John Shafto sat down by Sandy, with his hand through his arm, ready to listen eagerly to all he could tell him, asking him questions, and talking about little Gip in his low pleasant voice. Until Sandy felt that, even if little Gip were lost, he would have another friend who would love him, and whom he could love. They whispered together till bed-time, forming plans for seeking and finding poor lost Gip.
That night, after Mr. Shafto had gone to bed, Mrs. Shafto made up a place for Sandy to sleep on the kitchen hearth, with an old mattress and a brown moth-eaten velvet pall out of the shop, which had not been in use for years. It made so grand and magnificent a bed, that Sandy was almost afraid to lie down upon it, and could scarcely believe it was not all a dream.
Once when he awoke, before the fire had quite burned out, and saw the polished warming pan twinkling, and the steel balls glittering in the dim light, he sat up to rouse himself, and think where he could be. Then the remembrance of the lame boy's tender face and pleasant voice came back to him, and he went to sleep again with a strange sense of peace at the thought of the new friend he had found.
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[CHAPTER IX.]
SEEKING THE LOST.
But when the morning came, and Mrs. Shafto went to rouse Sandy, and kindle the kitchen fire, what was her surprise and disappointment to find that he was gone! The mattress had been dragged into a corner, and the pall roughly folded up, and laid upon it, but there was no other trace of the guest who had been made so comfortable by her last night.
John looked exceedingly grave and troubled, though he did not put his anxiety into words. Only Mr. Shafto, when he came down to a late breakfast after the fire had burned up well, and the room was warm, displayed some triumph; and declared, with more energy than was usual to him, that the lad was a rogue and a thief, no doubt, and they would find he had not gone off without carrying some plunder with him. Nothing, however, was missing from the kitchen; and there was no plunder in the shop, except a few rusty plumes, and the hatchment, with its faded painting, in the window.
Yet it was a sad day for John Shafto and his mother, though Sandy was not proved to be a thief. Their hearts had warmed so to the desolate boy, and they had felt so keen a sympathy with him about little Gip that this desertion pained them to the quick. John Shafto, as he lay awake all the early part of the night, had pondered over every possible means of tracing the lost child; and had prayed to God, with intense earnestness, that she might be found. He had felt so comforted by these prayers and ponderings, that he had made haste to get up in the morning to talk to Sandy; and not only to talk, but to set off in search himself upon his crutches, as soon as he could learn anything by which he might know little Gip if he saw her. Now all this was over. Sandy was gone, without a word to his new friend. A great blank fell upon John Shafto, as though all his love had been thrown back upon him carelessly and ungratefully.
Very slowly the hours of that autumn day passed by. John Shafto limped along some of the back slums near his own home, gazing with fresh interest and attention at the starved and puny children playing about the doors and in the gutters. There had never seemed such swarms of them before, nor so much sadness in their lives. He saw them fighting with one another for a crust of mouldy bread or the rind of an orange: the strongest always gaining the victory over those younger or weaker. He heard little children, who could hardly speak, stammering out bad words, which had no meaning for them, but which showed what the sin was of those about them. Now and then a baby looked at him over the shoulder of a drunken mother, who was entering or leaving a gin-palace.