I could not oblige him, though he promised that the chastisement should bring Tim as near the grave as he would ever be without entering it. I had now to put the matter before Tim in a plain, straightforward question—“Had he or had he not lied about the sale of that Family Bible?”
He loudly protested his truthfulness, and offered to help me to find the buyer.
“How can you do that when you say he left neither name nor address?” I impatiently returned.
“Oh, we could easily find him at some of the revival meetings,” was Tim’s quickwitted reply. “He’ll be at the door giving out tracts when the meeting breaks up. I know his face fine.”
I stared at Tim, and then spoke out the thought that flashed across my mind. “Tim, if you don’t turn out a thief, you’ll maybe be a detective some day.”
“A detective!” he echoed, with a merry twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, no, Mr McGovan, I haven’t enough wickedness in me for that.”
Tim and I went to a revival meeting that night together. By going together I mean to imply that we were closely attached to each other—by a pair of handcuffs. Tim could not have gone forward to the penitent form though he had been ever so strongly inclined. We did not need to wait till the close, nor look out for a tract distributor, for one of those who rose to address the meeting was instantly identified by Tim as the buyer of the Family Bible. The lad was quite young, and had on his face as he spoke a look of etherial happiness and rapt delight which could never have been assumed. I think I see that fair face before me now. It looked noble, exalted, thrilling—just such a face as we could imagine smiling at the stake, and breathing forth forgiveness and peace amidst the roaring of the flames.
When the address was over, the young man had occasion to move through the hall and past the place where we sat. I touched him on the arm, and drew him out to the door. He promptly admitted that he had bought a Family Bible, second-hand, from the boy before him. He had it at home, but though he had used it twice every day in his home, he declared most earnestly that he had found nothing in it. At my suggestion we walked with him to his home. He was evidently unmarried, for the home was presided over by his mother, a quiet, respectable-looking widow.
The Family Bible I sought occupied a place of honour in the little home, and the owner had only to point to it and tell me to take it down with my own hands. I opened the book, and he quietly informed me that the only alteration I should find would be at the beginning, where he had inserted a new leaf as a Family Register.
I turned to the leaf and read there his own name, and quite a recent date, in the column of “Births,” with the words below—“Saved from wrath by the mercy of Jesus Christ.” Without a remark I sat down and turned over every single leaf in that book, but found nothing. When I had finished, and was in despair, I happened to notice that the paper pasted against the inside of the back board did not correspond in colour and texture with that on the front board. A little examination revealed the cause. The lining of the back board was simply one of the fly-leaves pasted down at the edges. I passed my fingers over the pasted leaf. There was a feeling of something below. I took out my pen-knife and ran the point into the sheet and round the pasted edge—the whole family, and Tim in particular, looking on with goggling eyes. When I turned back the leaf, I found it glazed and yellow on the under side, like that inside the front board, but I found also other three slips of paper neatly ranged above one another, flat against the board of the Bible—three £50 bank-notes. The owner of the Bible looked simply and truly surprised. Tim looked terribly disappointed and chagrined.