He had not meant then to leave his home and kind grandmother for ever. He had had visions of making a fortune, and returning to keep her in comfort in her old age. But the wrong step taken, he gradually fell, first into ways of idleness, and then into worse ways; had roamed about from land to land, weary and unsatisfied, till now he lay dying in a comfortless London lodging-house, his only friend obliged to leave him, while he had refused to let him tell his Scotch friends anything about him. So now, he said to himself, there was no help for it—he must die. Scripture words of hope, blessed invitations of love from God's own lips, were well known to him; his Scotch Bible education had left him no stranger to those words of psalms and paraphrases sung in the quiet country church on Sabbath days. They often rose to memory. But he refused to take the comfort; he said they were not for him. He could join the many in saying, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;" but as yet he stopped there.
And so on that winter evening he lay, before his eyes a picture of high mountains, on which the snowflakes were falling even then, and in his ears the rush of the Highland river as it dashed through the pass, near which stood the home of his childhood. Oh, to see it once again! To hear, but for one moment, the dearly-loved accents of the Gaelic tongue, to him sweeter and more melodious than any other language in the world—to feel once again the loving hand of his grandmother laid on his brow, as she was wont to do in his boyish days when she gave him her goodnight blessing!
As he thought of these things, the tears fell fast, and an agony of bitter repentance filled his heart; and for the first time the words, spoken in what to those around him was an unknown language, broke from his lips, "God be merciful to me sinner!"
The landlord of the house, who had strolled in at that moment, heard the words, and turned hastily away. He said to himself, "I do wish some friend would turn up; that lad Finlay said he had written to his people in the north."
But the words had struck on the ear of a young man who was just entering the room, after having asked "if a lad called John Robertson lodged there."
Quickly he strode to the bedside, and spoke a few words in the same strange language. They seemed to act like a charm on the sick lad. He raised himself in bed, a bright light sparkling in his eyes, and said, but not in Gaelic, "Who are you, sir? And where do you come from? Oh, speak again in my native tongue, that I may make sure that it is not all a dream!"
Then ensued a conversation in Gaelic, which it is well I am not called upon to write, or my readers to peruse; but every word of the strange guttural language sounded as soothing music in the ear of the dying lad. Great was his surprise when he discovered that the handsome young gentleman beside him was the Master Macintosh with whom he had often climbed the hills and fished in the river near his northern home.
Not long had Ronald to tend the dying lad, for his days were numbered; but to him was given the joy of being used as God's instrument to set free one of Satan's fettered captives. To the cry for pardon, which were the first words that had greeted his ear, he could give, in all their fulness, the Lord's words of free forgiveness, could tell how Jesus "came to seek and to save them that were lost."
And the heavy, sin-sick heart grasped with a firm grip the precious promise, "He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."
And so, even at the eleventh hour, Johnny Robertson fell at the feet of his mother's Saviour, and was able to say: