In League with Israel: A Tale of the Chattanooga Conference

CHAPTER XI.

"Herschel," he said, "when do you have your Day of Atonement services? Is it this week or next? Rabbi Barthold invited us to attend, but I am not sure about the date. He is going to preach a series of sermons that are to set forth the views now held by the Reform school, and Cragmore and I are anxious to hear them."

"It is the week after this," said David, consulting the calendar.

"Then I can arrange to get in from my trip in time for the Friday night service."

"What do you think of Rabbi Barthold?" asked David. "Isn't he a magnificent old fellow?"

Marion stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "Well," he said after some deliberation, "I hardly know where to place him. He doesn't belong to this age. If I believed in the transmigration of souls, I should say that some old Levite, whose life-work had been to keep the Temple lamps perpetually burning, had strayed back to earth again.

"That seems to be his mission now. He is trying to rekindle the pride and zeal and hope of an ancient day. Excuse me for saying it, Herschel, but there are few in his congregation who understand him. Their vision is so obscured by this dense fog of modern indifference that they fail to appreciate his aims. They are still in the outer courts, among the tables of the money-changers, and those who sell doves. They have never entered the inner sanctuary of a spiritual life. Their religion stops with the altar and the censer—the material things. Understand me," he said hastily, as David interrupted him, "I know there are a number you have in mind, who are loyally true to the spirit of Judaism, but they are few and far between. I am not speaking of them, but of the great mass of the congregation. I believe the services of the synagogue, and their religion itself, is only a form observed from a cold sense of duty, merely to avert the evil decree."

David drew himself up rather stiffly.

"And you are the disciple of the man who said, 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone!' What do you suppose the Jew has to say about the dead-heads in your Churches? What proportion of your membership has passed beyond the tables of the money-changers? How many in your pews, who mumble the creed and wear the label 'Christian,' will be able at the passages of God's Jordan to meet the challenge of his Shibboleth?"

Marion laid his hand on David's shoulder. "You misunderstand me, my boy," he said. "I have no harsher denunciation for the indifferent Jew than for the indifferent Christian. God pity them both! I was simply drawing a contrast between Rabbi Barthold and his people, as it appears to me—a shepherd who longs to lead his flock up to the source of all living water; but they prefer to dispense with climbing the spiritual heights, jostle each other for the richest herbage of the lowlands, and are satisfied. You know that is so, David."

"Yes," admitted David, with a sigh. "He can not even arouse them to the necessity of teaching their children Hebrew, if they would perpetuate loyalty to its traditions."

David was about to repeat what the Rabbi had said the night he consented to take the Hebrew class, but his pride checked him: "What are we coming to, my son? Protestantism is having a wonderful awakening in regard to the study of the Bible. Never has there been such a widespread interest in it as now. But among our people, how many of the younger generation make it a text-book of daily study? Such negligence will surely write its 'Ichabod' upon the future of our beloved Israel."

"What a discussion we have drifted into!" exclaimed Mr. Marion. "I had only intended dropping in here to ask you a simple question. Come to think, I believe I have not answered yours. You asked me my opinion of Rabbi Barthold. Well, I think he is a sincere, noble soul, a true seeker of the truth, and a man whose friendship I would value very highly."

Herschel looked much pleased.

"I hope you may be able to hear him on 'Yom Kippur,'" he said.

"I shall certainly try to be there," Marion answered.

As his footsteps died away in the hall, David said to himself: "If every Gentile were like that man, and every Jew like Uncle Ezra, what an ideal state of society there would be! But then," he added as an after-thought, "what would become of the lawyers? We would starve."

In the waning light of the afternoon, that Day of the Atonement, there was no more devout worshiper in all the temple than George Cragmore. He had just finished reading a book of M. Leroy Beaulieu's, "Israel Among the Nations," and as he turned the leaves of the prayer-book some one handed him, he was impressed with the truth of this sentence which recurred to him:

"The Hebrew genius was confined to a narrow bed between two rocky walls, whence only the sky could be seen; but it channeled there a well so deep that the ages have not dried it up, and the nations of the four corners of the earth have come to slake their thirst at its waters."

It seemed to him that all that was purest, most heart-searching and sublime in the Old Covenant; all that time has proven most precious and comforting of its promises; all therein that best satisfies the human yearnings toward the Infinite, and gives wings to the God-instinct in man, might be found somewhere in the exquisite mosaic of this day's ritual.

Marion, concentrating his attention chiefly on the sermons, admired their scholarly style, and indorsed most of their substance, but he came away with a feeling of sadness.

It seemed so pitiful to him to see these people with their backs turned on the sacrifice a divine love had already provided, trying to make their own empty-handed atonement, simply by their penitent pleadings and good deeds.

Herschel's devotions were interfered with by a spirit of criticism heretofore unknown to him. His thoughts were so full of doubts that had been having an almost imperceptible growth that he could not enter into the service with his usual abandon. He was continually contrasting those around him with that never-to-be-forgotten gathering on Lookout, and the congregation in the tent.

What made them to differ? He could not tell, but he felt that something was lacking here that had made the other such a force.

Cragmore had not been able to attend the Friday night service, nor the one on the following morning. He came in just after the noon recess, and was ushered to a pew near the center of the room, where he immediately became absorbed in the ritual. He followed devoutly through the meditations and the silent devotions, and when they came to the responsive readings, his voice joined in as earnestly as any son of Abraham there.

The synagogue, with its modern trappings and fashionably-dressed congregation, seemed to disappear. He saw the old Temple take its place, with its solemn ceremonials of scapegoat and burnt-offering. Through the chanting of the choir in the gallery back of him he heard the thousand-voiced song of the Levites. He seemed to see the clouds of incense, and the smoke arising from the high brazen altar. He bowed his head on the seat in front of him. His whole soul seemed to go out in reverent adoration to this great Jehovah, worshiped by both Hebrew and Christian.

The memorial service to the dead followed the sermon.

Cragmore's music-loving nature responded like a quivering harp-string as the choir began a minor chant:

The low, moaning tones of the great organ rose and fell like the beat of a far-off tide, as all heads bowed in silent devotion, recalling in that moment the lives that had passed out into the great beyond.

Cragmore whispered a fervent prayer of thankfulness for the unbroken family circle across the wide Atlantic.

As he did so, a breath of blossoming hawthorn hedges, a faint chiming of the Shandon bells, and the blue mists of the Kerry hills seemed to mingle a moment with his prayer.

The sun had set, when in the concluding service his eyes fell on the words the Rabbi was reading—The Mission of Israel—"It's a pity," he thought, "that every mentally cross-eyed Christian, who, between ignorance and bigotry, can get only a distorted impression of the Jews, couldn't have heard this service to-day, especially that prayer for all mankind, and this one he is reading now:

"'This twilight hour reminds us also of the eventide, when, according to Thy gracious promise, Thy light will arise over all the children of men, and Israel's spiritual descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heaven. Endow us, our Guardian, with strength and patience for our holy mission. Grant that all the children of Thy people may recognize the goal of our changeful career, so that they may exemplify, by their zeal and love for mankind, the truth of Israel's watchword: One humanity on earth, even as there is but one God in heaven. Enlighten all that call themselves by Thy name with the knowledge that the sanctuary of wood and stone, that erst crowned Zion's hill, was but a gate, through which Israel should step out into the world, to reconcile all mankind unto Thee! Thou alone knowest when this work of atonement shall be completed; when the day shall dawn in which the light of Thy truth, brighter than that of the visible sun, shall encircle the whole earth. But surely that great day of universal reconciliation, so fervently prayed for, shall come, as surely as none of Thy words return empty, unless they have done that for which Thou didst send them. Then joy shall thrill all hearts, and from one end of the earth to the other shall echo the gladsome cry: Hear, O Israel, hear all mankind, the Eternal our God, the Eternal is One. Then myriads will make pilgrimage to Thy house, which shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, and from their lips shall sound in spiritual joy: Lord, open for us the gates of thy truth. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of glory shall come in.'"

And the choir chanting, replied:

"Who is the King of glory? The Lord of hosts—He is the King of glory."

There was a short prayer, then a benediction that made Cragmore and Marion look across the congregation at each other and smile. It was the Epworth benediction, with which the League was always dismissed:

"May the Lord bless thee, and keep thee. May the Lord let his countenance shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee! The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

The two men met each other at the door, and walked homeward together through the twilight.

Cragmore had found a boarding place. It was not far from the temple.

"Come up to my room," he said to Marion. "I see you still have Herschel's prayer-book with you. I want to compare the mission of Israel as given there with the one I was reading to-day of Leroy-Beaulieu's. I have never known before to-day what special hope they clung to. Come in and I will find the paragraph."

He lighted the gas in his room, pushed a chair over towards his guest, and, seating himself, began rapidly turning the leaves of the book.

"Here it is," he said, and he read as follows:

"Then at last Jewish faith, freed from all tribal spirit and purified of all national dross, will become the law of humanity. The world that jeered at the long suffering of Israel, will witness the fulfillment of prophecies delayed for twenty centuries by the blindness of the scribes, and the stubbornness of the rabbis. According to the words of the prophets, the nations will come to learn of Israel, and the people will hang to the skirts of her garments, crying, 'Let us go up together to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the Lord of Israel, that he may teach us to walk in his ways.' The true spiritual religion, for which the world has been sighing since Luther and Voltaire, will be imparted to it through Israel. To accomplish this, Israel needs but to discard her old practices, as in spring the oak shakes off the dead leaves of winter. The divine trust, the legacy of her prophets, which has been preserved intact beneath her heavy ritual, will be transmitted to the Gentiles by an Israel emancipated from all enslavement to form. Then only, after having infused the spirit of the Thora into the souls of all men, will Israel, her mission accomplished, be able to merge herself in the nations."

"See what a hopeless hope," said Cragmore, as he closed the book. "And yet do you know, Frank, I am becoming more and more sure that Israel has some great part to play in the conversion of humanity? Any one must see that nothing short of Divine power could have kept them intact as a race, and Divine power is never aimlessly exerted. There must be some great reason for such a miraculous preservation. What missionaries of the cross these people would make! What torch-bearers they have been! They have carried the altar-fires of Jehovah to every alien shore they have touched."

Cragmore stood up in his earnestness, his eyes alight with something akin to prophetic fire.

"The old thorny stem of Judaism shall yet bud and blossom into the perfect flower of Christianity!" he cried. "And when it does, O when it does, the 'chosen people' will become a veritable tree of life, whose leaves will be 'for the healing of the nations.'"

CHAPTER XII.

For half an hour the steady trail of her pen along the paper, and the singing of the kettle on the crane, was all that was audible.

Then Jack came wheeling himself in, with a radiant, sticky face, and a plate of candy.

"O, we're having such lots of fun!" he cried. "We're going to make some chocolate creams now. Do come and help, sister?"

She pointed to the pile of unanswered letters on the table. "I must get these out of the way first," she said. "Then I'll join you."

"I guess you can eat and write at the same time," he answered, holding out the plate.

He waited only long enough for her to taste his wares, and hurried back to the kitchen to report her opinion of their skill as confectioners.

Just as the dining-room door banged behind him, she thought she heard some one coming up on the front porch with slow, uncertain steps. She paused in the act of dipping her pen into the ink, and listened. Some one certainly tried the bell, but it did not ring. Then the outside door opened and shut. She started up slightly alarmed, and half way across the room stopped again to listen. There was a momentary rustling in the hall. She heard something drop on the hat-rack. Then there was a low knock at the library door. She opened it a little way, and saw Dr. Trent standing there.

"O, Uncle Doctor!" she cried, throwing the door wide open. "I never once thought of its being you. I took you for a burglar."

Then she stopped, seeing the worn, haggard look on his face. He seemed to have grown ten years older since the last time she had seen him. Without noticing her proffered hand, he pushed slowly past her, and stood shivering before the fire. He had taken off his overcoat in the hall. He was bent and careworn, as if some unusual weight had been laid upon his patient shoulders, already bowed to the limit of their strength.

Bethany knew from his firmly set lips and stern face that he was in sore need of comfort.

"What is it, Uncle Doctor?" she asked, following him to the fire, and laying her hand lightly on his trembling arm. She felt that something dreadful must have happened to unnerve him so. "What can I do for you?" she asked with a tremble of distress in her voice.

He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. When he raised his head his eyes were blurred, and he had that helpless, childish look that comes with premature age.

"I have been with Isabel all day," he said, huskily.

Although Bethany had never heard Mrs. Trent's given name before, she knew that he was speaking of his wife.

There was a long pause, which she finally broke by saying, "Don't you see her every day? I thought you were in the habit of going out to her that often."

"O, I have gone there," he answered wearily, "day after day, and day after day, all these long years; but I have never seen Isabel. It has only been a poor, mad creature, who never recognized me. She was always calling for me. The way she used to rave, and pray to be sent back to her husband, would have touched a heart of flint; yet she never knew me when I came. She would grow quiet when I put my arm around her, but she would sit and stare at me in a dumb, confused way that was pitiful. I always hoped that some day she might recognize me. I would sing her old songs to her, and talk about our old home, although the thought of its shattered happiness broke my heart. I tried in every way to bring her to herself. She would listen awhile, and look up at me with a recognition almost dawning in her eyes. Then the tears would begin to roll down her cheeks, and she would beg me to go and find her husband. Yesterday she knew me!" His voice broke. "She came back to me for the first time in eight years,—my own little Isabel! I knew it was only because the frail body was worn out with its terrible struggle, and I could not keep her long. O, such a day as this has been! I have held her in my arms every moment, with her poor, tired head against my heart. She was so glad and happy to find herself with me at last, but the happiness was over so soon."

He buried his face in his hands as before, with a groan. When he spoke again, it was in a dull, mechanical way.

"She died at sundown!"

The tears were running down Bethany's face. She had been standing behind his chair. Now she bent over him, lightly passing her hand over his gray hair, with a comforting caress.

"If I could only do something," she exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with sympathy.

"You can," he answered. "That is why I came. None of her relatives are living. Only my most intimate friends know that she did not die eight years ago, when she was taken away to a sanitarium. I want—" he stopped with a choking in his throat. "The attendants have been very kind, but I want some woman of her own station—some woman who would have been her friend—to put flowers about her—and—smooth her hair, as she would have wanted it done—and—and—see that everything is all fine and beautiful when she is dressed for her last sleep."

He tried to keep his voice steady as he talked; but his face was working pitifully, and the tears were rolling down his face.

"She would have wished it so. She knew Richard Hallam. He was my best friend. I do not know any one I could ask to do this for my little Isabel, but Richard Hallam's daughter."

She leaned over and touched his forehead with her lips.

"Then let her have a daughter's place in helping you bear this," she said. "Let her serve her father's dear, old friend as she would have served that father."

He reached up and mutely took her hand, resting his face against it a moment, as if the touch of its sympathy strengthened him. Then he rose, saying, "I shall send for you in the morning."

"O, are you going home so soon?" she exclaimed. "You have hardly been here long enough to get thoroughly warm."

"No, not home, but back to Isabel. It will be only a few hours longer that I can sit beside her. I have staid away now longer than I intended, but I had to come in town to see that Lee was all right."

"O, does he know?" asked Bethany.

"No, he was only two years old when they were separated. She has always been dead to him. Poor, little fellow! Why should I shadow his life with such a grief?"

Bethany helped him on with his overcoat, turned up the collar, and buttoned it securely. Then she gave him his gloves; but instead of putting them on, he stood snapping the clasps in an absent-minded way.

"I suppose Richard told you about that debt I have been wrestling with so long," he said, finally. "I got that all paid off last week, the last wretched cent. And now that Isabel is gone, I seem to have lost all my old vigor and ambition. If it were not for Lee, it would be so good to stop, and not try to take another step. I should like to lie down and go to sleep, too."

He opened the door. A raw, cold wind, laden with snow, rushed in.

Bethany watched him out of sight, then went shivering back to the fire.

A deep snowstorm kept Jack at home next day, so no one questioned, or no one knew why Bethany was excused from the office during the morning.

She carried out Dr. Trent's wishes faithfully. She stood beside him in the dreary cemetery till the white snow was laid back over the newly-made mound. Then she rode silently back to town with him. He sat with his hands over his eyes all the way, never speaking until the carriage stopped at the office, and the driver opened the door for Bethany to alight.

Next day she saw him drive past on his usual round of professional visits. No one else noticed any difference in him, except that he seemed a little graver, and, if possible, more tender and thoughtful in his ministrations, than he had been before.

To Bethany there was something very pathetic in the sudden aging of this man, who had borne his burden so silently and bravely that few had ever suspected he had one.

He was making a stern effort to keep on in the same old way. His profession had brought him in contact with so much of the world's sorrow and suffering that he would not lay even the shadow of his burden on other lives, if he could help it.

Only Bethany noticed that his hair was fast growing white, that he stooped more, and that he climbed slowly and heavily into the buggy, instead of springing in as he used to, with a quick, elastic step. She ministered to his comfort in all the little ways in her power, but it was not much that any one could do.

It must have been nearly two weeks before he came again to the house. This time it was to examine Jack.

"What would you say, my son," he asked, "if I should tell you I do not want you to go to the office any more after this week?"

Jack's face was a study. The tears came to his eyes. "Why?" he asked.

"Because you will be strong enough then to go through a certain exercise I want you to take many times during the day. If you keep it up faithfully, I believe you will be walking by Christmas."

This was so much sooner than either Jack or Bethany had dared hope, that they hardly knew how to express their joy. Jack gave a loud whoop, and went wheeling out of the room at the top of his speed to tell Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet.

Dr. Trent looked after him with a fatherly tenderness in his face. Then he sighed and turned to Bethany. "I have another trouble to bring to you, my dear. Lee has been getting into so much mischief lately. I never knew till yesterday that he has not been attending school regularly this term. You see every allowance ought to be made for the child—no home but a boarding-house; no one to take an oversight—for I am called out night and day. He is such a bright boy, so full of life and spirit. I am satisfied that his teachers do not understand him. They have not been fair with him. He has been transferred from one ward to another, and finally expelled. He never told me until last night. He said he knew it would grieve me, and that he put it off from day to day, because he did not want to trouble me when I was so worried over several critical cases. That showed a sweet spirit, Bethany. I appreciated it. He has always been such an affectionate little chap. I wanted to go and interview the superintendent; but he insisted it would do no good, because they are all prejudiced against him. I know Lee is a good child. They ought not to expect a growing boy, full of the animal spirits the Creator has endowed him with, to always work like a prim little machine. Maybe I am not acting wisely, but he begged so hard to be allowed to go to work for awhile, instead of being sent to any other school, that I gave my consent. It is little a ten-year old boy can do, but he has a taking way with him, and he got a place himself. He is to be elevator-boy in the same building where your office is. You will see him every day, and I am giving you the true state of affairs, so you will not misjudge the child. I hope you will look out a little for him, Bethany."

"You may be sure I shall do that," she promised. "We are already great friends. He used to often join us on his way to school, and wheel Jack part of the distance."

Jack made as much as possible of the remaining time that he was allowed to go to the office. He studied no lessons but the short Hebrew exercises David still gave him. He called at all the different offices where he had made friends, and spent a great deal of time in the hall, talking to Lee, who was soon installed in the building as elevator-boy.

"My! but Lee has been fooling his father," exclaimed Jack to Bethany after his first interview. "Dr. Trent thinks he is such a little angel, but you ought to hear the things he brags about doing. He's tough, I can tell you. He smokes cigarettes, and swears like a trooper. He showed me an old horse-pistol he won at a game of 'seven up.' He shoots 'craps,' too. He has been playing hooky half his time. One of the hostlers at the livery-stable, where his father keeps his horse, used to write his excuses for him. Lee paid him for it with tobacco he stole out of one of the warehouses down by the river. You just ought to see the book he carries around in his pocket to read when he isn't busy. It's called 'The Pirate's Revenge; or, A Murderer's Romance.' There is the awfulest pictures in it of people being stabbed, and women cutting their throats. I told him he showed mighty poor taste in the stuff he read; and asked him how he would like to be found dead with such a thing in his pocket. He told me to shut up preaching, and said the reason he has gone to work is to save up money so's he could go to Chicago or New York, or some big place, and have a 'howling good time.'"

It made Bethany sick at heart to think of the deception the boy had practiced on his father. Much as she trusted Jack, she could not bear to encourage any intimacy between the boys, and was glad when the time came for him to stay at home from the office. But in every way she could she strengthened her friendship with Lee. She brought him great, rosy apples, and pop-corn balls that Jack had made. No ten-year-old boy could be proof against the long twists of homemade candy she frequently slipped into his pocket. Sometimes when the weather was especially stormy and bleak outside, she stopped to put a bunch of violets or a little red rose in his button-hole. She was so pretty and graceful that she awakened the dormant chivalry within him, and he would not for worlds have had her suspect that he was not all his father believed him to be.

One day she told David enough of his history to enlist his sympathy. After that the young lawyer began to take considerable notice of him, and finally won his complete friendship by the gift of a little brown puppy, that he brought down one morning in his overcoat pocket.

There was no more time to read "The Pirate's Revenge." The helpless, sprawling little pup demanded all his attention. He kept it swung up in a basket in the elevator, when he was busy, but spent every spare moment trying to develop its limited intelligence by teaching it tricks. That was one occupation of which he never wearied, and in which he never lost patience. From the moment he took the soft, warm, little thing in his arms, he loved it dearly.

"I shall call him Taffy," he said, hugging it up to him, "because he's so sweet and brown."

Bethany had intended for Dr. Trent and Lee to dine with them on Thanksgiving day, but the sisters were invited to Mrs. Dameron's, and Mrs. Marion was so urgent for her and Jack to spend the day with them, that she reluctantly gave up her plan.

"I shall certainly have them Christmas," she promised herself, "and a big tree for Lee and Jack. Lois will help me with it."

It was a genuine Thanksgiving-day, with gray skies, and snow, to intensify the indoor cheer.

"Didn't the altar look beautiful this morning with its decorations of fruit and vegetables, and those sheaves of wheat?" remarked Miss Harriet. She had just come home from Mrs. Dameron's, and was holding her big mink muff in front of the fire to dry. She had dropped it in the snow.

"Yes, and wasn't that salad-dressing fine?" chimed in Miss Caroline. "Sally always did have a real talent for such things."

"It couldn't have been any better than we had," insisted Jack. "I don't believe I'll want anything more to eat for a week."

"That's very fortunate," answered Miss Caroline, "for I gave Mena an entire holiday. We'll only have a cup of tea, and I can make that in here."

They sat around the fire in the gloaming, quietly talking over the happy day. One of Bethany's greatest causes for thanksgiving was that these two gentle lives had come in contact with her own. Their simple piety and childlike faith sweetened the atmosphere around them, like the modest, old-fashioned garden-flowers they loved so dearly. Well for Bethany that she had the constant companionship of these loving sisters. Happy for Jack that he found in them the gracious grandmotherly tenderness, without which no home is complete. They were very proud of their boy, as they called him. Between the Junior League and their conscientious instruction, Jack was pretty firmly "rooted and grounded" in the faith of his fathers. Night stole on so gradually, and the firelight filled the room with such a cheerful glow, they did not notice how dark it had grown outside, until a sudden peal of the door-bell startled them.

"I'll go," said Miss Caroline, adjusting the spectacles that had slipped down when the sudden sound made her start nervously up from her chair. She waited to light the gas, and hastily arrange the disordered chairs.

When she opened the door she saw David Herschel patiently awaiting admittance. It was the first time he had ever called. She was all in a flutter of surprise as she ushered him into the library. He declined to take a seat.

"I have just come home from Dr. Trent's," he said. "You know he boards across the street from Rabbi Barthold's, where I have been spending the day. He was called out to see a patient last night, and came home late, with a hard chill. Lee saw me coming out of the gate a little while ago, and came running over to tell me. He had been out skating all morning. After dinner, when he went up-stairs, he found his father delirious, and had telephoned for Dr. Mills. He was very much frightened, and wanted me to stay with him until the doctor came. As soon as Dr. Mills examined him, he called me aside and asked me to get into his buggy and drive out to the Deaconess Home. I have just come from there," he said, "and Miss Carleton has no case on hands. Tell her if ever she was needed in her life, she is needed now. He has pneumonia, and it has been neglected too long, I'm afraid. It may be a matter of only a few hours."

Bethany started up, looking so white and alarmed that David thought she was going to faint. He arose, too.

"I must go over there at once," she said.

"It is quite dark," answered David. "I am at your service, if you want me to wait for you."

"O, I shall not keep you waiting a moment," she answered. "Jack, I'll be back in time to help you to bed."

As she spoke she began putting on her wraps, which were still lying on the chair, where she had thrown them off on coming in, a little while before.

David offered his arm as they went down the icy steps.

"It was so good of you to come at once," she said, as she accepted his assistance. "Is Miss Carleton there now?"

"Yes," he answered, "she was ready almost instantly. She is the same nurse that I met early one morning in that laundry office. She told me on the way back that Dr. Trent has done so much for the Home and for the poor. She says she owes her own life to his skill and care, and that no service she could render him would be great enough to express her gratitude. They all feel that way about him at the Home."

Belle Carleton met them at the bedroom door. "Dr. Trent has just spoken about you," she said in a low tone to Bethany. "He has had several lucid intervals. Take off your hat before you go to him."

Lee sat curled up in a big chair in a dark corner of the room, with Taffy hugged tight in his arms. An undefinable dread had taken possession of him. He looked up at Bethany, with a frightened, tearful expression, as she patted him on the cheek in passing.

Dr. Trent opened his eyes when she sat down beside him, and took his hand. He smiled brightly as he recognized her.

"Richard's little girl!" he said in a hoarse whisper, for he could not speak audibly. "Dear old Dick."

Then he grew delirious again. It was only at intervals he had these gleams of consciousness.

After awhile his eyes closed wearily. He seemed to sink into a heavy stupor. Bethany sat holding his hand, with the tears silently dropping down into her lap as she looked at the worn fingers clasped over hers.

What a world of good that hand had done! How unselfishly it had toiled on for others, to wipe out the brother's disgrace, to surround the little wife with comforts, to provide the boy with the best of everything! Besides all that, it had filled, as far as lay in its power, every other needy hand, stretched out toward its sympathetic clasp.

She sat beside him a long time, but he did not waken from the heavy sleep into which he had fallen, even when she gently withdrew her fingers, and moved away to let Dr. Mills take her place. He had just come in again.

"Will you need me here to-night, Belle?" asked Bethany.

The nurse turned to Dr. Mills inquiringly. He shook his head. "Miss Carleton can do all that is necessary," he said. "I shall come again about midnight, and stay the rest of the night, if I am needed. He will probably have no more rational awakenings while this fever keeps at such a frightful heat. If we can subdue that soon, he has such great vitality he may pull through all right."

"You'd better go back, dear," urged the nurse. "You have your work ahead of you to-morrow, and you look very tired."

"I have an almost unbearable headache," admitted Bethany, "or I would not think of leaving. I would not go even for that, if I thought he would have conscious intervals of any length; but the doctor thinks that is hardly probable to-night. I'll come back early in the morning. Maybe he will know me then."

"Are you going, too?" asked Lee, clinging wistfully to David's hand, as Bethany put on her hat.

"Would you like me to stay?" he asked, kindly.

Lee swallowed hard, and winked fast to keep back the tears.

"Everybody else is strangers," he said, with his lip trembling.

David put his arm around him caressingly. His sympathies went out strongly to the little lad, who might so soon be left fatherless.

"Then I'll come back and stay with you till you go to sleep, after I take Miss Hallam home," he promised.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Here's a little fellow who doesn't know where he is to sleep," David said to the nurse, when they had noiselessly entered Dr. Trent's room.

"We'll cover him up warm on the sofa," she said, kindly. "He'd better not undress."

David looked quickly across to the bed. "Is there any change?" he asked, anxiously.

She nodded, and then motioned him aside. "Would it be too much to ask you to stay a couple of hours longer, until Dr. Mills comes? Lee clings to you so, and the end may be much nearer than we thought."

"If I can be of any use, I'll stay very willingly," he replied.

They moved the sofa to the other side of the room, and the nurse began folding some blankets the landlady brought her to lay over it.

"Can't you put some more coal on the fire, dear?" she asked Lee.

He picked up a larger lump than he could well manage. The tongs slipped, and it fell with a great noise on the fender, breaking in pieces as it did so, then rattling over the hearth.

They all turned apprehensively toward the bed. The heavy jarring sound had thoroughly aroused Dr. Trent from his stupor. He looked around the room as if trying to comprehend the situation. He seemed puzzled to account for David's presence in the room, and drew his hand wonderingly across his burning forehead, then pressed it against his aching throat.

The nurse bent over him to moisten his parched lips with a spoonful of water.

Then he understood. A look of awe stole over his face, as he realized his condition. He held his hand out towards Lee, and the nurse, turning, beckoned the child to come. He folded the cold, trembling little fingers in his hot hands. "Papa's—dear—little son!" he gasped in whispers.

David turned his head away, his eyes suffused with hot tears. The scene recalled so vividly the night he had crept to his father's bedside for the last time. His heart ached for the little fellow.

"God—keep—you!" came in the same hoarse whisper.

Then he turned to the nurse, and with great effort spoke aloud, "Belle, pray!"

David, standing with bowed head, while she knelt with her arm around the frightened boy, listened to such a prayer as he had never heard before. He had wondered one time how this woman could sacrifice everything in life for the sake of a man who died so many centuries ago. But as he listened now, to her low, earnest voice, he felt an unseen Presence in the room, as of the Christ to whom she spoke so confidingly.

As she prayed that the Everlasting Arms might be underneath as this soul went down into the "valley of the shadow," the doctor cried out exultingly, "There is no valley!"

David looked up. The doctor's worn face was shining with an unspeakable happiness. He stretched out his arms.

"Jesus saves me! O, the wonder of it!"

His hands dropped. Gradually his eyes closed, and he relapsed into a stupor, from which he never aroused. When Dr. Mills came at midnight he was still breathing; but the street lights were beginning to fade in the gray, wintry dawn when Belle Carleton reverently laid the lifeless hands across the still heart, and turned to look at Lee.

The child had sobbed himself to sleep on the sofa, and David had gone.

O, the pity of it, that we keep the heart's-ease of our appreciation to wreathe cold coffin-lids, and cover unresponsive clay!

There was a constant stream of people passing in and out of the boarding-house parlor all day.

Bethany was not surprised at the great number who came to do honor to Baxter Trent, nor at the tearful accounts of his helpful ministrations from those he had befriended. But as she arranged the great masses of flowers they brought, she thought sadly, "O, why didn't they send these when he was in such sore need of love and sympathy? Now it's too late to make any difference."

All sorts of people came. A man whose wrists had not yet forgotten the chafing of a convict's shackles, touched one of the lilies that Bethany had placed on the table at the head of the casket.

"He lived white!" the man said, shaking his head mournfully. "I reckon he was ready to go if ever any body was."

They happened to be alone in the room, and Bethany repeated what the nurse had told her of the doctor's triumphant passing.

Late in the afternoon there was a timid knock at the door. Bethany opened it, and saw two little waifs holding each other's cold, red hands. One had a ragged shawl pinned over her head, and the other wore a big, flapping sunbonnet, turned back from her thin, pitiful face. Their teeth were chattering with cold and bashfulness.

"Missus," faltered the larger one, "we couldn't get no wreaves or crosses, but granny said he would like this ''cause it's so bright and gold-lookin'.'"

The dirty little hand held out a stemless, yellow chrysanthemum.

"Come in, dears," said Bethany softly, opening the door wide to the little ragamuffins.

They glanced around the mass of blossoms filling the room, with a look of astonishment that so much beauty could be found in one place.

"Jess," whispered the oldest one to her sister, "'Pears like our 'n don't show up for much, beside all these. I wisht he knowed we walked a mile through the snow to fetch it, and how sorry we was."

Bethany heard the disappointed whisper. "Did you know him well?" she asked.

"I should rather say," answered the child. "He kep' us from starvin', all the time granny was down sick so long."

"An' once he took me and Jess ridin' with him, away out in the country, and he let us get out in a field and pick lots of yellow flowers, something like this, only littler. Didn't he, Jess?"

The other child nodded, saying, as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her sister's shawl, "Granny says we'll never have another friend like him while the world stands."

Deeply touched, Bethany held up the stemless chrysanthemum. "See," she said, "I'm going to put it in the best place of all, right here by his hand."

The door opened again to admit David Herschel. Before it closed the children had slipped bashfully away, still hand in hand.

Bethany told him of their errand. "Who could have brought more?" she said, touching the shining yellow flower; "for with this little drop of gold is the myrrh of a childish grief, and the frankincense of a loving remembrance."

She felt that he could appreciate the pathos of the gift, and the love that prompted it. They had grown so much closer together in the last twenty-four hours.

"You've been here nearly all day, haven't you?" he asked, noticing her tired face. "I wish you would go home and rest, and let me take your place awhile."

He insisted so kindly that at last she yielded. Her sympathies had been sorely wrought upon during the day, and she was nearly exhausted.

After she had gone, he sat down with his overcoat on, near the front window. There was only a smoldering remnant of a fire in the grate.

The last rays of the sunset were streaming in between the slats of the shutters. He could hear the boys playing in the snowy streets, and the occasional tinkle of passing sleighbells.

"I wonder where Lee is," he thought. He had not seen the child since morning.

Two working men came in presently. They looked long and silently at the doctor's peaceful face, and tiptoed awkwardly out again.

The minutes dragged slowly by.

The heavy perfume of the flowers made David drowsy, and he leaned his head on his hand.

The door opened cautiously, and Lee looked in. His eyes were swollen with crying. He did not see David sitting back in the shadow. Only one long ray of yellow sunlight shone in now, and it lay athwart the still form in the center of the room.

Lee paused just a moment beside it, then slipped noiselessly over to the grate. There was a pile of books under his arm. He stirred the dying embers as quietly as he could, and one by one laid the books on the red coals. They were the ones Jack had so unreservedly condemned. Last of all he threw on a dogeared deck of cards. They blazed up, filling the room with light, and revealing David in his seat by the window.

"O," cried Lee in alarm, "I didn't know any one was in here."

Then leaning against the wall, he put his head on his arm, and began to sob in deeper distress than he had yet shown. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief, but there was none there.

David took out his own and wiped the boy's wet face, as he drew him tenderly to his knee.

"Now tell me all about it," he said.

Lee nestled against his shoulder, and cried harder for awhile. Then he sobbed brokenly: "O, I've been so bad, and he never knew it! I came in here early this morning before anybody was up, to tell him I was sorry—that I would be a good boy—but he was so cold when I touched him, and he couldn't answer me! O, papa, papa!" he wailed. "It's so awful to be left all alone—just a little boy like me!"

David folded him closer without speaking. No words could touch such a grief.

Presently Lee sat up and unfolded a piece of paper. It was only the scrap of a fly-leaf, its jagged edges showing it had been torn from some school-book.

"Do you think it will hurt if I put this in his pocket?" he asked in a trembling voice. "I want him to take it with him. I felt like if I burned up those books in here, and put this in his pocket, he'd know how sorry I was."

David took the bit of paper, all blistered with boyish tears, where a penitent little hand, out of the depths of a desolate little heart, had scrawled the promise: "Dear Papa,—I will be good."

A sob shook the man's strong frame as he read it.

"I think he will be very glad to have you give him that," he answered. "You'd better put it in his pocket before any one comes in."

Lee slipped down from his lap, and crossed the room. "O, I can't," he moaned, attempting to lift the lifeless hands.

David reached down, and unbuttoning the coat, laid the promise of the little prodigal gently on his father's heart, to await its reading in the glad light of the resurrection morning. Then he called some one else to take his place, and went to telephone for a sleigh. In a little while he was driving through the twilight out one of the white country roads, with Lee beside him, that nature's wintry solitudes might lay a cool hand of healing sympathy on the boy's sore heart.

Bethany took him home with her after the funeral, and kept him a week.

Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet petted him with all the ardor of their motherly old hearts. Jack did his best to amuse him, and with the elasticity of childhood, he began to recover his usual vivacity.

"This can not go on always," Mr. Marion said to Bethany one day. He had gone up to the office to talk to her about it.

Dr. Trent had left a small insurance, requesting that Frank Marion be appointed guardian.

"Ray wants him," continued Mr. Marion. "She would have turned the house into an orphan asylum long ago if I had allowed it. But she has so many demands on her time and strength that I am unwilling to have her taxed any more. You see, for instance, if we should take Lee, I am away from home so much, that the greater part of the care and responsibility would fall on her. Just now his father's death has touched him, and he is making a great effort to do all right; but it will be a hard fight for him in a big place like this, so full of temptations to a boy of his age. He would be a constant care. The only thing I can see is to put him in some private school for a few years."

"Let me keep him till after Christmas," urged Bethany. "I can't bear to let the little fellow go away among strangers this near the holiday season. I keep thinking, What if it were Jack?"

"How would it do for me to take him out on my next trip?" suggested Mr. Marion. "I will be gone two weeks, just to little country towns in the northern part of the State, where he could have a variety of scenes to amuse him."

"That will be fine!" answered Bethany. "I'm sure he will like it."

Lee was somewhat afraid of his tall, dignified guardian. He had a secret fear that he would always be preaching to him, or telling him Bible stories. He hoped that the customers would keep him very busy during the day, and he resolved always to go to bed early enough to escape any curtain lectures that might be in store for him.

To his great relief, Mr. Marion proved the jolliest of traveling companions. There was no preaching. He did not even try to make sly hints at the boy's past behavior by tacking a moral on to the end of his stories, and he only laughed when Taffy crawled out of the innocent-looking brown paper bundle that Lee would not put out of his arms until after the train had started.

Such long sleigh-rides as they had across the open country between little towns! Such fine skating places he found while Mr. Marion was busy with his customers! It was a picnic in ten chapters, he told one of the drivers.

One afternoon, as they drove over the hard, frozen pike, one of the horses began to limp.

"Shoe's comin' off," said the driver. "Lucky we're near Sikes's smithy. It's jes' round the next bend, over the bridge."

The smoky blacksmith-shop, with its flying sparks and noisy anvils, was nothing new to Lee. He had often hung around one in the city. In fact, there were few places he had not explored.

The smith was a loud, blatant fellow, so in the habit of using rough language that every sentence was accompanied with an oath.

Mr. Marion had taken Lee in to warm by the fire.

"I wonder what that horrible noise is!" he said. They had heard a harsh, grating sound, like some discordant grinding, ever since they came in sight of the shop.

Sikes pointed over his shoulder with his sooty thumb.

"It's an ole mill back yender. It's out o' gear somew'eres. It set me plumb crazy at first, but I'm gettin' used to it now."

"Let's go over and investigate," said Mr. Marion, anxious to get Lee out of such polluted atmosphere.

The miller, an easy-going old fellow, nearly as broad as he was long, did not even take the trouble to remove the pipe from his mouth, as he answered: "O, that! That's nothing but just one of the cogs is gone out of one of the wheels. I keep thinking I'll get it fixed; but there's always a grist a-waiting, so somehow I never get 'round to it. Does make an or'nery sound for a fact, stranger; but if I don't mind it, reckon nobody else need worry."

"Lazy old scoundrel," laughed Mr. Marion, after they had passed out of doors again. "I don't see how he stands such a horrible noise. It is a nuisance to the whole neighborhood."

When he reported the conversation at the smithy, Sikes swore at the miller soundly.

Frank Marion's eyes flashed, and he took a step forward.

"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 God, 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 passed 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 amusement 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 nobody 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 God, 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.