Black yer boots, sir? Shine ’em right up! Papers! Read God’s book instead,
Better’n papers that to die on! Jack——” one gasp, and Jim was dead!
Mrs. Emily Thornton.
“COALS OF FIRE.”
The coffin was a plain one—no flowers on its top, no lining of rose-white satin for the pale brow, no smooth ribbons about the coarse shroud. The brown hair was laid decently back, but there was no crimped cap, with its neat tie beneath the chin. “I want to see my mother,” sobbed a poor child, as the city undertaker screwed down the top. “You can’t: get out of the way, boy! Why don’t somebody take the brat away?” “Only let me see her for one minute,” cried the hapless orphan, clutching the side of the charity box. And as he gazed into that rough face tears streamed down the cheek on which no childish bloom every lingered. Oh, it was pitiful to hear him cry, “Only once! let me see my mother only once!”
Brutally, the hard-hearted monster struck the boy away, so that he reeled with the blow. For a moment the boy stood panting with grief and rage, his blue eyes expanded, his lips sprang apart; a fire glittered through his tears as he raised his puny arm, and with a most unchildish accent screamed, “When I am a man I’ll kill you for that!” A coffin and a heap of earth was between the mother and the poor forsaken child; a monument stronger than granite built in his boy-heart to the memory of a heartless deed.
The court house was crowded to suffocation. “Does any one appear as this man’s counsel?” asked the judge. There was silence when he finished, until, with lips tightly pressed together, a look of strange recognition blended with haughty reserve upon his handsome features, a young man, a stranger, stepped forward to plead for the erring and the friendless. The splendor of his genius entranced, convinced. The man who could not find a friend was acquitted.
“May God bless you, sir! I cannot.” “I want no thanks,” replied the stranger, with icy coldness. “I—I believe you are unknown to me.” “Man, I will refresh your memory. Twenty years ago you struck a broken-hearted boy away from his poor mother’s coffin; I was that poor, miserable boy.” “Have you rescued me, then, to take my life?” “No! I have a sweeter revenge: I have saved the life of a man whose brutal deed has rankled in my breast for twenty years. Go, and remember the tears of a friendless child.”