words were addressed by Mrs. Laver to Annie, and accompanied by a violent shaking of the little girl's arm, which set the mother's earrings quivering.
"If you go on whining like that, I'll give you to the black man, I will, instead of taking you with me to Greenwich!"
Mrs. Batten had just succeeded in fumbling a lozenge out of her pocket, and whether from the effects of the sweet, the threat, or the shaking, Annie was soon quiet enough, though her cheeks still glistened with the tears which her mother had not wiped away.
"We start at two, don't forget," said Mrs. Batten; "if to-morrow is as fine as to-day, the steamer is like to be crowded."
"The more the merrier," replied Ann Laver, the frown passing away from her brow, though its furrow always remained there: "a bit of a spree will brighten up my man; he had got so gloomy and moping-like when his illness was coming on, that I did not know what to make of him. He's fond of the river, I know. Good-day to you, Mrs. Batten. We'll be down at the wharf before two."
"Good-bye, little one," said the fishmonger's wife, as she quitted the shop, nodding and smiling at Annie, who, still perched on the counter, watched her with wistful eyes.
The sweet little face of the child was again very pale, with its habitual expression of patience and thought. Annie did not look like a light-hearted child. One might have fancied, as she sat with her large blue eyes fixed on the jars and pipes and papers in the window, that a good deal was passing through her infant mind, and that not of a cheerful description.
Though Mrs. Laver was fond of her only child, there was not much tenderness in her manner towards her. Mrs. Laver would have been indignant had any one charged her with cruelty, above all towards her daughter; but the harsh word, the hasty slap, the angry threat with which Annie was familiar, had much the same effect on the poor little girl that a blight has on the tender green leaves of the spring. Annie loved her mother, but scarcely as much as she feared her. The little one wanted more of the sunshine of smiles.
She had pined wearily for her father, and the two first nights after Martin Laver had gone to the hospital, his child had cried herself to sleep, "'Cause Daddy's away, and I can't have his bye-bye kiss," as she sobbed.
Decision.
VERY quiet and very dull sat Annie on the counter, staring gravely at the window. She could not clamber down from the counter, and she dared neither play with anything on it, nor ask to be set down on the floor by her mother, who was putting things in order on a shelf, with her back towards the little girl. Suddenly Annie uttered a cry of delight, stretched out her hands, and in her eagerness to get down from her perch would have fallen off the counter, had she not been caught in the arms of her father, who fondly pressed her to his heart.
"Ah! Martin, is that you? I did not look for your coming till the evening," cried Mrs. Laver, turning round, and then giving her husband a welcome that was not unkindly, though she shewed none of the rapturous delight of the child, who clung to her father's neck, and buried her face on his shoulder.
Martin Laver was a tall, fine-looking man, and until his illness had possessed more activity and strength than most men; but his eyes were now sunken, his face looked sickly, and he slightly stooped from weakness.
"Put that monkey down, she'll tire you," said Ann.
Martin smiled, and, shaking his head, pressed his little one to him more closely. He however took a seat, and sat down in the shop, leaning his arm upon the counter. It was such a pleasure to him to feel the soft little hands of his child again stroking his face, and playing with his whiskers, and then the sweet infant lips pressed to his cheek.
In the conversation between husband and wife which followed, Ann took by far the larger share. She told all the gossip of the neighbourhood, while Martin sat listening, or perhaps scarcely listening, with a thoughtful, and somewhat anxious look on his face.
Ann expected a great deal of credit from her husband for the way in which she had conducted the business during his absence.
"I cleaned that window with my own ten fingers," she observed, "and that's not what every woman would have done, you may take my word for that."
The expected praise was heartily given.
"And I've arranged it too, with a pretty bit of taste; those picture ballads attract the passersby, as fly-papers catch flies, specially the one about the murder."
"Ah! That reminds me of what I had resolved on," said Martin, rising from his seat.
After setting down Annie on the counter, he went up to the window, took down the papers, and examined them, one after the other, dividing them into two sets as he did so. Martin then replaced the larger number in the window, but four of the ballads he laid down on the counter with the words, "You had better use these to light the fire, my dear."
"Light the fire! My patience," exclaimed Mrs. Laver, her earrings glancing and twinkling with the jerk of her head. "Why, each of those may bring us a penny, and I'm not so flush of cash as to use them for lighting fires. Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves."
"With me this is no mere matter of money," said Martin. "I want to tell you, dear wife, all that is now on my mind. I've been thoughtless and careless enough in times past, but my eyes have been opened of late, and I intend, God helping me, to lead from henceforth the life of a Christian man."
Martin spoke with some effort, for he knew that his words would rouse a bitter feeling of opposition in his self-willed and worldly wife.
"As a matter of conscience," continued the husband, "I have resolved that nothing immoral or profane shall ever again be seen in my shop."
"Hoity, toity! Fiddlety dee! Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" exclaimed Mrs. Laver, in a tone that frightened Annie, and made her stretch out her hands to her father. "I thought that, in the hospital, you'd have got rid of all that stuff and nonsense."
"In the hospital I hope that I have got clearer views both of a Christian's hopes and a Christian's duties than I ever had before," began Martin.
But his wife would not let him finish his sentence.
"Put back those pictures, I say, and don't let us have any more of this sort of thing, which will only keep us in perpetual hot water!" she exclaimed. "Put them back, or I'll do it myself," and she advanced as if to take them.
Martin was a poor man, but he knew that God had placed him in the position of master in his own little home. He did not choose to bandy words with his wife, but he gave his answer in his action.
Quickly and firmly, he put the four ballads together, and tore them across, then laid down the halves on the counter. There was a resolution shewn by his manner and look, that for a moment overawed as well as surprised Ann Laver. No man is likely really to lose his hold over the affections of his wife, by letting her see that her influence cannot turn him from what he knows to be right. The husband who wins his spouse's respect is most likely to keep her love.
Customers now entering the shop, Martin took his place behind the counter and served them, while Mrs. Laver carried off Annie to the little back parlour. The woman was sullen and out of temper; she foresaw that struggle which must take place, sooner or later, in every home, where two who are not agreed on the most important of subjects, are coupled together as man and wife.
"There will be no peace her; I can see that well enough," muttered Ann to herself. "He'll be pulling one way, I pulling the other; but let him drag his very life out, he'll never get me to follow him in his methodistical ways!"
The jerk which followed this resolution was more defiant than usual.
"There will be no peace here!" How often had that painful thought crossed the mind of Martin, as he had lain in the hospital ward, silently resolving, at whatever cost, fully to follow the Lord.
Feeling too weak in health to be able to battle against a woman's violent will, yearning for the quiet, and comfort, and love, which can make even a humble home such a holy and happy place, Martin had looked forward with something like dread to the constant domestic struggle which was likely to follow any attempt on his part to lead a consistent life. Laver could better, far better, have borne even persecution from without, than the constant jarring with the woman whom he loved, which seemed likely to embitter his life. It was as one who girds himself and prepares for a painful conflict, that Martin, on returning to his home, resolved from the very first to confess his principles openly, to take his stand on the ground of conscience; and while acting with consideration and gentleness towards his wife, never to yield to her a single point where his duty to God was in question.
Martin had not, however, much opposition to encounter on that day of his return, which chanced to be the last of the week. Perhaps Ann's heart, for she had a heart, had warmed towards the husband of her youth, who had suffered so patiently and long; perhaps the sight of that pale sunken cheek roused a feeling of pity within her. Ann kept truce on the first evening, and gave only a look of careless indifference when Martin asked aloud a blessing at his meal, with his Annie's little hands tenderly folded within his own.
Annie was very unwilling to quit her father when Mrs. Laver, in her quick sharp manner, told her that it was time to come to bed, for that she could not keep her eyes open. Those blue eyes filled with tears, little arms were clasped round Martin's neck, and he only prevented the child from bursting out crying, by a promise to come in a little while, and give her a good-night kiss. Mrs. Laver carried Annie upstairs, and Martin was left alone with his thoughts.
"That child is as a piece of my heart, dearer than my life!" reflected the parent. "Helpless and weak as she is, able to do little more than lisp my name, that very helplessness and weakness only serve to make her more dear! She can, at least, cling to me—and love. How gracious is God to compare His own tenderness to that of a parent! 'Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' And all that God requires of us is just what a parent requires of a child, faith, love, and obedience."
There was a proof of love and obedience which Martin knew it to be his bounden duty to give; but he, like many other fathers of families, especially those who are married to worldly wives, felt it to be a duty very difficult to perform. For some little time before going to the hospital, Martin had found the comfort of private prayer, but he had never yet ventured to propose family prayer to his wife. Martin knew that it would be well to begin the custom on that night; delay would not only be wrong, but would increase the difficulties before him.
Laver reproached himself for the repugnance which he felt to entering upon the subject to Ann. Were they not one in the sight of God and of man? Should they not be one in their hopes and their actions? But Martin knew too well that, in all that regarded religion, he and his wife were not one, but severed by a great gulf.
For several minutes he stood irresolute beside the little crib in which Annie lay asleep, before he could summon up resolution to say to her mother, "Wife, let us thank God for His mercies, and ask for His blessing, together."
Without waiting for a reply, Martin instantly knelt down, and though Ann remained standing, she was perfectly quiet while her husband offered up a short but very earnest prayer for herself, himself, and their child.
To speak was at first an effort, but courage and joy came with prayer, and Martin rose from his knees like one who has had a burden rolled from his heart.
"Thank God, I have made a beginning!" thought the husband.
"Where will this end?" thought the wife.
Division.
AS Martin Laver was still weak from recent illness, he slept till a later hour than usual on the Sunday morning. It would have been pleasant to him to have begun his home-life again with a day of rest, had he not more than suspected that, from the opposing views of his wife, Sunday, of all days in the week, was most likely to prove a day of conflict.
The first sight which greeted the eyes of Martin, after he had come downstairs in the morning, was that of Ann Laver arranging the pipes and cigars in the window.
"Nay, Ann, no need to take that trouble," said her husband. "I'll put up the shutters again. I've asked God's forgiveness for having so often broken the Fourth Commandment, and His help to keep it better in future. From this time forth, we will neither buy nor sell upon Sundays."
Ann's short truce with her husband was over, and her passion burst forth the more violently from having for a while been kept under control.
"I tell you what, Martin, I'm not going to have more of this nonsense!" cried the woman, turning fiercely round on her husband. "We've hard enough work as it is to keep soul and body together, while we do as other folk do. Sunday's our best day for business, and, if you're such an idiot as to put up your shutters to please the parson, you'd better give up shop-keeping at once, and take to begging, or throw yourself and your wretched family upon the mercy of the parish!"
"I do not think so," replied Martin, calmly. "I believe that no one is the worse in the end for obeying the Word of God in a simple, straightforward way. 'The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.' * But were it not so, had we only the choice of a poorhouse with that blessing, or a palace without it, we should be fools indeed did we choose the latter. 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?'" †
* Prov. x. 22. † Matt. xvi. 26.
"I hope you don't mean to set up for a saint!" cried Ann, with a scornful jerk of the head.
"I wish to be a real Christian," replied Martin "and the one is the same as the other."
"What stuff you are talking!" cried Ann, with impatience. "Of course we are Christians, not heathens, though we don't pretend to be saints."
"Saint, which means holy, is the Bible name for all God's servants," replied Martin, leaning against the counter as he spoke. "You will find the word Christian, I think, but three times in all the Scripture, that of Saint more than forty or fifty; St. Paul's description of all the Lord's people in Rome was 'beloved of God, called to be saints.'" †
† Rom. i. 7.
"I am no saint, and I don't want to be one," said Ann Laver, with scorn; "but I know that I'm a baptised Christian, and that is enough for me!"
"Simon had but lately been baptised," observed Laver, "when St. Peter, the apostle, said to him, 'Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, because his heart was not right in the sight of God.' ‡ Oh! Dear wife, suffer me to speak for a few minutes freely on those things on which our salvation depends. God asks for our hearts, He will accept nothing less, and He accepts these hearts that, by His Spirit, He may make them holy."
‡ Acts viii. 21.
Ann would not hear her husband to the end.
"How you veer and change about!" she exclaimed. "Before you went to the hospital, it was all—'What must I do to be saved?' And now you are all for holiness as the way to get to Heaven."
"No, never, not the way!" exclaimed Martin, with such energy that his wife stared at him in surprise. "Christ is the Way, the only Way, it is His blood that cleanseth from all sin. * But, as some good man has said, 'He does not save us in our sins, but from our sins.'
* 1 John i. 7.
"'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature'; † he that comes to the Saviour in faith, seeks to follow the Saviour in that 'holiness without which no man shall see the Lord!'" ‡
† 2 Cor. v. 17. ‡ Heb. xii. 14.
Ann Laver had never come to the Saviour, nor felt her need of being saved; she was one of the many who choose their own way, and do their own will, and yet expect, somehow or other, to get to Heaven in the end. She was like a person with bandaged eyes walking towards the edge of a precipice, and the attempt to unbandage her eyes, or stop her on her perilous course, only roused her pride and her anger. It is needless to repeat the bitter things which she said to him whose love had made him speak the truth which she hated to hear. After a violent burst of temper, Mrs. Laver, slamming the door behind her, retired into the back parlour, where Annie had good reason to know that something had put her mother thoroughly out of temper.
With a heavy sigh, Martin Laver went to put up his shutters again. He was so weak from his recent illness, that he had to pause more than once, even when making so slight an exertion. Six months before he would have lifted ten times the weight of a shutter with ease. It was sad to feel the once strongly-knit arms so feeble; but it was not this sense of weakness, nor the fear of approaching poverty, that drew that deep sigh from Laver's heart. It was the burden of that cross which is wont to press more or less heavily upon all who would follow Christ fully—that cross of which the Blessed Master knew the weight day by day, and which He bids all His servants take up.
"Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you," * the Lord once said to His disciples, and through His Word He says so still. Persecution has been the portion of God's saints not only in times when fire and sword were used to destroy them, but when hatred could be shewn only in sneers and taunts, that do not endanger life, but deprive it of earthly enjoyment.
* John xv. 19.
While Laver was replacing the shutters, he thought of Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress," and how hard his wife tried to stop him when he would flee from the wrath to come.
"He had to bear her taunts and revilings," thought Laver; "what a hard struggle it must have cost Christian to leave all that had once been most dear. How different would his pilgrimage have been, had he and his wife been of one heart and one mind, and gone through all their trials together! But though his wife would not go one step with him, she followed at last in his track. Doubtless he had prayed for her very, very often, and God answered his prayer, though not till after Christian had left this earth and its sorrows behind him. Perhaps it may be thus with us; my poor Ann may remember my words, when I am no more here to speak them."
Martin raised his hand to his brow, for a faintness was coming over him. "God help me to be so careful in my daily conduct, to keep my lips and my life so pure, that my wife must own, however unwillingly, that in trying to be a better Christian, I am also a better husband, father, and friend. When she taunts me with being a saint, may I have grace to become one indeed, that, at least, she may never think me a hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another."
Ann would scarcely speak to her husband during all the time of breakfast, but she missed no opportunity of speaking at him, addressing herself to their child.
"Ah! You want more butter to your bread, do you?" she cried, pushing towards Annie a slice which she had just cut from the loaf. "Your father takes good care that we shan't have butter, and it will soon come, I suppose, to doing without the bread too!"
Ann glanced angrily towards the darkened shop as she spoke.
Annie held out her little foot to her mother, one of her tiny shoes needed repair, and the cotton sock appeared through a hole in the leather.
"So you want new shoes, little brat!" cried Ann. "I only wish you may get them! You'll have to run barefoot about the streets soon, and what will you do then, I wonder!"
"Ask Daddy carry me!" lisped the little child, as she calmly went on with her meal, undisturbed by fears for the future.
Even Ann could scarcely help smiling at the unexpected reply.
And Martin, as he stooped to kiss his little one, thought, "if she can so quietly trust her father, shall I not trust mine, who is the Giver of all good things?"
"I suppose you'll be going to some prayer-meeting or other?" said Ann, abruptly, to her husband, as soon as the uncomfortable meal was ended.
"I am going to church," replied Martin, and he could not forbear adding, "I wish we could go there together."
"Oh! I'm no saint, whatever you may be!" exclaimed Ann, with a jerk of the head. "I'm going to Greenwich with the Battens and their set—a lark on the river is a deal more to my taste than all your preaching and praying. I shall pay for my trip with my last Sunday's earnings, which I've kept for the purpose," she added, to give a keener sting to her taunt.
"I should be the last to wish to deprive you of any harmless pleasure," said her husband; "but if you spend the Lord's day in such an excursion, it will be without my consent."
"Your consent, indeed, I never asked for it!" exclaimed the rebellious wife to him whom she had vowed before God to obey. "You go your way, I will go mine; with your leave or without your leave, I'm off to Greenwich by two."
The husband and wife were, indeed, walking on different paths, such as must conduct to different ends. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." * These are our Lord's own words; but how few act as if they believed them to be true!
* Matt. vii. 13, 14.
Crowds press along the broad way, careless and disobedient, yet hoping that, after all, peace and rest and Heaven will be theirs at the end! "Ye shall not surely die" † is the Devil's whisper still, and, like Eve, we are too ready to listen. But let those who would continue in their sins remember that God hath declared in His word that "the end of these things is death," ‡ and that they who are His servants indeed have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
† Gen. iii. 4. ‡ Rom. vi. 21.