"Whither bound, messmate?" cried Franks, as he came up with the burly carpenter.
"I've a job at the Hall," replied Stone; "the new baronet will be coming down to the old house one of these days, and will want to find everything right there. Where are you going, Ned Franks?"
"I'm going to see if Bat Bell won't add something to the collection for the tumble-down cottages in Wild Rose Hollow. He was not at church yesterday."
Ben Stone burst out laughing, as he had a habit of doing upon the slightest occasion. "Going to ask Bat Bell for money! Going to try how much meal you can scrape off an old knife-board! ha! ha! ha! I put my shilling in the plate yesterday;"—the carpenter said this with a self-satisfied air, as one who felt conscious of having done the handsome thing;—"but I don't mind promising to double whatever you manage to squeeze out of Bat Bell; only, of course he mustn't know that I've said so."
"Don't make a rash engagement, messmate," said Ned Franks, with a smile; "I may come down upon you for some ready rhino."
"Well, and if you do," answered the good-humored carpenter, "I'll not flinch from my word. I've enough and to spare, and what one gives away, as we all know, goes to our good account in the end."
"That depends on the spirit in which we give," said Franks, more gravely, for he had good reason for suspecting that his companion held very mistaken views on the subject. "One can't keep a debtor and creditor account in heaven. We know from the Bible that a man might give all his goods to feed the poor, and yet that it might profit him nothing to do so."
"That's one of the texts as I never can make out the meaning of," said the carpenter. "To give is to give, and money is money; and why, when two men do exactly the same thing, one should have a blessing, and another none, quite passes my poor understanding."
"If one could suppose that all money given in charity could be put to a test, that only what is really offered for the Lord's sake should remain money, and all the rest be turned into withered leaves, don't you think we should have heaps of dry leaves, as in autumn, to be scattered about by the wind? Consider all that's given for mere show, all that's given from natural pity, all that's given because it would be thought strange and mean to do less than others; none of that money is given to God, so we must not expect that God will accept it."