Sandy spoke earnestly and sadly, with no look or tone as if he intended to give him any offence; he was only putting into words the difficulties that had come to his mind during the day.
A strange, new sense of shame smote the conscience of Mr. Shafto. All his life long he had professed to believe that God was everywhere, taking note of all that was said and done by every human being. He had professed also to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ had died for all, making no difference between rich and poor, learned and ignorant. Yet now, when this poor, untaught boy stood before his face, demanding of him if he really believed these things, he dared not say that he did.
"If it ain't true," continued Sandy, very sorrowfully, "there's nobody taking care of little Gip. I could get along somehow for myself, but I don't see what's to become of her. I were beginnin' to be glad again, I were; but now, if it's not true, Gip's lost, and mother's lost, and there's nobody to care a straw about it. I wish I'd never heard tell of such a thing!"
No answer yet from Mr. Shafto. If it was true that God was beside him, what a miserable fool he had been all his life! If God had been hearing, day after day, his fretful murmurings and his conceited boasting about his grandfather; if He had been watching all his idleness and selfishness, what a wretched, sinful man he had been! If Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who had laid down His life for him, knew how he had spent his own life, wasting it, and casting away all the golden opportunities of being good and doing good, why, then he was as much lost as poor little Gip or Sandy's drunken mother. There was as much need for the Lord to come seeking him, in long-suffering patience, as ever there had been for Him of old to seek and save the publican and sinner.
As for Sandy, his heart was very heavy again. The strange good news told to him by John and Mrs. Shafto had all turned out untrue. Nobody else believed these things. Even Mr. Shafto, living in the same house, and hearing all about it, did not believe it; that was very plain. Yet to turn away from this new hope and this new love, just dawning before him, would make the old life he must go back to a hundred-fold darker and sadder than it had seemed before. There was no unseen Friend seeking him and little Gip; no home for them to go to after death. The grave was the end of all; and even those who were rich or learned had nothing left to them when they died, but gravestones, growing black with time and the smoke of the busy city.
Sandy stole away silently, and without speaking again to Mr. Shafto, whose head had dropped down, and whose eyes had closed, not now in sheer laziness, but in something like shame and repentance.
The boy was at no loss for a shelter to-night; for one of his comrades had urged him to share an empty sugar-cask he knew of, where, lying close together, they might keep one another tolerably warm. It was not that he cared about; but it was the thought of little Gip, with no one now to care for her, except himself, and the loss of his new friend, John Shafto.
When Mr. Shafto roused himself from his reverie, and found that Sandy had disappeared, his first feeling was one of relief. The boy's questions had stung him too keenly for him not to be almost glad to be rid of him. But as the evening passed away, and he did not return to the house, and John Shafto wondered what had prevented his keeping his promise, Mr. Shafto began to listen eagerly for a low tap at the door, and was ready to fetch the boy in and make him welcome to his fireside. But no Sandy came; and at a late hour the shop door was locked, and John went upstairs to his little room, with a sad face and a sadder heart.
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