In League with Israel Part 22

"Look here, Sikes," he exclaimed, in a tone that made every one in the shop pause to listen, "you've got a bigger cog missing in you than the old mill has, and it makes you a sight bigger nuisance to the neighborhood. You have lost your reverence for all that is holy. You go grinding away by yourself, leaving out G.o.d, leaving out Christ, making a miserable failure of your life grist, and every time you open your lips, your blasphemous words tell the story of the missing cog. If that old mill-wheel makes such a hateful sound, what kind of a discord do you suppose your life is making in the ears of your Heavenly Father?"

Sikes looked at him an instant irresolutely. His first impulse was to knock him over with the heavy hammer he held; but the truth of the fearless words struck home, and he could not help respecting the man who had the courage to utter them.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said at last. "I had no idee you was a parson. I laid out as you was a drummer."

"I am a drummer," answered Marion. "I am a wholesale shoe-merchant now; but I spent so many years on the road for this same house before I went into the firm, that I often go out over my old territory."

Sikes regarded him curiously. "Strikes me you've got sermons and shoe-leather pretty badly mixed up," he said.

Afterward, when he had watched the sleigh disappear down the road, he picked up the bellows and worked them in an absent-minded sort of a way.

"A drummer!" he repeated under his breath. "A drummer! I'll be--blowed!"

The incident made a profound impression on Lee. A loop in the road brought them in sight of the old mill again.

"We don't want to have any cogs missing, do we, son!" said Mr. Marion, first pinching the boy's rosy cheek, and then stooping to tuck the buffalo robes more snugly around him.

The subject was not referred to again, but the lesson was not forgotten.

Sunday was pa.s.sed at a little country hotel. They walked to the Church a mile away in the morning. Time hung heavy on Lee's hands in the afternoon while Mr. Marion was reading. If it had not been for Taffy, it would have been insufferably dull. He had a slight cold, so Mr. Marion did not take him out to the night service. He left him playing with the landlady's baby in the hotel parlor. That amus.e.m.e.nt did not last long, however. The baby was put to bed, and some of the neighbors came in for a visit. Lee felt out of place, and went up to their room.

It was the best the house afforded, but it was far from being an attractive place. The walls were strikingly white and bare. A hideous green and purple quilt covered the bed. The rag carpet was a dull, faded gray. The lamp smoked when he turned it up, and smelled strongly of coal-oil when he turned it down.

He felt so lonely and homesick that he concluded to go to bed. It was very early. He could not sleep, but lay there in the dark, listening to somebody's rocking-chair, going squeakety squeak in the parlor below.

He wished he could be as comfortable and content as Taffy, curled up in some flannel in a shoe-box, on a chair beside the bed. He reached out, and stroked the puppy's soft back.

The feeling came over him as he did so, that there wasn't anybody in all the world for him really to belong to.

It was the first time since Bethany took him home that he had felt like crying. Now he lay and sobbed softly to himself till he heard Mr.

Marion's step on the stairs.

He grew quiet then, and kept his eyes closed. Mr. Marion lighted the lamp, putting a high-backed chair in front of it, so that it could not shine on the bed. He picked up his Bible that was lying on the table, and, turning the leaves very quietly that he might not disturb Lee, found the night's lesson.

A stifled sniffle made him pause. After a long time he heard another.

Laying down his book, he stepped up to the bed. Lee was perfectly motionless, but the pillow was wet, and his face streaked with traces of tears. Marion, with his hands thrust in his pockets, stood looking at him.

All the fatherly impulses of his nature were stirred by the pitiful little face on the pillow.

He knelt down and put his strong arm tenderly over the boy.

"Lee," he said, "look up here, son."

Lee glanced timidly at the bearded face so near his own.

"You were lying here in the dark, crying because you felt that there was n.o.body left to love you. Now put your arms around my neck, dear, while I tell you something. I had a little child once. I can never begin to tell you how I loved her. When she died it nearly broke my heart. But I said, for her sake I shall love all children, and try to make them happy.

Because her little feet knew the way home to G.o.d, I shall try to keep all other children in the same pure path. For her sake, first, I loved you; now, since we have been together, for your own. I want you to feel that I am such a close friend that you can always come to me just as freely as you did to your father."

The boy's clasp around his neck tightened.

"But, Lee, there will be times in your life when you will need greater help than I can give; and because I know just how you will be tried, and tempted, and discouraged, I want you to take the best of friends for your own right now. I want you to take Jesus. Will you do this?"

Lee hesitated, and then said in a half-frightened whisper, "I don't know how."

"Did you ever ask your papa to forgive you after you had been very naughty?" asked Mr. Marion.

"O yes," cried Lee, "but it was too late." Between his choking sobs he told of the promise lying on his father's heart, in the far-off grave under the cemetery cedars.

Mr. Marion controlled his voice with an effort, as he pointed out the way so surely and so simply that Lee could not fail to understand.

Then, with his arm still around him, he prayed; and the boy, following him step by step through that earnest prayer, groped his way to his Savior.

It was a time never to be forgotten by either Frank Marion or Lee. They lay awake till long after midnight, too happy even to think of sleep.

CHAPTER XIV.

HERZENRUHE.

A STORY has come down to us of a cricket that, hidden away in an old oak chest, found its way to the New World in the hold of the Mayflower. When night came, and the strange loneliness of those winter wilds made the bravest heart appalled; when little children held with homesick longing to their mother's hands, and talked of England's bonny hedgerows, then the brave little cricket came out on the hearthstone; and its familiar chirp, bringing back the cheer of the happy past, comforted the children, and sang new hopes into the hearts of their elders.

With every vessel that has touched the New World's sh.o.r.es since that time have come these fireside voices. Whether stowed away in the ample chests of the first Virginians, or bound in the bundles of the last steerage pa.s.sengers just landed at Castle Garden, some quaint custom of a distant Fatherland has always folded its wings, ready to chirp on the new hearthstone, the familiar even-song of the old.

That is how the American celebration of Christmas has become so cosmopolitan in its character. It is a chorus of all the customs that, cricket-like, have journeyed to us, each with its song of an "auld lang syne."

"I should like to have a little of everything this year," remarked Miss Caroline, as, pencil in hand, she prepared to make a long memorandum.

It was two weeks before Christmas, and she had called a family council in her room, after Jack had gone to bed.

Mrs. Marion and Lois were there, busily embroidering.

"It is the first time we have had a home of our own for so many years, or been where there is a child in the family," added Miss Harriet, "that we ought to make quite an occasion of it."

"Now, my idea," remarked Miss Caroline, "is to begin back with the mistletoe of the Druids, and then the holly and plum-pudding of old England. I'm sorry we can't have the Yule log and the wa.s.sail-bowl and the dear little Christmas waits. It must have been so lovely. But we can have a tree Christmas eve, with all the beautiful German customs that go with it. Jack must hang up his stocking by the chimney, whether he believes in Santa Claus or not. Then we must read up all the Scandinavian and Dutch and Flemish customs, and observe just as many as we can."

"And all this just for Jack and Lee," said Mrs. Marion, thoughtfully.

"Bless you, no," exclaimed Miss Caroline. "Jack is going to invite ten poor children that the Junior Mercy and Help Department have reported.

He is so grateful for being able to walk a little, that he wants to give up his whole Christmas to them."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Lois. "I'm through with my last present now, and am ready for anything, from serving a dinner to the slums to playing a bagpipe for its entertainment."

As she spoke she snipped the last thread of silk with her little silver scissors, and tossed the piece of embroidery into Bethany's lap.

Bethany spread it out admiringly. "You are a true artist, Lois," she said. "These sweet peas look as if they had just been gathered. They would almost tempt the bees."