“You may some of you be wondering, dear friends, how I can have permitted your dear young squire to have assumed and carried with my sanction a name among you that is not really his own; but I shall soon show you what will, I am sure, be perfectly satisfactory to you all on this point. What I am now going to tell you is not a mere tale to gratify curiosity. I have a sacred duty to perform in telling it; for it was the earnest request that I should do so of one who had a right to claim it of me—I mean your late squire, the father of my dear young friend here, whom I shall never cease to call my dear nephew.
“You must know, then, that some twenty-five years have now passed since I retired from the army. I was living at that time in a quiet way in my native county, when a cousin of mine, who used to be my special companion and friend when we were boys, died, and left me, to my considerable surprise, a large property in Australia, in which country he had been living for many years as an extensive sheep-farmer. Believing that property has its duties as well as its profits, I resolved to go over and see what my new acquisition was like, and what I had best do with it. I had no thoughts at first of settling in the colony. But I found when I got there a great deal to do and a great deal to undo before things could be set properly in order; and by the time I had got things into shape I had got so used to colonial life, and so well satisfied with its freedom from many of those fetters which society imposes on us in many of her usages in the old mother country, that I made up my mind to settle, for a time at any rate, in my adopted land.
“I had a house of my own in Melbourne, and used to visit my country estate from time to time as I found it necessary. One day, as I was walking along one of the principal streets of the city, when I had been settled in the colony a few years, I noticed a little boy of rather superior appearance, who was neatly but plainly dressed, walking slowly past the shops with a very sad expression on his face and his poor eyes full of tears. I stopped him, and asked what was the matter. He was reluctant at first to tell me; but on my getting his confidence by the sincere interest he saw I took in him, the little fellow told me that his dear old nurse was very ill, and he was afraid she would die before his father came back.
“I went with him at once to his home, which was a very humble one in a side street, and found the poor woman, the child’s nurse, quite sensible, yet manifestly near her end. The neighbours had been kind, and had done what they could; but it was too plain that human skill would not avail to restore the old woman to health or prolong her life. But she was quite able to listen to me; and when I had offered a prayer by her bedside, she evidently felt that she could confide her sorrows and troubles to me.
“She told me that her master, the little boy’s father, was called William Jackson; that he had come from England a few years before, after the death of his wife, to try his fortune in the colony, having lost his property in England. She herself, having known him from his infancy, and always having lived in his family, came with him to Australia to take care of Horace, his only child, who was then an infant. Her master had found employment in the city, but was anxious to see if he could not meet with success at the gold-diggings. He therefore had left her and his little son three months since, and they had only heard from him once. Horace was now six years old, and was going to a day-school in the city; and as Mr Jackson had left a sum of money with her which was not yet exhausted, she was not in want as regarded herself or the child, and was now anxiously looking for the father’s return. But it had pleased God to lay her low with sickness; and feeling that her time must be short, she was deeply concerned as to what was to become of her little charge, whom she loved as dearly as if he had been her own.
“I told her not to distress herself on this subject, but to cast this burden on the Lord, and that I would see what could be done. Her poor face lighted up when I said these words; and from the reply which she made, I concluded that she was a pious woman and knew where to lay her cares. So I went home, and after giving the necessary directions for the poor nurse’s comfort, I began seriously to consider what was to be done for the poor child; and after putting the matter before the Lord, I resolved to take him into my own house, and treat him as my own till his father should turn up. And so a week later, when the faithful old nurse was buried, I took the little Horace to live with me, and we have never been long separated from that day to this.
“But what of William Jackson, his father? Months rolled on, and no tidings—a year, and no tidings. Horace had learned to call me uncle, and I to call him and speak of him as nephew: and though friends and neighbours at first perfectly understood that this was only a loving mode of address, not at all intended to deceive anybody, yet in process of time it became so completely a matter of course with us, that we can hardly either of us believe that this relationship does not really exist between us, and so I shall be ‘Uncle Dawson’ to him, and he will be ‘Nephew Horace’ to me till death parts us. Horace was now seven years old, and I felt only too thankful to mark in him the evidences of a real love to that Saviour whom his good old nurse had taught him to know and serve in his childish way. And so the boy was twining himself tight round my heart, and, to tell the honest truth, I began to dread the father’s return, and almost to hope he might never come back to claim his child.
“It was one beautiful day in February. You must remember, dear friends, that February is one of our hot months in the southern hemisphere. Horace was at school, and I was sitting by an open window in my private room, which looked on to the garden at the back of my town house. Something came between me and the light. I looked up from my writing. A man stood by the open window, and did not move away as he saw my eyes fixed on him. He wore a broad palm leaf hat, which rather shaded from my view his full features; but I could see a noble countenance, which was rendered strikingly picturesque by the profusion of beard and moustache, which had evidently been long untrimmed. His upper clothing consisted of a faded blouse, fastened round the neck by a black silk handkerchief. He had also coarse duck trousers on, bound round his waist by a leathern belt, and well-made boots on his feet, which were remarkably small for one of his robust make.
“My heart sank within me for a moment or two, for I divined at once who he must be; but, recovering myself, I asked him if he wished to speak with me. ‘Yes; he should be glad to do so,’ he replied in a sad voice, but with the greatest courtesy of manner.
“He was soon seated opposite to me, and came at once to the point by saying, ‘How can I ever discharge my debt of gratitude to you, Colonel Dawson, for your most generous treatment of my poor boy, who might have been lost or ruined but for your kindness?’