“Why,” said the mother, “if a man owes another, the creditor attaches his wages, and when 89 the man presents his bill to his employer, he finds that he cannot pay him anything. In vain he went to distant places to earn a subsistence. Shrewd lawyers were put upon his track; he was ferretted out, until, discouraged, he came to me one day, and said,–
“‘Mary, the hounds are after me from morning till night. They dog my steps wherever I go, and give me no chance to retrieve my fortunes. I am going to the west; and it isn’t right to hold you to your engagement any longer, for I can never, on my part, fulfil it. The odds are against me here, and, what is worse, I’ve lost my courage and hope; I have come to bid you good by.’
“‘If you do not care for me any longer,’ I said, ‘say so. You’ve struggled hard, and have merited a better result; it isn’t your fault that you have failed. God forbid that I should break my promise. If you must go west, you are not going alone. I shall go with you, and shall this very night tell my parents all about my engagement, and get their consent to our marriage.’
“He shook his head. But feeling that it had been cowardly in me not to have mentioned the subject before, whatever the result might have been, in a few words I frankly, and with a composure that surprised myself, told them the whole story. My father was a quick-tempered, imperious 90 man, and my mother lived only for this world: the result you can easily imagine. But I felt that my duty was plain; and we were quietly married. Having a little money of my own, joining it with what your father had by him, we started towards the setting sun. But what was that?” said Mrs. Jones, stopping in her recital, as a strange sound fell upon her ear.
It was a long, fiendish yell, swelling upon the still night air over the unbroken solitudes of the prairie; it was most appalling. Tom and his mother hastened to the window; they saw a noble buck, his antlers held aloft, flying with his utmost speed, pursued by two dark-looking objects, that gained rapidly on him.
“It’s the gray wolf,” said Tom, “chasing a deer. How I wish I had a rifle! I could bring one of them down easy as not,”–as they dashed by, with short, quick yells, following their prey into the woods that skirted the river.
“I hope the poor creature will escape,” said Mrs. Jones, with a sigh; and she resumed her narrative. “I was not long in seeing, on our journey out, that a dreadful change had been wrought in your father by his business troubles. It had given him an unconquerable disgust of society, which he has not yet outgrown, making him uneasy and restless wherever he has been; and this, Tom, is the secret of his wandering 91 life; and this is why I never feel that I can complain at any of the changes in our hard, unsettled career as a family.”
Tom, who had listened absorbed to this before unread chapter in the family history, was deeply moved, and, while the tears filled his eyes, asked, in tremulous tones,–
“Do you think father’ll ever get over it, mother?”
“Tom,” replied she, “your father has a true heart and a good mind, and I believe that, in some way, good will yet come out of this long-continued trial. He’s taken a great liking to the missionary; and Mr. Payson seems to understand him better than most, and I am praying that the acquaintance may lead to something brighter for him; and, Tom,” she added, “I have told you this that you may see a new reason for not being in haste to leave your father and mother. There is one passage in the Bible I often think of, which directs us to both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of God. Your father’s mistake, when he went into business, was, that he was in too great haste to accomplish his own will. This is apt to be the error of the young. They are sanguine of success, and they rush into the battle of life without waiting to put on the armor of faith. What the young want in setting out, Tom, is a Guide and a Helper, who 92 cannot err, and will not forsake them. An old man in our town used to say, ‘Never try to kick open the door of Providence.’ I want you, Tom, to wait patiently till Providence opens the door for you. Then you need not be afraid to go forward.”