Eric, a waif

by Emma Leslie

"Ah, my boy, you don't understand how you have crept into our hearts," said the farmer, as they went gently up a hill outside of the town. "I have been thinking as I came along, that we all think of the Heavenly Father very much as you have thought of us in this matter. You thought of the horses and my loss of time and vexation, but never once thought that all these would be forgotten in the gladness of having you back in your old place once more, and this because you did not understand how we love you—the good wife and I." And as he spoke, the farmer looked as tenderly at Eric as he might have done if he had been his own son.

The boy felt a strong impulse to throw himself into his friend's arms, if they had not both been on horseback. But from that moment, he felt that he knew what a father's love was, and that this friend was a parent rather than a master to him henceforth.

Mrs. Consett was delighted to see him return safe and well, for she had been haunted by the fear that he might have fallen overboard and been drowned, and so to see him come riding up the avenue once more was a joy indeed.

Eric needed no urging to become a Methodist after this—he regarded it as part of the love and duty that he owed his adopted father—and so the very first letter that was sent to Sister Martin in England told how Eric, her waif, had become a professed Methodist at his own desire.

The following season she came again with another party of slaves, but after this there was an end of sending convicts to His Majesty's plantations of America, for the American War broke out the following year, and so there were no more visits from Sister Martin. The war which began so hastily, and was expected to end in a few months to the confusion of the colonists, was not over until Eric was a full-grown man, and all memory of him as a slave-convict had been forgotten here in England; so that he could return to see his native country and the one dear friend it held for him without fear of discovery.

So, ten years after he left his native shore, he returned on a visit to Sister Martin, and to transact some business for his adopted father and the Methodist congregation to which he belonged.

People did not cross the Atlantic for mere pleasure in those days, and therefore, if business of some importance had not arisen, that he alone could transact for Mr. Consett, it is unlikely that Eric would ever have come back to his native land.

But when he had seen Sister Martin, and the friends of his adopted father, a desire to see his mother's grave and his old home at The Magpie took him to Summerleigh once more.

He went in very different guise from that in which he had left it ten years before, but still he wondered whether any one would recognise him as the Eric Hunter who had been driven away as a beggar and vagabond, unworthy even to be stable boy at the village inn.

Now he went back as a gentleman traveller, who could command the best horses and the best room at any inn where he might choose to put up, and as such he was received by his old mistress when he ordered a good dinner to be served, and the best bedroom in the house prepared for a lady who would come by post-chaise a few hours later.