Her Benny: A Story of Street Life

by Silas K. Hocking

He found the old woman crying over Benny's letter, with the eighteenpence lying in her lap. When Joe came in she handed him the letter without a word. Joe blew his nose violently several times during its perusal, then laid it down on the table, and walked to the door to hide his emotion. It was several moments before he could command himself sufficiently to speak, then he blurted out—

"The poor parsecuted bairn mun be found somehow, Betty, an' 'ere's off to sairch. Good mornin', Betty."

And before the old woman could reply he was gone.

During the next three days Joe had but little sleep. He tramped the town in every direction, in the hope that he might glean some tidings of the poor lost lad; but his labour was in vain, and each evening when he returned to his hut it was with a sadly diminished hope of ever finding the boy again.

On the evening that Benny, hungry and forsaken, lay down in the wood to sleep, Joe felt his heart drawn out in prayer in such a manner as he had never before experienced. Nearly the whole of the night he spent upon his knees. Now and then he got up and walked out into the silent street, and gazed for a few moments up into the starlit sky. Then he would return to his hut again and pray more fervently than ever. He had returned from his search that evening utterly cast down, feeling that the only resource left to him was prayer. He knew not whether the boy was living or dead. He could hardly think the latter; and yet if he were alive, who could tell what he was suffering? Who but God? To God then he would go and plead for the outcast boy, and who should tell whether God might not regard his prayer and send help and deliverance to the child? Thus hour after hour he prayed on, and when the light of the morning crept up into the eastern sky, he rose from his knees comforted.

Were Joe Wrag's prayers answered? No doubt they were. Not in the way, perhaps, that Joe would have liked best, and yet in the best way for all that. God does not always give us in answer to our prayers what we think best, but what He thinks best. To weary, worn-out Benny God gave sleep, deep, dreamless, and refreshing, and in the morning he awoke to the song of birds and to the rustle of a thousand leaves. The music sounded very sweet to Benny's ears, but it was not the music of heaven, as he had hoped it would be. He had waited there in the solemn wood for the coming of the Lord, but He had not come. Heaven seemed farther away from him than ever this morning, and earth was painfully real. He felt himself too weak to stir at first, so he lay still, occasionally opening his eyes to watch the slanting sunbeams play among the tangled foliage, and light up the dewdrops that trembled on every leaf.

His head was hot and heavy, and his eyes ached when he kept them open long, and the pangs of hunger were coming on again. What should he do? He lay for a long time trying to think, but his thoughts whirled and twisted like snowflakes in a storm.

"P'raps I kin get on a little furder if I tries," he said to himself at length, and suiting the action to the words, he rose from his ferny bed and staggered out of the wood. He had scarcely strength left to get over the gate, but he managed it at length, and then fell down exhausted by the roadside.

How long he lay there he never knew; but he was aroused at length by the lumbering of some kind of vehicle coming towards him along the road, and by the shrill whistling of the driver.

Nearer and nearer came the vehicle, and then stopped just opposite him. Benny looked up and saw a shock-headed, overgrown lad, standing in what seemed an empty cart, staring at him with a look of wonder in his great round eyes.