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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Working in the Shade, by Theodore P Wilson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Working in the Shade
+       Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping
+
+Author: Theodore P Wilson
+
+Illustrator: F. A. F.
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21134]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKING IN THE SHADE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Working in the Shade; or, Lowly Sowing Brings Glorious Reaping
+
+by the Reverend Theodore P Wilson
+________________________________________________________________
+When he wrote "Frank Oldfield" some ten years before this book, and won
+a literary prize with it, Wilson showed that he was an author who could
+write a good story round a moral theme, and hold his readers' attention.
+
+This is just such a book.  You could look at it as no more than a very
+hard-hitting sermon on the theme of Selfishness, but it is well-written
+enough, with various episodes of selfishness leading to disaster, and
+unselfishness leading heavenwards.
+
+It is not a long book, and it will not take you long to read this book,
+or listen to it.  It is well-written, and it will surely make a good
+impression upon you, and give you food for thought. NH
+________________________________________________________________
+
+WORKING IN THE SHADE; OR, LOWLY SOWING BRINGS GLORIOUS REAPING
+
+BY THE REVEREND THEODORE P WILSON
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+THE NEW-COMER.
+
+Curiosity was on tiptoe in the small country-town of Franchope and the
+neighbourhood when it was settled without a doubt that Riverton Park was
+to be occupied once more.
+
+Park House, which was the name of the mansion belonging to the Riverton
+estate, was a fine, old, substantial structure, which stood upon a
+rising ground, and looked out upon a richly undulating country, a
+considerable portion of which belonged to the property.
+
+The house was situated in the centre of an extensive park, whose groups
+and avenues of venerable trees made it plain that persons of
+consideration had long been holders of the estate.  But for the last
+twenty years Riverton Park had been a mystery and a desolation.  No one
+had occupied the house during that time, except an old man and his wife,
+who pottered about the place, and just contrived to keep the buildings
+from tumbling into ruin.  The shutters were always closed, as though the
+mansion were in a state of chronic mourning for a race of proprietors
+now become extinct, except that now and then, in summer-time, a
+niggardly amount of fresh air and sunshine was allowed to find its way
+into the interior of the dwelling.
+
+As for the grounds and the park, they were _overlooked_ in more senses
+than one by a labourer and his sons, who lived in a hamlet called
+Bridgepath, which was situated on the estate, about a mile from the
+house, in the rear, and contained some five hundred people.  John Willis
+and his sons were paid by somebody to look after the gardens and drives;
+and as they got their money regularly, and no one ever came to inspect
+their work, they just gave a turn at the old place now and then at odd
+times, and neither asked questions nor answered any, and allowed the
+grass and weeds to have their own way, till the whole domain became
+little better than an unsightly wilderness.  Everybody said it was a
+shame, but as no one had a right to interfere, the broad, white front of
+Park House continued to look across the public road to Franchope through
+its surroundings of noble trees, with a sort of pensive dignity, its
+walls being more or less discoloured and scarred, while creepers
+straggled across the windows, looking like so many wrinkles indicative
+of decrepitude and decay.
+
+But why did no one purchase it?  Simply because its present owner, who
+was abroad somewhere, had no intention of selling it.  At last, however,
+a change had come.  Riverton Park was to be tenanted again.  But by
+whom?  Not by its former occupier; that was ascertained beyond doubt by
+those who had sufficient leisure and benevolence to find out other
+people's business for the gratification of the general public.  It was
+not so clear who was to be the new-comer.  Some said a retired
+tradesman; others, a foreign princess; others, the proprietor of a
+private lunatic asylum.  These and other rumours were afloat, but none
+of them came to an anchor.
+
+It was on a quiet summer's evening in July that Mary Stansfield was
+walking leisurely homeward along the highroad which passed through the
+Riverton estate and skirted the park.  Miss Stansfield was the orphan
+child of an officer who had perished, with his wife and other children,
+in the Indian Mutiny.  She had been left behind in England, in the
+family of a maiden aunt, her father's sister, who lived on her own
+property, which was situated between the Riverton estate and the town of
+Franchope.  She had inherited from her father a small independence, and
+from both parents the priceless legacy of a truly Christian example, and
+the grace that rests on the child in answer to the prayers of faith and
+love.
+
+The world considered her position a highly-favoured one, for her aunt
+would no doubt leave her her fortune and estate when she died; for she
+had already as good as adopted her niece, from whom she received all the
+attention and watchful tenderness which she needed continually, by
+reason of age and manifold infirmities.  But while our life has its
+outer convex side, which magnifies its advantages before the world, it
+has its inner concave side also, which reduces the outer circumstances
+of prosperity into littleness, when "the heart knoweth its own
+bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy."  So it
+was with Mary Stansfield.  She had a refined and luxurious home, and all
+her wants supplied.  She was practically mistress of the household, and
+had many friends and acquaintances in the families of the neighbouring
+gentry, several of whom had country seats within easy walk or drive of
+her home.  Yet there was a heavy cross in her lot, and its edges were
+very sharp.  In her aged aunt, with whom she lived, there were a
+harshness of character, and an inability to appreciate or sympathise
+with her niece, which would have made Mary Stansfield's life a burden to
+her had it not been for her high sense of duty, her patient charity, and
+God's abiding-grace in her heart.  Misunderstood, thwarted at every
+turn, her attentions misinterpreted, her gentle forbearance made the
+object of keen and relentless sarcasm or lofty reproof, her supposed
+failings and shortcomings exposed and commented upon with ruthless
+bitterness, while yet the tongue which wounded never transgressed the
+bounds imposed by politeness, but rather chose the blandest terms
+wherewith to stab the deepest,--hers was indeed a life whose daily
+strain taxed the unostentatious grace of patience to the utmost, and
+made her heart often waver, while yet the settled will never lost its
+foothold.
+
+How gladly, had she consulted self, would she have left her gilded
+prison and joined some congenial sister, as her own means would have
+permitted her to do, in work for God, where, after toiling abroad, she
+could come back to a humble home, in which her heart would be free, and
+generous love would answer love.  But duty said "No," as she believed.
+The cold, hard woman who so cruelly repulsed her was her beloved
+father's only sister, and she had resolved that while her aunt claimed
+or desired her services no personal considerations should withdraw her
+from that house of restraint and humiliation.
+
+Pondering the difficulties of her trying position, yet in no murmuring
+spirit, Mary Stansfield, on this quiet summer's evening, was just
+passing the boundary wall which separated Riverton Park from the
+adjoining property, when, to her surprise and partly amusement also, she
+noticed a venerable-looking old gentleman seated school-boy fashion on
+the top rail of a five-barred gate.  The contrast between his
+patriarchal appearance and his attitude and position made her find it
+difficult to keep her countenance; so, turning her head away lest he
+should see the smile on her face, she was quickening her pace, when she
+became aware that he had jumped down from his elevated seat and was
+advancing towards her.
+
+"Miss Stansfield, I suppose?" he asked, as she hesitated for a moment in
+her walk, at the same time raising his hat respectfully.
+
+Surprised at this salutation, but pleased with the voice and manner of
+the stranger, she stopped, and replied to his question in the
+affirmative, and was moving on, when he added,--
+
+"I am a stranger to you at present, my dear young lady; but I hope not
+to be so long.  I daresay you will guess that I am the new occupier of
+Riverton Park.  I suppose I ought properly to wait for a formal
+introduction before making your acquaintance; but I have lived abroad in
+the colonies for some years past, and colonial life makes one disposed
+at times to set aside or disregard some of those social barriers which
+are, I know, necessary in the old country; so you must excuse an old man
+for introducing himself, and will permit him, I am sure, to accompany
+you as far as your aunt's lodge."
+
+There was something so frank, and at the same time so thoroughly
+courteous, about the old gentleman's address that Miss Stansfield could
+not be offended with him; while his age and bearing prevented her
+feeling that there was any impropriety in her permitting him to be her
+companion on the public road till she should reach the drive-gate
+leading up to her home.  She therefore bowed her assent, and the two
+walked slowly forward.
+
+"You must know, Miss Stansfield," proceeded the stranger, "that I have
+both seen you before and have also heard a good deal about you, though
+we have never met till to-day.--Ah, I know what you would say," he
+added, with a smile, as he noticed her look of extreme surprise and her
+blush of bewilderment.  "You are thinking, What can I have heard about
+one who is leading such a commonplace, retired life as yours?  I will
+tell you.  I have been rather anxious to know what sort of neighbours I
+shall have round me here, so I have been getting a little reliable
+information on the subject--where from it matters not; and my informant
+has told me about an old lady whose estate adjoins Riverton Park, and
+who has a niece living with her who belongs to a class for which I have
+a special respect, and which I may call `workers in the shade.'  Do you
+understand me?"
+
+"Perfectly," replied his companion; "only I feel utterly unworthy of
+being included in such a class."
+
+"Of course you do.  And just for this reason, because you're in the
+habit of burning candles instead of letting off fireworks; and so you
+think your humble candles aren't of much service because they don't go
+off with a rush and a fizz.  Is that it?"
+
+"Perhaps it may be so," said the other, laughing.
+
+"Well, do you remember what Shakespeare says?" asked the old man.
+
+  "`How far that little candle throws its beams,
+  So shines a good deed in a naughty world.'
+
+"Now, I want you kindly to answer me a question.  It is this, Are there
+any unselfish people in Franchope or the neighbourhood?"
+
+The question was put so abruptly, and was so odd in itself, that Mary
+Stansfield looked in her companion's face with a half misgiving.  He
+noticed it instantly.  "You're a little doubtful as to the old
+gentleman's vanity?" he said, laughing; "but I'm quite sane and quite in
+earnest; and I repeat my question."
+
+"Really," said the other, much amused, "it is a very difficult question
+to answer.  I hope and believe that there are many unselfish persons in
+our neighbourhood, or it would be sad indeed."
+
+"Ah!  True," was his reply, "but hoping is one thing, and believing is
+another.  Now, I've been half over the world, and have come back to my
+own country with the settled conviction that selfishness is the great
+crying sin of our day; and it seems to me to have increased tenfold in
+my own native land since I last left it.  So I should very much like to
+meet with a specimen or two of genuine unselfish people; for I have some
+important work to do here, and I shall stand in need of truly unselfish
+helpers.  Can you name me one or two?"
+
+"Well, sir, if you mean by unselfish persons those who really work for
+God's glory and not their own, I freely admit that they are, and I
+suppose always must be, comparatively rare."
+
+"That is exactly what I _do_ mean, my dear young lady; can you help me
+to find a few such unselfish workers in your own rank of life, and of
+your own sex?"
+
+His companion was silent for a few moments, then she said slowly and
+timidly, "I judge, dear sir, from the tone of your questions that you
+are a follower of that Saviour who has set us the only perfect example
+of unselfishness."
+
+"I trust so, my young friend," was the other's reply; "I wish at least
+to be so.  Well, I see we have only a few more steps to bring us to your
+aunt's lodge.  We shall meet again, I have no doubt, before long; and
+perhaps when we do I shall have more to say to you on the same subject.
+Farewell, and thank you."  And with a courteous salutation he parted
+from her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+SETTLING DOWN.
+
+Restoration and improvement went on vigorously at Riverton Park.  The
+front of the house soon lost its careworn appearance; the walks laid
+aside their weeds, and shone with a lively surface of fresh gravel; the
+shutters ceased to exclude the daylight; while painters and paperers,
+masons and carpenters, decorators and upholsterers soon brought the
+interior of the dwelling into a becoming state of beauty, order, and
+comfort.
+
+And now the new proprietor was looked for with anxious expectation.  His
+name had already got abroad, and all the gentry round were prepared to
+welcome Colonel Dawson when he should take possession of his newly
+acquired property.  The colonel was an old retired officer, who had
+spent many years since leaving the army in one or more of the colonies.
+And now he was come home again, and intended to pass the rest of his
+days at Riverton.  This was all that report could confidently affirm at
+present.
+
+Was he an old bachelor or married?  And if the latter, was his wife
+still living, and was there any family?  Very conflicting rumours got
+abroad on this subject, but very little satisfaction came of them.  All
+that could conclusively be gathered was that Park House was to have a
+lady inhabitant as well as the colonel; but that only a portion of the
+house was to be fully furnished.  The appearance of a coachman daily
+exercising two noble carriage-horses was also hailed as a sign that the
+colonel did not mean to lead an unsociable life.
+
+So Franchope and its neighbourhood were content, and watched the
+arrivals at the station day by day with patient interest.  At length, in
+the first week in August, it was observed that the colonel's carriage
+drew up at the railway office to meet the evening train from London.
+From a first-class carriage there emerged three persons--the colonel, an
+elderly lady, and a young man who might be some twenty years of age; a
+footman and a lady's-maid also made their appearance; and all drove off
+for Riverton Park.  Who could count the pairs of eyes that looked out
+from various windows in Franchope as the carriage drove rapidly through
+the town?  A glance, a flash, and the new-comers were gone.
+
+And now, in a few days, the whole household having twice occupied the
+family pews in the old parish church on the Lord's day, the neighbouring
+gentry began to make their calls.
+
+The first to do so were Lady Willerly and her daughter.  Her ladyship
+had discovered that she was distantly connected with the colonel, and
+hastened to show her interest in him as speedily as possible.  Having
+cordially shaken hands with her and her daughter.  Colonel Dawson turned
+to the lady and young man by his side and introduced them as, "My sister
+Miss Dawson; my nephew Mr Horace Jackson."  So the relationships were
+settled, and public curiosity set at rest.
+
+Numerous other callers followed, and by all it was agreed that the
+family was a decided acquisition; a pity perhaps that there was not a
+Mrs Dawson and a few more young people to fill the roomy old house and
+add liveliness to the various parties and social gatherings among the
+gentry.  A younger man than the colonel would undoubtedly have been more
+to the general taste, especially as it was soon found that the family at
+Park House neither accepted nor gave dinner invitations, nor indeed
+invitations to any gatherings except quiet afternoon friendly meetings,
+where intercourse with a few neighbours could be enjoyed without mixing
+with the gaieties of the fashionable world.
+
+So good society shrugged its shoulders, and raised its eyebrows, and
+regretted that the colonel, who doubtless was a good man, should have
+taken up such strict and strange notions.  However, people must please
+themselves; and so it came to pass that the family at Riverton Park was
+soon left pretty much to itself, just exchanging civil calls now and
+then with the principal neighbours, and being left out of the circle of
+fashionable intimacy.
+
+Three families, however, kept up a closer acquaintance, which ripened,
+more or less, into friendship.  About a mile and a half from the Park,
+on the side that was farthest from Franchope, lived Mr Arthur Wilder, a
+gentleman of independent means, with a wife, a grown-up son, and three
+daughters.  Horace Jackson was soon on the most intimate terms with
+young Wilder, and with his sisters, who had the reputation of being the
+most earnest workers in all good and benevolent schemes, so that in them
+the clergyman of their parish had the benefit of three additional right
+hands; while their parents and brother gave time, money, and influence
+to many a good cause and useful institution.
+
+Adjoining the Riverton estate, in the direction of Franchope, was, as
+has been already stated, the property of the elderly Miss Stansfield,
+whose niece, Mary, has been introduced to our readers.  The old lady was
+an early caller on the colonel's family, having made a special effort to
+rouse herself to pay the call, as she rarely left her own grounds.  She
+at once took to Colonel Dawson; and, whether or no the liking was
+returned on his part, he frequently visited his infirm neighbour, and
+would spend many a quiet hour with her, to her great satisfaction.  The
+old lady was one who wished to do good, and did it, but not graciously.
+So she had won respect and a good name among her dependants, but not
+love.  The world called her selfish, but the world was wrong.  She was
+self-absorbed, but not selfish in the ordinary sense of the term.  She
+acted upon principle of the highest kind; her religion was a reality,
+but she had been used ever to have her own way, and could not brook
+thwarting or contradiction; while her ailments and infirmities had
+clustered her thoughts too much round herself, and had generated a
+bitterness in her manner and speech, which made the lot of her niece,
+who was her constant companion, a very trying one.
+
+To the north of Riverton Park was the estate of Lady Willerly.  Her
+ladyship was one of those impetuous characters who are never content
+unless they are taking castles by storm; she must use a hatchet where a
+penknife would answer equally well or better.  She was a widow, and
+dwelt with her only child Grace, a grown-up daughter, in her fine old
+family mansion, in the midst of her tenants and the poor, who lived in a
+state of chronic alarm lest she should be coming down upon them with
+some new and vigorous alteration or improvement.  Her daughter was in
+some respects like her mother, as full of energy, but with a little more
+discretion; bright as a sunbeam, and honest as the day; abounding also
+in good works.  Such were the three families who maintained an intimacy
+with Colonel Dawson, when the rest of the neighbouring gentry dropped
+off into ordinary acquaintances.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+"THE NEW SCHOOL."
+
+When the family had occupied Park House about four months, a great deal
+of curiosity and excitement was felt by the inhabitants of Bridgepath,
+the little hamlet of five hundred persons in the rear of Riverton Park,
+in consequence of sundry cart-loads of bricks, stone, and lime being
+deposited on a field which was situated a few yards from the principal
+beer-shop.  The colonel was going to build, it seemed,--but what?
+Possibly a full-grown public-house.  Well, that would be a very
+questionable improvement.  Was it to be a school, or a reading-room?
+
+There was a school already, held in the parlour of the blacksmith's
+cottage, where a master attended on week-days, weather permitting, and
+imparted as much of the three R's as the children, whose parents thought
+it worth while to send them, could be induced to acquire under the
+pressure of a moderate amount of persuasion and an immoderate amount of
+castigation.
+
+The master came in a pony-cart from Franchope, and returned in the same
+the moment the afternoon school broke up, so that his scholars had ample
+opportunity, when he was fairly gone, to settle any little disputes
+which might have arisen during school hours by vigorous fights on the
+open green, the combatants being usually encouraged to prolong their
+encounters to the utmost by the cheers of the men who gathered round
+them out of the neighbouring beer-shops.
+
+As for religious instruction, the master, it is true, made his scholars
+read a portion of the Scriptures twice a week, and learn a few verses.
+But they would have been almost better without this; for the hard,
+matter-of-fact way in which he dealt with the Holy Book and its
+teachings would make the children rather hate than love their Bible
+lesson.
+
+And what was done for the improvement, mental or spiritual, of the
+grown-up people?  Nothing.  Neither church nor chapel existed in the
+place.  A few old and middle-aged people walked occasionally to the
+nearest place of worship, some two miles off; but nine-tenths of the
+villagers went nowhere on a Sunday--that is to say, nowhere where they
+could hear anything to do them good, though they were ready enough to
+leave their homes on the Sabbath to congregate where they could drink
+and game together, and sing profane and immoral songs.
+
+So Bridgepath was rightly called "a lost place;" and indeed it had been
+"lost" for so many years, that there seemed scarcely the remotest
+prospect of its being "found" by any one disposed to do it good.
+However, even in this dark spot there was a corner from which there
+shone a little flickering light.  John Price and his family tenanted a
+tolerably roomy cottage at the entrance to the village, close to the
+horse-pond.  The poor man had seen better days, having acted as steward
+to the young squire from the time he came into the property till he
+disappeared with his infant son and an old nurse who had lived for
+nearly two generations on the Riverton estate.  Poor John had served the
+squire's father also as steward, and loved the young master as if he had
+been his own child; and it was known that, when ruin fell on the young
+man, the poor steward was dragged down also to poverty, having been
+somehow or other involved in his employer's ruin.  But never did John
+Price utter a word that would throw light on this subject to anyone
+outside his own family.  All he would let people know was, that the
+squire had left him his cottage rent-free for his life,--which was,
+indeed, all that the master had to leave his faithful servant.
+
+The worthy man had struggled hard to keep himself and his family; but
+now he was bed-ridden, and had been so for some five or six years past.
+However, he had a patient wife, who made the most and best of a very
+little, and loving children, some of them in service, who helped him
+through.  And he found a measure of peace in studying his old, well-worn
+Bible, though he read it as yet but ignorantly.  Still, what light he
+had he strove to impart to those of the villagers who came to sit and
+condole with him; while his wife, and an unmarried daughter who lived at
+home, both deploring the wickedness of Bridgepath, tried to throw in a
+word of scriptural truth now and then, for the sake of instructing and
+improving their heathenish neighbours.
+
+It may be well imagined, then, with what interest all the villagers, but
+especially the Prices, including John himself, as he was propped up in
+bed and gazed through the casement, marked the numerous carts bringing
+building materials of all kinds to the village.  All doubts on the
+subject, however, were soon brought to an end by a call from the colonel
+at John's house in the early part of November.  After a few kind
+inquiries about his health and family, Colonel Dawson informed him that
+he was going to build at once a school and master's house in Bridgepath,
+with a reading-room attached to it, and to place there a married man of
+thorough Christian principles; one who would not only look after the
+ordinary teaching of the children, but would also, under the
+superintendence of the vicar, conduct a simple religious service on
+Sundays for the instruction of the villagers.
+
+Bridgepath had from time immemorial been under the special supervision
+of the proprietors of Riverton Park, the whole hamlet being a portion of
+the property.  The parish to which it belonged was extensive, and the
+parish church some five miles distant, Bridgepath being just on the
+borders of the next parish, in which parish the Park itself was
+situated.  So, in former days, the chaplain at the house used to look
+after the people of the hamlet in a good-natured sort of way, by taking
+food and clothing to the sick and destitute, and saying a kind word, and
+giving a little wholesome advice, where he thought they were needed.
+But being himself unhappily possessed of but little light, he was unable
+to impart much to others, and the spiritual destitution of poor
+Bridgepath never seemed to occur to his mind at all.  But now, for the
+last twenty years, neither squire nor chaplain had resided at Riverton;
+so that a very occasional visit from the vicar--who had more on his
+hands nearer home than he could well accomplish, and who, with others,
+was living in constant expectation of some one coming to the property
+and bringing about a change--was all that had been done directly for the
+scriptural instruction and eternal welfare of the benighted inhabitants
+of Bridgepath.
+
+Now, however, a mighty change was coming, and the dwellers in the hamlet
+were supposed to be highly delighted, as a matter of course, with the
+prospect.  And, certainly, the hearts of old John Price and his wife and
+daughter did rejoice; but not so the hearts of most of the inhabitants,
+for they were thoroughly conscious that much of the goings on in their
+village would not bear looking into by those who feared God and
+respected human law.  Bridgepath had been now for a good many years a
+_privileged_ place in the eyes of poachers, gamblers, and Sabbath-
+breakers, where the devil's active servants could hold their festivals,
+especially on the Lord's day, without fear of interruption from
+policeman or preacher.  And the women were as bad as the men; they
+"loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."  So
+the new school and reading-room arose amidst the sneers and loudly-
+expressed disgust of the majority of the population; the proprietors of
+the beer-shops being specially bitter in their denunciations of this
+uncalled-for innovation on the good old times and habits, so long the
+favoured lot of a primitive and unsophisticated people, who had been
+quite content when left to their own devices, and could do perfectly
+well without these new-fashioned schemes, if only good people would just
+let them alone.  The good people, however, saw the matter in a different
+light; and so, spite of all the grumbling and outspoken dissatisfaction,
+the buildings were completed in the spring, and the new schoolmaster and
+his wife took up their abode in Bridgepath.
+
+Colonel Dawson had chosen his man carefully, and duly warned him that he
+would find his post at first no bed of roses.  To which the master
+replied that he was not afraid of encountering his share of thorns; and
+that he doubted not but that with prayer, patience, and perseverance,
+there would be both flowers and fruit in Bridgepath in due time.  As for
+opposition, he rather enjoyed a little of it, and trusted to be enabled
+to live it down.  The colonel was satisfied, for he knew that he had
+chosen a man who had already proved himself to be no mere talker.  So
+Bridgepath looked on in sulky wonder; but soon was constrained to
+acknowledge that, in their new schoolmaster, the right man had been put
+into the right place.
+
+And now the colonel was very anxious to get the help of some earnest-
+hearted Christian lady, who would visit the sick and needy in the
+neglected hamlet, carrying with her Christ in her heart and on her lips;
+for his sister was too old to undertake such a work.  His thoughts
+turned to Mary Stansfield.  He would go and have a talk with the old
+lady her aunt about it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+WHAT IS UNSELFISHNESS?
+
+Colonel Dawson took a deep interest both in Miss Stansfield and her
+niece.  He understood them both, and pitied them both, but for very
+different reasons.  He pitied the old lady because she was throwing away
+her own happiness and crippling her own usefulness.  He pitied her
+because she was not what she might so easily have been; because she was
+storing up vinegar where she might have gathered honey; and was one of
+those of whom Dr South says that "they tell the truth, but tell it with
+the tongue of a viper."  He pitied Mary Stansfield, but with a pity
+mingled with profound respect and admiration.  He pitied her that she
+should have to bear those daily raspings of the spirit which her aunt,
+half unconsciously, perpetually inflicted on her.  And yet he could not
+altogether regret the discipline, when he marked how the trial was daily
+burnishing the fine gold of her character.  Still, he pitied both, and
+was a frequent visitor at Morewood Court, partly because he marked how
+few were the friends who cared to stay at the house, and, more still,
+because he hoped to be of use in lightening the burden of both aunt and
+niece.
+
+Colonel Dawson was one of those who love "working in the shade."  Not
+that he was ashamed or afraid of working in the light, but he was
+content to pursue the less attractive and less ornamental paths of
+usefulness, which few comparatively cared to follow.  And so he had set
+himself resolutely and prayerfully to the task of rearranging the
+character of one who, he was persuaded, was capable and desirous of
+doing good and great things, could she only be got to hold herself at
+arm's-length from herself for a little while, and see herself in the
+glass of God's Word, and as others saw her.  He felt sure that there was
+good, practical sense enough in her mind, and grace enough in her heart,
+to make her yield to conviction when he should draw her on to see and
+acknowledge a better way; and then he knew that, when she should have
+been drawn out of the old self into a better self, she would duly
+appreciate and love her long-suffering niece.  But he was well aware
+that the old self would not surrender its throne without a severe
+struggle, and he was therefore not surprised to find the old lady's
+bitterness rather increase than diminish as through their conversations
+she was learning to become more and more dissatisfied with herself.
+
+Her poor niece had to bear in consequence the burden of an increased
+irritability in her aunt's addresses to her.  But she was greatly
+cheered when the colonel took an opportunity of seeing her alone, and
+assuring her that, spite of appearances to the contrary, the clouds were
+beginning to break, and that light and peace would shortly follow.
+
+It was now the month of June; the school and reading-room at Bridgepath
+had got fairly established; the growlers and grumblers had nearly all of
+them subsided; and many long-benighted souls were receiving light with
+gladness.
+
+"Pray excuse my calling so early," said the colonel, as he took his seat
+beside the elder Miss Stansfield, on a bright sunny morning.  The
+drawing-room window was open, and the ladies were seated on either side
+of it--the aunt half reclining on an easy-chair, the other occupying a
+low stool, with the open Bible from which she had been reading aloud on
+her lap.
+
+Miss Stansfield received her visitor very cordially, but it was plain
+that the reading of the Holy Book had not imparted any sunshine to her
+spirit, and there were traces of recent tears in her niece's eyes.
+
+The colonel saw this, but made no remark on it.  For a few moments he
+gazed on the lovely garden, visible through the open window, without
+speaking; then he said abruptly, "I was thinking how selfish we
+naturally are; those beautiful flowers reminded me of it, and seemed to
+reproach me.  God gives us such a profusion of colour, and harmonises it
+so marvellously to delight us; and yet how ready we are to pick out, as
+it were, the sombrest tints in his dealings with us, and to keep our
+eyes fixed on them."
+
+Miss Stansfield coloured slightly, and then said, after a pause, during
+which her niece did not look up, but nervously moved the leaves of her
+Bible, "Yes, I quite agree with you, Colonel Dawson; there is abundance
+of selfishness in our days, especially among young people.  They seem to
+think of nothing but having their own way, and seldom condescend to
+admit that those who have been brought up in less enlightened days can
+have gained any wisdom by experience."
+
+"Ah!  I dare say," replied the other; "I've no doubt that young people,
+many of them at least, have a large share of this very unlovable
+quality.  Perhaps we have all of us more of it than we should like to
+admit to ourselves.  But now, to tell the truth, I am on the look-out
+for one or two unselfish people;--can either of you, my dear friends,
+help me to find them?"
+
+"I think you will search in vain in _this_ neighbourhood," said the old
+lady dryly.
+
+"Nay, my dear Miss Stansfield, are you not a little uncharitable?
+Surely you can point me to some who love doing good, and forget
+themselves in doing it."
+
+"I can say `Yes' to the first but not to the last part of your
+question," was the reply.  "There are plenty who love doing good,
+according to the popular estimate of goodness; but they love still more
+to be known and praised as the doer of it."
+
+"Well," rejoined her visitor, "granting this in a measure, I should
+still like to know of some of these popular good-doers.  We must make
+considerable allowance for human frailty.  Perhaps I shall be able to
+pick out a real jewel, where you have believed them to be only coloured
+glass and tinsel."
+
+"I fear not, Colonel Dawson.  However, I will mention a few of what I
+believe to be but counterfeit gems.  There are the Wilders, for
+instance.  Those girls are always doing good, and their brother too.
+You have only to look into the local papers to see what a broad stream
+of good works is perpetually flowing from that family.  What with
+ecclesiastical decorations, Sunday-school and day-school _fetes_,
+dancing at charity balls, managing coal and clothing clubs, and a
+hundred other things in which the world and the Church get their
+alternate share pretty evenly, that family is a perfect pattern of good
+deeds for everybody to look at,--like the children's samplers, which
+their mothers point to with so much pride, as they hang up framed in
+their cottages."
+
+The colonel looked grave, and said, "Then you do not consider that there
+are likely to be any unselfish workers in the Wilder family?"
+
+"You had better ask my niece, colonel.  She will give you an
+unprejudiced opinion."
+
+The other looked towards the younger lady, and said, "I am asking now in
+confidence, and with an object, not from mere idle curiosity, far less
+from any wish to pick holes in the characters and conduct of any of my
+neighbours.  So, Miss Mary, kindly give me your opinion."
+
+Thus appealed to, the younger lady replied, but evidently with much
+reluctance, "I fear that my aunt is right in her judgment of the
+Wilders.  I dare not recommend them to you as likely to prove, in the
+truest sense, unselfish workers.  They are very kind and good-natured,
+and no one can help liking them; but--" and she hesitated.
+
+"I understand you," said the colonel; "they would not come up to my
+standard, you think?"
+
+"I fear not; but then I should be sorry to judge them harshly, only you
+asked my honest opinion."
+
+"Oh, speak out, my dear, speak out," said her aunt; "they are but
+afflicted with the epidemic which has attacked all ranks in our day.
+Thus, where will you find a really unselfish servant nowadays?  The old-
+fashioned domestics who would live a generation in a family, mourn over
+an accidental breakage committed once in a quarter of a century, and
+count their employer's interest as their own, are creatures entirely of
+the past.  And as with maid and man, so with mistress and master, old or
+young.  `What am I to get as an equivalent if I do this or that?' seems
+the prevailing thought now with workers of every kind."
+
+"Ah yes," said the colonel thoughtfully, "there is too much truth in
+what you say; only, in the darkest night we may detect a few stars, and
+some very bright ones too, if we will only look for them.  And I am
+looking for stars now, but I shall be quite content to get one or two of
+the second or third magnitude."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll hardly be able to find any in this neighbourhood, for
+the clouds," said the old lady, with a smile, in which the bitter
+prevailed over the sweet.
+
+"Nay, nay, my dear friend," cried the colonel cheerily, "don't let us
+talk about clouds this lovely June morning.  I fear, however, that I
+must not look for what I want among the Wilders.  I can readily
+understand that they might be unwilling to work in the shade, where
+there would be nothing to repay them except the smile of Him who will
+not let even the cup of cold water rightly given go unrewarded.  What do
+you say to Lady Willerly's daughter?  I have heard great things of her.
+They tell me she is one of the most unselfish creatures under the sun."
+
+"Ay," said the old lady dryly, "when the sun shines on her; but you want
+workers in the shade.  Grace Willerly will not do for that."
+
+"You think not?  Well, let me tell you what I have heard of her.  Those
+who know her well say that she never seems so happy as when she is doing
+good and making others happy.  Her mother calls her `my sunbeam.'  She
+seems to take a pleasure in thwarting herself in order to gratify
+others.  If she wants to go out for a walk, and some tiresome visitor
+comes in, she will laugh, and say, `I was just wanting some one to come
+and keep me in, for I dare say I should have caught cold if I had gone
+out just now.'  Or it may be quite the other way.  She is just sitting
+down to draw or play, and some one calls and asks her to take a walk,
+and she at once leaves her occupation, jumps up, and says, `Ah, how nice
+this is!  I ought to take exercise, but felt disinclined; and you've
+come at the very right time, to entice me out.'  In fact, her greatest
+pleasure seems to be to cross her own will and inclinations, that she
+may do what will give pleasure to others.  Such is the picture that
+intimate friends have drawn of her; and certainly it is a very charming
+one.  What say you to it, Miss Mary?"
+
+"It is very beautiful, Colonel Dawson--" and she hesitated.
+
+"Ah, then, too highly coloured, I suppose you would say.  Give me your
+candid opinion."
+
+"It is very difficult to say what I feel," replied Mary Stansfield,
+"without seeming to lay myself open to the charge of censoriousness or
+captiousness; and yet I cannot help seeing a shade of unreality, and
+even insincerity, on that bright and beautiful character,--that it
+wants, in fact, one essential element of genuine unselfishness."
+
+"Of course it does," broke in the elder lady; "you mean that it is not
+free from self-consciousness and, more or less, of parade."
+
+"I fear so, dear aunt.  I cannot help thinking that, as some one has
+said of faith, so it may be said of true unselfishness, that `it is
+colourless like water,'--it makes no show nor assertion of itself.  But
+dear Grace Willerly is a sterling character for all that."
+
+"So then," said the colonel, after a pause, "I must give up in despair,
+must I?  No, that will never do.  Now, I am wanting a quiet worker in
+the shade for poor Bridgepath,--some young lady friend who has a little
+leisure time, and will go now and then and read in the cottages there
+the Word of God, and give some loving counsel to those who need it so
+much.  I have the good vicar's full consent and approbation; he will
+gladly welcome any such helper as I may find for the post.  It will be a
+true labour of love; and, without any more words I am come to ask Miss
+Stansfield if she will spare her niece for the good work, and Miss Mary
+if she will be willing to undertake it."
+
+The reply of the two ladies, who were equally taken by surprise, was in
+each case made in a single word, and that word very characteristic.
+"Impossible!" cried the old lady.  "Me!" exclaimed the younger one.
+
+"Nay, not impossible, dear friend," said the colonel gently.  "I want
+this service of love only once a week for an hour or two, and I am sure
+you can spare my young friend for that time.--And as for yourself, Miss
+Mary, I believe, from what I have seen of you, that you are just fitted
+for the work; and I am sure that you are too sincere to excuse yourself
+on the ground of an unfitness which you do not really feel."
+
+"And what am I to do?" asked the old lady bitterly.
+
+"Exercise a little of this true unselfishness, dear friend.  You see
+there are many ways in which you too can show true unselfishness in the
+cause of that Master whom I know you truly love, though he has laid you
+aside from much active work for him."
+
+Miss Stansfield did not answer for a time; she looked pained, but the
+bitterness had passed away from her countenance.  Evading an immediate
+reply, she said, "I don't understand these many ways in which I can show
+unselfishness, Colonel Dawson."
+
+"Do you not?  May I mention some?"
+
+"Yes, do," she replied earnestly.
+
+"Well, bear with me then, while I make one or two suggestions which our
+late conversations have been leading up to.  I will imagine myself in
+your place, and looking out to see where I may best put the stamp of the
+Cross on my life.  I am wishing to do good, I am trying to do good: but
+may it not be that my benevolence is sometimes rendered so ungraciously
+that it gives more pain than pleasure to those who receive it?  Ah,
+then, I will put the stamp of the Cross here.  I will try, not only to
+do good, but to do it graciously.  Perhaps, again, I am looking upon
+suffering and natural infirmity of temper as an excuse for harshness and
+hard judgment, and not as a call to exercise charity, patience, and
+forbearance.  Then let me put the stamp of the Cross here also.  Or,
+once more, perhaps I am in the habit of looking for the weeds rather
+than the flowers, for the shadows rather than the sunshine, in my lot.
+Well, then, here again I may place the stamp of the Cross, by exercising
+quiet, unostentatious self-denial and unselfishness before the loving
+eyes of him who has made us for himself, and redeemed us that we might
+in all things glorify him.  Might I not thus, dear friend, exhibit true
+unselfishness, and at the same time brighten my own heart, and also the
+hearts of others?"
+
+No one spoke for a few moments, but the old lady bowed her head upon her
+hands and wept silently.  Then she stretched out a hand to the colonel,
+without raising her head, and said in a half-stifled whisper, "Thank
+you, thank you, faithful friend.  Mary shall undertake the post if she
+will."
+
+Ah yes!  Light had shone into that clouded spirit; the shadows were
+passing away.  Mary Stansfield knelt her down by the old lady's side,
+and in one loving, tearful embrace, such as they had never known before,
+the icy barrier that had so long chilled that young and loving heart was
+melted, and there was peace.
+
+The colonel was more than satisfied.  He knew, as he quietly stole out
+of the room without a further word, that he had been privileged to gain
+that morning two like-minded workers in the shade, instead of one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+THE STAMP OF THE CROSS.
+
+A few days after Colonel Dawson's happy interview with Miss Stansfield
+and her niece, a _fete_ was given by the Wilders at their residence,
+Holly House, partly for the entertainment of the children who belonged
+to the Sunday-school classes taught by the Misses Wilder, and partly
+also as a means of gathering together as many neighbouring friends and
+acquaintances as might be at leisure to come.
+
+Colonel Dawson and his nephew had received a pressing invitation; and
+also Lady Willerly and her daughter, though the latter was hardly
+expected, as it was known how many engagements she had to tie her at
+home.  The invitation, however, decided Grace Willerly to write at once
+and say that, although she had a very pressing engagement, she would
+arrange to put it off, as she felt that a good game of play with the
+dear children on the lawn at Holly House would be just the very thing
+she wanted to do her good and freshen her up.
+
+So a large party assembled on the day appointed, and among them the
+colonel and his nephew--the former because he wished to keep on friendly
+terms with his neighbours, though he anticipated but little pleasure
+from this particular gathering.  Besides this, he was a little anxious
+to see to what extent the intimacy between the young Wilders and his
+nephew had gone; for he had something of a misgiving that the young man
+might be getting entangled in the attractions of one of the young
+ladies, and this was the last thing he would have desired for him.  As
+for Horace Jackson himself, his impression concerning the younger
+members of the Wilder family was that they were decidedly "jolly."  He
+had not yet consciously arrived at a warmer stage of feeling in regard
+to any one of them, and his estimate was tolerably correct.  Somebody
+had characterised the young ladies of Holly House as "dashing girls,"
+and such they certainly were.
+
+The eldest was now about one and twenty, a fine _manly_ young woman,
+with a loud voice, and very demonstrative manners, who seemed inclined
+to do good in the spirit of a prize-fighter, by attacking the evils
+which she sought to remedy with a masculine vigour, such as would drive
+them in terror off the field.  The second daughter, Clara, was of a
+rather less commanding appearance than her elder sister, but dressed and
+talked pretty much in the same fashion.  The third, Millicent, would
+naturally have been quiet and retiring, but had constrained herself to
+imitate her sisters.  She had, however, only so far succeeded as to
+acquire an abrupt and off-hand style of speaking, which was calculated
+to shut up old-fashioned people, who had been brought up under the
+impression that young ladies should belong to the feminine gender.
+Indeed, when the three Misses Wilder were met on the public road in
+their walking attire, with natty little hats on their heads, ulsters
+down to their feet, turn-down collars round their necks, and riding-
+whips or walking-sticks in their hands, it would have been very
+difficult for an unpractised observer to determine to what particular
+sex they belonged.
+
+Their brother was proud of his sisters, and matched them admirably.  He
+was a kind-hearted, outspoken, generous young man, up to anything, from
+a midnight spree to a special religious service; hating everything like
+cant as decidedly "low," and going in for sincerity, truth, and free-
+thought.  Moreover, he spent his money, or, more strictly speaking, his
+father's money as well as his own, on horses, dogs, and guns, and left
+sundry little bills to stand over till the poor creditors had lost both
+hope and patience.
+
+It was now four o'clock, and the children were assembling for tea, after
+a series of games, in which they had been joined by Grace Willerly with
+an unflagging energy, and been occasionally encouraged by a kind word
+from Mr and Mrs Wilder and their daughters.
+
+"What a charming sight, isn't it?" said Mrs Wilder to Colonel Dawson,
+as they strolled up to the tea-tables, which had been set out under the
+shade of some huge elms.  "How happy the dear children seem!"
+
+"Yes," replied her guest; "it is indeed a pleasant sight, and I am sure
+we may well learn a lesson of contentment with simple pleasures from the
+hearty enjoyment of these young ones.  What a pity that the world and
+its attractions should ever get a place in the hearts of these or of any
+of us, since God has made us for purer and higher things!"
+
+"Ah!  Very true, colonel;--but won't you come into the house?  I see our
+friends are gathering in the drawing-room.  We shall find tea there; and
+Clara and Millicent, with Grace Willerly, will see that their little
+friends want for nothing.  Oh!  Here is your nephew.--Pray, Mr Jackson,
+come in with us; I am sure you will be glad of a little refreshment."
+
+So the elder guests assembled in the drawing-room, and got through an
+hour of miscellaneous gossip very creditably; at the end of which all
+adjourned to the garden again, and strolled about in twos and threes
+till the school children were dismissed and it was time for the visitors
+to take their leave.
+
+"What a relief!" exclaimed the colonel to his nephew, as they trotted on
+side by side on their ride homewards.
+
+"Well, it was dull work, uncle, I allow," said the young man, laughing.
+"But these gatherings are, I suppose, useful and necessary, if people
+are to keep up friendly acquaintance with one another, and do what is
+civil and neighbourly."
+
+"Yes, perhaps so," replied his uncle; "but such an afternoon is little
+better than bondage and lost time--at any rate to a man of my colonial
+habits.  However, it has given me an opportunity of seeing more of the
+young ladies at Holly House."
+
+"And I am afraid, uncle, that you do not find them improve upon
+acquaintance."
+
+"Just so, Horace; they don't suit my taste at all."
+
+"And yet, dear uncle, with all their dash, and _brusquerie_, and
+fastness, they really are most kind-hearted and unselfish girls."
+
+"Kind-hearted, I allow, but I doubt their unselfishness."
+
+"But why, uncle?  What would you have more?  They certainly don't spare
+themselves.  They are here, there, and everywhere, when any good is to
+be done, and think nothing of spending any amount of time and money in
+making other people happy."
+
+"True, Horace, but there is a pleasurable excitement in all this which
+more than overbalances any trouble it may cost, especially when the
+world's applause for their good deeds is thrown into the same scale."
+
+"But," remonstrated the young man, in rather a disturbed and anxious
+tone, "is not this dealing them a little hard measure?  Where shall we
+find anything that will deserve the name of unselfishness, if we weigh
+people's actions too rigorously?"
+
+"Ah!  You think me severe and uncharitable, Horace.  But now, it just
+comes to this.  What do the Misses Wilder and their brother (for I
+suppose we must take him into consideration too), really forsake or give
+up in order to do good?  I don't pretend to know the private affairs of
+the family generally, but certainly there are strong rumours afloat that
+the maxim, `Be just before you are generous,' is not acted upon by the
+young people in their money concerns.  I allowed just now that they are
+good-natured, but good-nature is a very different thing from
+unselfishness.  What personal gratification do they surrender in order
+to do good?  What worldly pleasure or amusement do they deny themselves?
+What extravagance do they curtail?"
+
+"I can't say much for them in that respect, certainly," replied the
+young man thoughtfully; "indeed, I must frankly confess that I have
+heard more than once from the eldest Miss Wilder the expression of her
+hope and conviction that the united good deeds of the family would be
+accepted, by the world at any rate, as a sort of atonement for follies
+and excesses which clearly could not be justified in themselves."
+
+"I can well believe it, my dear nephew: but I have something much
+weightier to say on the subject, and it is this.  There is manifestly
+one great want in all the doings of these kind-hearted people at Holly
+House, which would make me at once deny the character of unselfishness
+to their best deeds."
+
+"And what is that, dear uncle?"
+
+"The stamp of the Cross, Horace.  I know that there are plenty of
+crosses about them,--crosses on their prayer-books, crosses round their
+necks, crosses on their writing-cases and on their furniture; but _the_
+Cross is wanting.  In a word, they are not denying self, and seeking to
+do good to others from love to that Saviour who gave up so much for
+them.  I know that they are not without religion in the eyes of the
+world; but I cannot, I dare not believe that they are really actuated by
+love to the great Master in what they may do to make others happy.  Am I
+wrong, Horace?"
+
+"No, uncle, I cannot say that you are.  Much as I like the girls on many
+accounts, I should not be speaking my honest sentiments were I to say
+that I believed them to be doing good to others from real Christian
+motives.  And yet--"
+
+"Ah, my dear nephew, I know what you would say.  I know that the world
+would embrace such as these within its elastic band as among genuine
+unselfish workers, though avowedly on a lower level than that adopted by
+the true Christian.  But, after all, can God, the searcher of hearts,
+approve of anything as being truly unselfish which does not bear the
+stamp of the Cross?  And can anything of which he does not approve be a
+reality?"
+
+"I suppose not," said the other reluctantly.  "Still, it is difficult
+not to be dazzled by what looks like a reflection from the true Light;
+and difficult, too, to detect a sham where we are willing to see a
+reality."
+
+"Very difficult," replied Colonel Dawson: "and yet the world abounds in
+shams, and cant, and hypocrisy.  The world commonly lays these things at
+the door of religious professors; but the truth all the while is that
+the sham, and the cant, and the hypocrisy are really in those who take
+or gain credit for a character--unselfishness, for example--which is
+only to be found in true Christians, and hold themselves back from that
+genuine devotion, and self-sacrifice, and coming out to Christ, without
+which their boasted and lauded excellences are nothing better than a
+delusion and an empty name."
+
+The young man did not reply, and the subject was dropped for the
+remainder of the ride home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+DUTY.
+
+Mary Stansfield and Grace Willerly were sitting together, about three
+weeks after the above conversation, in an arbour in the garden attached
+to Lady Willerly's house.  Miss Stansfield had come to spend a day or
+two by special invitation, by way of getting a little change, which she
+much needed; her aunt having spared her without a murmur, and having
+accepted the services of a former domestic in her place.
+
+"How very kind of your aunt to spare you!" said Grace to her friend; "I
+hardly expected it, knowing how much she depends upon you."
+
+"Oh yes!" was the reply: "you cannot tell, dear Grace, what a wonderful
+change has come over my dear aunt.  And it is all owing, under God, to
+the loving faithfulness of our kind friend Colonel Dawson.  I scarcely
+ever get a harsh word or a hard look now; and when I do, my aunt at once
+calls me to her, and asks me to forgive her.  Oh, is it not wonderful?
+I am sure I blush with shame to think how little I deserve it."
+
+"Yes, it is very wonderful, dear Mary.  Certainly our new neighbour is a
+most earnest and useful man; and he has shown his discernment, too, in
+getting hold of yourself to work for him in Bridgepath.  But I am afraid
+you will find it very up-hill work; you'll want the strength of a horse,
+the patience of Job, and the zeal of an apostle in such a place as
+that."
+
+"Certainly, I shall want the grace of an apostle," said the other
+quietly; "but the work is very delightful, and is more than repaying me
+already for any little trouble or self-denial it may cost me."
+
+"It is very good of you to say so, Mary; I am afraid the work wouldn't
+suit me.  I don't mind making sacrifices--indeed, I think I can truly
+say it is one of my chief pleasures to make them; but there must be
+something very depressing in the jog-trot sort of work you are called on
+to do.  I don't mind anything, so long as it has a little bit of dash in
+it; but I am afraid I should soon grow weary of a regular grind like
+yours."
+
+"Oh, but you are quite mistaken about my work at Bridgepath," said the
+other, laughing.  "There is nothing dull or monotonous about it; and it
+is such a happiness to see the light of God's truth beginning to dawn on
+dark and troubled hearts.  And there is one particularly interesting
+family--I mean John Price's.  You have heard, I dare say, that he was
+steward to the squire, and that he lost almost everything by his poor
+master's extravagance.  Poor man, he is bed-ridden now, and I fear had
+little comfort even from his Bible, for he seemed to have learned little
+from it but patience.  But, oh!  How he has brightened up, and his wife
+and daughter, too, now that they have been led to see that it is their
+privilege to work and suffer _from_ salvation instead of _for_
+salvation."
+
+"I don't understand you," interrupted Miss Willerly.
+
+"Don't you?  Oh, it makes all the difference.  Poor John Price has been
+reading his Bible, and bearing his troubles patiently, in the hope that
+at the end he may be accepted and saved through his Saviour's merits.
+That is what I mean by working _for_ salvation."
+
+"And what else, dear Mary, would you have him do?"
+
+"O Grace!  This is poor work indeed, working in view of a merely
+possible salvation.  No!  What he has learned now is to see that his
+Saviour, in whom he humbly and truly believes, has given him a present
+salvation; so that he, and his wife and daughter too, can now say, `We
+love him, because he first loved us.'  And so they work and suffer
+cheerfully, and even thankfully, from love to that Saviour who has
+already received them as his own.  This is what I mean by working _from_
+salvation.  Surely we shall work more heartily for one of whom we know
+that he _has_ saved us, than for one of whom we know only that he has
+saved others, and may perhaps save us also in the end."
+
+"I see what you mean, dear Mary, but I never saw it so before.  Such a
+view of God's love to us personally must take the selfishness out of our
+good works, because what we do will be done just simply from love to
+Christ.  It is a beautiful way of looking at God's dealings with us."
+
+"Yes, Grace; and as true and scriptural as it is beautiful.  It is just
+what God sees that we need, and furnishes us with the most constraining
+motive to serve him, and to deny self in his service."
+
+"I see it," said Miss Willerly sadly and thoughtfully, after a pause.
+"I very much fear, dear Mary, that I have been greatly deceiving myself.
+I have been just simply building up a monument to my own honour and
+glory out of my heap of little daily crosses."
+
+"Nay, dear Grace, you are dealing too severely with yourself."
+
+"No, I think not.  At any rate, I am sadly aware that not the love of
+Christ, but the love of human applause, has been the constraining motive
+in my acts of self-denial.  I have made such a parade of my willingness
+to thwart my own will that I might please others, so that while I should
+have been startled to see a full-grown trumpeter at my side proclaiming
+my unselfishness, I have all the while been keeping in my service a
+little dwarf page, who has been sounding out my praises on his shrill
+whistle."
+
+"You judge yourself hardly, dear Grace; and yet, no doubt, self does
+enter largely even into our unselfishness.  I am sure I have felt it,
+oh, how deeply!  And specially just lately, since I have undertaken this
+work at Bridgepath."
+
+"You, dear Mary!"
+
+"Yes, indeed.  And I see now how wisely our heavenly Father ordered his
+discipline in my case.  There was indeed a `needs-be' in my dear aunt's
+former harshness and irritability to me; but for that, and for her
+disparaging remarks on my conduct, I might have been more self-seeking
+than I am.  But the discipline has been changed now, and I trust that
+the chastisement has not been wholly in vain.  What we all want, I am
+sure, if we are to be true workers for God, is to lift our eyes from
+self, and keep them steadily fixed on Him who has done so much for us."
+
+"I am sure you are right," said the other.  "I know I wish to do right,
+and I feel a pleasure in crossing my own inclination when it will
+gratify others; but then my inmost look has been to the world and its
+approbation.  `What will people say?  What will people think?' or, at
+any rate, `What will good people say and think?' this has been the
+prominent thought in my heart, I fear."
+
+"Well, dear Grace, I suppose this is so, more or less, with us all.
+What we want, I think, and comparatively seldom find in these showy and
+surface days, is a high sense of duty, so that we just act as duty
+calls, let the world, or good people even, judge of us or speak of us as
+they please."
+
+"And yet, dear Mary, I think I see a little crevice through which self
+may creep in even there.  I have met some of your `duty' people who have
+flung themselves so violently against the prejudices of society, or, at
+any rate, of good people, crying out all the time, `Duty, duty!  It
+don't matter to us what the world thinks,' that they have given great
+offence where they might have avoided giving any, and have set up
+people's backs against what is good and true."
+
+"I dare say you have met such, dear Grace, and I think you may be
+talking to one of the class now," said Miss Stansfield, laughing; "at
+least, my character and principles would naturally lead me in that
+direction, for, of course, we are all disposed to carry out our own
+views to an extreme, if we do not let common sense, enlightened by
+grace, preserve a proper balance.  But, spite of this, I still feel that
+a high sense of duty in those who love our Saviour is the surest
+preservative against being carried away by a subtle selfishness, and is
+the making of the finest and most truly self-denying characters.  If I
+am manifestly in the path of duty, what matters it what is said of me,
+or who says it?  I may then go forward, not, indeed, arrogantly or
+defiantly--that would be unlike the great Master--but yet firmly and
+confidently, and God will set me right with the world and with his
+people in his own good time."
+
+"Ah!  I believe you are right," said her friend, with a sigh.  "I wish
+there were more of such true unselfishness amongst us; I wish I were
+such a character myself."
+
+"And so you are, dear Grace, in the main.  No one can possibly doubt
+your genuineness and sincerity.  You have only just to step up on to the
+higher platform, and, as your heart's gaze becomes more fixed on a
+Saviour known and loved, you will cease to think about how your self-
+denial looks in the eyes of others, and will feel the cross which you
+carry after Christ in the path of duty to be easy and his burden light."
+
+"I shall not forget our conversation on this subject," said Miss
+Willerly with tears in her eyes.  "I always thought that I hated
+selfishness, but now I see that I have been blinded to my own.  I
+suppose it is very difficult for us to see it in ourselves as it really
+is, especially in these days when there are so many attractive forms of
+self-denial.  It occurred to me the other day what an odd thing it would
+be to see how a number of utterly selfish people would get on if thrown
+together for some weeks, with not a single unselfish person amongst
+them, and unable to get rid of one another's company.  I feel sure the
+result would teach an admirable lesson on the misery of a thoroughly
+selfish disposition."
+
+"I think so too, Grace," said her companion, much amused.  "What do you
+say to putting a story or allegory together on the subject."
+
+"Capital!" cried Miss Willerly; "it will be something quite in my line I
+will set about it at once.  I shall be able to give myself some very
+seasonable raps on the knuckles as I go on, and perhaps I may be of use
+to some of my acquaintance, who might be induced to look through my
+performance in a friendly way."
+
+"You must let me be the first to see it," said her friend.
+
+"Oh, certainly; and you must give me your free and candid criticisms."
+
+"Yes, I will do so; and I don't doubt I shall find profit in the reading
+of it, and a little bit of myself in more than one of your characters."
+
+A fortnight after this conversation Miss Stansfield received from her
+friend the promised story, which we give in the following chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+THE SELFISH ISLANDS.
+
+A certain Eastern despot, whose attention had been painfully drawn to
+the odious character of selfishness, by finding it exhibited in a very
+marked manner towards himself by some who had, in looking after their
+own interests, ventured to thwart the royal will, was resolved to get
+rid of all the most selfish people out of his capital.  To that end he
+made proclamation that on a certain day he would give a grand banquet to
+all the _un_selfish people in the metropolis, nothing being needed for
+admittance to the feast but the personal application of any one laying
+claim to unselfishness to the lord chancellor for a ticket.
+
+The king took this course under the firm conviction that all the most
+selfish people, being utterly blinded by self-esteem to their own
+failing, would be the very persons most ready to claim admittance to the
+banquet; and in this expectation he was not disappointed.  But he was a
+little staggered to find that about a thousand persons, of both sexes
+and of nearly all ages, applied at the office for tickets of admission
+and many of them such as had not made their appearance in public for
+many long years past.  Thus, when the feast-day came, bed-ridden men and
+women arrived at the palace dressed out in silks and satins; gouty men
+hobbled in without their crutches; and multitudes who had long been
+incapacitated from doing anything but try the patience of their friends
+and indulge their own whims, made no difficulty of appearing among the
+guests.  And it was strange, too, to see at the king's table delicate
+ladies and chronic invalids, who were never met with at places of
+worship or benevolent meetings, because the cold or the heat, or their
+nerves or their lungs made it a duty for them to be keepers at home.
+There were also present about two hundred spoilt children, whose mothers
+considered them to be "dear unselfish little darlings," and about an
+equal number of young ladies and young gentlemen, whose chief delight
+had consisted in spending their fathers' money, and studying their own
+sweet persons in the looking-glass.
+
+Of course, the company behaved with due decorum at the banquet,
+especially as the king did them the honour of sitting down to table with
+them, the only exception being on the part of the spoilt children, whom
+not even the presence of royalty itself could restrain from personal
+encounters over the more attractive-looking dishes.
+
+The banquet over, the king rose and thus addressed his astonished
+guests:--
+
+"I have ascertained from my lord chancellor, whose secretary took down
+the names and addresses of you all when you applied for your tickets,
+that he has made careful inquiry into your several characters, and finds
+that you all belong to a class of persons who greatly trouble our city.
+You have accepted my invitation professedly as unselfish people, but
+your estimate of yourselves is the very reverse of that which is held by
+those who know you best.  I have therefore resolved, for the good of the
+community generally, to transport the whole of you, for a period of six
+months, to the uninhabited island of Comoro, situate in the midst of the
+great lake, where you will find ample means for living in health, peace,
+and comfort, provided you are all and each willing to lay aside your
+selfishness, and to find your happiness in living for the good of
+others.  And I trust that at the end of the six months, when steamers
+shall call for you at Comoro, you may all be spared to return to your
+homes improved in character, more useful members of society, and more
+fitted to contribute to the real prosperity of this kingdom."
+
+Without waiting for a reply, which was not indeed attempted by any of
+the guests--for they remained for some moments speechless with
+amazement--the king retired from the banqueting hall; and the lord
+chancellor, motioning with his hand for attention, proceeded to state
+that each of the guests would be expected to be at the station on a day
+and at an hour specified on a ticket which each would receive; and that
+every one would be allowed to take with him or her a reasonable but
+limited amount of personal luggage, but no furniture or heavy and bulky
+articles.  Steamers would be in readiness, at the Lakeside Terminus, to
+convey the passengers and their goods to the island; and, as no one
+would be permitted to decline the journey--for all knew that the king's
+will was law--the guests would best consult their own interests and
+comfort by preparing for the removal with as little delay as possible.
+
+Having made this statement, the lord chancellor withdrew, leaving the
+company staring one at another in blank dismay.  What was to be done?
+Nothing but to make the best of it; as for resistance, all knew that it
+would be useless, and remonstrance equally so.  Even the infirm and
+sickly could hope for no exemption; for as their maladies had not
+hindered their attendance at the banquet, these could not be now
+admitted as a plea for excusing them from the removal.  Many, indeed, of
+the young people were highly delighted with the prospect before them,
+especially the children, who were anxious to be off for Comoro there and
+then.  As for their elders, they retired from the palace with varied
+feelings; some indignant, some conscience-stricken, and most prepared to
+lay the blame on some one or more of their neighbours.  Indeed, two old
+gentlemen, who had been lodgers on different floors in the same house
+for years, but, in consequence of an old quarrel, had never spoken to
+one another for the greater part of that time, now blocked up one of the
+exits from the palace, as they stood face to face, furiously charging
+each other with being the guilty cause of the terrible calamity which
+had now fallen on themselves and on so many of their fellow-citizens.
+
+And now the day of departure had arrived, and the trains for the lake
+were duly filled with passengers; not, however, till many heartrending
+scenes had occurred in connection with the luggage.  Two young ladies,
+bosom friends, having hired a van to convey their joint wardrobe and
+other ornamental effects to the station, were informed, to their tearful
+despair, that only about one-tenth of the goods could be conveyed to the
+island.  Similarly, three or four fast young men entered the train in a
+state of desperation bordering on collapse, because the officials had
+peremptorily turned back a stud of hunters and half-a-dozen sporting
+dogs.  But the most exciting scene of all occurred in the case of an old
+maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and
+comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence,
+and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of
+them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had
+himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was
+at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any
+explanation convince her of her mistake.  Let them say what they
+pleased, she had heard the word _un_limited with her own ears: and
+hearing was believing.  The last case which caused any serious
+difficulty, and which really excited the pity of the porters, was that
+of an elderly gentleman unfortunate enough to be troubled with a liver,
+who changed various colours when informed that he must leave behind him
+an iron-bound box containing some four or five hundredweight of patent
+and other medicines.
+
+At length, all the trains having reached the Lakeside Terminus, the
+entire party of temporary exiles were duly and speedily conveyed in
+steamers to the island of Comoro, where they were put on shore with
+their goods.
+
+The climate of the island was delightful, and subject to but few
+variations, so that nothing was to be feared by the new-comers from
+inclemency of weather.  Care had been also taken by the lord chancellor,
+to whom the carrying out of the details had been committed, that a
+sufficient number of tents should be ready for the use of those who
+chose to avail themselves of them, while building materials and tools
+had been duly provided, as well as an ample store of provisions.
+
+When the last steamer had discharged its passengers and cargo,
+proclamation was made by a herald that a commissioner from the king
+would visit Comoro once a month, to hear any complaints and record any
+misconduct; and that those who should be found guilty of any grave
+offence would receive condign punishment at the close of the term of
+banishment.
+
+The community was then left to follow its own devices.  And what would
+these be?  Of course the obvious thing was for each to look after
+"number one;" but he soon became painfully conscious that he could not
+do this without the help of "number two," and that to obtain this help
+he must be willing to do his own part.  One gentleman, indeed,
+apparently entirely unconscious of any other duty than that of taking
+care of himself, set to work at once to make himself as comfortable as
+circumstances would permit.  Having selected the most roomy and
+convenient tent he could find, he removed his most easily portable
+possessions into it, and proceeded to regale himself on some cold
+provisions which he had brought with him.  After these were finished, he
+rang violently several times a hand-bell which he had brought with him,
+expecting that his valet would at once answer the summons; but he soon
+found that he could not calculate on his servant's attendance in Comoro.
+It was true that the man had come on the same steamer as his master,
+having been one of the guests at the royal banquet; but he had no
+thought now of looking after any one but himself, and was, when his
+master rang for him, busily engaged in a drinking-bout with a few like-
+minded companions.
+
+And what could the females do?  The spoilt children had, of course,
+their mothers with them--for none but selfish mothers would spoil their
+children--and these mothers with their little ones were preparing to
+form themselves into a distinct community; but such a frightful
+contention and uproar arose amongst the children themselves, that before
+nightfall their parents had to abandon their original idea and seek
+separate homes among their neighbours.  As for the young ladies, they
+soon managed to enlist the services of the female domestics who had come
+to the island, and then placed themselves under the protection of two
+elderly maiden sisters, on the express understanding that their
+guardians were to be handsomely remunerated for looking after them.
+
+The young gentlemen, having no intention to exert themselves
+unnecessarily, lounged about with cigars in their mouths, and voted the
+whole thing "a bore;" while several of the elders of both sexes,
+suppressing for the time the exhibition of their specialities of
+selfishness, indulged in a prolonged chorus of grumbling and mutual
+condolence.  But, in one way or other, all had been fed and housed
+before midnight, and sleep buried for a while in forgetfulness the
+troubles of the bewildered settlers on Comoro.
+
+We pass over the first month, and how does the commissioner, on his
+arrival at the island, find the exiles bearing their lot?  Proclamation
+was at once made that those who had anything to complain of should meet
+him in a spacious marquee which he had caused to be set up on a large
+open piece of ground near the shore, immediately on his arrival.  He was
+rather dismayed, however, when he found the place of hearing crowded
+without a moment's delay by nine-tenths of the islanders, while many
+were clamouring outside because unable to obtain admission.  After a few
+moments' consideration, he ordered his officers to clear the marquee,
+and then to admit a hundred of the more elderly of each sex.  This was
+done with some considerable difficulty, and the commissioner then
+addressed himself to a crabbed-looking old gentleman, who had elbowed
+his way to the front with a vigour hardly to have been looked for in one
+of his years and apparent infirmities.
+
+"May I request, sir, to be informed what it is you have to complain of?"
+asked the commissioner.
+
+"I complain of everything and everybody," was the reply.
+
+"Is that _all_ you have to complain of?" the commissioner then asked.
+Before the old gentleman could frame an answer to this second question,
+the judge, having paused to give a few moments for reply, exclaimed,
+"Officer, dismiss this complainant;" and the old man was forthwith
+removed from the tent in a state of boiling indignation.
+
+"And now, madam," continued the commissioner, addressing a middle-aged
+lady of dignified mien and commanding stature, "may I ask what is your
+complaint?"
+
+"I complain, sir," replied the lady sternly, "of general neglect and
+ill-treatment."
+
+"Excuse me, madam," was the judge's reply, "but I can see no evidence of
+this in your personal appearance.  So far from it, that, having met you
+not unfrequently in the streets of our city, I am constrained to
+congratulate you on the manifest improvement in health which you have
+gained from a month's residence in this delightful climate.--Officer,
+conduct this lady with all due ceremony to the outside of our court."
+
+"And you, sir," speaking to a gentleman of very severe countenance, who
+had been used at home to "show his slaves how choleric he was, and make
+his bondmen tremble,"--"let me hear what charge you have to allege."
+
+"Charge, Mr Commissioner!  Charge enough, I'm sure!  Why, I can't get
+any one to mind a word that I say."
+
+"Then, I am sure, sir, the fault must be wholly or for the most part
+your own.--Officer, remove him."
+
+"Has no one anything more definite to complain of?" he again asked,
+looking round the assembly, which by this time had begun to thin, as it
+became obvious to all present that no attention would be given to mere
+vague grumblings.
+
+"I'm sure it's very hard," sighed a knot of young ladies, who had
+listened from the outside to what had been going on, and were afraid to
+speak out more plainly.  "We shall be moped to death if we're kept here
+any longer," muttered one or two fast young men, shrugging their
+shoulders.  But to these remarks the commissioner turned a deaf ear; and
+no one coming forward to lodge any distinct charge against another, the
+court broke up, and the commissioner proceeded to make a tour of
+inspection among the islanders.
+
+He found, as he had indeed expected to find, that the necessity for
+exertion, and the peculiarity of the circumstances in which they were
+now placed, had already got rid of a good deal of the selfishness which
+had only formed a sort of crust over the characters of many who, in the
+main, were not without kind and generous feelings; so that the looking
+after the due supply of provisions, and the cooking of them and serving
+them to the different families, had been cheerfully undertaken by a duly
+organised body of young and middle-aged workers of both sexes,--the
+result of which was, not only an improvement in character in the workers
+themselves, but also a drawing forth of expressions of gratitude from
+some who formerly took all attentions as a right, but now had been made
+to feel their dependence on their fellows.  And it was pleasant to see
+how cordially working men and women were united in striving for the good
+of the community in conjunction with those who had hitherto occupied a
+higher social position than themselves.
+
+Some, indeed, of the lower orders, whose tastes had been of an utterly
+low and degraded cast, had been summarily ejected from the island after
+they had more than once endangered the lives and stores of the islanders
+in their brutal drunken sprees.  They had talked big, indeed, and made
+at first a show of resistance; but the general body of the exiles had
+authorised a powerful force of young and middle-aged men to take them
+into custody, and convey them on a raft, constructed for the purpose, to
+an island some ten miles distant.  Here the rioters were left with a
+sufficient supply of provisions; a warning being given them that, should
+they attempt to return to Comoro, they would be put in irons, and kept
+in custody till they could be brought up before the commissioner.  The
+island being thus happily rid of this disturbing element, there was, at
+any rate, outward peace among the inhabitants of Comoro, though, of
+course, there was yet abundance of discontent and bitterness beneath the
+surface in the hearts of many.
+
+As the commissioner was making his way to the shore preparatory to his
+return to the mainland, he passed a tent from which there issued such
+deep-fetched sighs that, having obtained permission to enter, he
+inquired of the inmate the cause of so much trouble.
+
+"Ah, sir!" replied the poor sufferer, who was a man some sixty years of
+age, with grey hair, and a countenance whose expression was one of
+mingled shrewdness, discontent, and ill-temper, "our sovereign little
+knows the cruelty he has been guilty of in sending me all alone to a
+place like this."
+
+"How alone, my friend?" asked the other; "you have plenty of companions
+within reach."
+
+"Why, sir," was the poor man's reply, "I have been torn from the best
+and most loving of wives--I who am so entirely dependent on her for my
+happiness--I who love her so tenderly;--alas!  Wretched man that I am,
+what shall I do?"
+
+"Do you know this gentleman?" said the commissioner, turning to his
+secretary, who had accompanied him into the tent.
+
+"I know him well, your excellency," was the reply; "and a more selfish
+man does not exist.  He tells the truth, however, when he says that he
+is entirely dependent on his wife for his happiness; but it was
+impossible for her to accompany him hither, as she is the most unselfish
+of women.  On her he has ever made it a practice to vent his chief
+spleen and bitterness, exacting from her at the same time perpetual
+service, and rarely repaying her with anything but sneers and insults,
+holding her up even to the scorn and ridicule of his acquaintance."
+
+As the secretary uttered these words, a burning blush covered the face
+of the unhappy man, who ceased his sighs and bent his head upon his
+hands.
+
+"My friend," said the commissioner gently, "I am truly sorry for you;
+but I am in hopes that your solitude will work for your good.  Think
+over the past with contrition, and be up and joining in some useful work
+for the good of others; and when you return home, treat your injured,
+long-suffering, and admirable wife as a human being, a lady, a
+companion, a friend, an equal, and not, as you have hitherto done, like
+a slave or a brute beast."
+
+There was no reply, and the commissioner hastened to the shore.  He was
+about to step into the boat that was to convey him to the steamer, when
+a young man of dandified appearance and affected manner requested to
+know whether he could have one moment's private interview with the
+commissioner before his departure.
+
+"Well, sir," said the other, somewhat impatiently, "you must be brief,
+for I am anxious to lose no time, as business matters at home are
+pressing."
+
+"Sir," said the young man, dropping, at the same time, his affected
+drawl, "my case is a hard one, and I would ask if you could not grant me
+a passage home in the vessel by which you are returning."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked the commissioner.
+
+"Why, sir, I have an old mother and a sister, both in infirm health, who
+can hardly get on without me; and it is only just that I should be
+allowed to return, as my mother, who is a widow, has no other son."
+
+"Do you know this young man?" inquired the commissioner, turning to his
+secretary.
+
+"Far too well, your excellency; he is the clog of his home, the
+laughing-stock of his companions behind his back, and is despised by all
+wise and sensible people.  He has had situation after situation offered
+him, in which he could have earned an honest and respectable livelihood,
+but he has declined one after another as not to his taste.  He is far
+too much of a gentleman, in his own estimation, to enter upon any work
+that will involve any steady exertion; but he does not scruple to sponge
+upon his poor mother, to whose support he contributes nothing, and who
+has barely enough to meet her own needs, while he borrows--that is,
+appropriates--the savings of his delicate sister, who, though in feeble
+health, has undertaken tuition, because this brother of hers is too fine
+a gentleman to live in anything but idleness, and spends those hard-
+earned savings of hers as pocket-money on his own elegant pleasures and
+follies."
+
+"Contemptible wretch!" exclaimed the commissioner with flashing eyes;
+"stay where you are, and learn, if it is possible, by the end of these
+six months, to see that you have a duty to others as well as to your own
+despicable self."
+
+Amazed at this exposure and reply, the young man dropped his eye-glass
+from his eye, and his cigar from his mouth, and stood staring in
+bewilderment at the commissioner as he sprang into the boat and made for
+the steamer which was to convey him home.
+
+Only one other incident worth recording happened during the
+commissioner's subsequent visits; for the discipline involved in their
+banishment had produced the good result of making the various exiles
+feel the necessity of bearing and forbearing, giving and taking, and of
+each doing his and her part in contributing to the comfort and happiness
+of the whole.  The incident referred to happened during the
+commissioner's third monthly visit.
+
+Soon after his arrival he received a respectful note from the secretary
+of a Ladies' Working Committee, requesting him to receive a deputation
+from their society at the place of audience.  This request having been
+graciously acceded to, and the deputation received by his excellency in
+due form, the spokeswoman of the party, a young lady in spectacles,
+expressed the conviction, on behalf of herself and companions, that a
+sad but no doubt unintentional mistake had been made by his majesty in
+including themselves in the party sent to Comoro.  They were associated,
+and had been so for years past, as workers together for many benevolent
+objects and therefore this sending of them to the "Selfish Island" was a
+double wrong; for it not only threw a slur on their society, whose
+members were banded together for the purpose of working for the good of
+others, but it also deprived many suffering ones at home of the help and
+comfort they had been used to derive from the united and self-denying
+efforts of these their true and loving friends.
+
+The commissioner having listened with due politeness and attention to
+this address, assured the deputation that the king would be sorry to
+have done them any wrong, should such prove to have been the case, and
+that he would duly report the matter to his majesty.  He could not,
+however, release them on the present occasion; but he hoped, after
+having made full inquiry into the case on his return, that he should be
+able to bring them, on his next monthly visit, the welcome permission to
+leave the island.
+
+Having returned to Comoro in due time, his first care was to request the
+Ladies' Working Committee to meet him again by deputation.  This was
+accordingly done, and the commissioner addressed them as follows:--
+
+"I exceedingly regret, ladies, that I cannot promise you any shortening
+of your time of banishment.  His majesty has received your complaint,
+and has caused due investigation to be made; and the result of that
+investigation has not led him to make any relaxation in your case.  For
+it has been clearly ascertained that the good works and charitable deeds
+of which you informed me on my last visit, consisted in your attending
+to work to which you were not called, to the neglect of duties which
+plainly belonged to you; and that for any seeming sacrifice you made in
+the bestowal of your time and labour, you more than repaid yourselves in
+the applause which you managed to obtain from a troop of ignorant or
+interested admirers.  It would, in fact, appear that your benevolence
+and labour for others involved no real self-denial in it, but was only,
+after all, another but less obvious form of selfishness.  His majesty
+admires and respects nothing more than genuine co-operation in working
+for the benefit of the suffering and the needy; but in your case this
+stamp of genuineness is found to be wanting.  We trust, however, that
+your present work may prove to be of a better character, and that at the
+expiry of your exile you will return home prepared to do good from truly
+pure and unselfish motives."
+
+Murmurs followed, as they had accompanied, this speech, but the
+commissioner was inexorable.
+
+And now at last the six months had come to an end, and the exiles of
+Comoro flocked to the steamers which were to convey them back to the
+mainland.  The discipline had been with most very salutary.  Roughing it
+for the first time in their lives had been the means with many of
+smoothing out the wrinkles of grosser selfishness from their characters.
+Others had learned to look at things through their neighbours' eyes,
+and thus had come to think less about themselves and about consulting
+their own pleasure merely.  Some also who had moved up and down in a
+groove all their previous lives, and had made all about them miserable
+or uncomfortable by their unbending and ungracious habits, had learned
+the wisdom, and happiness, too, of bending aside a little from the path
+of their own prejudices to accommodate a neighbour.  Many likewise,
+having been forced to do things of which, on their first landing on
+Comoro, they had loudly proclaimed themselves physically incapable, now
+found, to no one's surprise so much as their own, that their former
+impossibilities could henceforth be performed by themselves with ease.
+While a few, who had been in the habit of glorying in unselfishness as
+their strong point, had come to detect their own weakness when they got
+little or no credit from their neighbours for their ambitious acts of
+self-denial.  And one thing was specially worthy of remark,--so far from
+suffering in health, everyone returned home greatly improved in looks
+and vigour by this compulsory stay in the clear and bracing atmosphere
+of Comoro.  As for the hypochondriacal gentleman, who had felt so keenly
+the refusal to be allowed to take his packing-case of medicines with
+him, he had returned in such a state of spirits that he at once sold his
+extensive stock of drugs by auction, and gave the money to an hospital
+for incurables.  And, indeed, so great was the gain to the metropolis,
+in the first place by the absence of the exiles, and afterwards by their
+altered character, for the most part, on their return to their homes,
+that the king, when talking over the matter with the commissioner,--whom
+he had selected for the post as, by general acknowledgment, the most
+upright, downright, straightforward, honest-minded man in his kingdom,--
+declared that he should like to try the atmosphere of Comoro himself
+some day, as it was proved to be so healthy and improving.
+
+"I most heartily advise your majesty to do so," said the commissioner,
+somewhat bluntly; "and if your majesty will only take the entire cabinet
+with you, I have little doubt but that the benefit to yourself and your
+ministers will be most heartily acknowledged and thoroughly appreciated
+by your subjects on your majesty's auspicious return."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+A LITTLE MYSTERIOUS.
+
+Mary Stansfield pursued her quiet work at Bridgepath amongst the poor,
+being welcomed by all, but by none so cordially as by John Price and his
+family, who seemed quite different people now from what they used to be.
+And why?  Just because they had exchanged resignation for God's peace.
+Their characters and conduct were outwardly the same; but there was a
+new light in them and reflected from them, even the light that shines in
+hearts where Jesus dwells as a Saviour known and loved, a light which
+brightens the heavy clouds of earthly sadness and spans them with a
+rainbow of immortal hope.  And not only so, but, in consequence of the
+entrance of this purer light, a change for the better was taking place
+in the bodily health of the poor bed-ridden man--for a wounded spirit
+had had a good deal to do with his physical infirmities--so that there
+seemed a likelihood that he would be able in time to leave his sick-bed
+and go forth once more, not indeed to laborious work, but to fill some
+light post which the colonel had in store for him.
+
+It was on a lovely afternoon that he was sitting up in his arm-chair,
+dressed in clothes which he had never thought to put on again.  He was
+listening to the gentle but earnest voice of Mary Stansfield, as she
+read to him from the Word of God, and spoke a few loving and cheering
+words of her own upon the passage she had selected.  A shadow fell
+across her book; she looked up.  The colonel and his nephew stood in the
+open doorway.
+
+"Don't let us interrupt you, Miss Stansfield," said the former; "I was
+only looking round with my nephew, who has not been here before, to see
+how things are going on in Bridgepath.  We will call again!"
+
+They passed on, and Miss Stansfield resumed her reading.  But somehow or
+other John Price's attention seemed to wander--he looked disturbed, and
+fidgeted in his chair; and so his visitor, thinking that he had been
+read to as long as he could hear with comfort and profit in his weak
+state, closed the book, and rose to leave.
+
+"Oh, don't go, miss!" cried the old man in a distressed voice.  "I'm so
+sorry; but something as I can't exactly explain just took away my
+thoughts and troubled me when the colonel came to the door.  But go on,
+go on, miss; I'm never tired of hearing the good news from your lips."
+
+"No, John," replied Miss Stansfield; "I think we shall do for to-day.
+You are not strong enough yet to bear much strain of mind or body; and
+Colonel Dawson will be coming in directly, and will like to have a word
+with you, and so, I am sure, will Mr Horace; so I will say good-bye."
+
+The other looked scared and bewildered, and made no reply.  "Poor John!"
+said his kind visitor to herself, as she left the cottage and went on
+her way; "I am afraid I have tired him.  And yet I think there must be
+something more than that which troubles him."
+
+A few minutes later the colonel and his nephew entered John Price's
+house.  "Come in, Horace," said Colonel Dawson; "you have not yet been
+introduced to one who will, I hope, be spared to be a great helper in
+the good work in Bridgepath, though he does not look much like a worker
+at present.  But the Lord has been doing great things for him already,
+and, I doubt not, means to do greater things for him yet."
+
+The young man stepped forward up to the old man's chair, and held out
+his hand to him.  John Price grasped it eagerly with both his own thin,
+wasted hands, and looking at him with a half-astonished, half-distressed
+gaze, said abruptly, in a hoarse, choking voice, "What's your name?"
+
+"My name?" said the young man, smiling at his earnestness.  "My name,
+old friend, is Horace Jackson."
+
+"Horace--Horace!" muttered the other in a tone of great excitement; "it
+must be--nay, it cannot be--and yet it must be.  Are you sure, sir, your
+name's Jackson?"
+
+The young man, surprised at such a question, was about to reply, when
+the colonel, coming forward, stooped over the old man and whispered a
+few words in his ear.  The poor invalid immediately sank back in his
+chair, and covered his eyes with his hand for a moment; then he sat up
+again, and took part in the conversation, but in a dreamy sort of way,
+keeping his face steadily turned away from his younger visitor.  But as
+the colonel and his nephew were leaving the cottage, he fixed upon the
+latter a look so full of anxiety and interest, that it was quite clear
+that Horace Jackson had opened unwittingly a deep spring of feeling in
+John Price's heart, which the old man found it almost impossible to
+repress.  As his visitors retired, Colonel Dawson, looking back, put his
+finger on his lips, to which sign John Price slowly bent his head.
+
+In a few minutes the colonel returned alone.  "I have left my nephew at
+the school," he said, "to give the children a questioning on what they
+have been lately learning; and now, John, I shall be able to clear up
+your doubts and fears, and to set your mind at rest on a subject which I
+see affects you deeply."  A long and interesting communication was then
+made by the colonel to his humble friend, at the close of which the
+invalid seemed as if he could have sprung out of his chair for very
+gladness, while the tears poured from his eyes, and his lips murmured
+words of thankfulness.
+
+As Colonel Dawson was leaving, he turned and said with a smile,
+"Remember, John, not a word to any one at present--not till I give you
+leave."
+
+"All right, sir; you may depend upon me.  The Lord be praised!" was the
+reply; and as the old man said the words, every wrinkle in his careworn
+face seemed running over with light.  But for the present Horace Jackson
+did not call at his cottage again, though he now and then appeared in
+the village, and was to be seen on more than one occasion accompanying
+Miss Stansfield on her return from Bridgepath.
+
+And now it began to be rumoured about in the neighbourhood that an
+attachment was springing up between the colonel's nephew and Mary
+Stansfield; and all true-hearted people rejoiced, knowing what a
+blessing the union of two such earnest workers would prove, as, of
+course, they would one day, if spared, succeed to the Riverton estate.
+The world, however, was both surprised and disgusted, having hoped
+"better things" of the young man.  As for the Wilders, they were full of
+dark and bitter sayings on the subject--the younger Mr Wilder
+especially, who was never tired of remarking to his acquaintance, when
+the subject was broached, that "Miss Stansfield had contrived to play
+her cards well."  This observation was not lost on the busy-bodies and
+scandal-mongers who abounded in Franchope, as they do in most country-
+towns, where there is not so much of active business stirring as will
+furnish sufficient material for gossip to those who love to act as
+unpaid news-agents in publishing their neighbours' real or supposed more
+private doings from house to house.
+
+There happened to live at the outskirts of the little town an elderly
+lady possessed of singular activity in all her members, especially that
+most unruly one, the tongue.  Give her a little bit of local news or a
+hard saying to report, and she would never rest till she had distributed
+the information throughout her entire acquaintance, with a little
+garnish of her own to the savoury dish, according to the taste or
+appetite of her hearers.  Loved by none, feared by all, her calls were
+received with apparent cordiality, partly from a natural relish in many
+for questionable news, and partly from a desire to stand well with one
+who had the reputations of her neighbours and associates more or less in
+her power.  Young Wilder's remark on Miss Stansfield's engagement was a
+choice morsel of scandal to old Mrs Tinderley, and was duly reported in
+every house to which she had access.  But that was not all.  Meeting
+Mary Stansfield herself one day near her aunt's house, Mrs Tinderley
+grasped her warmly by the hand--though hitherto they had never done more
+than just exchange civil greetings by word of mouth--and congratulated
+her upon her happy prospects.  Miss Stansfield, who knew the old lady's
+character well, was about to pass on, after a word or two of civil
+acknowledgment, but the other would not let her part from her so
+hastily.
+
+"My dear," she exclaimed in an earnest half-whisper, "isn't it really
+shameful that people should say the ill-natured things they do, calling
+you a hypocrite, and selfish of all things in the world?  And young Mr
+Wilder too--to think of his saying that `you've played your cards well.'
+Really, it's too bad.  But, my dear Miss Stansfield, if I were you I
+wouldn't mind it."
+
+The old lady paused, expecting to see a blush of vexation and annoyance
+on her young companion's face; but she was disappointed.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs Tinderley," replied Mary Stansfield.  "I suppose you
+mean well by repeating to me these foolish remarks.  I can assure you
+that I do _not_ mind them, as my conscience quite acquits me in the
+matter, and my happiness in no degree depends on the judgment of those
+who have made or reported them."
+
+So saying, she went quietly on her way, leaving poor Mrs Tinderley in a
+state of utter bewilderment.
+
+To Colonel Dawson the attachment, which was soon avowed on his nephew's
+part, was a matter of the sincerest satisfaction; as it was also to the
+elder Miss Stansfield, who had learned to take great pleasure in the
+society of Horace Jackson, and to see in him those excellences of a true
+Christian character which would make him a suitable husband to her
+invaluable niece.  She was pained, however, at the hard things which had
+been said on the subject, as reported to her by an acquaintance of Mrs
+Tinderley's, and spoke to the colonel on the subject.
+
+"I am sure, Colonel Dawson," she said, "dear Mary is without blame in
+this matter.  The idea of _her_ acting selfishly or `playing her cards,'
+such a thing is altogether preposterous.  I cannot imagine how people
+can be so wicked as to make such cruel and unjust remarks."
+
+"Ah, my dear friend," replied the colonel, smiling, "let it pass, the
+world will have its say.  I am sure your dear niece will have no wish,
+as I know she has no need, to vindicate her character from such
+aspersions.  She has just gone straight forward in the path of duty, and
+has met Horace while in that path; and to my mind there would be
+somewhat of selfishness, or, at any rate, of undue self-consciousness,
+on her part were she to trouble herself, or to allow her friends to
+trouble themselves, to defend her conduct in this matter.  We are, of
+course, as Christians, to abstain from all appearance of evil, and to
+give no handle to the enemies of the truth against us or our profession;
+but it does not, therefore, follow that we are to decline a path which
+plainly opens before us in God's providence, just because that path may
+be a smooth one, or may lead to a position of wealth and influence.  To
+choose another path which will gain us high credit for self-denial,
+because we turn away from that which is naturally more attractive to
+ourselves, may after all be only another though subtler form of
+selfishness.  Surely the right course is just to go in honesty of
+purpose unreservedly where God's hand is plainly guiding us and he will
+take care both of our character and of his own cause in connection with
+that character, as he orders everything else that is really essential to
+the welfare and usefulness of each of his own dear children."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+RUBY GRIGG.
+
+Horace Jackson had come to take a deep interest in the inhabitants of
+Bridgepath, especially since his engagement; for Mary Stansfield's heart
+was thoroughly in her work in that once benighted place, and she was
+only too glad to lead one now so dear to her to concern himself in the
+truest welfare of those in Bridgepath who were still living without
+thought of any world but this.
+
+Things had indeed greatly improved through the diligent and loving
+exertions of the excellent schoolmaster, who was evidently determined to
+tread down all opposition that came in his way by the firm and weighty,
+though gentle, steps of a steady and consistent Christian walk.  His
+task, it is true, was no easy one, for parents and scholars seemed for a
+time to be in league against all endeavours on his part to remove
+existing abuses.  It was all very right, they allowed, that he should
+teach the children head-knowledge--this they were content to put up
+with; but as for his influencing the heart, or inducing them to change
+their conduct, and thereby to give up the pleasures of sin in which they
+had so long delighted, this was not to be tolerated; they were
+determined not to submit to it.  And so the boys, when they could no
+longer carry on their encounters and settle their differences with the
+fist after school without interruption and remonstrance from the master,
+revenged themselves for this interference with their privileges by a
+thousand little sly tricks and bits of mischief at his expense, and with
+the full approbation, or, at any rate, connivance, of their friends.
+
+As for the grown-up people generally, they gave the good master and his
+loving wife to understand, when they paid friendly visits to the parents
+of the scholars, that the inhabitants of the hamlet could do just as
+well if left to themselves; that they were too old now to go to school;
+and as for the master's religious teaching, they had already quite as
+much religion amongst them as was necessary for their comfort and well-
+being: in fact, the schoolmaster and his wife would best consult their
+own interests and the peace of the place by being keepers at home and
+looking after their own household out of school hours.
+
+Nor was this all.  The good man having, in one of his Sunday evening
+addresses in the schoolroom, spoken some very plain though kindly words
+against sinful courses too prevalent in Bridgepath, an assault was made
+on his little garden one night during the following week, so that when
+he looked over his flower-beds next morning he found them all trampled
+over, his rose-trees cut down, and the flower roots torn up and thrown
+about in all directions.
+
+As he rose from the examination of what remained of a favourite tree,
+his eyes encountered those of one of his most determined opponents in
+the village.  The man was staring over the wall, and when his eyes met
+those of the schoolmaster, he inquired with a grin how his roses were
+getting on.  With a slight flush on his face, but yet with a smile on
+his lips, the master replied very slowly, "I shall have to kill some of
+you for this."  Before the evening this little sentence had been
+reported in every house in Bridgepath.
+
+"So you're a-going to kill some of us, master.  I thought you was one of
+them peaceable Christians," sneered a man to the schoolmaster as he was
+passing by the door of one of the beer-shops, before which a number of
+men were assembled with their pipes and pots.  There was a general
+scornful laugh at this speech.  Nothing dismayed, however, the
+schoolmaster stood still, and facing his opponent, said, "Yes, I said I
+would kill some of you, and I mean it; and if you will come up to the
+schoolroom to-night at eight o'clock, I will tell you all how and why."
+
+"Let's go and hear him," said one of the drinkers.  "Ay, let us," said
+another.
+
+By eight o'clock the schoolroom was half filled with men, women, and
+children.  The master was standing at his desk ready to receive them,
+and when the school clock had struck the hour, began as follows:--
+
+"Now, my friends and neighbours, I feel sure that you'll give me a quiet
+hearing, as you have come that you may know why I said I must kill some
+of you.  You've done me harm, some of you, but I've done you none; so
+the least you can do is to listen to me patiently."
+
+"Ay, ay," said one or two voices, and there was a hush of earnest
+attention.
+
+The master then unlocked his desk, and taking out a printed paper, read
+it out clearly and with due spirit and emphasis.  It was the admirable
+tract entitled "The Man who Killed his Neighbour."  When he had finished
+reading there was a general murmur of satisfaction, and all were deeply
+attentive as he went on to say, "Now, dear friends, that's the way I
+mean to kill some of you: I mean to do it by patience, by kindness, and
+by returning good for evil, as the good man in the tract did.  I'm sorry
+of course, that my roses have been cut down and my flower-beds trampled
+on.  But let that pass; I shan't fret over it, nor try to find out who
+did it.  But I do want to get you to believe that my great desire and
+aim is to do you good; and if I can manage, by God's help, to persuade
+you of this, I shall have killed the enemy that is living in your hearts
+against me, and we shall be happy and good friends."
+
+No one offered any reply, and the meeting broke up; but the master had
+gained his object.  Many who had been set against him were now
+thoroughly ashamed of themselves; nearly every door was gladly opened to
+himself and his wife; and one morning, when he came out into his garden,
+he found that some unknown hands had planted new rose-trees in the place
+of those which had been destroyed.  So the good man was making a way
+steadily for the spread of the truth.
+
+Nevertheless, the evil one had still many devoted followers, especially
+among the tipplers.  As one of these unhappy men was one day emerging
+from a beer-shop in Bridgepath, with flushed face and uncertain step, he
+ran against Horace Jackson, who was just then passing through the
+village.  Uttering a loud oath, the man was about to move on, when
+Horace, catching him by the arm, compelled him to stand still, while he
+sharply reproved him for his drunkenness and profanity.  A little
+staggered and abashed, the man muttered something that sounded half like
+an apology; and then, shaking himself free from Horace's grasp, pointed
+with his pipe across the green, and said scoffingly, "'Tain't of no use
+speaking to me.  If you wants a good hard piece to try your hand on, see
+what you can do with Ruby Grigg yonder;" saying which, he plunged back
+into the beer-shop.
+
+Vexed and annoyed at this encounter, Horace was just about to hasten on,
+when his eyes fell on the man to whom the poor drunkard had referred
+him; and who was seated not far-off on the other side of the green, upon
+the steps of a large travelling van.  The young man's heart died within
+him as he gazed at the strange uncouth being to whom he was invited to
+try and do some good.
+
+Reuben Gregson, popularly known as "Ruby Grigg," was anything but a
+jewel in appearance.  He wore at this time a very long coat, whose
+original colour, whatever it might have been, had now faded into a
+yellowish dirty brown in those parts which still remained unpatched.
+Trousers just reaching a little below the knee, and repaired here and
+there with remnants of staring blue cloth of various shapes and sizes,
+were succeeded by yellowish grey stockings, and by shoes which, if they
+ever enjoyed the luxury of blacking, must have last done so at a very
+remote period.  A hat, which had once been black and of some definite
+shape, but was now rimless, distorted, and of the same faded hue as the
+coat, being stuck on one side, only partially covered a tangled mass of
+greyish hair, which radiated wildly in every direction.  Beneath the
+foremost locks were two eyeballs, the one sightless, the other black and
+piercing, and ever on the move, having to do double duty.  A rough,
+stubbly, and anything but cleanly beard, which was submitted to the
+razor only on festal occasions, gave an additional wildness to a
+countenance which was furrowed across the forehead and down either cheek
+with deep lines blotched and freckled.  As for the mouth, it was a
+perfect study in itself.  Usually pretty tightly closed, it displayed
+when open a small remnant of teeth at irregular intervals, and now grown
+old and decayed by long service.  But, whether open or shut, there was
+an expression of amused consciousness and cunning about that mouth, as
+though the owner were living in a chronic state of self-satisfaction at
+having fairly outwitted somebody.  Such was Ruby Grigg in his personal
+appearance.
+
+His caravan, also, was a very original and peculiar structure,
+manifestly built more for use than ornament, and combining both shop and
+dwelling.  It was formed of boards of various lengths and widths, some
+painted and others bare, the business part being in front, and arched
+over with a stout framework which was covered with a tight-fitting
+tarpaulin; while at the back a square little house, painted uniformly a
+sober green, and protected by a sloping roof of brown-coloured wood-
+work, and lighted by two little windows, served as parlour, bedroom, and
+kitchen to Ruby and his wife.
+
+Mrs Gregson, or Sally Grigg as she was usually styled, was not a
+noticeable person, keeping out of the way as much as possible; and
+devoting her time and energies to seeing to the due feeding of her
+husband, his horse and dog, and herself--these forming the entire
+family, for they had no children--and also to taking care of, and
+tidying up from time to time, the very miscellaneous wares which were
+offered for sale in the caravan.
+
+Ruby's affections seemed pretty equally divided between his horse, his
+dog, and his wife--the two first having probably the best place in his
+heart.  The horse, like its owner, had no external beauty to boast of,
+and must have numbered many years since the days of its foalhood.  There
+was something rather knowing about its appearance, as though it had
+contracted a measure of cunning from constant companionship with its
+master.  The dog, whose name was Grip, was one of those nondescript
+animals which seem to have inherited a mixture of half-a-dozen different
+breeds, and had a temper as uncertain as its pedigree.  While
+journeying, his place was beneath the caravan, to which he was attached
+by a light chain, in which position he was a terror to all who might
+venture near the caravan without his master's company or permission.
+When the little party rested for a day or so, Grip had his liberty;
+which he occasionally abused by appropriating to himself the meals
+intended for his fellow-dogs, none of whom, however superior to him in
+size or strength, durst for a moment resist him.
+
+Such were the old man and his establishment.  His business was that of a
+miscellaneous salesman, the difficulty being rather to say what he did
+not than what he did offer to his various customers.  The front part of
+his van was hung with all sorts of hardware, inside and out; but,
+besides this, there were, within, secret drawers and cupboards
+containing articles which would not bear exhibition to the public--such
+as smuggled goods, both wearable and drinkable, which Ruby knew how to
+procure at a very low price, and could always part with confidentially
+for a sum which both suited the pockets of the purchasers, and also
+brought considerable profit to himself.  Among his secret wares were
+also immoral songs, and impure and infidel books, for which he had many
+eager buyers, especially in such places as Bridgepath.  He had his
+regular rounds, and his special customers, and was in the habit of
+attending all the feasts and fairs for many miles round.
+
+It need hardly be said that poor Ruby knew nothing and cared nothing
+about better things; his heart was wholly in the world, and in making
+money as fast as he could, by hook or by crook,--and in this he was
+succeeding.  For though the poor man and his wife were utterly godless,
+and even profane, yet Ruby was no drunkard; he loved his glass, it is
+true, but he loved money more, and so he always contrived to keep a
+clear head and a steady eye and hand.  He also took good care of his
+horse and dog for his own sake, as he wanted to make the best and the
+longest of their services, and was shrewd enough to know that you cannot
+get out of anything, whether animate or inanimate, more than is put into
+it.  So self and wife, and horse and dog were all well fed and cared
+for, and worked harmoniously together.
+
+This was the man to whom the poor drunkard pointed his pipe and
+sneeringly invited Horace Jackson to try and do him good.  The young man
+shrunk at first instinctively from coming in contact with old Reuben.
+Surely there was abundance of self-denying work in looking after the
+inhabitants of the hamlet itself; why then need he concern himself about
+a man who was only a passer through, and had no special claim on his
+attention?  Half-satisfied with these thoughts, Horace Jackson was about
+to proceed homewards, when it seemed to him that a voice, as it were,
+said within him, "Accept the work; it may not be in vain."  Though still
+reluctant, he now felt that he could no longer hang back; so he crossed
+the green, and greeted the old hawker kindly.
+
+Ruby looked up at him with a comical twinkle in his one eye, and,
+knocking out the ashes from his pipe, observed, "So you be the young
+gent as is turning all things topsy-turvy in this here village--you and
+the colonel between you.  I've heard all about it; and a precious mess
+you'll make of it, I doubt."
+
+"My friend," said Horace, now perfectly relieved from all feeling of
+disinclination to encounter the old man, "you make a little mistake
+there: when we came here we _found_ things topsy-turvy already, and we
+are just trying, by God's help, to set them upright and straight."
+
+"And I suppose you think as you're going to do it," said the other
+scornfully.
+
+"Yes, I hope so," was the reply.  "Come, my friend, now tell me
+honestly, isn't it happier for the people of this village to have a good
+school and a good schoolmaster set down amongst them than to be living
+as they used to do, without proper instruction for the children, and
+without any knowledge of God and a better world?"
+
+"Can't say as to that," said Ruby Grigg doubtfully, and a little
+sulkily; "there's lots of people here as likes the old ways better."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Horace; "but they may be wrong in what they like.
+Now, I ask you again--tell me honestly--don't you see a change for the
+better yourself in Bridgepath?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," replied the old man, fidgeting about; "it's been a
+worse change for me.  I ain't done anything like the business this time
+as I use doing here, leastways in some things."
+
+Horace had now seated himself by the old man, spite of a deep growl from
+Grip, whose nearer approach was cut short by a backhanded slap from his
+master.
+
+"Look there now, old friend," continued the young man.  At this moment
+the school doors were thrown open, and out poured a stream of boys and
+girls, tumbling one over another in their excitement, and singing gaily
+as they began to disperse over the green.  But all suddenly stopped, for
+the schoolmaster made his appearance, and all clustered round him.
+School was over, and what was going to happen now?  In former days the
+sight of the master would have been a signal for every boy and girl to
+slink out of reach of his observation; but now the master's coming was
+hailed with a happy shout, and the young ones vied with one another in
+getting near him, while the youngest clung to his dress, and all looked
+up at him with bright and happy smiles.  Horace turned towards the old
+man, and marked a flush on his worn and weather-beaten features.
+"That's a sight worth seeing, my friend," he added; "I think it used not
+to be so."
+
+Reuben made no answer.  His eye seemed to be gazing at something beyond
+the busy scene before him.
+
+"You've never had any children of your own, it may be," said Horace,
+noticing his absent look.
+
+Slowly the old man turned towards his companion, his face was now quite
+pale, and tears began to steal down its deep furrows.  "I've never a
+child now," he said in a hoarse and troubled voice, "but I had once--a
+blessed little 'un she were, but she died."
+
+"It may be, friend," said the young man gently, "that the Lord took her
+in mercy from the evil to come.  Did she die very young?"
+
+Reuben Gregson seemed unable to reply for a while, then he said slowly,
+and apparently with a great effort, "Ay, sir, very young, and she were
+all the boys and girls I ever had.  She were but five year old when she
+died, but she died happy, poor thing.  It's more nor thirty years now
+since she left us."
+
+"And she died happy, you say?" asked Horace, deeply touched.  "Did she
+know anything of her Saviour?"
+
+"I believe you," replied the other earnestly, "yes.  There were a good
+young lady--she ain't living now--as seed her playing about by the
+roadside one day, and gave her this book."  Ruby drew out from his
+breast-pocket a large faded leathern case, and from its inmost depths
+brought out a small picture-book full of coloured Scripture prints.  The
+frontispiece represented our Saviour hanging on the cross, and was much
+worn, as with the pressure of little fingers.  "There, sir," continued
+the old man, "the young lady showed her them pictures, and talked to her
+about 'em, and particular about Him as was nailed to the cross.  We was
+staying on a common near her house for a week or more, and each day that
+young lady came and had a talk to our little Bessy.  And she never
+forgot what the lady said to her.  And so, when she were took with the
+fever, some weeks arter that, when we was far-off from where the lady
+lived, her last words was, `Daddy, I'm going to Jesus, 'cos he said,
+"Suffer the little children to come to me."'  There, sir, I've told you
+now what I haven't spoken to nobody else these thirty years."
+
+"And won't you follow your dear child to the better land?" asked Horace
+kindly; "there's room in our Saviour's heart and home for you too."
+
+"I don't know, I don't know," said the other gloomily; "these things
+ain't in my line.  Besides, I'm too old and too hard now; it's no use
+for such as me to think about 'em."
+
+Horace said nothing immediately, but taking out a little New Testament,
+he read out, without any comment, the parables of the lost sheep and the
+lost piece of silver.  Then he said, "Old friend, I am so glad we have
+met.  Will you accept this little book from me?  It will tell you better
+than I can all about the loving Saviour, who has taken that dear child
+to himself, and wants you and your wife to follow her."
+
+Without saying a word Ruby clutched the Testament, thrust it into his
+breast-pocket and then, rising hastily, said, "I wish you good day, sir;
+maybe we shall meet again.  Thank you kindly for the little book."
+
+"Farewell for the present," said Horace.  "Yes, I believe we shall meet
+again," and he turned his steps homewards, deeply thankful that he had
+not declined the work which was so unexpectedly thrust upon him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+A ROUGH JEWEL POLISHED.
+
+Some months had passed since Horace Jackson's brief conversation with
+Ruby Grigg on the green at Bridgepath, and the good work was making
+steady progress in that hamlet.  A few of the adversaries continued
+rather noisy and troublesome; but it was observable that these avoided,
+as by common consent, one particular beer-shop, which used to be a
+favourite resort of the roughest and most dissolute characters, while
+the publican himself who kept this house was to be seen, at first
+occasionally, and now regularly at the service which was held in the
+schoolroom on the Sunday evenings.
+
+News of this happy change had reached Horace from several quarters, and
+gave the sincerest pleasure to himself and his uncle.  Meditating
+thankfully on these things, the young man was passing one afternoon down
+a by-lane which led to Bridgepath.  It was a lonely spot, far from any
+house.  On either hand the lane was closed in by tall hedges, and a
+broad belt of turf skirted the rugged road on each side, affording
+pasture to any stray beasts which might wander thither unbidden.  Wild
+flowers and singing birds filled the untrimmed bushes; while the lowing
+of cattle, faintly heard from some far-off farm or pasture, added depth
+to the solitude.  With his face turned in the direction of Bridgepath,
+Horace had just crossed the top of another and narrower lane, which
+joined at right angles that along which he was walking, and had passed
+the opening about a hundred yards, when he was startled by hearing a
+voice behind him shouting out, "Hi!  Hi!  Hi!  Mister!"  He looked back,
+and the sight that met his eye was not reassuring.  A tall figure, bare-
+headed and without a coat, was striding after him, tossing its arms
+about, and brandishing in the right hand a long whip.
+
+The thought at once suggested itself to Horace that this must be some
+poor lunatic escaped from an asylum, and the idea of a solitary
+encounter in that lonely spot was not an agreeable one, especially as
+the young man had no other weapon with him than a thin walking-cane, and
+he was well aware that these poor creatures, when excited and at
+liberty, often exhibited great strength of limb, and made use of it
+without scruple to the detriment of any they might fall in with; so he
+took no heed of the outcry, and hastened his pace onwards.  But this had
+only the effect of exasperating his pursuer, who bawled out to him to
+stop, and then began to make after him with a shuffling sort of run.  So
+when Horace looked back, and saw the presumed lunatic thus quickening
+his speed, and also wildly flourishing his whip, he fairly broke into a
+run himself, considering that, under the circumstances, "discretion
+was," undoubtedly, "the better part of valour."  He was, however,
+arrested in his flight by a roaring burst of laughter from the supposed
+madman, which made him pause for a moment and turn full round; and then
+he became convinced that the cause of his anxiety, who was now leaning
+his back against a bank, and still laughing vociferously, was none other
+than the old caravan hawker, Ruby Grigg.
+
+As soon as he could recover himself, the old man began to walk quietly
+forward, motioning to the other to come and meet him.  Horace did this,
+though with some little reluctance, not feeling sure that the old man's
+excitement might not be caused by either insanity or drink.  But he was
+soon satisfied that all was right on that score, as the two drew nearer
+together.
+
+"So you took me for a highwayman or a madman, Mr Horace!" said the old
+man, still laughing.  "Eh!  I don't wonder; you must have thought it
+very strange.  But I never thought how it'd look when I hollered arter
+you; I were only afeard you'd get out of hearing, and I've something to
+tell you as'll make your heart right glad, I know."
+
+"What is it, my friend?"
+
+"Well, can you spare me a few minutes, and I'll tell you?  My van's just
+a few yards down the lane you crossed a minute ago.  You didn't look
+that way as you passed, and I didn't take it in at first that it was
+yourself; and when my wife said, `There's Mr Horace Jackson just gone
+by,' I ran to the top of the lane just as I was, whip and all, and
+shouted arter you.  Can you come with me for a minute?"
+
+"With all my heart," replied the other.
+
+So they turned back, and soon reached the van, which was drawn up by the
+hedge-side, Grip and the old horse strolling about at leisure, and Mrs
+Gregson being engaged in cooking something savoury in an iron pot which
+was suspended over an open-air fire, gipsy fashion.
+
+When Horace had seated himself on the bank, the old hawker plunged into
+his travelling shop, and having returned with something in his right
+hand, seated himself by his young companion.  "It's this here little
+Testament as has been and gone and done it," he said abruptly, opening
+his hand at the same time and disclosing the book which Horace had given
+him at their last meeting.
+
+Greatly surprised and touched at these words, Horace looked earnestly
+into Reuben's face for an explanation, and as he did so, it struck him
+that the old expression of cunning had given place to one of gentleness
+and peace.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, sir," proceeded the other.  "You must know
+as I haven't been easy in my mind for some time past--never since that
+new schoolmaster at Bridgepath said a few words to me last feast-day.
+You know I often come to the village, 'cos I've some good customers
+there, and I never used to miss the feast.  Well, I'd heard a deal about
+the new goings on there long afore I set my own eyes on any on 'em, and
+I weren't best pleased, nor weren't my best customers neither, you may
+be sure.  But still, down in my heart, I couldn't help feeling as things
+were being changed for the better; yet it didn't quite suit my pocket
+that they should be, and so I were very cross, and ready to take
+everything by the wrong handle.  So when the schoolmaster came and spoke
+to me, I were as grumpy at first as a bear with a sore head, as the
+saying is.  But he wouldn't see it--no, not a bit, and talked to me as
+pleasant as if I'd been all the while looking sugar and honey at him;
+and I began to feel very uneasy all over.  Then, too, I couldn't help
+seeing as the boys and girls were as different as possible from what
+they used to be.  Many was the time as I've sworn with a big ugly oath
+as I'd set Grip at them, when they came up and plagued me and wanted to
+meddle with my goods.  But there weren't no need for it now.  Yet I
+stuck out for all that, and talked it over with the keepers of the beer-
+shops; and we all agreed as it were a great nuisance setting up this new
+school and reading-room.  But we didn't really think so, except that it
+began to hurt our trade; for this was where the shoe pinched.  And then
+it was, when my mind was a-playing at `see-saw,' first up on this side,
+and then up on the other, that you was sent that day to have a talk
+about the children and my own blessed little 'un, and to give me the
+Testament.  When you was gone, I grumbled to myself at first, `Precious
+humbug this!  What's the use of a Testament to me?  I ain't a-going to
+pull a long face and sing psalms,' and I were half in the mind to throw
+it away."
+
+"And what stopped you, old friend?" asked Horace.
+
+"I'll just tell you, sir," replied the other.  "When you gave it me, I
+stuck it in my coat-pocket, next my little girl's picture-book: and when
+I took it out again, t'other little book came with it, and I couldn't
+for the life of me do it any harm.  So I put 'em both back again side by
+side; and the next time as we camped in a quiet place, I took the
+Testament out and began to read a bit out loud.  And Sally heard me, and
+she came and listened with her mouth and eyes wide open, and then asked
+me what the book was and where I'd got it.  I told her all about it; and
+then she asked me if I thought I could find in the book them last words
+which our dear little 'un spoke.  I told you, sir, you'll remember, as
+she said, `Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me."'
+Them was her last words, poor thing!  Well, we sat on these steps day
+after day and hunted for them words between us; and we found 'em at
+last.  But we found something else as we hadn't been looking for.  We
+found a couple of miserable old sinners, Ruby and Sally Grigg, as was
+going along the broad road to destruction."  He paused, for his voice
+had become choked and troubled.
+
+"And did you find nothing more?" asked Horace, deeply interested.
+
+"Ay, to be sure we did, sir.  We found Jesus Christ was willing to have
+us; and we found peace--not at first, nor all at once, but by degrees,
+and after a while.  Sally were the first to get a firm hold: but I
+believe I've grasped it myself now, and by God's help I mean not to let
+go."
+
+"This is indeed joyful news, dear friend," said Horace Jackson, when he
+could trust himself to speak.  "Who would have thought it?"
+
+"Ay, who indeed?" said Reuben warmly.  "And now," he added, "I want a
+bit of advice, sir, from you, for it ain't all grass and gravel with me
+now; there's some deepish ruts and some stony roads before me, and
+that's why I were so anxious to stop you just now, sir, that I might
+tell you all about it, and get a word or two from yourself to give us a
+bit of encouragement."
+
+"I am truly thankful--I can't tell you how thankful," replied the young
+man.  "The Lord has indeed done great things for you, and I shall be
+only too happy to be helpful to you in any way that I can."
+
+"Thank you, sir, kindly; 'tain't worldly help as I wants from you.  I've
+earned enough for me and Sally to last us as long as we live; and it's
+almost time as I sold the old van, and settled down somewheres for the
+rest of my days.  But it's just this, sir--I want to do some work for
+the Lord, who's been and done so much for Sally and me.  Now I could, as
+I said just now, sell the old van and settle down; but then I mightn't
+be able to do much good, and my old limbs would get stiff for want of my
+regular exercise, and I should just be snoozing away the rest of my time
+in a big arm-chair.  Now I ain't quite used up, nor Sally neither.  So I
+could keep on the move from place to place, dropping a word for Christ
+here, and a word there, where I've been used to drop scores of words for
+the devil; and if you'd put me in the way, I could take a lot of
+Testaments and other good books with me, and sell 'em instead of the
+poisonous trash as I used to carry.  Now, what do you advise me?"
+
+"You couldn't do better, old friend," replied Horace; "you would be
+showing then your colours, and doing real work for the Master--better
+far than you could if you settled down."
+
+"Well, I think so too, sir; and you must know that I've begun to do a
+bit for the Lord already, though in a poor sort of way.  I used to sell
+smuggled goods on the sly, and bad songs and bad books, but I've dropped
+all that now.  You may look my van through, drawers and cupboards and
+all, every corner of it, and you'll not find a scrap of the bad sort
+now.  Eh!  How some of my old customers do stare, and how some on 'em do
+jeer, when I tells 'em as I've done selling the old things as they
+delight in.  But it don't matter.  I've made up my mind, and they're
+beginning to find that out.  They call me an old humbug, and tell me as
+Sally and I shall end our days in the Union.  But I ain't afeard; it
+ain't the likes of them as can send me there, and I know I'm safe in the
+Lord's hands."
+
+"That's very true," said Horace; "you'll be taken good care of while you
+are in the path of duty, and you will have many a noble opportunity of
+helping on the good cause as you go from place to place.  Many will get
+a word from you which they might not be in the way of hearing otherwise,
+and the very fact of such a change in the hearts and lives of your wife
+and yourself must tell on the consciences of many who see what you are
+now and know what you were in times past."
+
+"I believe you sir," said the old man.  "Now, there's one who's been
+touched already--Jim Grimes, who keeps `The Old Fighting-Cocks' at
+Bridgepath.  He were mightily surprised at first when he seed as I'd
+given up my old ways; he wouldn't believe as it were the true thing, and
+he were for chaffing me out of it.  But he found out after a bit as I
+was real.  'Tain't for me to boast--it were the Lord's doings, not
+mine--but when he came to be persuaded as I had taken to the better way
+in earnest, he couldn't make it out at first; but now he has come to set
+his feet on the right road, too, I trust, and this has made me think as
+there's work for the Lord for me to do in a quiet way without giving up
+the van--in a quiet way, I say, sir, for I don't want to be put in a
+`mag.'"
+
+"Put in a `mug,' old friend!" exclaimed Horace, in amused surprise;
+"what can you mean?  Is it slang for putting you in prison?  Why should
+any one put you in prison for such a work as you are purposing to carry
+on?  If any one tries to get you into trouble, come or send to me; they
+shan't interfere with you."
+
+"Nay, nay, sir," replied Ruby Grigg, with a laugh.  "Thank you kindly
+for what you say; but you've not got hold of my meaning.  What I'm
+driving at is this: I don't want people to put me in a `mag,'--mag's
+short for `magazine,'--one of them monthly or weekly papers as is full
+of pictures, and serves as town-crier to all the good deeds as is being
+done."
+
+"Ah, I understand you now," said Horace, smiling in return; "you want to
+work quietly for Christ in the shade, and not to be made a public
+character of."
+
+"That's just it, sir; I wouldn't be put in a `mag' for all the world.
+I've knowed many a good man spoilt by being put in a `mag.'  It blows
+'em up with pride; and then them as don't get put in the `mag' is fit to
+burst with envy and jealousy."
+
+"I believe, my friend," said Horace, "that there may be a great deal of
+truth in what you say.  A good man's usefulness may be injured by his
+being dragged into public notice; for no sin needs such watchfulness on
+the part of Christians, especially those at the beginning of their
+course, as pride.  There is too much of this trumpeting in our day; it
+spoils the simplicity and reality of many a character."
+
+"I've seen it, sir," replied Reuben.  "I used to laugh at it formerly,
+but I grieve over it now.  At any rate I'm sure, sir, as you won't put
+me in a `mag.'  I don't want to see myself in a couple of picturs, one
+with me and my van as they was, and t'other with the likeness of Mister
+Reuben Gregson in a brand new suit of clothes and a white choker,
+looking for all the world like a regular parson.  'Twouldn't do me no
+good.  I just want to do a little work in a quiet way--to jog along,
+telling how the Lord has done great things for me, and just to mix up a
+few Bibles, and Testaments, and tracts as I'm selling my goods.  And I
+don't want no reward here, and no notice, leastways no public notice.
+I've had more reward nor I deserve already; and if I make a few kind
+friends, such as yourself and the colonel maybe, I'd rather do it, Mr
+Horace, in a quiet way, and then I shall feel as I'm doing the work for
+the Lord himself out and out."
+
+"Well, dear old friend," said Horace, "it shall be as you say, so far as
+I am concerned, and I can answer for my uncle too.  And I feel sure that
+you are right, I understand now how the change has taken place in James
+Grimes.  Yes, the Lord honours steady consistent example, and I do
+heartily thank him that he has seen fit to enlist you in the increasing
+and noble army of `workers in the shade.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+A SURPRISE.
+
+Mr Horace Jackson has completed his twenty-first year, and the day is
+to be marked by a grand gathering in the grounds in front of Park House.
+The persons invited on the occasion were all the tenants on the estate,
+the two Misses Stansfield, and Lady Willerly and her daughter.  Ruby
+Grigg also and his wife Sally were present by special invitation.
+
+The colonel had never formally declared that his nephew was to be his
+heir, though it had been generally understood that such was to be the
+case.  And now the proceedings at Riverton Park were to be of so quiet a
+character, that people began to question whether after all this
+celebration of the young man's coming of age might not merely be an
+ordinary keeping of the majority of one who might not in the end turn
+out to be the real heir to the property.  Such was the conjecture of the
+public as the preparations were watched and commented upon.  "And yet
+who can tell?" exclaimed ungratified curiosity reproachfully, "for the
+colonel never does anything like other people."  There was, however, one
+person who was abundantly satisfied, and that was old John Price; but
+nothing could be got from him, though a host of questioners assailed him
+as he made his way down to the house, on the morning of the birthday
+gathering, seated on an old pony as prudent and impenetrable as himself.
+
+It was a glorious day, and, after a hearty noonday meal, all the guests
+were collected on the lawn in front of the mansion.  The colonel, his
+sister, and their nephew, having dined with the company, now occupied
+the centre of a group which had gathered on the steps of Park House,
+consisting of the ladies invited and old John Price.  Scarce a sound was
+heard but the rustling of the leaves of some of the noble trees, as all
+sat waiting for what was to come next, for certainly something special
+was expected by all, though they could scarce have told why.  At last
+the colonel stood forward, and, raising his hat from his venerable head,
+just closed his eyes for a moment and murmured a few words to himself
+and then, his voice trembling at first with emotion, spoke as follows--
+
+"My dear friends, I am about to bring strange things to your ears, but I
+trust not disagreeable ones.  And first of all, let me introduce to you,
+under a new name, Mr Horace Walters, the only son and only child of your
+late squire, and the present and, I trust for many happy years to come,
+future proprietor of the Riverton estate."
+
+He paused as the whole company rose to their feet and vociferously
+cheered the young master.  Looks of astonishment and perplexity were
+then exchanged by many as they resumed their seats, but these soon gave
+place to most earnest attention to Colonel Dawson, who thus proceeded--
+
+"You may some of you be wondering, dear friends, how I can have
+permitted your dear young squire to have assumed and carried with my
+sanction a name among you that is not really his own; but I shall soon
+show you what will, I am sure, be perfectly satisfactory to you all on
+this point.  What I am now going to tell you is not a mere tale to
+gratify curiosity.  I have a sacred duty to perform in telling it; for
+it was the earnest request that I should do so of one who had a right to
+claim it of me--I mean your late squire, the father of my dear young
+friend here, whom I shall never cease to call my dear nephew.
+
+"You must know, then, that some twenty-five years have now passed since
+I retired from the army.  I was living at that time in a quiet way in my
+native county, when a cousin of mine, who used to be my special
+companion and friend when we were boys, died, and left me, to my
+considerable surprise, a large property in Australia, in which country
+he had been living for many years as an extensive sheep-farmer.
+Believing that property has its duties as well as its profits, I
+resolved to go over and see what my new acquisition was like, and what I
+had best do with it.  I had no thoughts at first of settling in the
+colony.  But I found when I got there a great deal to do and a great
+deal to undo before things could be set properly in order; and by the
+time I had got things into shape I had got so used to colonial life, and
+so well satisfied with its freedom from many of those fetters which
+society imposes on us in many of her usages in the old mother country,
+that I made up my mind to settle, for a time at any rate, in my adopted
+land.
+
+"I had a house of my own in Melbourne, and used to visit my country
+estate from time to time as I found it necessary.  One day, as I was
+walking along one of the principal streets of the city, when I had been
+settled in the colony a few years, I noticed a little boy of rather
+superior appearance, who was neatly but plainly dressed, walking slowly
+past the shops with a very sad expression on his face and his poor eyes
+full of tears.  I stopped him, and asked what was the matter.  He was
+reluctant at first to tell me; but on my getting his confidence by the
+sincere interest he saw I took in him, the little fellow told me that
+his dear old nurse was very ill, and he was afraid she would die before
+his father came back.
+
+"I went with him at once to his home, which was a very humble one in a
+side street, and found the poor woman, the child's nurse, quite
+sensible, yet manifestly near her end.  The neighbours had been kind,
+and had done what they could; but it was too plain that human skill
+would not avail to restore the old woman to health or prolong her life.
+But she was quite able to listen to me; and when I had offered a prayer
+by her bedside, she evidently felt that she could confide her sorrows
+and troubles to me.
+
+"She told me that her master, the little boy's father, was called
+William Jackson; that he had come from England a few years before, after
+the death of his wife, to try his fortune in the colony, having lost his
+property in England.  She herself, having known him from his infancy,
+and always having lived in his family, came with him to Australia to
+take care of Horace, his only child, who was then an infant.  Her master
+had found employment in the city, but was anxious to see if he could not
+meet with success at the gold-diggings.  He therefore had left her and
+his little son three months since, and they had only heard from him
+once.  Horace was now six years old, and was going to a day-school in
+the city; and as Mr Jackson had left a sum of money with her which was
+not yet exhausted, she was not in want as regarded herself or the child,
+and was now anxiously looking for the father's return.  But it had
+pleased God to lay her low with sickness; and feeling that her time must
+be short, she was deeply concerned as to what was to become of her
+little charge, whom she loved as dearly as if he had been her own.
+
+"I told her not to distress herself on this subject, but to cast this
+burden on the Lord, and that I would see what could be done.  Her poor
+face lighted up when I said these words; and from the reply which she
+made, I concluded that she was a pious woman and knew where to lay her
+cares.  So I went home, and after giving the necessary directions for
+the poor nurse's comfort, I began seriously to consider what was to be
+done for the poor child; and after putting the matter before the Lord, I
+resolved to take him into my own house, and treat him as my own till his
+father should turn up.  And so a week later, when the faithful old nurse
+was buried, I took the little Horace to live with me, and we have never
+been long separated from that day to this.
+
+"But what of William Jackson, his father?  Months rolled on, and no
+tidings--a year, and no tidings.  Horace had learned to call me uncle,
+and I to call him and speak of him as nephew: and though friends and
+neighbours at first perfectly understood that this was only a loving
+mode of address, not at all intended to deceive anybody, yet in process
+of time it became so completely a matter of course with us, that we can
+hardly either of us believe that this relationship does not really exist
+between us, and so I shall be `Uncle Dawson' to him, and he will be
+`Nephew Horace' to me till death parts us.  Horace was now seven years
+old, and I felt only too thankful to mark in him the evidences of a real
+love to that Saviour whom his good old nurse had taught him to know and
+serve in his childish way.  And so the boy was twining himself tight
+round my heart, and, to tell the honest truth, I began to dread the
+father's return, and almost to hope he might never come back to claim
+his child.
+
+"It was one beautiful day in February.  You must remember, dear friends,
+that February is one of our hot months in the southern hemisphere.
+Horace was at school, and I was sitting by an open window in my private
+room, which looked on to the garden at the back of my town house.
+Something came between me and the light.  I looked up from my writing.
+A man stood by the open window, and did not move away as he saw my eyes
+fixed on him.  He wore a broad palm leaf hat, which rather shaded from
+my view his full features; but I could see a noble countenance, which
+was rendered strikingly picturesque by the profusion of beard and
+moustache, which had evidently been long untrimmed.  His upper clothing
+consisted of a faded blouse, fastened round the neck by a black silk
+handkerchief.  He had also coarse duck trousers on, bound round his
+waist by a leathern belt, and well-made boots on his feet, which were
+remarkably small for one of his robust make.
+
+"My heart sank within me for a moment or two, for I divined at once who
+he must be; but, recovering myself, I asked him if he wished to speak
+with me.  `Yes; he should be glad to do so,' he replied in a sad voice,
+but with the greatest courtesy of manner.
+
+"He was soon seated opposite to me, and came at once to the point by
+saying, `How can I ever discharge my debt of gratitude to you, Colonel
+Dawson, for your most generous treatment of my poor boy, who might have
+been lost or ruined but for your kindness?'
+
+"`Pray, don't say anything more on the subject, Mr Jackson,' I replied.
+`It has been a happiness to me to have been led to befriend your child;
+and, indeed, he has become so dear to me, that I know not how to part
+with him.  But, of course, as he is yours, not mine, you are at liberty
+to take him when you will, or to leave him with me till you can provide
+a settled home for him.'
+
+"My visitor was greatly moved, and grasped my hand most warmly.  `I
+know,' he said, `the best recompense I can make to one who has acted
+towards me as you have done, is to lay myself under still deeper
+obligation to you; and I will do so.  I may tell you thus much about
+myself--I am not what I seem.  I have a great object which I am seeking
+to accomplish, and I am, I think, on the road to success.  I shall be
+most thankful to leave my boy in your hands, at any rate, for the
+present, and shall be most happy to charge myself with all his expenses
+at home and at school.'
+
+"`Nay, Mr Jackson,' I replied; `while he remains with me it shall be my
+privilege to supply him with all that he needs, as I can well afford to
+do, and I shall be further truly happy to be of personal service to
+yourself if I can.'
+
+"`I accept your offer with gratitude,' he replied.  `You _can_ help me,
+I dare say.  I want employment as a clerk or book-keeper.  Dare you
+trust me yourself, or dare you recommend me to another?  I dare myself
+affirm that I will not disappoint an employer who may trust me.'
+
+"There was a frankness and sincerity in his manner which completely
+disarmed me of all suspicion or hesitation; whatever colonial _prudence_
+might suggest, I _could_ not distrust him.  So I offered him at once a
+place in my own office with a moderate stipend.  He accepted it without
+hesitation, and lived in my house as a member of the family; and never
+did employer have a more intelligent and faithful worker.  As for the
+child, his father never in the least interfered with my management of
+him, though I brought him up after my own utterly unfashionable, or
+perhaps more properly speaking, old-fashioned ideas.  On the contrary,
+he warmly approved of my system.
+
+"`I cannot tell you,' he said one day, soon after he had come to live
+with me, `how truly grateful I am to see you forming my dear boy's
+character in the way you are doing.  I want him to be the very opposite
+to what I was myself at his age, and to what the generality of children
+are now.  I was brought up just to please myself and to have my own
+way--to be, in fact, a little incarnation of self-will and selfishness.
+I was allowed to ask for everything I liked at the table, no restriction
+being put upon my self-indulgence.  I went where I liked, and did what I
+liked, and was never checked except when I was in the way, or had become
+intolerably troublesome.  I was placed under no regular discipline, and
+was allowed to thrust myself and my opinions forward amongst my seniors
+and those who were my superiors in everything but worldly position; and
+as I grew older, and became inconveniently self-asserting, I was
+alternately snubbed and humoured according to the whim or temper of
+those who claimed authority over me.  And what was the result?  Alas!
+Early reckless extravagance followed by ruin, and a character which
+might have been moulded into something noble, now for a long time
+shapeless and distorted.  And my boy--well, I am only too thankful that
+he has fallen into your hands out of his unworthy father's.'  He spoke
+these words with deep emotion.
+
+"`I am truly glad, Mr Jackson,' I said, `that you are able to look at
+things in this better and clearer light.  I quite agree with you about
+the present bringing up of children.  For a few years they are treated
+as little idols by parents, who are too selfish to give themselves the
+pain and trouble of correcting and disciplining them, and this, too,
+even in cases where the parents themselves are true Christians; and
+then, when they begin to get unbearable, and have passed out of the
+winning ways of early childhood, they are too often thrown back upon
+themselves, and made to suffer the penalty of neglect of discipline and
+training, which ought properly to be inflicted on the parents, who have
+not done their duty towards them.'
+
+"`It is so.  I have seen it; I have felt it, Colonel Dawson,' he replied
+warmly; `and so I just leave Horace's education entirely in your hands.'
+
+"And thus it was that I brought up my dear nephew, as I still continued
+to call him, in my own way--that is to say, to eat what was given him,
+to do what was told him, to go where I allowed him, and to have as much
+liberty as I thought good for him; to listen when his elders were
+speaking, to be diligent in his lessons, early in his hours of rising
+and going to bed, and regular in all his habits.  And he will tell you
+himself, I don't doubt, as he has told me over and over again, that, so
+far from feeling this discipline and these wholesome restraints a
+bondage, he was as happy as the day was long under them.  And I am sure
+of this, dear friends, that the little, stuck-up, pampered, self-willed,
+selfish children which abound in our day, who are supposed to rejoice in
+having their own way, are really slaves to themselves, as well as a
+burden to their friends, and are strangers to that vigorous enjoyment
+which is the privilege of a childhood passed under judicious and even
+discipline.
+
+"Well, so it was with Horace; and so his father rejoiced to find it.
+And what made me rejoice still more was the happy conviction that a
+deeper work still was beginning to manifest itself in the heart and life
+of the dear boy.  Yes, you may think it strange, dear friends that I am
+entering into all these particulars on an occasion so public as the
+present, and with your young squire by my side; but I have a reason for
+it, as you will see by-and-by, and I am doing it with the full consent
+and approval of my dear nephew himself.  Let me, then, proceed with my
+story.
+
+"When Horace was sixteen years of age he expressed to me his earnest
+desire to engage in some special work for the spread of the gospel,
+which he had learned himself to prize above all earthly things.  His
+father at this time was not residing with me in the town, but held the
+post of manager of my country estate and sheep-farm, which flourished
+admirably under his most vigorous and faithful superintendence; for he
+was a born ruler of others, and a man of such decision of character that
+everything he laid his hands to fell, as it were, into order under his
+unflagging and indomitable energy.  I knew that I had `the right man in
+the right place,' and was satisfied.  However, when his son expressed
+this his heart's desire to me, we rode up together to my country house
+and laid the matter before Mr Jackson.
+
+"He seemed at first confused and embarrassed when I mentioned the
+subject to him, and asked me to wait for his views upon it till the
+following day.  So we spent the night at the farm; and the next day the
+father and myself walked towards the neighbouring hills, and then he
+told me, what you may be sure I was deeply thankful to hear, that what
+he was pleased to call the consistent Christianity which he had
+witnessed in our household had been blessed to himself, and that he
+trusted that he was now endeavouring to live as a true follower of his
+Saviour.
+
+"`You will approve, then,' I said, `of Horace's wish to be trained for
+direct gospel work.'
+
+"`Yes and no,' he replied.  `By _no_,' he added, `I mean that I do not
+wish him to enter the ministry.  I have reasons of my own for this which
+just now I would rather keep to myself; but one day, and it may be
+before very long, I should like you to know them.'
+
+"`And what would you wish, then, Horace to do?'  I asked.
+
+"`I will talk the matter over with him,' he said.  And he did so that
+day; and the result was that the young man proposed, with his father's
+full approbation, to pass through a course of training in medicine and
+surgery with a view to his becoming qualified for the post of medical
+missionary.  So, on our return to Melbourne, the necessary steps were
+taken; and two years ago my nephew left us for a short experimental trip
+to one of the islands of the Pacific Ocean, under the guidance of an
+excellent and experienced missionary.
+
+"And now I am coming to a very sad and wonderful part of my story; but
+as I have talked long enough now to weary myself if not to weary you, I
+will ask you to amuse yourselves for a while among the grounds and in
+the park till tea-time, and after tea I shall be happy to conclude my
+story, the most important part of which is yet to come."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+CLOUD AND SUNSHINE.
+
+There was clearly much anxiety on the part of the guests to hear the
+conclusion of Colonel Dawson's narrative.  So the bountiful tea which
+had been provided was speedily despatched, and every eye fixed intently
+on the speaker when he resumed his address, after the tables had been
+withdrawn and the hearers settled in their old places.
+
+"You will remember," began the colonel, "that I had sorrowful things to
+tell you in continuing my story: and sorrowful indeed they are, though
+not without a mixture of brightness.  Horace had been gone from the
+colony, on what I might call his missionary trial-trip, about a month,
+when I was one day sitting alone under the veranda of my country house,
+thinking over many things, and specially pondering the wonderful way in
+which I had gained two so dear to me as Horace and his father.  Then my
+thoughts and heart went across the sea to my dear nephew,--when I was
+suddenly aroused from my day-dream by seeing just before me a stranger,
+who must have come up very silently, for I was quite unaware of his
+approach till I looked up and saw him gazing very keenly and not very
+pleasantly at me.  It was now evening, and twilight, of which there is
+very little in those parts, would speedily be followed by darkness.  The
+new-comer was dressed in bush fashion, and carried a rifle, and I could
+see the stocks of a brace of pistols peeping out from his blouse.  The
+man's features and appearance altogether were most forbidding; and
+though a military man myself, I felt anything but comfortable with these
+ferocious eyes staring full upon me.  However, in the bush open house is
+more or less a rule, and rough-looking fellows often turn up and request
+a night's lodging and food, which we do not think of refusing them.
+Besides which, the wild-looking outside not unfrequently covers an
+honest heart beneath.  So, while I did not at all like the looks of my
+visitor, I asked him what he wanted, and if he would sit down and take
+some refreshment.  He replied, in a voice as rough as his appearance,
+that he was looking after some horses which had strayed as he was
+bringing them overland, and that he should be glad of a mouthful of
+bread and cheese and a drink.  The refreshment was brought him by one of
+my men, whom he eyed all over; while all the time he was eating, those
+same fierce and restless eyes were taking in everything about the place,
+till he rose to go, with a muttered word or two which hardly sounded
+like thanks.
+
+"No sooner was he out of sight than Horace's father joined me in the
+veranda.  His voice was agitated as he asked,--
+
+"`Do you know that man?'
+
+"`Not that I am aware of,' I replied; `indeed I may say, certainly not;
+for once seen, such a man is not easily forgotten.  A more villainous
+face I never beheld.'
+
+"`You may well say so,' said my friend.  `I know that man too well; he
+nearly succeeded in taking my life at the diggings,--he is somewhat
+older-looking, of course, but there is no mistaking him.  He was an
+escaped convict when I knew him, and belonged to the most dangerous set
+in the place where I was working.  I don't at all like his lurking about
+here.  You may depend upon it, his presence bodes no good.'
+
+"`I can well believe that,' I said; `so we must take proper precautions,
+and see that the men are on the look-out.'
+
+"`Yes,' he replied, `I will see to that; and it will be as well to send
+a messenger to-night over to Melbourne to give the police a hint, as I
+fancy they would not be sorry to come across this fellow, as his doings
+are no doubt pretty well known to them.'
+
+"Nothing more occurred that night to disturb us; but the following day
+four horsemen might be seen riding up towards the house at a dashing
+gallop, just about noon.  I was prepared, however, for their coming and
+had caused all the men about the place to take refuge in my own house,
+which I had made provision for barricading if necessary.  I had only
+three or four men on the place at that time, and their wives and
+children.  These last I brought into an inner room when I saw the
+horsemen in the distance.  Though a soldier by profession, I was
+exceedingly reluctant to shed blood, and had resolved on the present
+occasion not to do so if it could possibly be avoided.
+
+"The strangers were soon at the veranda, evidently resolved to take us
+by storm.  Foremost among them was my visitor of the day before.  He
+sprang down from his horse in the most reckless manner, and began
+thundering at the door with the butt end of his rifle.  My house had not
+been built with the view of its sustaining a siege at any time, but was
+constructed of rather light materials, so that the door began to groan
+and creak under the assaults of the bushranger, whose every movement I
+could see through a small opening in the shutters.
+
+"`What do you want here, friend?'  I asked.
+
+"`Open the door,' was the only reply.
+
+"`Tell me what you want,' I said again.
+
+"`Open the door,' was all that was returned in answer; and then came a
+thundering blow, which fairly crushed in one of the panels.
+
+"`Shall I fire?' asked Mr Jackson, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"`No, no!  Not yet, not yet,' I cried.
+
+"Then came a united rush of three of the men, and the door came crashing
+into the outer room.  The foremost villain then sprang at me, and we
+wrestled together, after I had knocked up his revolver.  In a few
+minutes I had hurled him back from me, and he fell to the ground and was
+seized by one of my men.  Gasping for breath, I paused and looked about
+me.  A pistol was presented at me by another bushranger, but before it
+could be fired Horace's poor father had thrown himself in front of me;
+he received the bullet in his own breast, and fell to the ground
+grievously wounded.  But now help was at hand; alas that it did not come
+sooner!  A strong body of mounted police came up, and having secured all
+the robbers, carried them off in triumph.
+
+"But what was to be done with my dear wounded friend, who had saved my
+life by perilling his own?  I knew enough of surgical matters to
+ascertain by inspection that the injury, though severe, was not likely
+to be mortal.  So, having bandaged up the wound with the best appliances
+I had at hand, I drove my friend as rapidly as he could bear it to my
+town house, where he was at once placed under the care of the best
+medical skill in the city.  And for some time I had every hope that he
+would recover, and earnestly did I pray that it might be so, if it were
+the Lord's will.  But it was not so to be.  A constitution once strong,
+but impaired in early youth, and much tried when he was at the diggings,
+had not sufficient vigour remaining to enable my poor friend to regain
+health and strength.  But he did not pass away rapidly, nor did he lose
+any of his power of mind in his last days.  And then it was, on his
+dying-bed, that he opened his whole heart to me, and told me what I am
+about to tell you, and, as nearly as I can remember, in these words:--
+
+"`My name is really Horace Walters, and I am the owner of an estate
+called Riverton Park in my dear native country.  But I ruined myself by
+my mad love for gambling, and when my poor wife died, and left me with
+Horace a baby, and my estate was become sadly encumbered, I resolved at
+once that I would leave my native land, go over to Australia, live a
+life of hard work and self-denial, and not come back again until, by the
+accumulated rents and by what I could earn, I could make my property
+absolutely and honestly my own, and leave it unencumbered to my dear
+child.  You have seen enough of me to know that I have some strength of
+will in my character; and so, when I had made this resolution, I began
+immediately to carry it out.  Taking with me our old nurse, whom I bound
+to secrecy, I came over to this colony, got employment, and then went to
+the diggings.  There, by diligence, perseverance, and self-denial, I
+managed to accumulate a large sum, which is safely deposited in the
+bank.  I had some thoughts of going back at once to England; but on
+learning what had happened to Horace, and about your noble and loving-
+care of him, I resolved to wait a while, and to get employment in your
+neighbourhood--at any rate, for a time.  And that resolution I have
+never repented of; indeed, I have felt _my_ dear Horace's--ay, I will
+say _our_ dear Horace's--position in your house such a privileged one,
+that I have gladly delayed taking any further steps homeward, wishing to
+see him all that we both could desire him to be before I let him know
+his real name and position.  You can easily understand why I changed my
+name to Jackson.  I felt that I had brought shame and dishonour on my
+own name in my native land and I resolved that in this distant country I
+would change it for another, and not take it back again till I could do
+so with honour and credit to myself and my child.'
+
+"And then, dear friends, he told me how he blessed God for bringing
+himself to the knowledge of his truth, and me for having been the
+instrument--an unworthy one indeed I was--of leading him to that
+knowledge.  Of course, I told him what a privilege I felt it to have
+been permitted to guide him to his Saviour; and I added that I would
+gladly do anything I could to show my gratitude to him for having
+sacrificed himself to save my life.
+
+"`You have done more than enough already,' was his reply; `and yet I
+will take you at your word.  Horace knows nothing yet of his real name
+and prospects; I had made up my mind lately that I would wait till he
+came of age to tell him.  And now I would ask you, dear friend, to take
+Horace with you to England and see him settled in his property when I am
+gone, which will be, I know, before very long.  I have ample means in
+the bank here to meet all expenses, and will give you full power to act
+for me.  You will understand now why I did not wish Horace to be a
+minister.  I think godly laymen are as much needed as godly clergymen;
+and, as he in God's providence inherits an important property, I have a
+strong impression that he will be more free to do his duty to his
+tenantry and his estate as a Christian country squire, than he would be
+if he had taken upon himself the charge of a special sphere or parish at
+home or abroad.  And my earnest wish and prayer is that he may soon, by
+his conduct as a Christian landlord, blot out altogether the memory of
+his unworthy father.'
+
+"I stopped him here and told him that he was nobly redeeming the past,
+so far as it was possible for man to do so, and that I would gladly
+carry out what he desired.  This seemed to make him quite happy; and his
+one great wish now was to see his son once more, and this was granted to
+him.  Horace returned to comfort him in his dying hours, and to receive
+his blessing, with his expressed wish that he should accompany me to
+England, whither I was going on his account to settle some matters of
+business for him.  He said nothing further to his son, having already
+expressed his wish to me that I should first set the Riverton estate in
+thorough order, according to my own views of what was right--with one
+special injunction, that I should do everything that might be in my
+power to recompense John Price and his family for the loss they had
+suffered on his account.
+
+"So, after my poor friend's departure to his better inheritance, we have
+come over here to carry out his wishes and instructions; and you have
+seen, and can now see, the results.  My dear nephew has been kept in
+ignorance of his real name and prospects till yesterday, when I laid the
+whole matter before him; and it is by his father's earnest dying request
+that I have given you this full and minute history.  To-day Horace
+Walters is of full age, and to-day I surrender up all to him.
+
+"I would just add a word or two more.  I have gone so fully into my
+story, not only because Mr Walters urged me to do so, but still more
+for two special reasons: first, because I know that rumour and fancy
+would be sure to put their heads together and circulate all sorts of
+foolish stories about your late squire, and about his dear son, your
+present squire, and some of these stories probably to the discredit of
+one or both.  Now I have given you the true account of all, so that you
+can safely put down all slanderers' gossip and tittle-tattle on the
+subject.  And further, I have gone thus particularly into my story,
+because it will show you what rare jewels there were in your late
+squire's character, and how brightly those shone out when the black
+crust of evil habits had fallen away from them.  And, lastly, I have
+wished to show you how graciously God has been ordering things for the
+good of you all, and has brought blessings and peace out of a strange
+tangle of circumstances which he has unravelled for your happiness.
+
+"And now, dear friends, having accomplished the work for which I came
+back to the old country, I am returning to the land of my adoption for a
+time.  I think it will be only for a time; for my dear nephew here has
+got such a hold upon my heart, that I think I shall have to come back
+and settle near him, if I am spared.  However, I have the satisfaction
+of knowing that I am leaving behind me two earnest, like-minded servants
+of the great Master to preside over the good work at Riverton and
+Bridgepath.  I shall not leave the country till I have seen them made
+one; and then I shall feel assured that in Horace Walters and her who
+will, I trust, soon become his wife, I shall leave you those who, having
+long been working for God separately in the shade, will work together as
+devotedly, hand in hand, and heart in heart, in the light."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Working in the Shade, by Theodore P Wilson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKING IN THE SHADE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 21134.txt or 21134.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/1/3/21134/
+
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+
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