Flash! flash! flash! went the memories, and still the night wind whistled through the trees, still the great sea moaned its eternal song under the cliffs that lead to the Garden of Sleep.
Now I was in Australia, whither I had wandered in my despair, standing white-robed before the altar, where I had made our Nick and Nan man and wife. Now back again in England, where I fell in with Samuel Barkston, the Mascotte of my strange, wandering and lonely life.
Why is it, that I look upon this good fellow as the best friend man ever had on earth? Has he not done everything that one Christian man can do for another? Has he not well deserved the love of every one of the villagers round about, and become part of the heart’s life of those who just now, on this Christmas Eve, at my bidding, said “God bless us all”?
Have you ever seen the modest, picturesque almshouses, that dear old Barkston built in the village of North Repps, near Cromer? Have you never passed them in warm midsummer covered with roses, embraced by dark purple clematis, smelling of new-mown hay, and decked round with old stocks and golden marigold?
I call it a harbour of refuge. Was it not Samuel Barkston who, at my simple suggestion, brought down the dear old Cheevers, man and wife, my old world parishioners, to exchange the dark roar and riot of London, the dirt, the care, and unrest, where they would have decayed into the workhouse, to weather their last years out in God’s country, in a haven of rest, built by man in God’s eternal honour?
Why do they pooh-pooh and ridicule the men of wealth who build these harbours of refuge for the poor? Surely they do a noble work.
What ignominy is it, to live in this peaceful and blessed dependence? What disgrace, to accept the hand-clasp of such beautiful charity? I never pass one of these hospitals of old England, from that of St. Cross at Winchester down to the most modern building dedicated, “Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” without taking off my hat and saying a prayer for the rest of the souls of such pious benefactors.
What, indeed, has not my excellent patron and chosen friend done, for the dear ones who love him so well?
His son mercifully restored to him, he has placed at North Repps Cottage, one of the ideal love nests of this beautiful old England of ours, and there he dwells, when he can be spared from his splendid philanthropic labours, and from Parliament, and from countless duties, with the beautiful, dark-eyed, whole-souled, handsome Nan, who is the Lady Bountiful of the villagers for miles and miles around.
And if, after their wandering life, great sorrows and bitter trials, the cottage in the wood seems rather a new and restricted sort of domain after the gold-fields and mighty distances of Australia, their children, at any rate, have no such ideas or contrasts whatever.