Mr. Garrison, meanwhile, was untying his wrists. As he unwound the last coil, he said,—
"The forces of law and order are what rule the world. I think if you fight against them, you'll always be likely to find yourself on the losing side."
A great bitter wave of defiance swelled up in Jack's heart; not against Mr. Garrison as an individual, but against such as he,—handsome, graceful, cultured; against his own hard lot; against a prosperous world; against, it almost seemed, God, Himself.
"What do you know about it?" he said sullenly. "You never had to fight. It was all on your side. God did it. He made you handsome and strong, and had you go to school and college, and grow up a gentleman. And he made me"—how the face darkened here—"what you see. He took my mother, who did love me and pray for me, away from me when I wasn't more than three years old. He gave me to a father who drank hard and taught me nothing good. And then he took even him from me, and handed me over to Deacon Small; and I tell you, teacher, you don't know what a tough time is till you've summered and wintered with Deacon Small. I've got a bad name, and who wonders? and I feel like living up to it. I hadn't any thing against you, specially; but if I'd given in peaceably to all your rules, the boys would have said I had grown chicken-hearted, and a little name for pluck is all the name I have got."
Mr. Garrison looked at him a few moments, steadily. Then he said,—
"It does seem as if fate had been hard on you. But do you know what I think God has been doing for you, in giving you all these hard knocks; for things don't happen; God never lets go the reins."
The boy looked the question he did not speak, and Mr. Garrison went on.
"I think He has been making you strong, just as rowing against wind and tide made my wrists strong, until now you could fight all your enemies if you would.
"The thing we are put here for," he continued, "is to do our best; and if we are doing that, in God's sight, there is nothing that can prevail against us; not fate, or foes, or poverty, or any other creature. There is nothing in all the universe that is strong enough to stand against a soul that is bound to go up and not down. You may go home, now."
It was one of Mr. Garrison's merits that he knew when to stop. Jack Ramsdale went home with that last sentence ringing in his ears,—