[CHAPTER XXI.]
ONLY ONE LAMB.
THERE is a beautiful story, with which many are familiar, of a good missionary who, when too aged to go on with the work which he loved, was found meekly teaching the alphabet to a little child, thankful that he had still power to perform this humble labour for God. Harold was reminded of this anecdote by the position in which he found himself in relation to poor little Shelah.
The child, desolate and helpless in a land of strangers, where the name of Christian was scarcely known, had no one to whom to look for kindness and protection but Harold. He had regarded her as unlovely and unloveable; Shelah, in her merrier days, had excited no sympathy in his mind; but Christian pity now touched a chord, and that chord wakened something like music in young Hartley's desolate spirit. As he marched on painfully in the heat, keeping as near as he could to the camel on which poor Shelah was perched, Harold thought much of the future fate of the young Irish girl. She was of good family, her father a distinguished officer in the army, and Shelah was his only child. When the news of her having been carried off by Arabs should reach India, efforts, and strenuous ones, would doubtless be made for her deliverance. But Arabia was a large country in which to search, without newspapers for advertisements, or postal system for letters, or wires to flash messages with lightning speed.
"Were I to be separated from Shelah, which is likely enough," thought Harold, "or were anything to happen to me, all trace of the child might be utterly lost. Shelah would be buried in some Mahomedan zenana, and childish and thoughtless as she is, would probably soon forget everything about her family and her language. I doubt whether the poor girl would remember her own name for a month. I wish that I had some means of stamping it—either on her form or her memory."
Harold glanced up at the little girl, who still wore her cardinal's hat, though its colour had almost entirely faded. The motion of the camel made Shelah appear as if being rocked on waves; she was clinging to the large bundles strapped on the camel, in order to feel the motion less. Harold raised his voice that it might reach the child.
"What is your name?" he asked, to see how far she was able to identify herself with the daughter of Sir Patrick O'More.
"Lammikin," cried Shelah, looking down from her perch.
"Tell me your other name," said Harold.
"I don't want another name; I'm just Lammikin; that is what Robin used to call me."