Cast Adrift

The man was on his feet by this time, with his hand in his pocket, from which he drew a number of pennies. These he counted over carefully twice. The number was just ten. If there had been only himself to provide for, it would not have taken long to settle the question of expenditure. Five cents at an eating-shop where the caterer supplied himself from the hodge-podge of beggars’ baskets would have given him a breakfast fit for a dog or pig, while the remaining five cents would have gone for fiery liquor to quench a burning thirst.

But another mouth had too be fed. All at once this poor degraded man had risen to a sense of responsibility, and was practicing the virtue of self-denial. A little child was leading him.

He had no toilette to make, no ablutions to practice. There was neither pail nor wash-basin in his miserable kennel. So, without any delay of preparation, he caught up the broken mug and went out, as forlorn a looking wretch as was to be seen in all that region. Almost every house that he passed was a grog-shop, and his nerves were all unstrung and his mouth and throat dry from a night’s abstinence. But he was able to go by without a pause. In a few minutes he returned with a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a single dried sausage.

What a good breakfast the two made. Not for a long time had the man so enjoyed a meal. The sight of little Andy, as he ate with the fine relish of a hungry child, made his dry bread and sausage taste sweeter than anything that had passed his lips for weeks.

Something more than the food he had taken steadied the man’s nerves and allayed his thirst. Love was beating back into his heart—love for this homeless wanderer, whose coming had supplied the lost links in the chain which bound him to the past and called up memories that had slept almost the sleep of death for years. Good resolutions began forming in his mind.

“It may be,” he said to himself as new and better impressions than he had known for a long time began to crowd upon him, “that God has led this baby here.”

The thought sent a strange thrill to his soul. He trembled with excess of feeling. He had once been a religious man; and with the old instinct of dependence on God, he clasped his hands together with a sudden, desperate energy, and looking up, cried, in a half-despairing, half-trustful voice,

“Lord, help me!”

No earnest cry like that ever goes up without an instant answer in the gift of divine strength. The man felt it in a stronger purpose and a quickening hope. He was conscious of a new power in himself.

“God being my helper,” he said in the silence of his heart, “I will be a man again.”

There was a long distance between him and a true manhood. The way back was over very rough and difficult places, and through dangers and temptations almost impossible to resist. Who would have faith in him? Who would help him in his great extremity? How was he to live? Not any longer by begging or petty theft. He must do honest work. There was no hope in anything else. If God were to be his helper, he must be honest, and work. To this conviction he had come.

But what was to be done with Andy while he was away trying to earn something? The child might get hurt in the street or wander off in his absence and never find his way back. The care he felt for the little one was pleasure compared to the thought of losing him.

As for Andy, the comfort of a good breakfast and the feeling that he had a home, mean as it was, and somebody to care for him, made his heart light and set his lips to music.

When before had the dreary walls of that poor hovel echoed to the happy voice of a light-hearted child? But there was another echo to the voice, and from walls as long a stranger to such sounds as these—the walls in the chambers of that poor man’s memory. A wellnigh lost and ruined soul was listening to the far-off voices of children. Sunny-haired little ones were thronging about him; he was looking into their tender eyes; their soft arms were clinging to his neck; he was holding them tightly clasped to his bosom.

“Baby,” he said. It was the word that came most naturally to his lips.

Andy, who was sitting where a few sunbeams came in through a rent in the wall, with the warm light on his head, turned and looked into the bleared but friendly eyes gazing at him so earnestly.

“I’m going out, baby. Will you stay here till I come back?”

“Yes,” answered the child, “I’ll stay.”

“I won’t be gone very long, and I’ll bring you an apple and something good for dinner.”

Andy’s face lit up and his eyes danced.

“Don’t go out until I come back. Somebody might carry you off, and then I couldn’t give you the nice red apple.”

“I’ll stay right here,” said Andy, in a positive tone.

“And won’t go into the street till I come back?”

“No, I won’t.” Andy knit his brows and closed his lips firmly.

“All right, little one,” answered the man, in a cheery sort of voice that was so strange to his own ears that it seemed like the voice of somebody else.

Still, he could not feel satisfied. He was living in the midst of thieves to whom the most insignificant thing upon which they could lay their hands was booty. Children who had learned to be hard and cruel thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel, that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child subjected to ill-treatment. He had always fastened the door on going out, but hesitated now about locking Andy in.

All things considered, it was safest, he felt, to lock the door. There was nothing in the room that could bring harm to the child—no fire or matches, no stairs to climb or windows out of which he could fall.

“I guess I’d better lock the door, hadn’t I, so that nobody can carry off my little boy?” he asked of Andy.

Andy made no objections. He was ready for anything his kind friend might propose.

“And you mustn’t cry or make a noise. The police might break in if you did.”

“All right,” said Andy, with the self-assertion of a boy of ten.

The man stroked the child’s head and ran his fingers through his hair in a fond way; then, as one who tore himself from an object of attraction, went hastily out and locked the door.

And now was to begin a new life. Friendless, debased, repulsive in appearance, everything about him denoting the abandoned drunkard, this man started forth to get honest bread. Where should he go? What could he do? Who would give employment to an object like him? The odds were fearfully against him—no, not that, either. In outward respects, fearful enough were the odds, but on the other side agencies invisible to mortal sight were organizing for his safety. In to his purpose to lead a new life and help a poor homeless child God’s strength was flowing. Angels were drawing near to a miserable wreck of humanity with hands outstretched to save. All heaven was coming to the rescue.

He was shuffling along in the direction of a market-house, hoping to earn a little by carrying home baskets, when he came face to face with an old friend of his better days, a man with whom he had once held close business relations.

“Mr. Hall!” exclaimed this man in a tone of sorrowful surprise, stopping and looking at him with an expression of deepest pity on his countenance. “This is dreadful!”

“You may well say that, Mr. Graham. It dreadful enough. No one knows that better than I do,” was answered, with a bitterness that his old friend felt to be genuine.

“Why, then, lead this terrible life a day longer?” asked the friend.

“I shall not lead it a day longer if God will help me,” was replied, with a genuineness of purpose that was felt by Mr. Graham.

“Give me your hand on that, Andrew Hall,” he exclaimed. Two hands closed in a tight grip.

“Where are you going now?” inquired the friend.

“I’m in search of something to do—something that will give me honest bread. Look at my hand.”

He held it up.

“It shakes, you see. I have not tasted liquor this morning. I could have bought it, but I did not.”

“Why?”

“I said, ‘God being my helper, I will be a man again,’ and I am trying.”

“Andrew Hall,” said his old friend, solemnly, as he laid his hand on his shoulder, “if you are really in earnest—if you do mean, in the help of God, to try—all will be well. But in his help alone is there any hope. Have you seen Mr. Paulding?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He has no faith in me. I have deceived him too often.”

“What ground of faith is there now?” asked Mr. Graham.