“Yes, he is a kindly man but if he could be brought to think that it was his duty to take that boy, your work would be already done, and if he should take him, the boy is made for life, that is, if there’s anything in him to make a man out of.”
“Can’t you help me old acquaintance?”
“I would gladly, Robert, but I don’t feel free to, for this reason. Bradford Whitman is a kindly man as you say, and an upright man, and a man of most excellent judgment, a man who knows how to make money and to keep it and is able to do just as he likes. We have always been great friends, but he is a man quite set in his way, and if I should influence him to take this boy, about whom I know nothing, and he should turn out bad (or what I think is most likely, to be stupid and not worth his salt) he never would forget it.”
But notwithstanding the backwardness of the miller to aid his friend, the Being who is wont to shape the affairs of men and bring about events in the most natural manner, and one noticed only by the most thoughtful, was all unbeknown to the soul-driver preparing instrumentalities and setting in operation causes a thousand times more effective than the efforts of the miller (had he done his best), to bring about the purpose Wilson had at heart.
CHAPTER V.
THE UNSEEN HAND.
As the Whitmans were seated at the supper-table of an autumn evening, Peter, the eldest boy, who had just returned from the store, reported that Wilson, the soul-driver, had come to the village and put up at Hanscom’s tavern, with some redemptioners, and that Mr. Wood, one of their neighbors, who had engaged one the last spring, was going over to get his man, and they said there was a boy he hadn’t engaged, and wanted some one to take him off his hands.
“From my heart I pity these poor forlorn creatures,” said the mother; “brought over here to a strange land with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and how they will be treated and whose hands they will fall into, they don’t know.”
After the meal they all drew together around the fire, that the season of the year made agreeable.
The children, hoping to obtain some old-time story from their grandfather, drew his large chair with its stuffed back and cushion, worked in worsted by the cunning hand of their mother, into his accustomed corner. Bradford Whitman sat in a meditative mood, with hands clasped over his knees, watching the sparks go up the great chimney.
“Bradford,” said the old gentleman, “I have sometimes wondered that you don’t take one of these redemptioners; you are obliged to hire a good deal, and it is often difficult to get help when it is most needed.”