"Well, I grant ye this," said the carpenter, "if every man's almsgiving could be known only to himself and to God, there's many a one as gives now would keep his money snug in his pocket. But I'm not one of those, my good friend. I know, as we can carry nothing out of the world, that it's best to have something laid up in the bank above. But here your way divides from my way,—you go down the dell, I keep to the road. Good-day to you, Ned Franks, let me know what you get from Bat Bell; I'll be bound 'twill be nothing to ruin me. I've not much to do at the Hall to-day, but measuring and fitting, so maybe I'll be back before you return; just drop in at my shop and tell me what's your success;" and with a friendly nod and complacent smile, the carpenter went along the high road, while the school-master turned down the little wooded lane which led to the mill.
"I should have liked to have had a little longer talk with Ben Stone," thought Franks. "I'm afraid that he thinks that he is actually buying God's favor, and earning heaven, by the little kind acts that he does! That's a kind of error which so many people run foul of. The sunken rock of self-righteousness is, maybe, just as dangerous as the sandbank of love of money. I must have a care that I don't take to judging others, and so split on it myself. I spoke very hardly yester-evening of Bat Bell the miller, yet, when I consider what a poor wretched sinner I am, receiving so much from God, and showing my gratitude in such a poor way, I'm scarce likely to run on that rock. When one measures one's little drop of charity, and even that not pure, with the great unfathomable ocean of love of Him who gave his life-blood for us, one is far more inclined to ask forgiveness for doing so little, than to expect reward for doing so much. There's nothing that can give the best of us any claim to the least of God's mercies, but the merits of Christ. That is a truth that I see the more plainly the longer I live. To attempt to hold by one's own merits would be like trying to go to sea in a bark made of gossamer threads. The gossamer web looks goodly enough when the sunbeams are glinting upon it, and the dew-drops are nestling in it, but no man in his senses would trust his life to its power to bear up his weight. It would be a madder thing still for him to trust his soul's salvation to his own merits. If any mortal had anything in himself to boast of or to trust to, that mortal was St. Paul, who was ready to spend and to be spent; who had suffered the loss of all things for God,—a very different kind of self-denial from what we dare to call by that name,—and yet what was the feeling of St. Paul? Did he think thus he had earned heaven? Did he not say, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? If we were to strip ourselves of all that we have, if we were to give away health and time and life itself for God's service, we should never get beyond that verse, we should have nothing whereof to boast, nothing (out of Christ) whereon to rest."
Ned had now descended to the bottom of a beautiful little dell, through which gushed a rapid stream of water, turning the large wheel of Bell's mill. The wheel was, however, at this time still, and its monotonous clack did not mingle with the gurgle of the brook and the song of the birds. Franks had many delightful associations connected with that wooded dell; for there stood the cottage in which Persis, as a maiden, had dwelt with her aged grandfather; it was there that he had wooed and won her; from that little ivy-mantled nest he had, three years before, taken his bride to church. The cottage had now other inhabitants, but Franks could not pass the spot without stooping to pluck a violet to carry back to his wife.
"I'll give this to Persis," he said to himself; "she'll like a flower from the old home, though, thank God, I believe that she has never regretted leaving it for the new one. This much I can answer for, leastways, that every day since that happy one on which God gave her to me has made me prize his gift more dearly."
V.
An Appeal.
Bat Bell was a particular man, regular and precise in all his ways, who had, as it were, stiffened into his own mould, especially since the death of his wife, and who did not choose, as he often said, "to be put out for nobody." Bell hated a visitor at work-time, and he was so keen after making money that his work-time began early and ended late. He hated a visitor at meal-time, probably because he did not wish any one to share his meal. Franks was aware of this, and tried so to time his visit to the mill that he should catch Bell in that half-hour of rest which usually followed his early dinner.
"He'll be playing with his Bessy," thought Franks, "and there's nothing on earth that softens and opens a man's heart like hearing the voice of his own little child, or dancing it on his knee." Such was the conclusion to which the school-master came after his four weeks' experience of the feelings of a father.
Franks, however, found little Bessy, not with her parent, but amusing herself in the lane close by the mill. She ran up to him with open arms, and held up her little face for a kiss, for Ned was a prime favorite with every child who knew him, and, during her mother's last illness, Bessy had spent a week at a time under the care of the Franks. She was a plump, rosy-cheeked, merry little girl, of about five years of age.