YANKEE SAM.
It was a wild March night when Job Malden found his way back to God. No one could ever forget that night. The storm tore over the mountains till the great forests fairly creaked and groaned beneath the mad sweep of the wind.
At dusk that afternoon a rap startled Job as he sat by the fire watching the logs crackle and thinking of by-gone days, while the rain poured without. He opened the door, and saw Mike Hennessy, dripping wet and with cap in hand.
"Shure, Mr. Job, the top of the evenin' to yez. But Mr. Schwarzwalder, the hotel keeper at the town, wants ye, he says, to bring the Holy Book;" at which Mike reverently crossed himself. "A man is dyin' and wants yez;" and the good-natured Irishman was gone in an instant, leaving Job in blank amazement.
Ride that awful night to Gold City—take the Bible—man dying. What could it mean? But the lad's better nature conquered, and, the Bible snug in his pocket, he and Bess were soon daring the storm, bound for Gold City.
It was a wild night. Wet to the skin, Job rode up to the Palace Hotel, late, very late, where he found a group of solemn-faced men waiting for him.
"Change your clothes, Job," said the hotel-keeper; "here's a dry suit. Hurry now! Yankee Sam is dying upstairs, and he won't have no one but you; says you're his preacher, and he wants to hear you read out of some book."
"Listen, Job; I want to tell you."
Job grew white. Yankee Sam dying, and he to hear his last confession, he the priest to shrive him, he the preacher to console him! The boy lifted up his first true prayer for months, and followed the man upstairs to a low garret room, where the door closed behind him and left him alone with a weak old man lying on a low bed, his eyes shining in the dim candle-light with an unnatural glare.
"Oh, Job, I'm mightly glad you've come to help an old man die! Yes, I am dying, Job; the old man's near the end. I'll no more hang around the Miners' Home and beg a drink from the stranger. Curse the rum, Job! It's brought me here where you find me, a good-for-nothing, dying without a friend in the world—yes, one friend, Job; you're my friend, ain't you?"
Job, frightened and touched to the heart, nodded assent.
"I thought so, Job. I take stock in you. That night you came here, a blue-eyed, lonely boy, I took you into my heart—for Yankee Sam's got a heart; and I felt so proud of you that night when you said, 'I renounce the devil and all his works,' and I wished I could have stood by you and said it, too. But Job, my boy, the devil has a big mortgage on Yankee Sam, and he's foreclosing it to-night, and—"
The tempest shook the building, and Job lost the next words as the old man rose on his elbow, then sank back exhausted. The wind died down, and Job tried to comfort him with some words that sounded weak and hollow to himself. But the dying man roused again, and, raising his trembling hand, said:
"Wait, Job. Get the Book. See if it has anything in it for me."
Job opened to those beautiful words in Isaiah: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
The old man bent his ear to listen. "Job, let's see it. Is it in there—'red like crimson, white as wool'? Oh, no, my sins are too red for that! Listen, Job, I want to tell you. I am dying a poor lost sinner, but I was not always a street loafer, kicked and cuffed by the world. Hear me, my boy! Would you believe that I was once a mother's blue-eyed boy in old New Hampshire? Oh, such a mother! She's up where the angels are now. I can feel the soft touch of her hands that smoothed my head when I was a boy. Oh, I wish she was here to-night! But—Job, Job, I killed her!—I did! I came home with the liquor in me and she fell in a faint, and they said afterward that she never came to. Oh, Job, I killed her, and I didn't care! I went to the city. I found a wife, a sweet-faced little woman; she married me for better or for worse; and Job, it was worse—God have mercy on me!"
The old man gasped and then went on. "The babies came, and I was so proud of them! Then the fever broke out. I went to get medicine when she and the little ones were so sick, and I got on a spree—I don't remember—but when I came to, they showed me their graves in the potter's field; they said the medicine might have saved them. Oh, Job, I can't think! It makes me wild to think!"
The storm burst again in its fury, and the old man's voice was silenced. Then came a lull, and he went on, "Job, 'sins as scarlet,'—ain't they scarlet? Well, I came West, got in the mines, went from bad to worse and now, Job, I'm dying! And who cares?"
"God cares," said Job. "Listen: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'"
"Oh, Job, does that mean me?—poor old Yankee Sam!" said the dying man.
Again Job read the words, and once again told as best he could the story of the Father's love and of Jesus, who came to save from sin; came to save poor lost sinners.
The old man hung on every word. "Say it again, Job, say it again! God loves poor Yankee Sam! Say it again!"
Over and over Job said the words, then he sang soft and low:
"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,"
while the tempest raged without.
"Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on thee."
Just then Yankee Sam stopped him.
"Job, that's me, that's me! Pray, Job! I am going fast!"
Oh, how Job prayed! Prayed till he felt God close by that dying bed.
"'As scarlet'—yet—'white—as snow.' Is that it, Job?" whispered Sam. "Oh, yes, that's it! They're gone. Job—the devil's lost his mortgage. Let me pray, Job. It's the prayer mother said for me when I was a little boy; it's the prayer Andy Malden said at his lad's grave; it's my prayer now:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
And if—if—"
The low, quavering voice ceased, a smile came over the white face, the wind was hushed without, the stars struggled through the clouds. Yankee Sam was dead, and peace had come back into Job Malden's soul.