The lost hunter: A tale of early times

by John Turvill Adams

The first words Holden uttered, after recovering from his emotion sufficiently to speak, were:

"Lord! now let thou thy servant depart, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation."

"Do not talk of departing," said Mr. Pownal. "It seems to me now is the very time to stay. Many years of happiness are in store for you."

"But," said Holden, "tell me, thou who hast conferred an obligation that can never be repaid, and restored as it were the dead to life, how didst thou become the preserver of my child?"

But a few words are necessary to answer Holden's questions. As the happy father sat with his arm over his son's neck, Mr. Pownal related the following particulars.

"The John Johnson, of whom Esther the squaw told you," said Mr. Pownal, "was some nineteen or twenty years ago a porter in the employ of our house. He was an honest, industrious man, who remained in our service until his death, which happened two or three years after the event I am about to relate, and enjoyed our confidence to the last. It was in the Spring—the month I do not recollect—when he came to the counting-room and desired to speak with me in private. He told me that on the previous evening he had found a child, dressed in rags, asleep upon the steps of his house, and that to preserve it from perishing he had taken it in. His own family was large, and he was a poor man, else he would willingly keep it. He knew not exactly what to do, and as he was in the habit of consulting me when in any difficulty, he thought he had better do so now. It was a pretty lively little boy, but so young that though beginning to speak it was unable to give any account of itself.

"While Johnson was speaking a plan came into my mind, which I had thought of before, and it seemed as if the child were providentially sent in order to enable me to accomplish it. The truth is, that I had been married for several years, and the merry voice of no child of my own had gladdened my home and I had given up the expectation of children. Loving them dearly, it occurred to me to adopt some child, and rear it as my own. The feelings of Mrs. Pownal were the same as mine, and we had often talked over the subject together, but one circumstance and another, I can hardly tell what they were, had postponed the execution of our purpose from day to day. I therefore said to Johnson that I would attend him home and see the child, after which I should be better able to give him advice. Accordingly we went together to his house, which I recollect was the very one you described as having visited in your search in William street. There I found the little waif, a bright eyed boy of some three or four years of age, though his cheeks were pale and thin, as if he had already known some suffering. He wore around his neck the coral beads you have in your hand, which seemed to me at the time to have been left in order to facilitate a recognition. The appealing look and sweet smile with which he gazed into my eyes, as if demanding protection, was, in the condition of my feelings, more than I could withstand, and I took him home and gave him to my wife. She seemed equally pleased with myself, and for a time we reared him as a child of our own. Richly has he repaid our love, and you may well be proud of such a son. But some ten years afterwards, to our surprise, for we had given up all hope of such a blessing, Heaven gave us a son, and two years after that a daughter. The birth of the children altered, in some respects, our calculations, and I thought it necessary to communicate to Thomas the fact that he was not my son, but promising that he should ever be to me as one, and leaving it to be inferred from the identity of name, for I had given him my own, that he was a relative. He has more than once endeavored to penetrate the mystery, but I have always shrunk from revealing it, although determined that at some time or another he should be made acquainted with it, and with that view, to guard against the contingencies of sudden death, prepared a narrative of the events I am relating, which is at this moment in my desk addressed to him. Mr. Holden," concluded Mr. Pownal, and his voice choked for an instant, "I can wish you no higher good fortune than that the youth, who, if not the offspring of my loins, is the son of my affection, may be to you a source of as much happiness as he has been to me."

Moved to tears the young man threw himself into the arms of his benefactor, and in broken words murmured his gratitude.

"Ah!" cried he, "you were always so indulgent and so kind, dear sir!
Had it not been for, you, what should I have been to day?"

"Nay, Thomas," said Mr. Pownal, "you have conferred a benefit greater than you received. You filled a void in hearts that were aching for an object of parental love, and for years were the solitary beam of sunshine in a household that would else have been desolate and dark. And had I not interposed, other means would have been found to restore you to your proper sphere. There is that in you, my son—let me still call you by the dear name—that under any circumstances would have forced its way, and elevated you from darkness into light, from obscurity into distinction."