“Oh, don’t let us think of such things,” answered Julian, who had the greatest dread of being found out in any of his tricks, though he had not the slightest objection to doing what was wrong.
There are, unfortunately, a great number of people in the world like Julian Langley. They do not comprehend the awful fact that the Almighty God sees and knows all they do and think, even to their most trivial acts and thoughts, and that at the great Day of Judgment they will have to answer for all the evil they have committed, all the evil thoughts in which they have willingly indulged. Not understanding, or forgetting this great truth, their only dread is lest their sins should be discovered by their fellow-men, or should in any way disturb the equanimity of their own consciences. No greater offence, therefore, can be committed against them than to speak to them of their vices, or to try to prove to them that they have done wrong. Ostriches, when chased, are said to run their heads into a bush, and to fancy that because they cannot see they are free from pursuit; so men try to shut out their sins and faults from their own sight, and, as foolishly as the ostrich, to fancy that they are not perceived by others, or, still more foolishly and madly, that a due and just punishment, which an all-righteous God has said he will inflict on evildoers, will not ultimately overtake them. Unhappy Julian, I would rather not have had to narrate his career.
“Come on, Julian,” said Digby, at last. “I hear no one about; we must make a push for our window and get in. If we are caught, patience! The thing is done, and can’t be undone.”
Digby was, in reality, by far the most daring of the two, in cases of real danger. Off he set across the lawn, Julian following. They reached the window. The rope was there. Up he climbed.
Julian fancied that he heard some one speak, and then that footsteps were coming along the gravel walk. He was in an agony of terror. He could scarcely climb up the rope, and was almost letting go, but Digby caught his arm, and helped to drag him in. They hauled up the rope, and Julian stowed it away again in his box. They then shut their window and unlocked their door.
When they came to undress, they found that their clothes were very muddy, and that they had got their shoes very wet and dirty in the ditch into which they had jumped. Even Julian’s fertile brain was puzzled as to how they should account for this, should they be questioned on the subject. He lay cold and trembling, and very uncomfortable. He was paying somewhat dear for his lark; people generally do for such like proceedings.
There is an old French proverb, “The game is not worth the candle,” meaning, which is burnt while it is played. In a true and Christian point of view, sin, however delicious, however attractive it may appear, never is worth a hundredth part of the consequences it is sure to entail.
Digby was not much less unhappy than Julian. Still, as he was prepared, with sturdy independence, to undergo whatever consequences his prank might bring upon him—for a prank only it was, though an unwise one—he did not trouble himself much more about the matter, but coiled himself up in his bed to try and get warm, and prepared to go to sleep. He was just dozing off, when he heard the voices of his uncle, and Marshall, and Power, passing the door.
“Some people can sleep through a thunder-storm, or a battle at sea; and so, I suppose, those youngsters were not awoke by all that tremendous noise,” observed Marshall.
“More likely that they were awoke, and that fellow Julian Langley is lying quaking in his bed, and wondering what all the noise was about,” answered Power.