Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Seventeen.Further Confessions.Ned Taylor’s misspent life came to an end a few weeks after his confession to Thomas Bradly of his connection with the awful death of Joe Wright. His internal injuries could not be healed; and, after many days and nights of terrible suffering, meekly and patiently borne, he passed away from a world on which he had left no other mark but the scar of a wasted life. Alas that beings to whom God has given faculties, by the right use of which they might glorify him on the earth, should pass away from it, as thousands do, to be remembered only as a warning and a shame! Not but that there was a little fringe of light on the skirts of the dark cloud of Ned Taylor’s career. There was, indeed, no joy nor triumphant confidence at the last, but there was humble and penitent hope.Bradly and Foster were among those who followed him to the grave, and listened with awe to the sublime words of the burial service. As they turned to go home, Bradly noticed a female among the by-standers, whose face he felt sure he knew, though it was nearly concealed from him by her handkerchief, and the pains she manifestly took to avoid observation as much as possible. She was one, if she was the person he supposed her to be, whom he would least have expected to meet on the present occasion; but he might, of course, be mistaken. That same evening, while he was sitting in his surgery about nine o’clock, he heard a timid knock at the outer door. He was used to all sorts of knocks, bold and timid, loud and gentle, so he at once said, “Come in,” and was not surprised to see a woman enter, with her face muffled up in a shawl.“Take a seat, missus,” he said in a kind voice, “and tell me what I can do for you.”—His visitor sat down and uncovered her face without speaking a word. It was Lydia Philips, the publican’s daughter. She was simply dressed; her face was very pale and sad, and she had evidently been weeping, for the tears were still on her cheeks.“Mr Bradly,” she said, “will you give a word of advice and a helping hand to a poor heart-broken girl? You and I don’t know much of each other, but at any rate you won’t quite despise me, though you know who I am, when I tell you my trouble, if you’ll be good enough to listen to it.”“Despise you, Miss Philips! No, indeed; I know too much of my own evil heart to be despising any poor fellow-sinner.”“Ah, that’s just what I am and have been,” she exclaimed vehemently; “a vile, miserable sinner.—You saw me to-day at poor Ned Taylor’s funeral?” she added abruptly.“I did, miss; and I own it took me by surprise.”“Well, Mr Bradly, I want to tell you to-night what brought me there. I know that Ned Taylor told you all about the bag, and the bracelet, and poor Joe Wright’s death, because once when I called upon him in his illness, and found him alone, he said that he had confessed it all to you to ease his conscience, and that I had nothing to fear, for you were a prudent man, and would keep the story to yourself. I told him I was not afraid about that; and then we had a very serious talk together, and he begged me with many tears to forgive him for all the wicked words he had said in our house, and the bad example he had shown there; and he finished by begging and praying me to get out of the public-house and the business, where there were so many snares, and to care for my soul and a better world.“O Mr Bradly, I can never forget his words. But they were not the first that touched me, and brought me to a sense of sin. That night when poor Wright was killed, when Ned turned that bag upside down which he told you about, a little book fell out of it under the table; but the men were so eager with their plan, and so frightened about the bracelet, that they never remembered or thought anything about the book; but I found it under the table when they were gone, for I had noticed that some of the papers out of the bag had not been put back, and I was curious to see if there was any writing on any of them, but there was not; they were only bits of silver paper and other waste paper. As I stooped to pick them up I noticed the little book, and took it up from under the table. It was an old-fashioned Bible, very faded and worn. As I carelessly turned over a leaf or two, I noticed that a red-ink line was drawn under some of the words. Not understanding why this was done, my curiosity was a little excited, and I read a few of the verses. There was one which seemed to have been very much read, for the Bible opened of its own accord at the place; the words were these,—‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.’ My heart sank within me as I read them. I felt that I knew nothing of this peace, nor, indeed, of any peace at all. I hastily turned to another part, and my eye caught the words, which were underlined with the red mark, ‘Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ Ididfear, and I knew I was not one of ‘the little flock.’“We used to read the Bible every day at the boarding-school I went to, and the mistress explained it, and we used to get verses by heart, and a whole chapter or part of one on Sundays; and we had to write out on Sunday evenings what we could remember of one of the sermons. But this was only task-work; and I remember agreeing with my special friend at school what a happiness it would be when we were not forced to learn any more verses. But the words of the little book were quite a different thing to me—they seemed as if they came to me from another world. They made me miserable: for they showed me what I hadn’t got, which was peace; and what I was not, which was one of Christ’s little flock. I hadheardall about it before, but I had neverfeltabout it till then. And it made me wretched as I read. So I threw down the book on the table in a pet; but somehow I couldn’t let it be. So I carried it off to my bedroom, and kept reading one marked verse after another till mother called for me. But I was thinking about the little Bible all the time; and yet I didn’t want to think about it, for it made me more and more unhappy.“So I determined to get rid of it; for every time I looked at one of those red-ink lines, the words above it seemed as though they were put there to condemn me. And, besides, I was afraid that any one should see me with that Bible, and want to know where I got it; for if the owner of the bag, who was of course the owner of the Bible too, should make a noise about the loss in the town, and it were to come round to him that I’d got the Bible, he’d be wanting me to tell him what had become of the bag and the bracelet. So I resolved to get rid of the little book; but something in my heart or conscience wouldn’t let me burn it, or pull it to pieces and destroy it. Then, all of a sudden, it came into my mind—it may be that God put it there—that I would try to drop it somewhere about William Foster’s house, where he or his wife would find it. I used to know Kate Foster well before I went to the boarding-school, as we were schoolfellows when we were little girls. I thought that perhaps the marked verses might do one or other of them good: for I felt how much they both needed it, and if the little book made me unhappy, possibly it might make them happy; and, at any rate, I should feel that I had done better than destroy it, and Foster’s house would be the last place any one would be thinking of tracing a Bible to.“So, late on in the evening, about ten o’clock, I crept round to the back of William Foster’s house, and intended to have lifted the latch of the outer door softly, and placed the Bible on the window-sill inside. But just then I heard Kate’s voice. I could hardly believe my ears—yes—she was praying and crying; pouring out her heart to God with tears. Oh, I was cut to the very soul; and then it rushed into my mind, ‘Drop the Bible into the room,’ for I had seen that the casement was a little open. I felt pretty sure that her husband could not be in; indeed I satisfied myself that he was not in that room by cautiously peeping in. Kate’s head was bowed down over the cradle, so that I was not observed. So I drew the casement open a little further, and let the Bible fall inside. But in so doing, a ring for which I had a particular value slipped off my finger, and of course I could not recover it without making myself known.”Here Thomas Bradly took a little box out of one of his drawers, and handed it to his visitor without a word.“Yes,” she said, having opened the box, “this is the very ring; thank you very much for keeping it for me and now restoring it to me. I heard that it had got into your daughter’s hands, though I didn’t know how. I know I’ve done very wrong in telling stories about it and denying that it was mine; but I was afraid of getting myself and our house into trouble if I owned to it.”“Good,” said Bradly, when she had finished her story; “the next best thing to not doing wrong is an honest confession that you’ve done it, and then you’re on the road to doing right. I see exactly how things has gone; and now, my poor friend, what can I do for you?”“Why, Mr Bradly, two or three things. In the first place, you won’t mention what I’ve been telling you to the neighbours, I’m sure.”“Yes, miss, youmaybe sure; gossiping ain’t in my line at all. But, after all, there’s nothing to fear so far as you’re concerned, for the Bible and the ring have both got to their rightful owners.”“The Bible, Mr Bradly?”“Yes; it’s been a blessed worker, has that little book. It belongs to my sister Jane. It were she as made them red-ink marks in it. Only this is to be a secret at present, if you please. And I’m persuaded as bag, and bracelet, and all ’ll turn up afore long, and then there’ll be no blame to nobody.—But what’s the next thing you want with me?”“Why, I want to sign the pledge in your book; for, please God, I’ll never touch strong drink again.”“Eh! The Lord be praised for this!” exclaimed Bradly; “you shall sign, with all the pleasure in life.—But do your parents give their consent?”“Yes, mother does. I’ve had a long talk with her, and, though we keep a public-house, she has seen so much of the misery and ruin that have come from the drink, that she says she’ll never stand in the way of her child being an abstainer.”“Bless her for that; she’ll never regret it,” said Thomas.So the book was brought out, and the signature taken; and then both knelt, while Bradly commended his young friend to that grace and protection which could alone secure her stability.“And what else can I do for you?” he asked, when they had risen from prayer.“Please, Mr Bradly, I want you to help me get some situation at a distance from Crossbourne, where I can earn my own living as a teacher. Mother is quite agreeable to my doing so; indeed, she sees that our house is not a safe and proper place for me now, and she’ll be very thankful if I can get a situation where I shall be out of the reach of so much evil as goes on more or less in a place like ours.”“I’ll do that too, with all my heart,” said the other, “as far as in me lies. I’ll speak to the vicar, and I know he’ll do his best to get you suited. You’ve had a good education, so he’ll be able to find you summat as’ll fit, I’ve no doubt.—And now I’m going to ask you, miss, just to accept a little Bible from me, instead of that one which you’ve helped to send back to its right owner; and I want you to make it your daily guide.” So saying, he took from a shelf, where he kept a little store of Scriptures, a new Bible, and sitting down, wrote Lydia Philips’s name within the cover, and his own beneath it as the giver; and then, below all, the two texts, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee;” and, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” These he underlined with red-ink. “Now,” he said, “you’ll keep this little book, I’m sure, to remind you of our meeting to-night. Read it with prayer, and you’ll soon find peace, if you haven’t begun to find it already.”The young woman received the little gift most gratefully, and said, “I will keep it, and read it daily, Mr Bradly; and I do think that I am beginning to see my way to peace. Poor Ned Taylor’s words have not been in vain; and what you have said to-night has helped me on the way. I know I am not worthy to be called God’s child, but I think, nay, I feel sure, he will not cast me out. I have wandered far, very far, from the fold; but now I really feel and understand the love of Jesus, and that he has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”When his visitor was gone, Bradly spent a few minutes alone in earnest prayer and thanksgiving, and then, with a bright face, entered his cozy kitchen, and drew his chair close to Jane’s.“Another little link,” he said, “or, perhaps, one of the old ones made a little stronger.” She looked smilingly at him, but did not speak. Then he told her of Lydia Philips’s visit and conversation with himself. “You see,” he continued, “Lydia fully confirms poor Ned Taylor’s story; but then she brings us no nearer the bag. However, the Lord can find it for us, or show us as there’s something better for us than finding it, if that be his will.”“True, Thomas,” said his sister; “and now ‘the next thing’ is for you to see the vicar about Lydia Philips and her situation.”“Just so, dear Jane; I’ll do so, if I’m spared to-morrow.”

Ned Taylor’s misspent life came to an end a few weeks after his confession to Thomas Bradly of his connection with the awful death of Joe Wright. His internal injuries could not be healed; and, after many days and nights of terrible suffering, meekly and patiently borne, he passed away from a world on which he had left no other mark but the scar of a wasted life. Alas that beings to whom God has given faculties, by the right use of which they might glorify him on the earth, should pass away from it, as thousands do, to be remembered only as a warning and a shame! Not but that there was a little fringe of light on the skirts of the dark cloud of Ned Taylor’s career. There was, indeed, no joy nor triumphant confidence at the last, but there was humble and penitent hope.

Bradly and Foster were among those who followed him to the grave, and listened with awe to the sublime words of the burial service. As they turned to go home, Bradly noticed a female among the by-standers, whose face he felt sure he knew, though it was nearly concealed from him by her handkerchief, and the pains she manifestly took to avoid observation as much as possible. She was one, if she was the person he supposed her to be, whom he would least have expected to meet on the present occasion; but he might, of course, be mistaken. That same evening, while he was sitting in his surgery about nine o’clock, he heard a timid knock at the outer door. He was used to all sorts of knocks, bold and timid, loud and gentle, so he at once said, “Come in,” and was not surprised to see a woman enter, with her face muffled up in a shawl.

“Take a seat, missus,” he said in a kind voice, “and tell me what I can do for you.”—His visitor sat down and uncovered her face without speaking a word. It was Lydia Philips, the publican’s daughter. She was simply dressed; her face was very pale and sad, and she had evidently been weeping, for the tears were still on her cheeks.

“Mr Bradly,” she said, “will you give a word of advice and a helping hand to a poor heart-broken girl? You and I don’t know much of each other, but at any rate you won’t quite despise me, though you know who I am, when I tell you my trouble, if you’ll be good enough to listen to it.”

“Despise you, Miss Philips! No, indeed; I know too much of my own evil heart to be despising any poor fellow-sinner.”

“Ah, that’s just what I am and have been,” she exclaimed vehemently; “a vile, miserable sinner.—You saw me to-day at poor Ned Taylor’s funeral?” she added abruptly.

“I did, miss; and I own it took me by surprise.”

“Well, Mr Bradly, I want to tell you to-night what brought me there. I know that Ned Taylor told you all about the bag, and the bracelet, and poor Joe Wright’s death, because once when I called upon him in his illness, and found him alone, he said that he had confessed it all to you to ease his conscience, and that I had nothing to fear, for you were a prudent man, and would keep the story to yourself. I told him I was not afraid about that; and then we had a very serious talk together, and he begged me with many tears to forgive him for all the wicked words he had said in our house, and the bad example he had shown there; and he finished by begging and praying me to get out of the public-house and the business, where there were so many snares, and to care for my soul and a better world.

“O Mr Bradly, I can never forget his words. But they were not the first that touched me, and brought me to a sense of sin. That night when poor Wright was killed, when Ned turned that bag upside down which he told you about, a little book fell out of it under the table; but the men were so eager with their plan, and so frightened about the bracelet, that they never remembered or thought anything about the book; but I found it under the table when they were gone, for I had noticed that some of the papers out of the bag had not been put back, and I was curious to see if there was any writing on any of them, but there was not; they were only bits of silver paper and other waste paper. As I stooped to pick them up I noticed the little book, and took it up from under the table. It was an old-fashioned Bible, very faded and worn. As I carelessly turned over a leaf or two, I noticed that a red-ink line was drawn under some of the words. Not understanding why this was done, my curiosity was a little excited, and I read a few of the verses. There was one which seemed to have been very much read, for the Bible opened of its own accord at the place; the words were these,—‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.’ My heart sank within me as I read them. I felt that I knew nothing of this peace, nor, indeed, of any peace at all. I hastily turned to another part, and my eye caught the words, which were underlined with the red mark, ‘Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ Ididfear, and I knew I was not one of ‘the little flock.’

“We used to read the Bible every day at the boarding-school I went to, and the mistress explained it, and we used to get verses by heart, and a whole chapter or part of one on Sundays; and we had to write out on Sunday evenings what we could remember of one of the sermons. But this was only task-work; and I remember agreeing with my special friend at school what a happiness it would be when we were not forced to learn any more verses. But the words of the little book were quite a different thing to me—they seemed as if they came to me from another world. They made me miserable: for they showed me what I hadn’t got, which was peace; and what I was not, which was one of Christ’s little flock. I hadheardall about it before, but I had neverfeltabout it till then. And it made me wretched as I read. So I threw down the book on the table in a pet; but somehow I couldn’t let it be. So I carried it off to my bedroom, and kept reading one marked verse after another till mother called for me. But I was thinking about the little Bible all the time; and yet I didn’t want to think about it, for it made me more and more unhappy.

“So I determined to get rid of it; for every time I looked at one of those red-ink lines, the words above it seemed as though they were put there to condemn me. And, besides, I was afraid that any one should see me with that Bible, and want to know where I got it; for if the owner of the bag, who was of course the owner of the Bible too, should make a noise about the loss in the town, and it were to come round to him that I’d got the Bible, he’d be wanting me to tell him what had become of the bag and the bracelet. So I resolved to get rid of the little book; but something in my heart or conscience wouldn’t let me burn it, or pull it to pieces and destroy it. Then, all of a sudden, it came into my mind—it may be that God put it there—that I would try to drop it somewhere about William Foster’s house, where he or his wife would find it. I used to know Kate Foster well before I went to the boarding-school, as we were schoolfellows when we were little girls. I thought that perhaps the marked verses might do one or other of them good: for I felt how much they both needed it, and if the little book made me unhappy, possibly it might make them happy; and, at any rate, I should feel that I had done better than destroy it, and Foster’s house would be the last place any one would be thinking of tracing a Bible to.

“So, late on in the evening, about ten o’clock, I crept round to the back of William Foster’s house, and intended to have lifted the latch of the outer door softly, and placed the Bible on the window-sill inside. But just then I heard Kate’s voice. I could hardly believe my ears—yes—she was praying and crying; pouring out her heart to God with tears. Oh, I was cut to the very soul; and then it rushed into my mind, ‘Drop the Bible into the room,’ for I had seen that the casement was a little open. I felt pretty sure that her husband could not be in; indeed I satisfied myself that he was not in that room by cautiously peeping in. Kate’s head was bowed down over the cradle, so that I was not observed. So I drew the casement open a little further, and let the Bible fall inside. But in so doing, a ring for which I had a particular value slipped off my finger, and of course I could not recover it without making myself known.”

Here Thomas Bradly took a little box out of one of his drawers, and handed it to his visitor without a word.

“Yes,” she said, having opened the box, “this is the very ring; thank you very much for keeping it for me and now restoring it to me. I heard that it had got into your daughter’s hands, though I didn’t know how. I know I’ve done very wrong in telling stories about it and denying that it was mine; but I was afraid of getting myself and our house into trouble if I owned to it.”

“Good,” said Bradly, when she had finished her story; “the next best thing to not doing wrong is an honest confession that you’ve done it, and then you’re on the road to doing right. I see exactly how things has gone; and now, my poor friend, what can I do for you?”

“Why, Mr Bradly, two or three things. In the first place, you won’t mention what I’ve been telling you to the neighbours, I’m sure.”

“Yes, miss, youmaybe sure; gossiping ain’t in my line at all. But, after all, there’s nothing to fear so far as you’re concerned, for the Bible and the ring have both got to their rightful owners.”

“The Bible, Mr Bradly?”

“Yes; it’s been a blessed worker, has that little book. It belongs to my sister Jane. It were she as made them red-ink marks in it. Only this is to be a secret at present, if you please. And I’m persuaded as bag, and bracelet, and all ’ll turn up afore long, and then there’ll be no blame to nobody.—But what’s the next thing you want with me?”

“Why, I want to sign the pledge in your book; for, please God, I’ll never touch strong drink again.”

“Eh! The Lord be praised for this!” exclaimed Bradly; “you shall sign, with all the pleasure in life.—But do your parents give their consent?”

“Yes, mother does. I’ve had a long talk with her, and, though we keep a public-house, she has seen so much of the misery and ruin that have come from the drink, that she says she’ll never stand in the way of her child being an abstainer.”

“Bless her for that; she’ll never regret it,” said Thomas.

So the book was brought out, and the signature taken; and then both knelt, while Bradly commended his young friend to that grace and protection which could alone secure her stability.

“And what else can I do for you?” he asked, when they had risen from prayer.

“Please, Mr Bradly, I want you to help me get some situation at a distance from Crossbourne, where I can earn my own living as a teacher. Mother is quite agreeable to my doing so; indeed, she sees that our house is not a safe and proper place for me now, and she’ll be very thankful if I can get a situation where I shall be out of the reach of so much evil as goes on more or less in a place like ours.”

“I’ll do that too, with all my heart,” said the other, “as far as in me lies. I’ll speak to the vicar, and I know he’ll do his best to get you suited. You’ve had a good education, so he’ll be able to find you summat as’ll fit, I’ve no doubt.—And now I’m going to ask you, miss, just to accept a little Bible from me, instead of that one which you’ve helped to send back to its right owner; and I want you to make it your daily guide.” So saying, he took from a shelf, where he kept a little store of Scriptures, a new Bible, and sitting down, wrote Lydia Philips’s name within the cover, and his own beneath it as the giver; and then, below all, the two texts, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee;” and, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” These he underlined with red-ink. “Now,” he said, “you’ll keep this little book, I’m sure, to remind you of our meeting to-night. Read it with prayer, and you’ll soon find peace, if you haven’t begun to find it already.”

The young woman received the little gift most gratefully, and said, “I will keep it, and read it daily, Mr Bradly; and I do think that I am beginning to see my way to peace. Poor Ned Taylor’s words have not been in vain; and what you have said to-night has helped me on the way. I know I am not worthy to be called God’s child, but I think, nay, I feel sure, he will not cast me out. I have wandered far, very far, from the fold; but now I really feel and understand the love of Jesus, and that he has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

When his visitor was gone, Bradly spent a few minutes alone in earnest prayer and thanksgiving, and then, with a bright face, entered his cozy kitchen, and drew his chair close to Jane’s.

“Another little link,” he said, “or, perhaps, one of the old ones made a little stronger.” She looked smilingly at him, but did not speak. Then he told her of Lydia Philips’s visit and conversation with himself. “You see,” he continued, “Lydia fully confirms poor Ned Taylor’s story; but then she brings us no nearer the bag. However, the Lord can find it for us, or show us as there’s something better for us than finding it, if that be his will.”

“True, Thomas,” said his sister; “and now ‘the next thing’ is for you to see the vicar about Lydia Philips and her situation.”

“Just so, dear Jane; I’ll do so, if I’m spared to-morrow.”

Chapter Eighteen.All Right.Ernest Maltby was deeply interested in the account which Thomas Bradly gave him of the work going on in the heart of Lydia Philips.“This is the Lord’s doing,” he said, “and is marvellous in our eyes. I am so glad that she came to you, Thomas; and equally so that you have come to me about her, for I think I know of a situation that may suit her nicely.”“Indeed, sir; I’m truly glad of that.”“Yes; I heard yesterday from our old friend Dr Prosser that he is wanting to find just such a young woman as Lydia Philips to fill a place which is now vacant, and the appointment to which is in his hands. I will write to him about her at once, if Lydia is willing to go. Perhaps you would be good enough to call at her house as you go by, and ask her to step up and speak to me.—By the way, Thomas, have you heard anything more about the bag since poor Taylor made his confession to you? I have been so busy lately that I have quite forgotten to ask you.”“Nothing, sir, but Lydia’s story; and that, as you see, merely confirms poor Ned’s account. We’re fast now: the bag’s been in London half a year now, or thereabouts, if it hasn’t been destroyed long ago; and, if it’s still in existence somewhere or other, we’ve nothing whatever to show us where. I’ve not liked to trouble you any more about it, but I’ve left no stone unturned. I got a friend of mine, the guard of one of the trains, to inquire at the left-luggage office at Saint Pancras; and I put an advertisement for a week together into the London papers, offering five pounds reward to any one as’d bring the bag just as it was when it was lost; but it were all of no use, and I didn’t expect as it would be, as it were taken up to London so long ago. It would have turned up months since if it had got into honest hands, and they had found our address in the bag. But I thought it best to try everything I could think of. And now me and Jane’s satisfied to leave it to the Lord to find it for us in his own way.”“Yes,” replied the vicar, “that is your truly wise and happy course; and now you can patiently wait.—But stay; it just occurs to me, now I have been mentioning Dr Prosser, that he must have been travelling by the very train on to which the bag was dropped. It was the night of 23rd December last, was it not?”“Yes, sir, that was the night.”“And it was dropped on to the express train from the north to London?”“It was, sir; but what then?”“Why, don’t you remember what the doctor said as we were walking with him to the station the morning when he left us? Don’t you remember his saying that his luggage was put on the top of the carriage he was in, and that he was angry with the porter for his carelessness in not covering it properly?”“Yes, sir; I think I remember it now, but other things have put it out of my head.”“Well, Thomas, it seems to me not at all impossible that the bag was dropped on to this carriage; and you know that the train did not stop till it reached London.”“Well, sir?”“Might not the bag have been reckoned by the porter at London as part of the doctor’s luggage, if it was just on the top of it, and have been carried off by him?”“Possible, sir, but I’m afraid not very likely.”“No, perhaps not, but, as you admit, possible.”“True, sir; but if Dr Prosser took it home, and found it had been a mistake, wouldn’t he have sent it back to the luggage office; and if so, the guard would have found it there when he inquired by my wish.”“I’m not so sure of that, Thomas: the doctor’s head would be full of thoughts about other things, science, and other matters; and when he got home he wouldn’t trouble himself about his luggage if he’d seen it safe on the cab; he would leave it to the servants to see that it was all brought in; and if there was your bag with it as well, he would not have noticed it. And if he came upon it afterwards in the hall, he would probably think it was something that belonged to Mrs Prosser, or to one of the servants. And as for Mrs Prosser herself, she was in those days so full of meetings and schemes of all sorts away from home, that a bag like that might have stood in their hall for days and she would not have noticed it; and so, if it really got there, it might have been carried off by the servants to the lumber-room, and may be there still.”Thomas Bradly smiled, and shook his head sorrowfully. “It’s possible enough, no doubt, sir, but I’m afraid it’s too good to be true. But is it sufficiently possible for me to do anything? Supposing the doctor took it by mistake, and it went with him to his house, and is stowed away there in some lumber-room or cupboard, from what you say neither he nor his missus will remember anything about it.”“That’s true, Thomas; and certainly it wouldn’t be worth while your going up to London on such a mere chance or possibility; but it suggests itself to me that, if Lydia Philips would like the situation which the doctor has to offer, and he is willing to take her on my recommendation, it would be a great satisfaction to me if you would, at my expense, go with her and see her safe to London, and introduce her to Dr Prosser, and you could then take the opportunity of asking his servants about the bag. You may be quite sure that if it is in the housetheywill be quite aware of the fact, and where it is to be found.”“You’ve just hit the right nail on the head, sir,” replied Bradly thoughtfully. “I’ll go with pleasure; and don’t say a word about the expenses, for I shall feel it to be a privilege to give that little trouble and money if I can only lend a helping hand in settling poor Lydia in a better place than her own home, poor thing.”Three days after the above conversation Bradly called again at the vicarage, by Mr Maltby’s request.“All is arranged, Thomas,” said the vicar. “Lydia Philips is to go to the situation; and as it has been vacant for some time, the doctor wants her to go up to London as soon as possible; so she is to start next Tuesday, if you can make it convenient to accompany her on that day.”“All right, sir; I can ask off a day or two at any time, and I’ll be ready.”“And, Thomas, I can’t help having a sort of hope, and almost expectation, that you will hear something satisfactory about the bag.”“Thank you, sir; it’s very kind of you to say so, but I shan’t say anything to Jane about it. I don’t want to raise hopes in her, as I can’t see much like a foundation for ’em; so I shall only tell her about Lydia’s getting the situation, which she’ll be very pleased to hear, and that it’s your wish I should see her safe to London. But if I do find the bag, and all safe in it, you shall hear, sir, afore I get back.”Tuesday evening, 6 p.m. A telegram for Reverend Ernest Maltby from London. The vicar opened it; it was signed TB, and was as follows:—“All right—I have got it—hurrah!—Tell Jane.”An hour later found the vicar in Thomas Bradly’s comfortable kitchen, and seated by his sister.“Jane,” he began, “I have often brought you the best of all good news, the gospel’s glad tidings; perhaps you won’t be sorry to hear a little of this world’s good news from me.”“What is it?” she asked, turning rather pale.“Jane, the Lord has been very good—the bag is found; your brother has got it all right.”Poor Jane! She thought that she had risen out of the reach of all strong emotion on this subject; but it was not so. “Patience had indeed had her perfect work in her,” yet the pressure and strain of her sorrow had never really wholly left her. And now the news brought by the vicar caused a rush of joy that for a few moments was almost intolerable. But her habitual self-control did not even then desert her, and she was enabled in a little while to listen with composure to the explanation of her clergyman, while her tears now flowed freely and calmly, bringing happy relief to her gentle spirit. And then, at her request, Mr Maltby knelt by her side, and uttered a fervent thanksgiving on her behalf to Him who had at length scattered the dark clouds which had long hung over the heart of the meek and patient sufferer. And now, oh what a joy it was to feel that the heavy burden was gone; that she who had borne it would be able to show her late mistress, Lady Morville, that she was innocent of the charge laid against her, and had never swerved from the paths of uprightness in her earthly service. As she thought on these things, and bright smiles shone through her tears, the vicar was deeply touched to hear her, as she quietly bowed her head upon her hands, implore pardon of her heavenly Father for her impatience and want of faith. He waited, however, till she again turned towards him her face full of sweet peace, and then he said,—“‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye do much dreadAre big with mercy, and shall breakWith blessings on your head.’“Yes, Jane, your trial has indeed been a sharp one; but the Lord knew that you could stand that trial. And now he has brought you out of it as gold purified in the furnace.”“I don’t know, dear sir,” was her reply; “I can see plenty of the dross in myself, but yet I do hope and trust that the chastening has not been altogether in vain.”“I will leave you now, Jane,” said the vicar, rising, “and I shall be delighted to hear from your brother’s own lips all about his finding the long-missing bag.”

Ernest Maltby was deeply interested in the account which Thomas Bradly gave him of the work going on in the heart of Lydia Philips.

“This is the Lord’s doing,” he said, “and is marvellous in our eyes. I am so glad that she came to you, Thomas; and equally so that you have come to me about her, for I think I know of a situation that may suit her nicely.”

“Indeed, sir; I’m truly glad of that.”

“Yes; I heard yesterday from our old friend Dr Prosser that he is wanting to find just such a young woman as Lydia Philips to fill a place which is now vacant, and the appointment to which is in his hands. I will write to him about her at once, if Lydia is willing to go. Perhaps you would be good enough to call at her house as you go by, and ask her to step up and speak to me.—By the way, Thomas, have you heard anything more about the bag since poor Taylor made his confession to you? I have been so busy lately that I have quite forgotten to ask you.”

“Nothing, sir, but Lydia’s story; and that, as you see, merely confirms poor Ned’s account. We’re fast now: the bag’s been in London half a year now, or thereabouts, if it hasn’t been destroyed long ago; and, if it’s still in existence somewhere or other, we’ve nothing whatever to show us where. I’ve not liked to trouble you any more about it, but I’ve left no stone unturned. I got a friend of mine, the guard of one of the trains, to inquire at the left-luggage office at Saint Pancras; and I put an advertisement for a week together into the London papers, offering five pounds reward to any one as’d bring the bag just as it was when it was lost; but it were all of no use, and I didn’t expect as it would be, as it were taken up to London so long ago. It would have turned up months since if it had got into honest hands, and they had found our address in the bag. But I thought it best to try everything I could think of. And now me and Jane’s satisfied to leave it to the Lord to find it for us in his own way.”

“Yes,” replied the vicar, “that is your truly wise and happy course; and now you can patiently wait.—But stay; it just occurs to me, now I have been mentioning Dr Prosser, that he must have been travelling by the very train on to which the bag was dropped. It was the night of 23rd December last, was it not?”

“Yes, sir, that was the night.”

“And it was dropped on to the express train from the north to London?”

“It was, sir; but what then?”

“Why, don’t you remember what the doctor said as we were walking with him to the station the morning when he left us? Don’t you remember his saying that his luggage was put on the top of the carriage he was in, and that he was angry with the porter for his carelessness in not covering it properly?”

“Yes, sir; I think I remember it now, but other things have put it out of my head.”

“Well, Thomas, it seems to me not at all impossible that the bag was dropped on to this carriage; and you know that the train did not stop till it reached London.”

“Well, sir?”

“Might not the bag have been reckoned by the porter at London as part of the doctor’s luggage, if it was just on the top of it, and have been carried off by him?”

“Possible, sir, but I’m afraid not very likely.”

“No, perhaps not, but, as you admit, possible.”

“True, sir; but if Dr Prosser took it home, and found it had been a mistake, wouldn’t he have sent it back to the luggage office; and if so, the guard would have found it there when he inquired by my wish.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Thomas: the doctor’s head would be full of thoughts about other things, science, and other matters; and when he got home he wouldn’t trouble himself about his luggage if he’d seen it safe on the cab; he would leave it to the servants to see that it was all brought in; and if there was your bag with it as well, he would not have noticed it. And if he came upon it afterwards in the hall, he would probably think it was something that belonged to Mrs Prosser, or to one of the servants. And as for Mrs Prosser herself, she was in those days so full of meetings and schemes of all sorts away from home, that a bag like that might have stood in their hall for days and she would not have noticed it; and so, if it really got there, it might have been carried off by the servants to the lumber-room, and may be there still.”

Thomas Bradly smiled, and shook his head sorrowfully. “It’s possible enough, no doubt, sir, but I’m afraid it’s too good to be true. But is it sufficiently possible for me to do anything? Supposing the doctor took it by mistake, and it went with him to his house, and is stowed away there in some lumber-room or cupboard, from what you say neither he nor his missus will remember anything about it.”

“That’s true, Thomas; and certainly it wouldn’t be worth while your going up to London on such a mere chance or possibility; but it suggests itself to me that, if Lydia Philips would like the situation which the doctor has to offer, and he is willing to take her on my recommendation, it would be a great satisfaction to me if you would, at my expense, go with her and see her safe to London, and introduce her to Dr Prosser, and you could then take the opportunity of asking his servants about the bag. You may be quite sure that if it is in the housetheywill be quite aware of the fact, and where it is to be found.”

“You’ve just hit the right nail on the head, sir,” replied Bradly thoughtfully. “I’ll go with pleasure; and don’t say a word about the expenses, for I shall feel it to be a privilege to give that little trouble and money if I can only lend a helping hand in settling poor Lydia in a better place than her own home, poor thing.”

Three days after the above conversation Bradly called again at the vicarage, by Mr Maltby’s request.

“All is arranged, Thomas,” said the vicar. “Lydia Philips is to go to the situation; and as it has been vacant for some time, the doctor wants her to go up to London as soon as possible; so she is to start next Tuesday, if you can make it convenient to accompany her on that day.”

“All right, sir; I can ask off a day or two at any time, and I’ll be ready.”

“And, Thomas, I can’t help having a sort of hope, and almost expectation, that you will hear something satisfactory about the bag.”

“Thank you, sir; it’s very kind of you to say so, but I shan’t say anything to Jane about it. I don’t want to raise hopes in her, as I can’t see much like a foundation for ’em; so I shall only tell her about Lydia’s getting the situation, which she’ll be very pleased to hear, and that it’s your wish I should see her safe to London. But if I do find the bag, and all safe in it, you shall hear, sir, afore I get back.”

Tuesday evening, 6 p.m. A telegram for Reverend Ernest Maltby from London. The vicar opened it; it was signed TB, and was as follows:—“All right—I have got it—hurrah!—Tell Jane.”

An hour later found the vicar in Thomas Bradly’s comfortable kitchen, and seated by his sister.

“Jane,” he began, “I have often brought you the best of all good news, the gospel’s glad tidings; perhaps you won’t be sorry to hear a little of this world’s good news from me.”

“What is it?” she asked, turning rather pale.

“Jane, the Lord has been very good—the bag is found; your brother has got it all right.”

Poor Jane! She thought that she had risen out of the reach of all strong emotion on this subject; but it was not so. “Patience had indeed had her perfect work in her,” yet the pressure and strain of her sorrow had never really wholly left her. And now the news brought by the vicar caused a rush of joy that for a few moments was almost intolerable. But her habitual self-control did not even then desert her, and she was enabled in a little while to listen with composure to the explanation of her clergyman, while her tears now flowed freely and calmly, bringing happy relief to her gentle spirit. And then, at her request, Mr Maltby knelt by her side, and uttered a fervent thanksgiving on her behalf to Him who had at length scattered the dark clouds which had long hung over the heart of the meek and patient sufferer. And now, oh what a joy it was to feel that the heavy burden was gone; that she who had borne it would be able to show her late mistress, Lady Morville, that she was innocent of the charge laid against her, and had never swerved from the paths of uprightness in her earthly service. As she thought on these things, and bright smiles shone through her tears, the vicar was deeply touched to hear her, as she quietly bowed her head upon her hands, implore pardon of her heavenly Father for her impatience and want of faith. He waited, however, till she again turned towards him her face full of sweet peace, and then he said,—

“‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye do much dreadAre big with mercy, and shall breakWith blessings on your head.’

“‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;The clouds ye do much dreadAre big with mercy, and shall breakWith blessings on your head.’

“Yes, Jane, your trial has indeed been a sharp one; but the Lord knew that you could stand that trial. And now he has brought you out of it as gold purified in the furnace.”

“I don’t know, dear sir,” was her reply; “I can see plenty of the dross in myself, but yet I do hope and trust that the chastening has not been altogether in vain.”

“I will leave you now, Jane,” said the vicar, rising, “and I shall be delighted to hear from your brother’s own lips all about his finding the long-missing bag.”

Chapter Nineteen.Full Satisfaction.On the afternoon of the next day after his disclosure of the good news to Jane Bradly, the vicar received a note from herself, asking the favour, if quite convenient, of the company of himself and his sister, Miss Maltby, at a simple tea at Thomas’s house. Gladly complying with this request, the invited guests entered their host’s hospitable kitchen at half-past six o’clock, and found just himself and his family, ready to greet them.“I’m glad to see you safe back again, Thomas,” said Mr Maltby, as he took his seat by Mrs Bradly, Jane being on his other hand.“And right glad I am to find myself safe back again,” said the other. “London’s no place for me. I got my head so full of horses and carriages, and ladies and gentlemen, and houses of all sorts and sizes, that I could scarce get a wink of sleep last night; and as for that underground railway, why it’s like as if all the world was running away from all the rest of the world, without waiting to say ‘good-bye.’”“And so you’ve found the bag at last?” said Miss Maltby.“If you please, ma’am,” said Thomas, “I thought, with your leave, not meaning to be uncivil, and with the vicar’s leave, we’d just let that matter be till tea’s over, and then go right into it. None of us has looked inside the bag since I came back, not even Jane; she’s been quite content to wait and take my word for it as all’s right. I thought as I’d just tell my story in my own way, and then you’d all of you be able to see how wonderfully all has been ordered.”“Nothing can be better than that, I’m sure; don’t you think so, Ernest?” said Miss Maltby.“Yes,” replied her brother; “it is a privilege to be thus invited to ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice,’ as we have wept with you when you wept. So you shall tell us your story, Thomas, at your own time, for that will be the best.—And now let me know how you found Dr Prosser and his wife, and if all was right about poor Lydia Philips.”Having replied to this question, and given due attention to the entertainment of his guests, Thomas Bradly, when tea was finished, helped his wife to remove the large table to one side, and then, having drawn forward a smaller one into the midst of the assembled company, placed on the very centre of it a bag, which he fetched out of his surgery. Certainly the article itself was not one much calculated to draw attention or excite curiosity; indeed, there was something almost burlesque in its extreme shabbiness, as it stood there the centre of attraction, or at any rate observation, to so many eyes.“Shall we have your story now, Thomas?” said the vicar, when all were duly seated.“You shall, sir; and you must bear with me if I try your patience by my way of telling it.“We’d a very pleasant journey to London, and then took a cab to Dr Prosser’s. The door were opened by a boy in green, with buttons all over him; he looked summat like a young volunteer, and summat like a great big doll. I’d seen the like of him in the windows of two or three of the big clothing shops as we drove along. I couldn’t help thinking what a convenience them buttons must be; for if he didn’t mind you, you could lay hold on him by one of ’em, and if that’d come off there’d be lots more to take to. ‘Young man,’ says I, ‘is your master at home?’ He’d got his chin rather high in the air, and didn’t seem best pleased with the way in which I spoke to him. ‘Who do you mean by my master?’ says he. ‘Dr Prosser,’ says I; ‘I hope he’s your master, for certainly you don’t seem fit to be your own.’ He stares very hard at me, and then he says, ‘All right.’ So I gets out, and sees to Miss Philips and her boxes; and the doctor were very kind, and talked to me about Crossbourne, and so did the missus. She seemed quite a changed woman, so homely-like, and they both looked very happy, and were as kind as could be to poor Lydia, so she took heart at once.“When I were ready to go, I says to Dr Prosser, ‘Doctor, may I have a word or two with your green boy?’ ‘My what?’ says the doctor, laughing. ‘Your green boy,’ says I; ‘him with the buttons.’ ‘Oh, by all means,’ he says; ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong?’ ‘Nothing at all, sir, thank you,’ I says.—‘Here, William,’ says he, ‘step into the dining-room with this gentleman; he wants to speak to you.’“‘You don’t know who I am,’ I said to the boy when we was by ourselves. ‘No, nor don’t want to,’ says he.—‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, holding up half-a-crown. ‘Yes, I know what that is well enough.’—‘Well, you’ve no need to be afraid of me; I’m not a policeman in plain clothes,’ says I. ‘Aren’t you?’ said he; ‘I thought you was.’—‘There, put that half-crown in your pocket,’ I said, ‘and answer me one or two civil questions.’ ‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ says he, as brisk as could be.—Then I asked him if he remembered the doctor’s coming home on Christmas-eve last year. ‘Yes, he remembered that very well.’—‘Did he bring anything with him besides his own luggage?’ He looked rather hard at me.—‘Nobody’s going to get you into trouble,’ says I, rather sharp. ‘Have you lost anything?’ he asks again very cautiously.—I told him ‘yes, I had.’ He wanted to know what it were like, but that wouldn’t do for me. So I asked my other question over again. ‘Yes, the doctor brought a bag with him as didn’t seem to belong to him; at least he hadn’t it with him when he left home.’—‘What sort of a bag?’ says I. ‘It was a small bag, and a very shabby one too.’—‘And what did you do with it?’ ‘I put it in the doctor’s study.’—‘And is it there now?’ ‘I suppose so; nobody never meddles with any of the doctor’s things.’—‘And you haven’t seen it, nor heard anything about it since?’ ‘No, I haven’t.’—‘Thank you, my boy; that’s all I want to know from you.’“Then I asks the doctor to let me have five minutes alone with him, which he granted me most cheerfully; and I just tells him as much as were necessary to let him know what I wanted, and why I wanted it.—‘A bag,’ he said; ‘ah, I do remember something about it now; but, if I don’t mistake, there was nothing but paper in it. However, it’s pretty sure to be in my closet, and if so it will be just as I put it there, for no one goes to that closet but myself.’ So he unlocks the closet door, and comes back in a minute with a bag in his hand. ‘Is this it?’ he asks.—‘I suppose it is,’ says I, ‘for I never saw it; but we shall soon find out.’ The doctor had a key on his bunch which soon opened the padlock, and then we turned out what was inside. Paper, nothing but paper at first. I were getting in a bit of a fright; but after a bit we comes to summat hard wrapped up; and there, when we unfolded the paper, was the missing bracelet! And then we searched to the bottom, and found an envelope sealed up and directed, ‘Miss Jane Bradly;’ but what’s inside I don’t know, for of course I didn’t open it.“We was both very glad, at least I was, you may be sure; and the doctor were very kind about it, and shook hands with me, and said he was sorry as we’d been kept out of the things so long: but I told him it were no fault of his, and it were all right, for the Lord’s hand were plainly in it; for if it had gone elsewhere we might never have seen it again. So I carried off the bag as carefully as if it had been made of solid gold, and it hasn’t been out of my sight a moment till I got it safe home.“The doctor sent his best regards to you, sir, and the same to Miss Maltby, and so did his missus. And as I went out at the door, I just said to the green boy, ‘William, you keep a civil tongue in your head toeverybody, my lad, and don’t be too proud of them buttons.’“And now, dear friends, with your leave, I’ll open the bag again, and see what it’s got to tell us.” Having unlocked the padlock with an ordinary key, Thomas Bradly drew forth a quantity of paper, and then a small packet wrapped up in silver paper which he handed to his sister. Poor Jane’s hands trembled as she unfolded the covering, and she had some difficulty in maintaining her self-command as she drew forth the bracelet, the innocent occasion of so much trial and sorrow. It was evidently a costly article, and, though a little tarnished, looked very beautiful. As Jane held it up for inspection, tears of mingled sadness and thankfulness filled her eyes.“Oh,” she said, “how little did I think, when I took the fellow to this bracelet into my hand at Lady Morville’s, and held it up to look at it, as I am doing now, that such a flood of sorrow would have come from such a simple act of mine! Ah, but I can see already how wonderfully the Lord has been bringing good to others out of what seemed so long to be full of nothing but evil for me.”“You recognise the bracelet then, Jane,” asked the vicar, “as the match to the one which was found in your hand?”“O yes, sir: the image of that bracelet has been burnt into my memory; I could never forget it; it has often haunted me in my dreams.”While these words were being spoken, Thomas had emptied out the remaining contents of the bag on to the table, and thoroughly examined them. All that he found was the unopened envelope and a quantity of waste paper.“This belongs to you, dear Jane,” said Bradly, giving her the letter.She shook her head. “I cannot, Thomas,” she said. “Oh, doyouopen it, and read it out,” she added imploringly.“Well, I don’t know,” replied her brother; “I feel just now more like a cry-baby than a grown man. Shall we ask our kind friend the vicar to open it and read it out for us?”“O yes, yes,” cried Jane, “if he will be so good.”“With pleasure, dear friends,” said Mr Maltby, and he held out his hand for the dingy-looking letter.—Little did the writer imagine, when he penned that wretched scrawl, what a value it would have in the eyes of so many interested and anxious hearers. It was as follows:—“Dear Jane Bradly,“I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope you’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, for I’ve behaved shameful to you, and I don’t mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning. It were all of that lady’s-maid. I wish I’d never set eyes on her, that I do.“Well, you know as we couldn’t either of us a-bear you, because you knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn’t at all easy; but Georgina wouldn’t let me rest till we had got you out of the house. And so she took one of her ladyship’s bracelets and hid it away, and made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn’t find it; and then we got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.“We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer’s for things she’d never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn’t going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to take herself off. That was about two years after you had left Monksworthy.“When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn’t feel at all comfortable about the hand I’d had in your going, and I couldn’t get what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn’t often go to, and there it were left, and I never seed it till a few weeks since, and then I was looking for something I couldn’t find, and poked your little Bible out from the back of the drawer. ‘What’s this?’ I thought; and I took it up and noticed the red-ink lines under so many of the verses. Oh, I was struck all of a heap when I read some of them. They showed me what a wicked man I had been, for they just told me what I ought to be, and what I could plainly see you was trying to be when you was living at the Hall. And they told me about the love of Jesus Christ, and that seemed to cut me to the heart most of all.“I didn’t know what to do, I were quite miserable; and the other servants began to chaff me, so I tried to forget all about better things, and put the Bible back in the drawer. But I couldn’t let it rest there, so I kept reading it; but it didn’t give me no peace. So I ventured to kneel me down in my pantry one day and ask God to guide me, and I felt a little happier after that. But I soon saw as it wouldn’t do for me to remain any longer at the Hall, if I meant to mend my ways. I were mixed with so many of the others, I couldn’t see my way out of the bad road at all if I stayed. I know I ought to have gone straight to Sir Lionel, and told him how I had been a-cheating him; but then I should have brought my fellow-servants, and some of the tradesmen too, into the scrape, and I couldn’t see the end of it. So I made up my mind to cut and run. I know it’s wrong, but I haven’t got the courage just to confess all and face it out.“And now, what I want to do before I leave the country, for I can’t stay in England, is to see and make amends to you, Jane, as far as I can. I have found out from one of your old friends here where you are living, and I mean to let you have this letter on my way. Sir Lionel has let me have a holiday to see my friends, and I haven’t said anything about not coming back again. But he’ll be glad enough that he’s got shut of me when he comes to find out what I’ve been—more’s the pity. I know better, and ought to be ashamed of myself; but, if I gets clear off into another country, I’ll try and make amends to them as I’ve wronged in Monksworthy. You’ll find the bracelet and the Bible along with this letter. Georgina took both bracelets, and left the one as didn’t turn up with me; for, she said, if there was any searching for it they’d never suspectmeof taking it, but they might searchherthings.“So now I think I have explained all; and when you get the Bible, and the bracelet, and this letter, the only favour I ask is that you will wait a month before you let her ladyship know anything about it, and that will give me time to get well out of the country.“So you must forgive me for all the wicked things I have done—and do ask the Lord to forgive me too. I hope I shall be able to turn over a new leaf. I shan’t forget you, nor your good advice, nor what I did at you, nor the verses marked under with red-ink. So no more from your humble and penitent fellow-servant,“JH.”Such was the letter, which was listened to by all with breathless interest.“And now what’s ‘the next step’?” said Thomas Bradly.“I think your next step,” said the vicar, “will be to go yourself to Lady Morville, and lay before her this conclusive evidence of your sister’s innocence.”“Yes; I suppose that will be right,” said Bradly. “I can explain it better than Jane could—indeed, I can see as Jane thinks so herself; and it would be too much for her, any way, to go about it herself and, besides, it’ll have a better look for me to go.”

On the afternoon of the next day after his disclosure of the good news to Jane Bradly, the vicar received a note from herself, asking the favour, if quite convenient, of the company of himself and his sister, Miss Maltby, at a simple tea at Thomas’s house. Gladly complying with this request, the invited guests entered their host’s hospitable kitchen at half-past six o’clock, and found just himself and his family, ready to greet them.

“I’m glad to see you safe back again, Thomas,” said Mr Maltby, as he took his seat by Mrs Bradly, Jane being on his other hand.

“And right glad I am to find myself safe back again,” said the other. “London’s no place for me. I got my head so full of horses and carriages, and ladies and gentlemen, and houses of all sorts and sizes, that I could scarce get a wink of sleep last night; and as for that underground railway, why it’s like as if all the world was running away from all the rest of the world, without waiting to say ‘good-bye.’”

“And so you’ve found the bag at last?” said Miss Maltby.

“If you please, ma’am,” said Thomas, “I thought, with your leave, not meaning to be uncivil, and with the vicar’s leave, we’d just let that matter be till tea’s over, and then go right into it. None of us has looked inside the bag since I came back, not even Jane; she’s been quite content to wait and take my word for it as all’s right. I thought as I’d just tell my story in my own way, and then you’d all of you be able to see how wonderfully all has been ordered.”

“Nothing can be better than that, I’m sure; don’t you think so, Ernest?” said Miss Maltby.

“Yes,” replied her brother; “it is a privilege to be thus invited to ‘rejoice with them that do rejoice,’ as we have wept with you when you wept. So you shall tell us your story, Thomas, at your own time, for that will be the best.—And now let me know how you found Dr Prosser and his wife, and if all was right about poor Lydia Philips.”

Having replied to this question, and given due attention to the entertainment of his guests, Thomas Bradly, when tea was finished, helped his wife to remove the large table to one side, and then, having drawn forward a smaller one into the midst of the assembled company, placed on the very centre of it a bag, which he fetched out of his surgery. Certainly the article itself was not one much calculated to draw attention or excite curiosity; indeed, there was something almost burlesque in its extreme shabbiness, as it stood there the centre of attraction, or at any rate observation, to so many eyes.

“Shall we have your story now, Thomas?” said the vicar, when all were duly seated.

“You shall, sir; and you must bear with me if I try your patience by my way of telling it.

“We’d a very pleasant journey to London, and then took a cab to Dr Prosser’s. The door were opened by a boy in green, with buttons all over him; he looked summat like a young volunteer, and summat like a great big doll. I’d seen the like of him in the windows of two or three of the big clothing shops as we drove along. I couldn’t help thinking what a convenience them buttons must be; for if he didn’t mind you, you could lay hold on him by one of ’em, and if that’d come off there’d be lots more to take to. ‘Young man,’ says I, ‘is your master at home?’ He’d got his chin rather high in the air, and didn’t seem best pleased with the way in which I spoke to him. ‘Who do you mean by my master?’ says he. ‘Dr Prosser,’ says I; ‘I hope he’s your master, for certainly you don’t seem fit to be your own.’ He stares very hard at me, and then he says, ‘All right.’ So I gets out, and sees to Miss Philips and her boxes; and the doctor were very kind, and talked to me about Crossbourne, and so did the missus. She seemed quite a changed woman, so homely-like, and they both looked very happy, and were as kind as could be to poor Lydia, so she took heart at once.

“When I were ready to go, I says to Dr Prosser, ‘Doctor, may I have a word or two with your green boy?’ ‘My what?’ says the doctor, laughing. ‘Your green boy,’ says I; ‘him with the buttons.’ ‘Oh, by all means,’ he says; ‘I hope there’s nothing wrong?’ ‘Nothing at all, sir, thank you,’ I says.—‘Here, William,’ says he, ‘step into the dining-room with this gentleman; he wants to speak to you.’

“‘You don’t know who I am,’ I said to the boy when we was by ourselves. ‘No, nor don’t want to,’ says he.—‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, holding up half-a-crown. ‘Yes, I know what that is well enough.’—‘Well, you’ve no need to be afraid of me; I’m not a policeman in plain clothes,’ says I. ‘Aren’t you?’ said he; ‘I thought you was.’—‘There, put that half-crown in your pocket,’ I said, ‘and answer me one or two civil questions.’ ‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ says he, as brisk as could be.—Then I asked him if he remembered the doctor’s coming home on Christmas-eve last year. ‘Yes, he remembered that very well.’—‘Did he bring anything with him besides his own luggage?’ He looked rather hard at me.—‘Nobody’s going to get you into trouble,’ says I, rather sharp. ‘Have you lost anything?’ he asks again very cautiously.—I told him ‘yes, I had.’ He wanted to know what it were like, but that wouldn’t do for me. So I asked my other question over again. ‘Yes, the doctor brought a bag with him as didn’t seem to belong to him; at least he hadn’t it with him when he left home.’—‘What sort of a bag?’ says I. ‘It was a small bag, and a very shabby one too.’—‘And what did you do with it?’ ‘I put it in the doctor’s study.’—‘And is it there now?’ ‘I suppose so; nobody never meddles with any of the doctor’s things.’—‘And you haven’t seen it, nor heard anything about it since?’ ‘No, I haven’t.’—‘Thank you, my boy; that’s all I want to know from you.’

“Then I asks the doctor to let me have five minutes alone with him, which he granted me most cheerfully; and I just tells him as much as were necessary to let him know what I wanted, and why I wanted it.—‘A bag,’ he said; ‘ah, I do remember something about it now; but, if I don’t mistake, there was nothing but paper in it. However, it’s pretty sure to be in my closet, and if so it will be just as I put it there, for no one goes to that closet but myself.’ So he unlocks the closet door, and comes back in a minute with a bag in his hand. ‘Is this it?’ he asks.—‘I suppose it is,’ says I, ‘for I never saw it; but we shall soon find out.’ The doctor had a key on his bunch which soon opened the padlock, and then we turned out what was inside. Paper, nothing but paper at first. I were getting in a bit of a fright; but after a bit we comes to summat hard wrapped up; and there, when we unfolded the paper, was the missing bracelet! And then we searched to the bottom, and found an envelope sealed up and directed, ‘Miss Jane Bradly;’ but what’s inside I don’t know, for of course I didn’t open it.

“We was both very glad, at least I was, you may be sure; and the doctor were very kind about it, and shook hands with me, and said he was sorry as we’d been kept out of the things so long: but I told him it were no fault of his, and it were all right, for the Lord’s hand were plainly in it; for if it had gone elsewhere we might never have seen it again. So I carried off the bag as carefully as if it had been made of solid gold, and it hasn’t been out of my sight a moment till I got it safe home.

“The doctor sent his best regards to you, sir, and the same to Miss Maltby, and so did his missus. And as I went out at the door, I just said to the green boy, ‘William, you keep a civil tongue in your head toeverybody, my lad, and don’t be too proud of them buttons.’

“And now, dear friends, with your leave, I’ll open the bag again, and see what it’s got to tell us.” Having unlocked the padlock with an ordinary key, Thomas Bradly drew forth a quantity of paper, and then a small packet wrapped up in silver paper which he handed to his sister. Poor Jane’s hands trembled as she unfolded the covering, and she had some difficulty in maintaining her self-command as she drew forth the bracelet, the innocent occasion of so much trial and sorrow. It was evidently a costly article, and, though a little tarnished, looked very beautiful. As Jane held it up for inspection, tears of mingled sadness and thankfulness filled her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, “how little did I think, when I took the fellow to this bracelet into my hand at Lady Morville’s, and held it up to look at it, as I am doing now, that such a flood of sorrow would have come from such a simple act of mine! Ah, but I can see already how wonderfully the Lord has been bringing good to others out of what seemed so long to be full of nothing but evil for me.”

“You recognise the bracelet then, Jane,” asked the vicar, “as the match to the one which was found in your hand?”

“O yes, sir: the image of that bracelet has been burnt into my memory; I could never forget it; it has often haunted me in my dreams.”

While these words were being spoken, Thomas had emptied out the remaining contents of the bag on to the table, and thoroughly examined them. All that he found was the unopened envelope and a quantity of waste paper.

“This belongs to you, dear Jane,” said Bradly, giving her the letter.

She shook her head. “I cannot, Thomas,” she said. “Oh, doyouopen it, and read it out,” she added imploringly.

“Well, I don’t know,” replied her brother; “I feel just now more like a cry-baby than a grown man. Shall we ask our kind friend the vicar to open it and read it out for us?”

“O yes, yes,” cried Jane, “if he will be so good.”

“With pleasure, dear friends,” said Mr Maltby, and he held out his hand for the dingy-looking letter.—Little did the writer imagine, when he penned that wretched scrawl, what a value it would have in the eyes of so many interested and anxious hearers. It was as follows:—

“Dear Jane Bradly,“I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope you’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, for I’ve behaved shameful to you, and I don’t mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning. It were all of that lady’s-maid. I wish I’d never set eyes on her, that I do.“Well, you know as we couldn’t either of us a-bear you, because you knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn’t at all easy; but Georgina wouldn’t let me rest till we had got you out of the house. And so she took one of her ladyship’s bracelets and hid it away, and made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn’t find it; and then we got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.“We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer’s for things she’d never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn’t going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to take herself off. That was about two years after you had left Monksworthy.“When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn’t feel at all comfortable about the hand I’d had in your going, and I couldn’t get what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn’t often go to, and there it were left, and I never seed it till a few weeks since, and then I was looking for something I couldn’t find, and poked your little Bible out from the back of the drawer. ‘What’s this?’ I thought; and I took it up and noticed the red-ink lines under so many of the verses. Oh, I was struck all of a heap when I read some of them. They showed me what a wicked man I had been, for they just told me what I ought to be, and what I could plainly see you was trying to be when you was living at the Hall. And they told me about the love of Jesus Christ, and that seemed to cut me to the heart most of all.“I didn’t know what to do, I were quite miserable; and the other servants began to chaff me, so I tried to forget all about better things, and put the Bible back in the drawer. But I couldn’t let it rest there, so I kept reading it; but it didn’t give me no peace. So I ventured to kneel me down in my pantry one day and ask God to guide me, and I felt a little happier after that. But I soon saw as it wouldn’t do for me to remain any longer at the Hall, if I meant to mend my ways. I were mixed with so many of the others, I couldn’t see my way out of the bad road at all if I stayed. I know I ought to have gone straight to Sir Lionel, and told him how I had been a-cheating him; but then I should have brought my fellow-servants, and some of the tradesmen too, into the scrape, and I couldn’t see the end of it. So I made up my mind to cut and run. I know it’s wrong, but I haven’t got the courage just to confess all and face it out.“And now, what I want to do before I leave the country, for I can’t stay in England, is to see and make amends to you, Jane, as far as I can. I have found out from one of your old friends here where you are living, and I mean to let you have this letter on my way. Sir Lionel has let me have a holiday to see my friends, and I haven’t said anything about not coming back again. But he’ll be glad enough that he’s got shut of me when he comes to find out what I’ve been—more’s the pity. I know better, and ought to be ashamed of myself; but, if I gets clear off into another country, I’ll try and make amends to them as I’ve wronged in Monksworthy. You’ll find the bracelet and the Bible along with this letter. Georgina took both bracelets, and left the one as didn’t turn up with me; for, she said, if there was any searching for it they’d never suspectmeof taking it, but they might searchherthings.“So now I think I have explained all; and when you get the Bible, and the bracelet, and this letter, the only favour I ask is that you will wait a month before you let her ladyship know anything about it, and that will give me time to get well out of the country.“So you must forgive me for all the wicked things I have done—and do ask the Lord to forgive me too. I hope I shall be able to turn over a new leaf. I shan’t forget you, nor your good advice, nor what I did at you, nor the verses marked under with red-ink. So no more from your humble and penitent fellow-servant,“JH.”

“Dear Jane Bradly,

“I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope you’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, for I’ve behaved shameful to you, and I don’t mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning. It were all of that lady’s-maid. I wish I’d never set eyes on her, that I do.

“Well, you know as we couldn’t either of us a-bear you, because you knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn’t at all easy; but Georgina wouldn’t let me rest till we had got you out of the house. And so she took one of her ladyship’s bracelets and hid it away, and made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn’t find it; and then we got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.

“We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer’s for things she’d never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn’t going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to take herself off. That was about two years after you had left Monksworthy.

“When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn’t feel at all comfortable about the hand I’d had in your going, and I couldn’t get what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn’t often go to, and there it were left, and I never seed it till a few weeks since, and then I was looking for something I couldn’t find, and poked your little Bible out from the back of the drawer. ‘What’s this?’ I thought; and I took it up and noticed the red-ink lines under so many of the verses. Oh, I was struck all of a heap when I read some of them. They showed me what a wicked man I had been, for they just told me what I ought to be, and what I could plainly see you was trying to be when you was living at the Hall. And they told me about the love of Jesus Christ, and that seemed to cut me to the heart most of all.

“I didn’t know what to do, I were quite miserable; and the other servants began to chaff me, so I tried to forget all about better things, and put the Bible back in the drawer. But I couldn’t let it rest there, so I kept reading it; but it didn’t give me no peace. So I ventured to kneel me down in my pantry one day and ask God to guide me, and I felt a little happier after that. But I soon saw as it wouldn’t do for me to remain any longer at the Hall, if I meant to mend my ways. I were mixed with so many of the others, I couldn’t see my way out of the bad road at all if I stayed. I know I ought to have gone straight to Sir Lionel, and told him how I had been a-cheating him; but then I should have brought my fellow-servants, and some of the tradesmen too, into the scrape, and I couldn’t see the end of it. So I made up my mind to cut and run. I know it’s wrong, but I haven’t got the courage just to confess all and face it out.

“And now, what I want to do before I leave the country, for I can’t stay in England, is to see and make amends to you, Jane, as far as I can. I have found out from one of your old friends here where you are living, and I mean to let you have this letter on my way. Sir Lionel has let me have a holiday to see my friends, and I haven’t said anything about not coming back again. But he’ll be glad enough that he’s got shut of me when he comes to find out what I’ve been—more’s the pity. I know better, and ought to be ashamed of myself; but, if I gets clear off into another country, I’ll try and make amends to them as I’ve wronged in Monksworthy. You’ll find the bracelet and the Bible along with this letter. Georgina took both bracelets, and left the one as didn’t turn up with me; for, she said, if there was any searching for it they’d never suspectmeof taking it, but they might searchherthings.

“So now I think I have explained all; and when you get the Bible, and the bracelet, and this letter, the only favour I ask is that you will wait a month before you let her ladyship know anything about it, and that will give me time to get well out of the country.

“So you must forgive me for all the wicked things I have done—and do ask the Lord to forgive me too. I hope I shall be able to turn over a new leaf. I shan’t forget you, nor your good advice, nor what I did at you, nor the verses marked under with red-ink. So no more from your humble and penitent fellow-servant,

“JH.”

Such was the letter, which was listened to by all with breathless interest.

“And now what’s ‘the next step’?” said Thomas Bradly.

“I think your next step,” said the vicar, “will be to go yourself to Lady Morville, and lay before her this conclusive evidence of your sister’s innocence.”

“Yes; I suppose that will be right,” said Bradly. “I can explain it better than Jane could—indeed, I can see as Jane thinks so herself; and it would be too much for her, any way, to go about it herself and, besides, it’ll have a better look for me to go.”

Chapter Twenty.Peace.“If you please, my lady, Thomas Bradly would be glad to speak with you for a few minutes, if you could oblige him.”“Thomas Bradly?” asked Lady Morville of the footman who brought the message; “is he one of our own people?”“No, my lady; but he says you’ll know who he is if I mention that Jane Bradly is his sister.”“Dear me! Yes, to be sure. Take him into the housekeeper’s room, and tell him I will be with him in a few minutes.”“Well, Thomas,” said her ladyship, holding out her hand to him as she entered the room, “I’m very glad to see you. I needn’t ask if you are well.”“Thank your ladyship, I’m very well; and I hope you’re the same, and Sir Lionel too.”“Thank you. Sir Lionel is not so well just now; he has had a good deal to worry him lately. But how are all your family? We miss you still from church very much, and from the Lord’s table.—And poor Jane?”“Well, my lady, poor Jane’s been poor Jane indeed for a long time, but she’s rich Jane now.”“You don’t mean to say, Thomas—!” exclaimed the other in a distressed tone.“Oh no!” interrupted Bradly; “Jane’s not left yet for the better land, though she’s walking steadily along the road to it. But the Lord has been very gracious to her, in bringing her light in her darkness. She wants for nothing now, except a kind message from your ladyship, which I hope to carry back with me.”“That you shall, with all my heart, Thomas, though I don’t quite see what your meaning is. But I can tell you this: I have never felt satisfied about poor Jane’s leaving me as she did, and yet I do not see that I could have acted otherwise than I did at the time; but I have wished her back again a thousand times, you may tell her, especially as I fear there were some base means used to get her away.”“How does your ladyship mean?”“Why, have you not heard, Thomas, that John Hollands the butler has absconded? He left us on a pretence of visiting some of his relations, with his master’s leave, last December; and we find now that he has been robbing us for years, and cheating the trades-people, and even selling some of Sir Lionel’s choice curiosities, and putting the money into his own pocket. It is this that has worried Sir Lionel till he is quite ill. We have had, too, to make an entire change of all our servants; for we found that all of them had been, more or less, sharing in Hollands’ wickedness and deceit.”“And was your ladyship’s own maid, Georgina, one of these?”“O Thomas! She was worse, if possible, even than Hollands. Before he left I detected her in lying, thieving, and intemperance, besides abominable hypocrisy, and was thankful to get her out of the house.”“Well, my lady, I’m truly sorry for all this; but perhaps it shows that poor Jane’s story may have been true after all.”“Indeed it does; but still I have never been able to understand Jane’s conduct when I found the bracelet in her hands. If she had only produced the other bracelet, and explained in a simple way how she came by them, or if the other bracelet had been found, that might have made a difference; but it has never been seen or heard of from that day to this.”“I can now explain all to your ladyship’s full satisfaction,” said Bradly.“Indeed, Thomas, I shall be only too thankful, for I now know both Georgina and John Hollands to have been utterly untruthful, and I could almost as soon have doubted my own senses as Jane’s truthfulness and honesty. But appearances did certainly seem very much against her.”“Your ladyship says nothing but the simple truth, but I can explain it all now from John Hollands’ own confession.”“Indeed!”“Yes, my lady. On the 23rd of last December, Hollands, who was on his way abroad, stopped at our station—Crossbourne station—on the road, and left a bag and a letter for Jane in the hands of a railway porter. In that bag was the missing bracelet, the fellow to the one your ladyship saw in Jane’s hands; and a letter was in the bag too, explaining how John had joined Georgina in a plot to ruin Jane, because she had reproved them for some of their evil doings.”“Dear me!” cried her ladyship, shocked and surprised; “is it possible? But why did you not acquaint me with this at once?”“Well, my lady, here is the strangest part of my story. The porter, instead of bringing the bag on to us at once, left it outside a public-house, while he went in to get a drink, and when he came out again the bag was gone; and, though every inquiry and search was made after it, it only turned up a few days ago.”“But the letter?” asked Lady Morville; “did the porter lose that too?”“No; he brought it to us in a day or two, for he were afraid to bring it at first, because he’d lost our bag.”“Still, Thomas, if you or Jane had brought that letter, it would, no doubt, have made all plain, and quite cleared her character.”“Ah! But, my lady, the letter the porter brought said very little. I have it here. It only says, ‘Dear Jane, I am sorry now for all as I’ve done at you. Pray forgive me. You will find a letter all about it in the bag, and I’ve put your little marked Bible and the other br—t (that means bracelet, of course) with it into the bag. So no more at present from yours—JH.’”“And why didn’t you bring me this letter, Thomas? I should have been quite satisfied with it.”“Ah! My lady, it would have looked a lame sort of tale if I’d brought this letter and said as the bag and bracelet had been lost. It would have looked very much like a roundabout make-up sort of story, letter and all.”“I see what you mean, Thomas; but now you say that the bag and its contents have been found after all. Pray, tell me all about it.”“Well, it’s a long story, my lady; but, if you’ll have patience with me, I’ll make it as short as I can.”Bradly then proceeded to give Lady Morville the history of the manner in which the way had been opened up little by little, and the bag found at last. He then drew from his pocket a neatly-folded packet, and handed it to her ladyship, who, having opened it, found the bracelet.“Yes,” she said, “there can be no doubt about it—this is my missing bracelet; and that heartless creature Georgina has cruelly misled me, and, more cruelly still, ruined for a time the character of her fellow—servant. But, poor, wretched, misguided creature, her triumphing was short indeed.”Before she could say more, Bradly placed in her hands Hollands’ letter of explanation. She read it through slowly and carefully; and then, laying it down, leaned her head on her hand, while her tears fell fast.“O Thomas,” she said, after a while, “what a terrible trial your sister’s must have been! How can I ever make her amends for the cruel injustice I have been guilty of to her?”“Nay, my lady,” cried Thomas, touched by her deep emotion, “you’ve done Jane no wrong; you did as you was bound to do under the circumstances. It’s all right now, and the Lord’s been bringing a wonderful deal of blessing out of this trouble. Jane’s been sharply chastened, but she’s stood the trial well, by God’s grace, and she’s come out of it purified like the fine gold. All she wants now is a kind message by me, assuring her as you are now thoroughly satisfied she was innocent of what was laid to her charge and led to her leaving your service.”“She shall have it, Thomas, and not only by word of mouth, but in my own handwriting.”So saying, Lady Morville rang the bell, and having ordered some refreshment for Thomas Bradly, asked him to wait while she went to her own room and wrote Jane a letter. In half an hour she returned, and, having given the letter into Bradly’s charge, said,—“I have been talking to Sir Lionel, and he is as pleased as I am at the thorough establishment of Jane’s character; and we both wish to show our sense of her value, and our conviction that she deserves our fullest confidence, and some amends too for my mistaken judgment, by offering her the post of matron to a cottage hospital we have been building, if she feels equal to undertaking it. She will have furnished rooms, board, and firing, and thirty pounds a year, and the duties will not require much physical exertion. I shall thus have her near me, and it will be my constant endeavour to show my sense of her worth, and my sorrow for her sufferings, by doing everything in my power to make her comfortable and happy.”“I’m sure Sir Lionel, and your ladyship more particularly, deserve our most grateful thanks for your goodness,” said Thomas Bradly. “I don’t doubt as Jane’ll be better content to be earning her own living again, though she’s not been eating the bread of idleness, and I’m sure she couldn’t start again in a happier way to herself, so I’ll tell her your most kind offer; and may the Lord reward Sir Lionel and yourself for it.”No man in the United Kingdom journeyed homeward that day in a happier frame of mind than Thomas Bradly.

“If you please, my lady, Thomas Bradly would be glad to speak with you for a few minutes, if you could oblige him.”

“Thomas Bradly?” asked Lady Morville of the footman who brought the message; “is he one of our own people?”

“No, my lady; but he says you’ll know who he is if I mention that Jane Bradly is his sister.”

“Dear me! Yes, to be sure. Take him into the housekeeper’s room, and tell him I will be with him in a few minutes.”

“Well, Thomas,” said her ladyship, holding out her hand to him as she entered the room, “I’m very glad to see you. I needn’t ask if you are well.”

“Thank your ladyship, I’m very well; and I hope you’re the same, and Sir Lionel too.”

“Thank you. Sir Lionel is not so well just now; he has had a good deal to worry him lately. But how are all your family? We miss you still from church very much, and from the Lord’s table.—And poor Jane?”

“Well, my lady, poor Jane’s been poor Jane indeed for a long time, but she’s rich Jane now.”

“You don’t mean to say, Thomas—!” exclaimed the other in a distressed tone.

“Oh no!” interrupted Bradly; “Jane’s not left yet for the better land, though she’s walking steadily along the road to it. But the Lord has been very gracious to her, in bringing her light in her darkness. She wants for nothing now, except a kind message from your ladyship, which I hope to carry back with me.”

“That you shall, with all my heart, Thomas, though I don’t quite see what your meaning is. But I can tell you this: I have never felt satisfied about poor Jane’s leaving me as she did, and yet I do not see that I could have acted otherwise than I did at the time; but I have wished her back again a thousand times, you may tell her, especially as I fear there were some base means used to get her away.”

“How does your ladyship mean?”

“Why, have you not heard, Thomas, that John Hollands the butler has absconded? He left us on a pretence of visiting some of his relations, with his master’s leave, last December; and we find now that he has been robbing us for years, and cheating the trades-people, and even selling some of Sir Lionel’s choice curiosities, and putting the money into his own pocket. It is this that has worried Sir Lionel till he is quite ill. We have had, too, to make an entire change of all our servants; for we found that all of them had been, more or less, sharing in Hollands’ wickedness and deceit.”

“And was your ladyship’s own maid, Georgina, one of these?”

“O Thomas! She was worse, if possible, even than Hollands. Before he left I detected her in lying, thieving, and intemperance, besides abominable hypocrisy, and was thankful to get her out of the house.”

“Well, my lady, I’m truly sorry for all this; but perhaps it shows that poor Jane’s story may have been true after all.”

“Indeed it does; but still I have never been able to understand Jane’s conduct when I found the bracelet in her hands. If she had only produced the other bracelet, and explained in a simple way how she came by them, or if the other bracelet had been found, that might have made a difference; but it has never been seen or heard of from that day to this.”

“I can now explain all to your ladyship’s full satisfaction,” said Bradly.

“Indeed, Thomas, I shall be only too thankful, for I now know both Georgina and John Hollands to have been utterly untruthful, and I could almost as soon have doubted my own senses as Jane’s truthfulness and honesty. But appearances did certainly seem very much against her.”

“Your ladyship says nothing but the simple truth, but I can explain it all now from John Hollands’ own confession.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, my lady. On the 23rd of last December, Hollands, who was on his way abroad, stopped at our station—Crossbourne station—on the road, and left a bag and a letter for Jane in the hands of a railway porter. In that bag was the missing bracelet, the fellow to the one your ladyship saw in Jane’s hands; and a letter was in the bag too, explaining how John had joined Georgina in a plot to ruin Jane, because she had reproved them for some of their evil doings.”

“Dear me!” cried her ladyship, shocked and surprised; “is it possible? But why did you not acquaint me with this at once?”

“Well, my lady, here is the strangest part of my story. The porter, instead of bringing the bag on to us at once, left it outside a public-house, while he went in to get a drink, and when he came out again the bag was gone; and, though every inquiry and search was made after it, it only turned up a few days ago.”

“But the letter?” asked Lady Morville; “did the porter lose that too?”

“No; he brought it to us in a day or two, for he were afraid to bring it at first, because he’d lost our bag.”

“Still, Thomas, if you or Jane had brought that letter, it would, no doubt, have made all plain, and quite cleared her character.”

“Ah! But, my lady, the letter the porter brought said very little. I have it here. It only says, ‘Dear Jane, I am sorry now for all as I’ve done at you. Pray forgive me. You will find a letter all about it in the bag, and I’ve put your little marked Bible and the other br—t (that means bracelet, of course) with it into the bag. So no more at present from yours—JH.’”

“And why didn’t you bring me this letter, Thomas? I should have been quite satisfied with it.”

“Ah! My lady, it would have looked a lame sort of tale if I’d brought this letter and said as the bag and bracelet had been lost. It would have looked very much like a roundabout make-up sort of story, letter and all.”

“I see what you mean, Thomas; but now you say that the bag and its contents have been found after all. Pray, tell me all about it.”

“Well, it’s a long story, my lady; but, if you’ll have patience with me, I’ll make it as short as I can.”

Bradly then proceeded to give Lady Morville the history of the manner in which the way had been opened up little by little, and the bag found at last. He then drew from his pocket a neatly-folded packet, and handed it to her ladyship, who, having opened it, found the bracelet.

“Yes,” she said, “there can be no doubt about it—this is my missing bracelet; and that heartless creature Georgina has cruelly misled me, and, more cruelly still, ruined for a time the character of her fellow—servant. But, poor, wretched, misguided creature, her triumphing was short indeed.”

Before she could say more, Bradly placed in her hands Hollands’ letter of explanation. She read it through slowly and carefully; and then, laying it down, leaned her head on her hand, while her tears fell fast.

“O Thomas,” she said, after a while, “what a terrible trial your sister’s must have been! How can I ever make her amends for the cruel injustice I have been guilty of to her?”

“Nay, my lady,” cried Thomas, touched by her deep emotion, “you’ve done Jane no wrong; you did as you was bound to do under the circumstances. It’s all right now, and the Lord’s been bringing a wonderful deal of blessing out of this trouble. Jane’s been sharply chastened, but she’s stood the trial well, by God’s grace, and she’s come out of it purified like the fine gold. All she wants now is a kind message by me, assuring her as you are now thoroughly satisfied she was innocent of what was laid to her charge and led to her leaving your service.”

“She shall have it, Thomas, and not only by word of mouth, but in my own handwriting.”

So saying, Lady Morville rang the bell, and having ordered some refreshment for Thomas Bradly, asked him to wait while she went to her own room and wrote Jane a letter. In half an hour she returned, and, having given the letter into Bradly’s charge, said,—

“I have been talking to Sir Lionel, and he is as pleased as I am at the thorough establishment of Jane’s character; and we both wish to show our sense of her value, and our conviction that she deserves our fullest confidence, and some amends too for my mistaken judgment, by offering her the post of matron to a cottage hospital we have been building, if she feels equal to undertaking it. She will have furnished rooms, board, and firing, and thirty pounds a year, and the duties will not require much physical exertion. I shall thus have her near me, and it will be my constant endeavour to show my sense of her worth, and my sorrow for her sufferings, by doing everything in my power to make her comfortable and happy.”

“I’m sure Sir Lionel, and your ladyship more particularly, deserve our most grateful thanks for your goodness,” said Thomas Bradly. “I don’t doubt as Jane’ll be better content to be earning her own living again, though she’s not been eating the bread of idleness, and I’m sure she couldn’t start again in a happier way to herself, so I’ll tell her your most kind offer; and may the Lord reward Sir Lionel and yourself for it.”

No man in the United Kingdom journeyed homeward that day in a happier frame of mind than Thomas Bradly.

Chapter Twenty One.Finale, at Cricketty Hall.The letter and offer of Lady Morville poured a flood of sunshine into Jane’s heart, and helped to hasten her restoration to perfect health. Most thankfully did she accept the situation offered her by her former mistress, which restored her to an honourable position, and enabled her to earn her own living in a way suited to her abilities, experience, and strength. She wrote at once her earnest thanks, and her grateful acceptance of the proposed post, and it was arranged that she should leave her home for Monksworthy in the beginning of August. But Thomas Bradly had set his heart on having a special temperance demonstration before her departure; so it was put before Mr Maltby, and a grand temperance tea-party and open-air meeting at Cricketty Hall was announced for the second Saturday in July.It soon got whispered about that something more than usual was to be expected in the speeches after the tea; and as every one knew that “Tommy Tracks” could get up a capital meeting, there was a good deal of attention drawn to the subject among the operatives and people generally in the town and neighbourhood. Bills of a large size had been duly posted, and small handbills left at every house; and a prayer-meeting had been held on the Wednesday evening previous, to seek a special blessing on the coming gathering, so that its promoters looked hopefully for a fine day, and were not disappointed.Tea was to begin at 5 p.m., and the meeting as near half-past six as could be accomplished. Crossbourne human nature, like the human nature in most English manufacturing districts, had a great leaning to tea-parties andfêtes, the latter name being sometimes preferred by the younger men as being more imposing. On the present occasion there was an abundance of interested and willing helpers, so that early in the Saturday afternoon the road to Cricketty Hall was all alive with comers and goers, more or less busy with band and tongue; while carts of many shapes and sizes were conveying the eatables and drinkables up to the old ruin. The tea-tickets had sold well, and there was evidently much expectation in the minds of the public generally.About half-past three o’clock the Temperance and Band of Hope members came flocking into the market place, Bradly being there to keep order, with Foster and Barnes as his helpers. The last of these had charge of a small basket, which he now and then glanced at with a grin of peculiar satisfaction. Then the band mustered in full force—a genuine temperance band, which never mingled its strains of harmony with streams of alcohol. And oh, what a noble drum it boasted of!—could musical ambition mount higher than to be permitted the privilege of belabouring thundering sounds out of its parchment ends? Such clearly was the view of two of the youngest members of the Band of Hope, who were gazing with fond and awed admiration at the big drum itself and its highly favoured bearer.Shortly before four o’clock the vicar and his sister made their appearance; and then, in a little while, the procession, with appropriate banners flying, large and small, was on its way, Mr and Miss Maltby marching at the head, and Thomas Bradly bringing up the rear. In front of the procession was the band, which struck up a lively air as all stepped forward, the drum being particularly emphatic at every turning. Just at the outskirts of the town an open carriage joined the long line: there were in it Mrs Maltby and her daughter, who had returned from the seaside a few days before, and Jane Bradly, who was not yet equal to much exertion.On, on they marched, bright and happy, conscious that their cause was a good one, and that their enjoyment would not be marred by any excesses. The day was charming; there had been just enough rain during the preceding night to lay the dust and freshen up the vegetation, while the ardent rays of the sun were tempered from time to time by transient screens of semi-transparent clouds. As the procession neared Cricketty Hall, a cooling breeze from the west sprang up, just enough to ruffle out the banners, as they were carried proudly aloft, without distressing their bearers. Then the band, which had been silent for a while, put on the full power of lungs and muscle in one prolonged outburst of boisterous harmony; and just at five minutes to five the whole body of the walkers, old and young, was drawn up in due order in front of the ruined gateway.It was just the right spot for such a summer’s gathering. Far away towards the south sloped the fields, disclosing on either hand many a snug farm-house amidst its ripening crops, and to the extreme east an undulating range of dim, blue, shadowy hills. Facing a spectator, as he stood with his back to the ruined gateway, was the town of Crossbourne, with its rougher features softened down by the two miles of distance; its tall chimneys giving forth lazy curls of smoke, as though pausing to rest after the ceaseless labours of a vigorous working week. The noble railway viaduct, spanning the wide valley, was rendered doubly picturesque by its nearest neighbours of houses being hidden on one side by a projecting hill; while the greater part of the old church was visible, seeming as though its weather-beaten tower were looking down half sternly, half kindly on the eager thousands, who were living, too many of them, wholly for a world whose glory and fashion were quickly passing away. And now, till a bandsman should give a trumpet-signal for tea, all the holiday-makers, both old and young, dispersed themselves among the ruins, and through the wood, and over the rising ground in the rear.Strange contrast! Those crumbling stones, that time-worn archway, those shattered windows, that rusty portcullis, all surely, though imperceptibly, corroding under the ceaseless waste of “calm decay,” and sadly suggestive of wealth, and power, and beauty all buried in the dust of bygone days; and, on the other hand, the lusty present, full of vigour, energy, and bustling life, to be seen in the gaily-decked visitors swarming amidst the ruins in every direction, and to be heard in the loud shouts and ringing laughter of children, and of men and women too, who had sprung back into their childhood’s reckless buoyancy for a brief hour or two.And now the shrill blast of the trumpet called the revellers to tea. This was set out in rough but picturesque form, in the centre of what had once been the great hall. New-planed planks, covered with unbleached calico, and supported on trestles, formed the tables; while the tea-making apparatus had been set up in what had originally been the kitchen, near to which there welled up a stream of the purest water.When as many were seated as could be accommodated at once, the vicar was just about to give out the opening grace, when a young man decorated with an exceedingly yellow waistcoat, and as intensely blue a temperance bow, came hastily up to him, and whispered mysteriously in his ear. The smile with which this communication was received showed that there was nothing amiss. Having asked the assembled company to wait for a minute, Mr Maltby hastened out of the building, and quickly returned, leading in Dr and Mrs Prosser. A shout of surprised and hearty welcome greeted the entrance of the new guests.“This is not to me,” said the vicar, “an altogether unexpected pleasure; but I would not say anything about the doctor’s coming, as, though I had invited him, he left it very doubtful whether his engagements would allow him to be here, and I had pretty well given him up. But I am sure we are all rejoiced to see him among us on this happy occasion.”—There could be no doubt of that, and the doctor and his wife being accommodated with places, grace was sung, and the tea began in earnest.If you want thoroughly to appreciate a good tea, be in the habit of drinking nothing stronger, take a moderate walk on a bright, blowy summer’s afternoon, have a scramble with a lot of little children till all your breath is gone for the time being, and then sit down, if you are privileged to have the opportunity, in the open-air, to such a meal as was spread before the temperance holiday-makers of Crossbourne. Dr Prosser and his wife thought they had never enjoyed anything more in their lives, and looking round saw a sparkling happiness on every face, the result in part, at any rate, of partaking of that most gentle, innocent, and refreshing of stimulants—tea.But even the most importunate tea-cup must rest at last; and so, while the first division, having been fully satisfied, gave way to a second, the band struck up a torrent of music, and in due time sat down themselves with those whom they had helped to cheer with their enlivening strains. And now the last cup of tea had been emptied, and the most persevering of the Band of Hope boys had reluctantly retired, leaving an unfinished plate of muffins master of the field.The fragments were gathered up, the tables and trestles removed, and the trumpeter, invigorated by his inspiriting meal, poured forth a blast loud and long to recall the stragglers. It was close upon half-past six, and all began now to assemble, pouring in from all quarters into the central open space. A few chairs had been brought, and were appropriated to the ladies and speakers. Two large cake-baskets turned on their ends, with two stout planks across them, served for a table, which was placed in front of a huge fragment of a buttress, beneath which irregular masses of fallen moss-covered stone made very fairly comfortable seats for some of the more special friends and supporters; while the audience generally were seated all up and down within hearing distance, forming a most picturesque congregation, as they sat, or stood, or lay down, as proved most convenient. By the time the vicar was ready to commence the proceedings, the space all round him was rapidly filling with men and women from the town, who had not been at the tea, but were drawn by interest or curiosity to be present at the after-meeting.All were very silent as the vicar, after the usual preliminary hymn and prayer, rose, and began as follows:—“I make no apology, dear friends, for being about to occupy a portion of your time by addressing you this evening; but I shall not detain you long. Still, what I have to say is of deep importance to you all, and, therefore, I must ask your earnest and patient attention.“Without further preface, then, I do earnestly desire to impress upon you all this truth, that there can be no real peace, no solid happiness in this world, unless we areconsciouslyseeking to live to the glory of God. I look around me, and see with alarm, in these days of increased knowledge and intelligence, how entirely many thoughtful people are living without God in the world; I mean, without having anyconsciouscommunion or connection with him.“This is so very dangerous a feature of our times, because there is at the same time a very widely spread respect for religion. Coarse abuse and reviling of religion and religious people are frowned upon now by all persons of education and refinement as vulgar and illiberal. But yet, with this respect for religion and its followers, there seems to be growing up a conviction or impression that people can be good, and happy, and profitable in their day without any religion at all. If you are religious, well and good, no one should meddle with you; and if you are consistent, all should respect you, and it would be exceedingly bad taste to quarrel with you for your opinions. But then, if you arenotreligious, well and good too, no one should meddle with you, and it would be very uncharitable, and in very bad taste, to quarrel with you about your creed or views. Religion, in fact, is becoming with many a matter of pure indifference—a matter of taste; you may do wellwithit, and you may do as well, or nearly as well,withoutit.“Hence it has come to pass that there are to be found men of science and learning who never trouble themselves about religion at all. They would certainly never care to abuse it; but then they plainly think that science, and the world, and society can get on perfectly well without it.“And what is worse still, even professedly religious people are being carried down this stream of opinion, without being fully or perhaps at all conscious whither it has been leading them. Thus, even ladies professing godliness are being entangled by the intellectual snares of the day, and are so pursuing the shadows of this world—its honours, its prizes, its mind-worship—as to become by degrees almost wholly separated from God and thoughts of him. And thus, while they do not outwardly neglect the ordinances of religion, they have ceased to meet God in them; they hear in them a pleasing sound rather than a living voice, and find themselves offering to God, when they join in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, rather a mere musical accompaniment than the intelligent melody of a heart that believes and loves.“Oh, don’t be deceived, dear friends, any of you. You who go to the mills, or are engaged in any other manual labour, don’t think, because you may be spending your evenings and leisure in mechanics’ institutes, or in attending science classes, or in working up scientific subjects, that in these pursuits you can find real peace, without religion and without God; that religion is no matter of necessity, but only a comfortable and creditable superfluity; or that, at any rate, by using outward attendance on religious ordinances, as a sort of make-weight, you can be solidly happy while your hearts are far from God. It cannot be. You are not thus disgracing our common humanity like the drunkards and profligates, but, then, you are not fulfilling the true law of your being; you cannot be doing so while you are travelling all your lives in a circle which keeps you ever on the outside of the influence of the love and of the grace of that God who made you and that Saviour who redeemed you.“Don’t mistake me, dear friends; I rejoice with all my heart to see progress of every kind amongst you, so long as it is real. Some people say that we ministers of the gospel are foes to education and to intellectual progress. Nay, it is not so. I will tell you what we are foes to, and unflinching foes; we are foes to all that is false and hollow, and we assert that nothing can be sound and true which puts the God who made us out of his place, and thrusts him down from his rightful throne in our hearts. Study science by all means, cultivate your intellects, elevate your tastes, refine your pursuits. But then, remember that you are, after all, not your own in any of these things, for Christ has purchased you for himself. Begin with him, and he will give you peace, and an abiding blessing uponallthat you do; but never suppose that you can be really living as you ought to live,—that is, as God made you and meant you to live,—while you are feeding your intellects and starving your souls.“And now I will only add how happy I am to meet you all here. We are about soon to part with one who is well-known to many of you,—Jane Bradly. It is partly in connection with the Lord’s wonderful dealings with her, as you will hear shortly from her brother Thomas, that we have set on foot this happy gathering. It is one cheering sign of real progress in Crossbourne that our Temperance Society and Band of Hope are so nourishing. You know the rock on which we have founded them; I mean, on love to the Lord Jesus Christ. May these societies long flourish! I trust we shall gain some members to-night; for Thomas, I know, has got the pledge-book with him. And now I have much pleasure in calling on William Foster to address you.”When Foster rose to speak there was a deep hush, a silence that might be felt.“If I had come to a gathering like this a year ago,” began the speaker, “it would have been as a mocker or a spy. But how different are things with me to-day! I am now one of yourselves, a total abstainer upon principle, an unfeigned believer in the Bible, and a loyal though very unworthy disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have good cause to remember these old ruins, as you all know; but you do not many of you know how I used to spend Sabbath after Sabbath here in gambling; and yet the good Lord bore with me. And it is not long since that he gave me a wonderful deliverance, not far from the spot where I now stand. But I am not going to refer any more to that, except to say, let by-gones be by-gones. I bear no ill-will to those who have shown themselves my enemies. What I want to do now, for the few minutes that I shall stand here, is just to give you my experience about the Bible.“When I was professedly an unbeliever, I thought I knew a great deal about the Bible, and I used to lay down the law, and talk very big about this inconsistency and that inconsistency in the Scriptures, and I just read those books which supplied me with weapons of attack. But I was in utter ignorance of what the Bible really was; and had I read it from beginning to end a thousand times over,—which I never did, nor even once,—it would have been all the same, for I should not have read it in a candid spirit—I should not have wanted to know what it had to tell me.“It’s just perfectly natural. I remember that two of our men went up to London some time ago, and they strolled together into the Kensington Museum. When they came back, we asked them what they had seen there, and what they liked best. One of them had seen a great number of rich and curiously inlaid cabinets, but he could call to mind nothing else, though he had spent hours in the place, and had been all over it upstairs and downstairs. As for the other man, he couldn’t for the life of him remember anything, but he could tell you all about the dinner they had together at a chop-house afterwards,—what meat, what vegetables, what liquor they had, and how much it cost to a penny. You see it was what their mind was set on that really engrossed their attention.“And so it is in going through the Bible: you’ll not get a word of instruction from it, if you go in at Genesis and come out at Revelation, if you go in with an unteachable mind. God would have us ask him humbly, but not dictate to him. Or you may notice in the Bible just such things as you want to notice, and not see anything else, though it’s as plain as daylight. So it was with me, and so it has been and will be with thousands of sceptics. I just looked into a Bible now and then to find occasion for cavilling and scoffing, and I found what I wanted. But I missed all the love, and the mercy, and the promises, and the holy counsel, and never so much as knew they were there, though my eyes passed over them continually.“But now the Bible is a new book to me altogether. I can truly say, in its own words, ‘The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of gold and silver.’ The more I read, the more I wonder: often and often, when I come to some marvellous passage, I am constrained to stop and bow my head in astonishment and adoration. There’s nothing like studying the book itself—asking God, of course, to give one the guidance of his Holy Spirit. The more I read, the more I find verses that just as exactly fit into my own experience as if they had been penned especially in reference to the history, circumstances, character, and wants of William Foster; and no doubt they were, for that’s a most wonderful thing about the Bible, and shows that it is God’s book,—I mean that it as much suits each individual man’s case as if it had been originally written for that man only.“I remember there was an American in our country some years ago, who said he would open any lock you could bring him; and so I believe he did, by making ingenious picks that would get into the most complicated locks. But that’s nothing to the Bible; for without any force or difficulty it comes as one universal key that will unlock every heart, and open up its most secret thoughts and feelings, and then throw light and peace into the darkest corners. This is what the Bible has been and is to me; it shows me daily more of myself, and more of Christ and his love, and more of a heaven begun on earth.“Now I would just advise and urge you all to take up this blessed book in a humble and teachable spirit, and you’ll find it to be to you what God in his mercy has made it to me. And I’ll tell you how to deal with difficulties, and hard places, and so on. Now, mind, I’m only just giving you a leaf out of my own experience. I’m not setting myself up as a teacher. I’m not saying a word to disparage God’s ministers, for they are specially appointed by him to study, and unfold, and expound the Word; and I can only say with sincere thankfulness that I come home with new light on the Bible from every sermon which I hear from our earnest and deeply taught clergyman. But, as regards our own private reading, just let me say, if you come to a hard place, read it again; and if you don’t understand it then, read it again; and if you don’t understand it then, why, read somewhere else in the book, and you’ll find that the more you study the Word throughout, the more one passage will throw light upon another, the more your mind and heart will expand and embrace and understand truths which were wholly hidden or only imperfectly seen before. This, at any rate, is my own happy experience, and my dear wife’s also. May God make it the experience of every one of you.”He sat down again amidst the profoundest silence, and then all joined heartily in the hymn beginning,—“Holy Bible, book divine,Precious treasure, thou art mine.”The vicar then called upon James Barnes to speak.“Well, I don’t know,” began Jim, starting up, and plunging headlong into his address; “I don’t feel at all fit to stand up in such a company as this, and yet I’ve got summat to say, and it’s a good deal to the point too, I think. At our last public temperance meeting, the first I’d the pleasure of speaking at, we had a noisy set of fellows trying to put me down, and now we’re all as quiet as lambs.“Well, William Foster’s just been giving you his experience about the Bible, and I can say amen to all he’s been a-saying; I mean this, that the good book’s been doing for him and me just what he says. It’s been and made a changed man of him, there’s no doubt about that. He’s been a kind friend to me, and he’s been a kind friend to many as has often had nothing but hard words for him. I like to see a man live up to what he professes.“Perhaps you’ll say, ‘Jim, why don’t you set us an example?’ Well, I’m trying, and I hopes to do better by-and-by. But there’s no mistake about William. He aren’t like a chap I heard talk of the other day. A friend of mine were very much taken up with him.—‘Eh! You should hear him talk,’ he says. ‘You never heard a man talk like him; he’d talk a parrot dumb, he would.’—‘Very likely,’ says I; ‘but does he practise what he preaches?’—‘Why, they reckon not,’ says my friend. Now that sort don’t suit me; and it oughtn’t to suit any of us, I’m sure. We temperance people aren’t like that.“Ah! It’s a fine thing is this temperance, if you only get hold of it by the Bible end. See what it’s been and done for me and mine. Look at my wife Polly there, sitting on that big stone—(Nay, Polly, ’tain’t no use your shaking your head and winking; Imusthave it out)—just look at her: you wouldn’t believe as she’s the same woman if you’d only seen her at our old house a year ago. I can scarce believe myself as she’s the same sometimes. I has to make her stand at the other end of the room now and then to get a long view of her, to be sure she’s the same. She’s like a new pin now, bright and clean, with the head fixed on in the right place.“Ah! You may laugh, friends, but it’s nothing but the plain truth. There’s a deal of difference in pins. You just take up a new one, as shines all over like silver, and it’ll stand hard work, and it’s just as if it were all of a piece—that’s like my wife now. But you get hold of an old yaller crooked pin, with point bent down to scratch you, and when you try to make use of it, the head’s in the wrong place, it’s got slipped down, and the thick end of the pin runs into your finger, and makes you holler out—that’s like what my wifewas. But she’s not a bit like that now; she’s like the new pin, bless her; and it’s been Tommy Tracks—I begs his pardon—it’s been Mr Thomas Bradly, and the Bible, and the temperance pledge as has been and gone and done it all.“And then there’s the children. Why, they used to have scarce a whole suit of clothes between ’em, and that were made of nearly as many odd pieces and patches as there’s days in the year. And as for boots, why, when they’d got to go anywheres, one on ’em, on an errand, and wanted to look a bit respectable, he were forced to put on the only pair of boots as had got any soles to ’em, and that pair belonged to the middlemost, but they fitted the eldest middlin’ well, as they let in plenty of air at the toes. And what’s the case now? Why, on a Saturday night you can see a whole row of boots standing two and two by the cupboard door, and they shines so bright with blacking, the cat’s fit to wear herself out by setting up her back and spitting at her own likeness in ’em. It’s the gospel and temperance as has done this.“But that ain’t all. I’ve knowed two of our lads fight over a dirty crust as they’d picked out of the gutter, for their mother hadn’t got nothing for them to eat,—how could she, poor thing, when the money had all gone down my throat? It’s very different now. We’ve good bread and butter too on our table every day, with an onion or two, or a red herring to give it a relish, and now and then a rasher of bacon, or a bit of fresh meat; and before so very long I’ve good hopes as we shall have a pig of our own. Eh! Won’t that be jolly for the children? I told ’em I thought of getting one soon. Says our little Tom, ‘Daddy, how do they make the pig into bacon?’ ‘They rub it with salt,’ says I. Next day, at dinner-time, I watched him put by a little salt into a small bag, and next day too, and so on for a week. So at last I says, ‘What’s that for, Tommy?’ ‘Daddy,’ says he, ‘I’m keeping it for the new pig. Eh! Won’t I rub it into him, and make bacon of him, as soon as he comes?’“But I ax your pardon, friends, for telling you all this.—‘Go on,’ do you say? Well, I’ll go on just for a bit. So you see what a blessing the giving up the drink has been to me and my family. And, what’s better still, it’s left room for the gospel to enter. It couldn’t get in when the strong drink blocked up the road. I’m not going to boast; I should get a tumble, I know, if I did that. It ain’t no goodness of mine, I’m well aware of that. It’s the Lord’s doing, and his blessing on Thomas Bradly’s kindness and care for a poor, wretched, ruined sinner like me. But here’s the fact: we has the Bible out now every night in our house, and I reads some of the blessed book out loud, and then we all kneels us down and has a prayer; and we goes to church on Sundays, and it’s like a little heaven below. Rather different that from what it used to be on the Sabbath-day, when I were singing and drinking with a lot of fellows, and it were all good fellowship one minute, and perhaps a kick into the street or a black eye the next. Ay, and there’s many of the old lot as knows the change, and what the Lord’s done for me, and they’re very mad, some on ’em; but that don’t matter, so long as they don’t make a madman of me.“But just a word or two for you boys and girls of the Band of Hope afore I sit down.—Now, I’ve brought with me, by Mr Bradly’s leave, something to show you.” So saying, he beckoned to a young man, who handed him a small basket. He opened it, and produced a small jar with a brush in it. A half-suppressed murmur of merriment ran through the crowd. “Ah! You know what this is, I see,” continued James Barnes. “’Tain’t the first time as this has made its appearance in Cricketty Hall. Now, I’m not going to say anything ill-natured about it. As William Foster has said, ‘let by-gones be by-gones.’ It’s very good of him to say so, and I only mean to give you a word or two on the subject. This little jar has got tar in it, and tar’s a very wholesome and useful thing in its proper place. Now, a few months ago them as shall be nameless meant to daub William all over with this, and feather him afterwards, because he wouldn’t break his pledge. A cowardly lot they was to deal so with one man against a dozen of ’em; but that’s neither here nor there. I only want you, boys and girls, to take example by William, and stick to your pledge through thick and thin. See how the Lord protected him, and how his worst enemy were caught in his own trap. He were just winding a cord round his own legs when he thought he’d got William’s feet fast in the snare. Now, boys and girls, when you’re tempted to break the pledge, just think of this jar of tar, and offer up a prayer to be kept firm. ’Twouldn’t be a bad thing—specially if you’re much in the way of temptation—just to get a jar like this of your own, and hang it up in the wash-house, and put some good fresh tar in it, and, just before you go to your work of a morning, take a good long sniff at the tar—it’s a fine healthy smell is tar—and maybe it’ll be a help to you the whole day. There, I’ve done.”And he sat down as abruptly as he had risen, amid the hearty cheers and laughter of his hearers.The vicar then introduced Dr Prosser, remarking that he was sure that those who had heard him lecture last April would be delighted to listen to his voice again. The doctor, who was vociferously cheered, stood forward and said:—“I have the greatest pleasure in being with you, dear friends, to-day. I have heard a great deal of what has been going on from your excellent vicar, and have now listened with the deepest interest to the characteristic speeches which have just been made. I shall be glad now to say a few words, and to add my testimony to the importance of certain truths which need enforcing in our day. Thomas Bradly is to follow me, and I feel sure that his homely eloquence and plain practical good sense will be a fit termination to this most truly interesting meeting.“What I would now urge upon you all is this,—the unspeakable importance in these days of grasping realities instead of hunting shadows. I have been, I fear, till lately, more or less of a shadow-hunter myself. I used to sympathise with the cry,—“‘For names and creeds let senseless bigots fight—He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’“But I don’t think this now. We men of science are too apt to deal with abstractions, and to follow out favourite theories, till we are in danger of forgetting that we have hearts and souls as well as heads; that, as has been beautifully said, ‘The heart has its arguments as well as the understanding;’ and that, as God’s Word tells us, ‘The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ I am more and more strongly persuaded of this every day. We are living in times of immense energy and surprising intellectual activity, but, at the same time, are surrounded with unrealities or half-realities. We want something to grasp that will never deceive us, never fly from us. Anything—like mere vague generalities will never satisfy beings constituted as you and I are; and thus it is that we cannot do without something real in our religion, something definite. We want to come into real communion with a personal Being, whom we can consciously, though spiritually, approach, love, and reverence. We want a real person such as ourselves, and yet infinitely above ourselves; and such an one we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour—one who is like us as man, yet infinitely above us as God—one who can smile on us, because he is human, and can watch over us, guide us, and bear with us, because he is divine.“Be sure of this, dear friends,—and I am speaking to you now as persons of intelligence, who can thoughtfully weigh what I say,—science can never be true science, knowledge can never be real knowledge which sets aside the God who is the fountain of all truth and every kind of truth. If we are to learn anything aright and thoroughly, we must learn it as believers in Him in whom ‘we live, and move, and have our being,’ who has given us all our faculties, and placed us in the midst of that universe all of whose laws are of his own imposing and maintaining. Depend upon it, you cannot acquire any sound and useful knowledge aright, if you try and keep up an independence of that God who is the author and upholder of all things physical and spiritual. At the Cross we must learn the only way of peace for our souls; and, in dependence on the grace and wisdom of Him who is in every sense the Light of the world, we must seek to make real advance in every field of knowledge, content to know and feel our own ignorance, and thankful to gain light inallour investigations from Him who can at the same time baffle the searchings of the wisest, and unfold to the humble yet patient and persevering inquirer treasures of knowledge and wisdom otherwise unattained and unattainable. In a word, as the whole universe belongs to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and was made by him what it is, if we would pursue any branch of knowledge, any science whatever, with the truest and fullest prospect of success, we must do it as Christians, as in dependence on Him ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’“This, I am well aware, is not the tendency of the age, which is rather to seek knowledge apart from God, and to treat science and religion as distant and cold acquaintances, instead of loving and inseparable friends.—But now I gladly give way to my old friend Thomas Bradly, who has, I know, something to tell us which will do us good, if we will only carry it away with us.”“Yes,” said Bradly, slowly and thoughtfully, as he took the speaker’s place, by the vicar’s invitation, “it is true, dear friends, that I have something of moment to say to you. This has truly been a happy day to me so far. I rejoice in the presence of so many dear friends; and it is indeed kind of Dr Prosser to be at the trouble to come among us, and give us those words of weighty counsel which we have just heard. I have listened to the other speeches also with very great satisfaction. I think we’re got on the right foundation, and we only wants to stick there.“Well now, dear friends, I’ve got something to show you here. Look at this little book; it ain’t got much outward show about it, but it’s got the old-fashioned words of God’s truth inside. It was my mother’s Bible afore she were married, and a blessed book it were to her, and to her children too. I think I can see her now, sitting of a summer’s evening, after the day’s work were done, under an old apple tree, on a seat as my father had made for her. She would get us children round her, and be so happy with her little Bible, reading out its beautiful stories to us, and telling us of the love of Jesus. She always read the Bible to us with a smile, unless we’d any of us been doing anything wrong, and then she read to us what the Bible tells us about sin, and she looked grave indeed then.“Well, when she died, the little book were left to our Jane—her mother wished it so—and Jane prized it more than gold, and used to mark her favourite verses with a line of red-ink under ’em; it were her way, and helped to bring the passages she wished particularly to remember more quickly to her eye. But the Lord was ordering and overruling this marking for his own special purposes. Look at the book again; you can many of you see the red lines.“Now, it’s some years ago as me and mine was living a long way off from here. Jane were in service at a great house, and the butler and lady’s-maid, who hated the truth and poor Jane, because she loved it and stood up for it, managed to take away her character in the eyes of her mistress; but the Lord has graciously opened her mistress’s eyes at last, and that cloud is passed away for ever. I only mention this just to bring in this little book. The butler, to vex poor Jane, had taken away her Bible from her before he took away her character; but what happened? Why, when she had left the place, he goes to his drawer and takes out the Bible when he were looking for summat else; for he’d quite forgot as he’d hid it there. He sees the red lines, and reads the verses over them, and they make him think, and he’s brought to repentance.“The little book’s beginning to do great things. He wants to restore the book, and make amends to Jane, does the butler; but he’s been such a rogue, he’s obliged to take himself away into foreign parts somewhere. But I don’t doubt but what he’ll come right in the end; the Word’ll not let him alone till it’s brought him to the foot of the cross. As he’s on his way abroad, he leaves the Bible at the station here to be taken to our house; but it manages to get lost on the way, and turns up at last in the tap-room of a public-house. Now, just mark this. If the Bible had come straight to our house, it would have helped to clear Jane’s character with her mistress, and no more; but there were other work for it to do. The publican’s daughter gets hold of it, and sees the red lines. She sees the verses above ’em, and they pricks her conscience. She don’t like this, and she resolves to get rid of the book. Yes, yes; but the little book has taken good aim at her heart, and shot two or three arrows into it, and she can’t get ’em out; it’s been doing its work, or rather the Lord’s work. So she takes it with her in the dark, and drops it into William Foster’s house, of all places in Crossbourne.“Just fancy any one leaving a Bible in that house ten months ago. But it came at the very nick of time. William’s wife were in great trouble, and she’d tried a great many sticks to lean upon, but they’d all snapped like glass when she leaned her weight on ’em—she found nothing as’d ease the burden of an aching heart. It were just at the right time, then, as the little Bible fell into her room. She took it up, noticed the red lines, and some precious promises they was scored under, and by degrees she found peace.—Eh, but William must know nothing of this; how he would scoff if he found his wife reading the Bible!—But what’s this? William finds his missus quite a changed woman; she’s twice the wife to him she was, and his home ain’t like the same place. What’s the secret of this change? He don’t like to ask; but he watches, and he finds the worn old Bible hidden in the baby’s cradle. He reads it secretly; he prays over it; the scales fall from his eyes; he becomes a changed man; he comes out boldly and nobly for Christ; he and his wife rejoice together in the Lord.“But the little homely book hadn’t quite done its work yet. Foster one night asks me to help him in a little trouble which the words of the book had got him into. Strange that, isn’t it? No, ’tain’t strange; ’cos there’s deep things, wonderful things, and terrible things in that blessed book; but then there’s light too to help you past these deep pits, if you’ll only use the Word as God’s lamp. I takes up the Bible to help William to a bright text or two, and I sees my mother’s name in the cover. Here was our long-lost Bible; its work so far were done, and now it’s got back to its rightful owner. But after we’d got it back we’d some time to wait; but waiting-times are blessed times for true Christians. At last the full evidence, of which Jane’s Bible were one little link, came up, and my dear sister’s character were cleared of every spot and stain as had been cast upon it by her fellow-servants.“Now, what I want you to notice, dear friends, is just this—how wonderfully the Lord has worked in this matter. If my dear sister had not suffered in the first instance from the tongue of the slanderer, that blessed book’d never have done all this good, as far as we can see. The butler wouldn’t have been convinced of sin; the publican’s daughter wouldn’t have been brought to repentance and praise; William and his wife wouldn’t have been made happy and rejoicing believers. And indeed, though I can’t explain all now, neither, as far as we can tell, would Jim Barnes have been what he now is, with his missus like a new pin, nor would poor Ned Taylor have died a humble penitent. All these precious fruits have growed and ripened out of the loss of my dear sister’s Bible. And she herself—well, it’s been a sore trial, but it’s yielded already the peaceable fruit of righteousness. She’s lost nothing in the end but a little dross, and her sorrow has helped to bring joy to many.“Now, I ask you all to cling to the grand old book; to use it as a sword and a lamp,—a sword against your spiritual enemies, and a lamp to guide you to heaven. We’ve heard a good deal just now of the special dangers of our own times, how people are getting wise above what’s written. Ah! But ‘the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’ Dr Prosser’s a man of science, and you’ve heard his experience. You see he finds he can’t get on without the old-fashioned gospel. A religion without a regular creed’s no use at all. He’s found out as religion without a real human and divine Saviour’s only moonshine; nay, it’s no shine at all; it’s just darkness, and nothing else. There’s a striking verse in the prophet Jeremiah as just suits these days. It’s this, and I’m reading it out of Jane’s Bible. You’ll find it in Jeremiah, the eighth chapter and the ninth verse: ‘The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?’ Well, but do you cling to the old Bible—there’s nothing like it. There’s many a showy life just now as looks well enough outside; but if you want a life as’ll wear well you must fashion it by God’s Word.“Now, afore I sits down, I’m just a-going to tell you about Dick Trundle’s house-warming.—Dick were one of them chaps as are always for making a bit of a show, and making it cost as little as possible. He were a hard-working man, and didn’t spend much in drink, so he managed to get a little money together, and he puts up half-a-dozen houses. The end one were bigger than the rest, and had a bow-window to it.—Well, Dick were a bachelor, and had an old housekeeper to do for him. When his new houses were built, and he were just ready to go into his own, he resolves to have a house-warming, and he invites me and three other chaps to tea and supper with him. We’d some of us noticed as he’d been sending a lot of things to the house for days past.—When the right day was come, we goes to the front door, ’cos it looked more civil, and we knocks. Dick himself comes to the door, and says through the keyhole, ‘I must ask you to go round, for the door sticks, and I can’t open it.’ So we goes round.—There were a very handsome clock in the passage, in a grand mahogany case. ‘Seven o’clock!’ says I, looking at it; ‘surely we can’t be so late.’ ‘Oh no,’ says he, ‘the clock stands. I got it dirt cheap, but there’s something amiss with the works. But it’s a capital clock, they tell me, entirely on a new principle.’—We was to have tea in the best parlour. ‘Dear me,’ says one of my mates, ‘what a smell of gas!’ ‘Yes,’ says Dick; ‘ain’t them beautiful gas-fittings? I got ’em second-hand for an old song, but I’m afraid they leak a bit.’—We should have been pretty comfortable at tea, only the window wouldn’t shut properly, and there came in such a draught as set us all sneezing. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Dick, ‘as you’re inconvenienced by that draught; it’s the builder’s fault. Of course I took the lowest estimate for these houses, and the rascal’s been and put me in green wood; but the carpenter shall set it all right to-morrow.’—But the worst of all was, the gas escaped so fast it had to be turned off at the meter. ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘that won’t matter for to-night, for I’ve bought a famous lamp, a new patent. I got it very reasonable, because the man who wanted to part with it were giving up housekeeping and going abroad.’ So we had the lamp in, and a splendid looking thing it were; but I thought I saw a crack in the middle, only I didn’t like to say so. Well, all of a sudden, just in the middle of the supper, the lamp falls right in two among the dishes, and the oil all pours out over my neighbour’s clothes. Such a scene there was! I tried to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t stop, though I almost choked myself.—Dick, you may be sure, weren’t best pleased. It were a bad job altogether; so we bade good-night as soon as it were civil to do so. But I shall never forget Dick Trundle’s house-warming, nor the lesson it taught me.“What we want, dear friends, is, not what’s new, cheap, and showy, but what’s solid, and substantial, and thoroughly well made. Will itwearwell? That’s the question after all. Dick’s fine things was just got up for show; they’d no wear in ’em—they was cheap and worthless. Now there’s a deal of religion going in our day as is like Dick Trundle’s house and purchases; it’s quite new, it makes a great show, it looks very fine, till you come to search a little closer into it. But it ain’t according to the old Bible make: it don’t get beyond the head; it can’t satisfy the heart. What we want is a religion that’s real—just the religion of the gospel, as puts Jesus Christ and his work first and foremost. If you haven’t got that, you’ve got nothing as you can depend on it’ll fail you when you most want it. It may be called very wide, and very intelligent, and very enlightened, but it won’t act in the day of trouble, and when the conscience gets uneasy.“Well, now, we’ve got a happy company here to-night; we’re many of us total abstainers on principle and most of us, I hope, Bible Christians on principle, after the old fashion; for, if we haven’t Christ and his Word for our foundation, we haven’t got that as’ll stand the test. No, friends, take the word of Tommy Tracks—and you’ve got what’ll confirm what I say all round you in this meeting to-night—the life as is begun, continued, and ended in the fear of God, and with the Bible for its guide, and Jesus for its example, is the life that’s just what you and I were meant to live by the God who made us and redeemed us, and it’s plainly and unmistakably the life thatwearsbest.”

The letter and offer of Lady Morville poured a flood of sunshine into Jane’s heart, and helped to hasten her restoration to perfect health. Most thankfully did she accept the situation offered her by her former mistress, which restored her to an honourable position, and enabled her to earn her own living in a way suited to her abilities, experience, and strength. She wrote at once her earnest thanks, and her grateful acceptance of the proposed post, and it was arranged that she should leave her home for Monksworthy in the beginning of August. But Thomas Bradly had set his heart on having a special temperance demonstration before her departure; so it was put before Mr Maltby, and a grand temperance tea-party and open-air meeting at Cricketty Hall was announced for the second Saturday in July.

It soon got whispered about that something more than usual was to be expected in the speeches after the tea; and as every one knew that “Tommy Tracks” could get up a capital meeting, there was a good deal of attention drawn to the subject among the operatives and people generally in the town and neighbourhood. Bills of a large size had been duly posted, and small handbills left at every house; and a prayer-meeting had been held on the Wednesday evening previous, to seek a special blessing on the coming gathering, so that its promoters looked hopefully for a fine day, and were not disappointed.

Tea was to begin at 5 p.m., and the meeting as near half-past six as could be accomplished. Crossbourne human nature, like the human nature in most English manufacturing districts, had a great leaning to tea-parties andfêtes, the latter name being sometimes preferred by the younger men as being more imposing. On the present occasion there was an abundance of interested and willing helpers, so that early in the Saturday afternoon the road to Cricketty Hall was all alive with comers and goers, more or less busy with band and tongue; while carts of many shapes and sizes were conveying the eatables and drinkables up to the old ruin. The tea-tickets had sold well, and there was evidently much expectation in the minds of the public generally.

About half-past three o’clock the Temperance and Band of Hope members came flocking into the market place, Bradly being there to keep order, with Foster and Barnes as his helpers. The last of these had charge of a small basket, which he now and then glanced at with a grin of peculiar satisfaction. Then the band mustered in full force—a genuine temperance band, which never mingled its strains of harmony with streams of alcohol. And oh, what a noble drum it boasted of!—could musical ambition mount higher than to be permitted the privilege of belabouring thundering sounds out of its parchment ends? Such clearly was the view of two of the youngest members of the Band of Hope, who were gazing with fond and awed admiration at the big drum itself and its highly favoured bearer.

Shortly before four o’clock the vicar and his sister made their appearance; and then, in a little while, the procession, with appropriate banners flying, large and small, was on its way, Mr and Miss Maltby marching at the head, and Thomas Bradly bringing up the rear. In front of the procession was the band, which struck up a lively air as all stepped forward, the drum being particularly emphatic at every turning. Just at the outskirts of the town an open carriage joined the long line: there were in it Mrs Maltby and her daughter, who had returned from the seaside a few days before, and Jane Bradly, who was not yet equal to much exertion.

On, on they marched, bright and happy, conscious that their cause was a good one, and that their enjoyment would not be marred by any excesses. The day was charming; there had been just enough rain during the preceding night to lay the dust and freshen up the vegetation, while the ardent rays of the sun were tempered from time to time by transient screens of semi-transparent clouds. As the procession neared Cricketty Hall, a cooling breeze from the west sprang up, just enough to ruffle out the banners, as they were carried proudly aloft, without distressing their bearers. Then the band, which had been silent for a while, put on the full power of lungs and muscle in one prolonged outburst of boisterous harmony; and just at five minutes to five the whole body of the walkers, old and young, was drawn up in due order in front of the ruined gateway.

It was just the right spot for such a summer’s gathering. Far away towards the south sloped the fields, disclosing on either hand many a snug farm-house amidst its ripening crops, and to the extreme east an undulating range of dim, blue, shadowy hills. Facing a spectator, as he stood with his back to the ruined gateway, was the town of Crossbourne, with its rougher features softened down by the two miles of distance; its tall chimneys giving forth lazy curls of smoke, as though pausing to rest after the ceaseless labours of a vigorous working week. The noble railway viaduct, spanning the wide valley, was rendered doubly picturesque by its nearest neighbours of houses being hidden on one side by a projecting hill; while the greater part of the old church was visible, seeming as though its weather-beaten tower were looking down half sternly, half kindly on the eager thousands, who were living, too many of them, wholly for a world whose glory and fashion were quickly passing away. And now, till a bandsman should give a trumpet-signal for tea, all the holiday-makers, both old and young, dispersed themselves among the ruins, and through the wood, and over the rising ground in the rear.

Strange contrast! Those crumbling stones, that time-worn archway, those shattered windows, that rusty portcullis, all surely, though imperceptibly, corroding under the ceaseless waste of “calm decay,” and sadly suggestive of wealth, and power, and beauty all buried in the dust of bygone days; and, on the other hand, the lusty present, full of vigour, energy, and bustling life, to be seen in the gaily-decked visitors swarming amidst the ruins in every direction, and to be heard in the loud shouts and ringing laughter of children, and of men and women too, who had sprung back into their childhood’s reckless buoyancy for a brief hour or two.

And now the shrill blast of the trumpet called the revellers to tea. This was set out in rough but picturesque form, in the centre of what had once been the great hall. New-planed planks, covered with unbleached calico, and supported on trestles, formed the tables; while the tea-making apparatus had been set up in what had originally been the kitchen, near to which there welled up a stream of the purest water.

When as many were seated as could be accommodated at once, the vicar was just about to give out the opening grace, when a young man decorated with an exceedingly yellow waistcoat, and as intensely blue a temperance bow, came hastily up to him, and whispered mysteriously in his ear. The smile with which this communication was received showed that there was nothing amiss. Having asked the assembled company to wait for a minute, Mr Maltby hastened out of the building, and quickly returned, leading in Dr and Mrs Prosser. A shout of surprised and hearty welcome greeted the entrance of the new guests.

“This is not to me,” said the vicar, “an altogether unexpected pleasure; but I would not say anything about the doctor’s coming, as, though I had invited him, he left it very doubtful whether his engagements would allow him to be here, and I had pretty well given him up. But I am sure we are all rejoiced to see him among us on this happy occasion.”—There could be no doubt of that, and the doctor and his wife being accommodated with places, grace was sung, and the tea began in earnest.

If you want thoroughly to appreciate a good tea, be in the habit of drinking nothing stronger, take a moderate walk on a bright, blowy summer’s afternoon, have a scramble with a lot of little children till all your breath is gone for the time being, and then sit down, if you are privileged to have the opportunity, in the open-air, to such a meal as was spread before the temperance holiday-makers of Crossbourne. Dr Prosser and his wife thought they had never enjoyed anything more in their lives, and looking round saw a sparkling happiness on every face, the result in part, at any rate, of partaking of that most gentle, innocent, and refreshing of stimulants—tea.

But even the most importunate tea-cup must rest at last; and so, while the first division, having been fully satisfied, gave way to a second, the band struck up a torrent of music, and in due time sat down themselves with those whom they had helped to cheer with their enlivening strains. And now the last cup of tea had been emptied, and the most persevering of the Band of Hope boys had reluctantly retired, leaving an unfinished plate of muffins master of the field.

The fragments were gathered up, the tables and trestles removed, and the trumpeter, invigorated by his inspiriting meal, poured forth a blast loud and long to recall the stragglers. It was close upon half-past six, and all began now to assemble, pouring in from all quarters into the central open space. A few chairs had been brought, and were appropriated to the ladies and speakers. Two large cake-baskets turned on their ends, with two stout planks across them, served for a table, which was placed in front of a huge fragment of a buttress, beneath which irregular masses of fallen moss-covered stone made very fairly comfortable seats for some of the more special friends and supporters; while the audience generally were seated all up and down within hearing distance, forming a most picturesque congregation, as they sat, or stood, or lay down, as proved most convenient. By the time the vicar was ready to commence the proceedings, the space all round him was rapidly filling with men and women from the town, who had not been at the tea, but were drawn by interest or curiosity to be present at the after-meeting.

All were very silent as the vicar, after the usual preliminary hymn and prayer, rose, and began as follows:—

“I make no apology, dear friends, for being about to occupy a portion of your time by addressing you this evening; but I shall not detain you long. Still, what I have to say is of deep importance to you all, and, therefore, I must ask your earnest and patient attention.

“Without further preface, then, I do earnestly desire to impress upon you all this truth, that there can be no real peace, no solid happiness in this world, unless we areconsciouslyseeking to live to the glory of God. I look around me, and see with alarm, in these days of increased knowledge and intelligence, how entirely many thoughtful people are living without God in the world; I mean, without having anyconsciouscommunion or connection with him.

“This is so very dangerous a feature of our times, because there is at the same time a very widely spread respect for religion. Coarse abuse and reviling of religion and religious people are frowned upon now by all persons of education and refinement as vulgar and illiberal. But yet, with this respect for religion and its followers, there seems to be growing up a conviction or impression that people can be good, and happy, and profitable in their day without any religion at all. If you are religious, well and good, no one should meddle with you; and if you are consistent, all should respect you, and it would be exceedingly bad taste to quarrel with you for your opinions. But then, if you arenotreligious, well and good too, no one should meddle with you, and it would be very uncharitable, and in very bad taste, to quarrel with you about your creed or views. Religion, in fact, is becoming with many a matter of pure indifference—a matter of taste; you may do wellwithit, and you may do as well, or nearly as well,withoutit.

“Hence it has come to pass that there are to be found men of science and learning who never trouble themselves about religion at all. They would certainly never care to abuse it; but then they plainly think that science, and the world, and society can get on perfectly well without it.

“And what is worse still, even professedly religious people are being carried down this stream of opinion, without being fully or perhaps at all conscious whither it has been leading them. Thus, even ladies professing godliness are being entangled by the intellectual snares of the day, and are so pursuing the shadows of this world—its honours, its prizes, its mind-worship—as to become by degrees almost wholly separated from God and thoughts of him. And thus, while they do not outwardly neglect the ordinances of religion, they have ceased to meet God in them; they hear in them a pleasing sound rather than a living voice, and find themselves offering to God, when they join in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, rather a mere musical accompaniment than the intelligent melody of a heart that believes and loves.

“Oh, don’t be deceived, dear friends, any of you. You who go to the mills, or are engaged in any other manual labour, don’t think, because you may be spending your evenings and leisure in mechanics’ institutes, or in attending science classes, or in working up scientific subjects, that in these pursuits you can find real peace, without religion and without God; that religion is no matter of necessity, but only a comfortable and creditable superfluity; or that, at any rate, by using outward attendance on religious ordinances, as a sort of make-weight, you can be solidly happy while your hearts are far from God. It cannot be. You are not thus disgracing our common humanity like the drunkards and profligates, but, then, you are not fulfilling the true law of your being; you cannot be doing so while you are travelling all your lives in a circle which keeps you ever on the outside of the influence of the love and of the grace of that God who made you and that Saviour who redeemed you.

“Don’t mistake me, dear friends; I rejoice with all my heart to see progress of every kind amongst you, so long as it is real. Some people say that we ministers of the gospel are foes to education and to intellectual progress. Nay, it is not so. I will tell you what we are foes to, and unflinching foes; we are foes to all that is false and hollow, and we assert that nothing can be sound and true which puts the God who made us out of his place, and thrusts him down from his rightful throne in our hearts. Study science by all means, cultivate your intellects, elevate your tastes, refine your pursuits. But then, remember that you are, after all, not your own in any of these things, for Christ has purchased you for himself. Begin with him, and he will give you peace, and an abiding blessing uponallthat you do; but never suppose that you can be really living as you ought to live,—that is, as God made you and meant you to live,—while you are feeding your intellects and starving your souls.

“And now I will only add how happy I am to meet you all here. We are about soon to part with one who is well-known to many of you,—Jane Bradly. It is partly in connection with the Lord’s wonderful dealings with her, as you will hear shortly from her brother Thomas, that we have set on foot this happy gathering. It is one cheering sign of real progress in Crossbourne that our Temperance Society and Band of Hope are so nourishing. You know the rock on which we have founded them; I mean, on love to the Lord Jesus Christ. May these societies long flourish! I trust we shall gain some members to-night; for Thomas, I know, has got the pledge-book with him. And now I have much pleasure in calling on William Foster to address you.”

When Foster rose to speak there was a deep hush, a silence that might be felt.

“If I had come to a gathering like this a year ago,” began the speaker, “it would have been as a mocker or a spy. But how different are things with me to-day! I am now one of yourselves, a total abstainer upon principle, an unfeigned believer in the Bible, and a loyal though very unworthy disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have good cause to remember these old ruins, as you all know; but you do not many of you know how I used to spend Sabbath after Sabbath here in gambling; and yet the good Lord bore with me. And it is not long since that he gave me a wonderful deliverance, not far from the spot where I now stand. But I am not going to refer any more to that, except to say, let by-gones be by-gones. I bear no ill-will to those who have shown themselves my enemies. What I want to do now, for the few minutes that I shall stand here, is just to give you my experience about the Bible.

“When I was professedly an unbeliever, I thought I knew a great deal about the Bible, and I used to lay down the law, and talk very big about this inconsistency and that inconsistency in the Scriptures, and I just read those books which supplied me with weapons of attack. But I was in utter ignorance of what the Bible really was; and had I read it from beginning to end a thousand times over,—which I never did, nor even once,—it would have been all the same, for I should not have read it in a candid spirit—I should not have wanted to know what it had to tell me.

“It’s just perfectly natural. I remember that two of our men went up to London some time ago, and they strolled together into the Kensington Museum. When they came back, we asked them what they had seen there, and what they liked best. One of them had seen a great number of rich and curiously inlaid cabinets, but he could call to mind nothing else, though he had spent hours in the place, and had been all over it upstairs and downstairs. As for the other man, he couldn’t for the life of him remember anything, but he could tell you all about the dinner they had together at a chop-house afterwards,—what meat, what vegetables, what liquor they had, and how much it cost to a penny. You see it was what their mind was set on that really engrossed their attention.

“And so it is in going through the Bible: you’ll not get a word of instruction from it, if you go in at Genesis and come out at Revelation, if you go in with an unteachable mind. God would have us ask him humbly, but not dictate to him. Or you may notice in the Bible just such things as you want to notice, and not see anything else, though it’s as plain as daylight. So it was with me, and so it has been and will be with thousands of sceptics. I just looked into a Bible now and then to find occasion for cavilling and scoffing, and I found what I wanted. But I missed all the love, and the mercy, and the promises, and the holy counsel, and never so much as knew they were there, though my eyes passed over them continually.

“But now the Bible is a new book to me altogether. I can truly say, in its own words, ‘The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of gold and silver.’ The more I read, the more I wonder: often and often, when I come to some marvellous passage, I am constrained to stop and bow my head in astonishment and adoration. There’s nothing like studying the book itself—asking God, of course, to give one the guidance of his Holy Spirit. The more I read, the more I find verses that just as exactly fit into my own experience as if they had been penned especially in reference to the history, circumstances, character, and wants of William Foster; and no doubt they were, for that’s a most wonderful thing about the Bible, and shows that it is God’s book,—I mean that it as much suits each individual man’s case as if it had been originally written for that man only.

“I remember there was an American in our country some years ago, who said he would open any lock you could bring him; and so I believe he did, by making ingenious picks that would get into the most complicated locks. But that’s nothing to the Bible; for without any force or difficulty it comes as one universal key that will unlock every heart, and open up its most secret thoughts and feelings, and then throw light and peace into the darkest corners. This is what the Bible has been and is to me; it shows me daily more of myself, and more of Christ and his love, and more of a heaven begun on earth.

“Now I would just advise and urge you all to take up this blessed book in a humble and teachable spirit, and you’ll find it to be to you what God in his mercy has made it to me. And I’ll tell you how to deal with difficulties, and hard places, and so on. Now, mind, I’m only just giving you a leaf out of my own experience. I’m not setting myself up as a teacher. I’m not saying a word to disparage God’s ministers, for they are specially appointed by him to study, and unfold, and expound the Word; and I can only say with sincere thankfulness that I come home with new light on the Bible from every sermon which I hear from our earnest and deeply taught clergyman. But, as regards our own private reading, just let me say, if you come to a hard place, read it again; and if you don’t understand it then, read it again; and if you don’t understand it then, why, read somewhere else in the book, and you’ll find that the more you study the Word throughout, the more one passage will throw light upon another, the more your mind and heart will expand and embrace and understand truths which were wholly hidden or only imperfectly seen before. This, at any rate, is my own happy experience, and my dear wife’s also. May God make it the experience of every one of you.”

He sat down again amidst the profoundest silence, and then all joined heartily in the hymn beginning,—

“Holy Bible, book divine,Precious treasure, thou art mine.”

“Holy Bible, book divine,Precious treasure, thou art mine.”

The vicar then called upon James Barnes to speak.

“Well, I don’t know,” began Jim, starting up, and plunging headlong into his address; “I don’t feel at all fit to stand up in such a company as this, and yet I’ve got summat to say, and it’s a good deal to the point too, I think. At our last public temperance meeting, the first I’d the pleasure of speaking at, we had a noisy set of fellows trying to put me down, and now we’re all as quiet as lambs.

“Well, William Foster’s just been giving you his experience about the Bible, and I can say amen to all he’s been a-saying; I mean this, that the good book’s been doing for him and me just what he says. It’s been and made a changed man of him, there’s no doubt about that. He’s been a kind friend to me, and he’s been a kind friend to many as has often had nothing but hard words for him. I like to see a man live up to what he professes.

“Perhaps you’ll say, ‘Jim, why don’t you set us an example?’ Well, I’m trying, and I hopes to do better by-and-by. But there’s no mistake about William. He aren’t like a chap I heard talk of the other day. A friend of mine were very much taken up with him.—‘Eh! You should hear him talk,’ he says. ‘You never heard a man talk like him; he’d talk a parrot dumb, he would.’—‘Very likely,’ says I; ‘but does he practise what he preaches?’—‘Why, they reckon not,’ says my friend. Now that sort don’t suit me; and it oughtn’t to suit any of us, I’m sure. We temperance people aren’t like that.

“Ah! It’s a fine thing is this temperance, if you only get hold of it by the Bible end. See what it’s been and done for me and mine. Look at my wife Polly there, sitting on that big stone—(Nay, Polly, ’tain’t no use your shaking your head and winking; Imusthave it out)—just look at her: you wouldn’t believe as she’s the same woman if you’d only seen her at our old house a year ago. I can scarce believe myself as she’s the same sometimes. I has to make her stand at the other end of the room now and then to get a long view of her, to be sure she’s the same. She’s like a new pin now, bright and clean, with the head fixed on in the right place.

“Ah! You may laugh, friends, but it’s nothing but the plain truth. There’s a deal of difference in pins. You just take up a new one, as shines all over like silver, and it’ll stand hard work, and it’s just as if it were all of a piece—that’s like my wife now. But you get hold of an old yaller crooked pin, with point bent down to scratch you, and when you try to make use of it, the head’s in the wrong place, it’s got slipped down, and the thick end of the pin runs into your finger, and makes you holler out—that’s like what my wifewas. But she’s not a bit like that now; she’s like the new pin, bless her; and it’s been Tommy Tracks—I begs his pardon—it’s been Mr Thomas Bradly, and the Bible, and the temperance pledge as has been and gone and done it all.

“And then there’s the children. Why, they used to have scarce a whole suit of clothes between ’em, and that were made of nearly as many odd pieces and patches as there’s days in the year. And as for boots, why, when they’d got to go anywheres, one on ’em, on an errand, and wanted to look a bit respectable, he were forced to put on the only pair of boots as had got any soles to ’em, and that pair belonged to the middlemost, but they fitted the eldest middlin’ well, as they let in plenty of air at the toes. And what’s the case now? Why, on a Saturday night you can see a whole row of boots standing two and two by the cupboard door, and they shines so bright with blacking, the cat’s fit to wear herself out by setting up her back and spitting at her own likeness in ’em. It’s the gospel and temperance as has done this.

“But that ain’t all. I’ve knowed two of our lads fight over a dirty crust as they’d picked out of the gutter, for their mother hadn’t got nothing for them to eat,—how could she, poor thing, when the money had all gone down my throat? It’s very different now. We’ve good bread and butter too on our table every day, with an onion or two, or a red herring to give it a relish, and now and then a rasher of bacon, or a bit of fresh meat; and before so very long I’ve good hopes as we shall have a pig of our own. Eh! Won’t that be jolly for the children? I told ’em I thought of getting one soon. Says our little Tom, ‘Daddy, how do they make the pig into bacon?’ ‘They rub it with salt,’ says I. Next day, at dinner-time, I watched him put by a little salt into a small bag, and next day too, and so on for a week. So at last I says, ‘What’s that for, Tommy?’ ‘Daddy,’ says he, ‘I’m keeping it for the new pig. Eh! Won’t I rub it into him, and make bacon of him, as soon as he comes?’

“But I ax your pardon, friends, for telling you all this.—‘Go on,’ do you say? Well, I’ll go on just for a bit. So you see what a blessing the giving up the drink has been to me and my family. And, what’s better still, it’s left room for the gospel to enter. It couldn’t get in when the strong drink blocked up the road. I’m not going to boast; I should get a tumble, I know, if I did that. It ain’t no goodness of mine, I’m well aware of that. It’s the Lord’s doing, and his blessing on Thomas Bradly’s kindness and care for a poor, wretched, ruined sinner like me. But here’s the fact: we has the Bible out now every night in our house, and I reads some of the blessed book out loud, and then we all kneels us down and has a prayer; and we goes to church on Sundays, and it’s like a little heaven below. Rather different that from what it used to be on the Sabbath-day, when I were singing and drinking with a lot of fellows, and it were all good fellowship one minute, and perhaps a kick into the street or a black eye the next. Ay, and there’s many of the old lot as knows the change, and what the Lord’s done for me, and they’re very mad, some on ’em; but that don’t matter, so long as they don’t make a madman of me.

“But just a word or two for you boys and girls of the Band of Hope afore I sit down.—Now, I’ve brought with me, by Mr Bradly’s leave, something to show you.” So saying, he beckoned to a young man, who handed him a small basket. He opened it, and produced a small jar with a brush in it. A half-suppressed murmur of merriment ran through the crowd. “Ah! You know what this is, I see,” continued James Barnes. “’Tain’t the first time as this has made its appearance in Cricketty Hall. Now, I’m not going to say anything ill-natured about it. As William Foster has said, ‘let by-gones be by-gones.’ It’s very good of him to say so, and I only mean to give you a word or two on the subject. This little jar has got tar in it, and tar’s a very wholesome and useful thing in its proper place. Now, a few months ago them as shall be nameless meant to daub William all over with this, and feather him afterwards, because he wouldn’t break his pledge. A cowardly lot they was to deal so with one man against a dozen of ’em; but that’s neither here nor there. I only want you, boys and girls, to take example by William, and stick to your pledge through thick and thin. See how the Lord protected him, and how his worst enemy were caught in his own trap. He were just winding a cord round his own legs when he thought he’d got William’s feet fast in the snare. Now, boys and girls, when you’re tempted to break the pledge, just think of this jar of tar, and offer up a prayer to be kept firm. ’Twouldn’t be a bad thing—specially if you’re much in the way of temptation—just to get a jar like this of your own, and hang it up in the wash-house, and put some good fresh tar in it, and, just before you go to your work of a morning, take a good long sniff at the tar—it’s a fine healthy smell is tar—and maybe it’ll be a help to you the whole day. There, I’ve done.”

And he sat down as abruptly as he had risen, amid the hearty cheers and laughter of his hearers.

The vicar then introduced Dr Prosser, remarking that he was sure that those who had heard him lecture last April would be delighted to listen to his voice again. The doctor, who was vociferously cheered, stood forward and said:—

“I have the greatest pleasure in being with you, dear friends, to-day. I have heard a great deal of what has been going on from your excellent vicar, and have now listened with the deepest interest to the characteristic speeches which have just been made. I shall be glad now to say a few words, and to add my testimony to the importance of certain truths which need enforcing in our day. Thomas Bradly is to follow me, and I feel sure that his homely eloquence and plain practical good sense will be a fit termination to this most truly interesting meeting.

“What I would now urge upon you all is this,—the unspeakable importance in these days of grasping realities instead of hunting shadows. I have been, I fear, till lately, more or less of a shadow-hunter myself. I used to sympathise with the cry,—

“‘For names and creeds let senseless bigots fight—He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’

“‘For names and creeds let senseless bigots fight—He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’

“But I don’t think this now. We men of science are too apt to deal with abstractions, and to follow out favourite theories, till we are in danger of forgetting that we have hearts and souls as well as heads; that, as has been beautifully said, ‘The heart has its arguments as well as the understanding;’ and that, as God’s Word tells us, ‘The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ I am more and more strongly persuaded of this every day. We are living in times of immense energy and surprising intellectual activity, but, at the same time, are surrounded with unrealities or half-realities. We want something to grasp that will never deceive us, never fly from us. Anything—like mere vague generalities will never satisfy beings constituted as you and I are; and thus it is that we cannot do without something real in our religion, something definite. We want to come into real communion with a personal Being, whom we can consciously, though spiritually, approach, love, and reverence. We want a real person such as ourselves, and yet infinitely above ourselves; and such an one we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour—one who is like us as man, yet infinitely above us as God—one who can smile on us, because he is human, and can watch over us, guide us, and bear with us, because he is divine.

“Be sure of this, dear friends,—and I am speaking to you now as persons of intelligence, who can thoughtfully weigh what I say,—science can never be true science, knowledge can never be real knowledge which sets aside the God who is the fountain of all truth and every kind of truth. If we are to learn anything aright and thoroughly, we must learn it as believers in Him in whom ‘we live, and move, and have our being,’ who has given us all our faculties, and placed us in the midst of that universe all of whose laws are of his own imposing and maintaining. Depend upon it, you cannot acquire any sound and useful knowledge aright, if you try and keep up an independence of that God who is the author and upholder of all things physical and spiritual. At the Cross we must learn the only way of peace for our souls; and, in dependence on the grace and wisdom of Him who is in every sense the Light of the world, we must seek to make real advance in every field of knowledge, content to know and feel our own ignorance, and thankful to gain light inallour investigations from Him who can at the same time baffle the searchings of the wisest, and unfold to the humble yet patient and persevering inquirer treasures of knowledge and wisdom otherwise unattained and unattainable. In a word, as the whole universe belongs to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and was made by him what it is, if we would pursue any branch of knowledge, any science whatever, with the truest and fullest prospect of success, we must do it as Christians, as in dependence on Him ‘in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’

“This, I am well aware, is not the tendency of the age, which is rather to seek knowledge apart from God, and to treat science and religion as distant and cold acquaintances, instead of loving and inseparable friends.—But now I gladly give way to my old friend Thomas Bradly, who has, I know, something to tell us which will do us good, if we will only carry it away with us.”

“Yes,” said Bradly, slowly and thoughtfully, as he took the speaker’s place, by the vicar’s invitation, “it is true, dear friends, that I have something of moment to say to you. This has truly been a happy day to me so far. I rejoice in the presence of so many dear friends; and it is indeed kind of Dr Prosser to be at the trouble to come among us, and give us those words of weighty counsel which we have just heard. I have listened to the other speeches also with very great satisfaction. I think we’re got on the right foundation, and we only wants to stick there.

“Well now, dear friends, I’ve got something to show you here. Look at this little book; it ain’t got much outward show about it, but it’s got the old-fashioned words of God’s truth inside. It was my mother’s Bible afore she were married, and a blessed book it were to her, and to her children too. I think I can see her now, sitting of a summer’s evening, after the day’s work were done, under an old apple tree, on a seat as my father had made for her. She would get us children round her, and be so happy with her little Bible, reading out its beautiful stories to us, and telling us of the love of Jesus. She always read the Bible to us with a smile, unless we’d any of us been doing anything wrong, and then she read to us what the Bible tells us about sin, and she looked grave indeed then.

“Well, when she died, the little book were left to our Jane—her mother wished it so—and Jane prized it more than gold, and used to mark her favourite verses with a line of red-ink under ’em; it were her way, and helped to bring the passages she wished particularly to remember more quickly to her eye. But the Lord was ordering and overruling this marking for his own special purposes. Look at the book again; you can many of you see the red lines.

“Now, it’s some years ago as me and mine was living a long way off from here. Jane were in service at a great house, and the butler and lady’s-maid, who hated the truth and poor Jane, because she loved it and stood up for it, managed to take away her character in the eyes of her mistress; but the Lord has graciously opened her mistress’s eyes at last, and that cloud is passed away for ever. I only mention this just to bring in this little book. The butler, to vex poor Jane, had taken away her Bible from her before he took away her character; but what happened? Why, when she had left the place, he goes to his drawer and takes out the Bible when he were looking for summat else; for he’d quite forgot as he’d hid it there. He sees the red lines, and reads the verses over them, and they make him think, and he’s brought to repentance.

“The little book’s beginning to do great things. He wants to restore the book, and make amends to Jane, does the butler; but he’s been such a rogue, he’s obliged to take himself away into foreign parts somewhere. But I don’t doubt but what he’ll come right in the end; the Word’ll not let him alone till it’s brought him to the foot of the cross. As he’s on his way abroad, he leaves the Bible at the station here to be taken to our house; but it manages to get lost on the way, and turns up at last in the tap-room of a public-house. Now, just mark this. If the Bible had come straight to our house, it would have helped to clear Jane’s character with her mistress, and no more; but there were other work for it to do. The publican’s daughter gets hold of it, and sees the red lines. She sees the verses above ’em, and they pricks her conscience. She don’t like this, and she resolves to get rid of the book. Yes, yes; but the little book has taken good aim at her heart, and shot two or three arrows into it, and she can’t get ’em out; it’s been doing its work, or rather the Lord’s work. So she takes it with her in the dark, and drops it into William Foster’s house, of all places in Crossbourne.

“Just fancy any one leaving a Bible in that house ten months ago. But it came at the very nick of time. William’s wife were in great trouble, and she’d tried a great many sticks to lean upon, but they’d all snapped like glass when she leaned her weight on ’em—she found nothing as’d ease the burden of an aching heart. It were just at the right time, then, as the little Bible fell into her room. She took it up, noticed the red lines, and some precious promises they was scored under, and by degrees she found peace.—Eh, but William must know nothing of this; how he would scoff if he found his wife reading the Bible!—But what’s this? William finds his missus quite a changed woman; she’s twice the wife to him she was, and his home ain’t like the same place. What’s the secret of this change? He don’t like to ask; but he watches, and he finds the worn old Bible hidden in the baby’s cradle. He reads it secretly; he prays over it; the scales fall from his eyes; he becomes a changed man; he comes out boldly and nobly for Christ; he and his wife rejoice together in the Lord.

“But the little homely book hadn’t quite done its work yet. Foster one night asks me to help him in a little trouble which the words of the book had got him into. Strange that, isn’t it? No, ’tain’t strange; ’cos there’s deep things, wonderful things, and terrible things in that blessed book; but then there’s light too to help you past these deep pits, if you’ll only use the Word as God’s lamp. I takes up the Bible to help William to a bright text or two, and I sees my mother’s name in the cover. Here was our long-lost Bible; its work so far were done, and now it’s got back to its rightful owner. But after we’d got it back we’d some time to wait; but waiting-times are blessed times for true Christians. At last the full evidence, of which Jane’s Bible were one little link, came up, and my dear sister’s character were cleared of every spot and stain as had been cast upon it by her fellow-servants.

“Now, what I want you to notice, dear friends, is just this—how wonderfully the Lord has worked in this matter. If my dear sister had not suffered in the first instance from the tongue of the slanderer, that blessed book’d never have done all this good, as far as we can see. The butler wouldn’t have been convinced of sin; the publican’s daughter wouldn’t have been brought to repentance and praise; William and his wife wouldn’t have been made happy and rejoicing believers. And indeed, though I can’t explain all now, neither, as far as we can tell, would Jim Barnes have been what he now is, with his missus like a new pin, nor would poor Ned Taylor have died a humble penitent. All these precious fruits have growed and ripened out of the loss of my dear sister’s Bible. And she herself—well, it’s been a sore trial, but it’s yielded already the peaceable fruit of righteousness. She’s lost nothing in the end but a little dross, and her sorrow has helped to bring joy to many.

“Now, I ask you all to cling to the grand old book; to use it as a sword and a lamp,—a sword against your spiritual enemies, and a lamp to guide you to heaven. We’ve heard a good deal just now of the special dangers of our own times, how people are getting wise above what’s written. Ah! But ‘the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’ Dr Prosser’s a man of science, and you’ve heard his experience. You see he finds he can’t get on without the old-fashioned gospel. A religion without a regular creed’s no use at all. He’s found out as religion without a real human and divine Saviour’s only moonshine; nay, it’s no shine at all; it’s just darkness, and nothing else. There’s a striking verse in the prophet Jeremiah as just suits these days. It’s this, and I’m reading it out of Jane’s Bible. You’ll find it in Jeremiah, the eighth chapter and the ninth verse: ‘The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?’ Well, but do you cling to the old Bible—there’s nothing like it. There’s many a showy life just now as looks well enough outside; but if you want a life as’ll wear well you must fashion it by God’s Word.

“Now, afore I sits down, I’m just a-going to tell you about Dick Trundle’s house-warming.—Dick were one of them chaps as are always for making a bit of a show, and making it cost as little as possible. He were a hard-working man, and didn’t spend much in drink, so he managed to get a little money together, and he puts up half-a-dozen houses. The end one were bigger than the rest, and had a bow-window to it.—Well, Dick were a bachelor, and had an old housekeeper to do for him. When his new houses were built, and he were just ready to go into his own, he resolves to have a house-warming, and he invites me and three other chaps to tea and supper with him. We’d some of us noticed as he’d been sending a lot of things to the house for days past.—When the right day was come, we goes to the front door, ’cos it looked more civil, and we knocks. Dick himself comes to the door, and says through the keyhole, ‘I must ask you to go round, for the door sticks, and I can’t open it.’ So we goes round.—There were a very handsome clock in the passage, in a grand mahogany case. ‘Seven o’clock!’ says I, looking at it; ‘surely we can’t be so late.’ ‘Oh no,’ says he, ‘the clock stands. I got it dirt cheap, but there’s something amiss with the works. But it’s a capital clock, they tell me, entirely on a new principle.’—We was to have tea in the best parlour. ‘Dear me,’ says one of my mates, ‘what a smell of gas!’ ‘Yes,’ says Dick; ‘ain’t them beautiful gas-fittings? I got ’em second-hand for an old song, but I’m afraid they leak a bit.’—We should have been pretty comfortable at tea, only the window wouldn’t shut properly, and there came in such a draught as set us all sneezing. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Dick, ‘as you’re inconvenienced by that draught; it’s the builder’s fault. Of course I took the lowest estimate for these houses, and the rascal’s been and put me in green wood; but the carpenter shall set it all right to-morrow.’—But the worst of all was, the gas escaped so fast it had to be turned off at the meter. ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘that won’t matter for to-night, for I’ve bought a famous lamp, a new patent. I got it very reasonable, because the man who wanted to part with it were giving up housekeeping and going abroad.’ So we had the lamp in, and a splendid looking thing it were; but I thought I saw a crack in the middle, only I didn’t like to say so. Well, all of a sudden, just in the middle of the supper, the lamp falls right in two among the dishes, and the oil all pours out over my neighbour’s clothes. Such a scene there was! I tried to keep from laughing, but I couldn’t stop, though I almost choked myself.—Dick, you may be sure, weren’t best pleased. It were a bad job altogether; so we bade good-night as soon as it were civil to do so. But I shall never forget Dick Trundle’s house-warming, nor the lesson it taught me.

“What we want, dear friends, is, not what’s new, cheap, and showy, but what’s solid, and substantial, and thoroughly well made. Will itwearwell? That’s the question after all. Dick’s fine things was just got up for show; they’d no wear in ’em—they was cheap and worthless. Now there’s a deal of religion going in our day as is like Dick Trundle’s house and purchases; it’s quite new, it makes a great show, it looks very fine, till you come to search a little closer into it. But it ain’t according to the old Bible make: it don’t get beyond the head; it can’t satisfy the heart. What we want is a religion that’s real—just the religion of the gospel, as puts Jesus Christ and his work first and foremost. If you haven’t got that, you’ve got nothing as you can depend on it’ll fail you when you most want it. It may be called very wide, and very intelligent, and very enlightened, but it won’t act in the day of trouble, and when the conscience gets uneasy.

“Well, now, we’ve got a happy company here to-night; we’re many of us total abstainers on principle and most of us, I hope, Bible Christians on principle, after the old fashion; for, if we haven’t Christ and his Word for our foundation, we haven’t got that as’ll stand the test. No, friends, take the word of Tommy Tracks—and you’ve got what’ll confirm what I say all round you in this meeting to-night—the life as is begun, continued, and ended in the fear of God, and with the Bible for its guide, and Jesus for its example, is the life that’s just what you and I were meant to live by the God who made us and redeemed us, and it’s plainly and unmistakably the life thatwearsbest.”

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