CHAPTER I.
“I was a Stranger, and ye took Me in.”
IT was a sharp, frosty night late in December, the wind driving the snow in unfriendly gusts into the faces of the passers-by, and compelling all who were not actually obliged to encounter its violence to seek as speedily as possible the shelter of their own homes.
At the corner of a street leading out of one of the many crowded thoroughfares in the heart of the city, stood an old-fashioned crockery shop, from the inner parlour of which the cheerful glow of a coke fire, reflected on the window-panes, made the darkness without only seem more dreary and desolate. Unmindful of wind and snow, two little faces might have been seen closely pressed against the window, eagerly gazing on a sight which greeted their eyes through the glass door separating the shop from the room behind. The muslin blind, which usually hung before it to screen those within from the gaze of the outer world, had accidentally dropped, and left to view a cheerful group, consisting of father, mother, and several children, seated at their evening meal.
The kettle singing on the fire, the cat comfortably lying on the snug hearth, the clean white cloth, with the neat cups and saucers, the home-made cake, and bread-and-butter, above all, the happy faces of the children, did not escape the eager notice of the poor little wanderers, whose own sad experience of life might have been summed up in the few short but expressive words—hungry and cold, motherless and homeless.
It was the old story, alas, only too common, of sin, suffering, and sorrow; the drunkard husband going away, and leaving the poor, worn-out, sorrow and care-stricken wife to die in a miserable garret, and the friendless little ones turned out alone on the world, which seemed to them so large and dreary. Sleeping now on a doorstep, now under one of the numerous railway arches, too often the only refuge of the homeless and destitute, in the daytime begging a few halfpence, or some scant crusts, growing every day more dirty and more forlorn; no wonder that the sight of a home which seemed to them (unaccustomed to aught but want and woe) rich in all that could be desired, should arrest their eyes and make them gaze on wistfully, forgetful of wind and cold.
No such home had ever been for them; their earliest remembrances were of a dark, damp cellar, a cruel father, and a sorrowful and ailing mother; their latest of an old tumble-down garret, where that mother lay dying, without proper nourishment or kind, loving care—no voice to whisper to her of a Saviour’s love, or to bear to her heart the glad tidings which could have shed a light over the dark valley. Mingled with these came the remembrances of the coarse tones of the rough woman, who, as soon as their mother was buried, had pushed them into the street, telling them to “be gone, and never to darken her doorway again, the good-for-nothing brats.”
After gazing intently for some time at the happy scene before them, the elder of the two children, by a sudden, irresistible impulse, at length darted up the steps, and softly turning the handle of the door, crept inside the shop, the younger one clinging to her sister’s arm. Crouching down in a corner, where they hoped to escape observation, but with eyes and ears both on the alert, they bent forward to catch the sound of what was passing in the inner room. For a moment all seemed to be quiet, and then the father’s voice was heard reading aloud. They saw the children seated round the table, the elder ones reading in turn, while the younger sat by, quietly listening. They could even distinguish some of the words, but, alas, they were no familiar tones which fell on the ears of the little beggar children; they heard something about a Father pitying His children, and, as the words were read, instinctively the younger child whispered, “That’s not our father. Whose father can that be?”