Cast Adrift

“This,” was the firm but hastily spoken answer. “Last night as I sat in the gloom of my dreary hovel, feeling so wretched that I wished I could die, a little child came in—a poor, motherless, homeless wanderer, almost a baby—and crept down to my heart, and he is lying there still, Mr. Graham, soft, and warm and precious, a sweet burden to bear. I bought him a supper and a breakfast of bread and milk with the money, I had saved for drink, and now, both for his sake and mine, I am out seeking for work. I have locked him in, so that no one can harm or carry him away while I earn enough to buy him his dinner, and maybe something better to wear, poor little homeless thing!”

There was a genuine earnestness and pathos about the man that could not be mistaken.

“I think,” said Mr. Graham, his voice not quite steady, “that God brought us together this morning. I know Mr. Paulding. Let us go first to the mission, and have some talk with him. You must have a bath and better, and cleaner clothes before you are in a condition to get employment.”

The bath and a suit of partly-worn but good clean clothes were supplied at the mission house.

“Now come with me, and I will find you something to do,” said the old friend.

But Andrew Hall stood hesitating.

“The little child—I told him I’d come back soon. He’s locked up all alone, poor baby!”

He spoke with a quiver in his voice.

“Oh, true, true!” answered Mr. Graham; “the baby must be looked after;” and he explained to the missionary.

“I will go round with you and get the child,” said Mr. Paulding. “My wife will take care of him while you are away with Mr. Graham.”

They found little Andy sitting patiently on the floor. He did not know the friend who had given him a home and food and loving words, and looked at him half scared and doubting. But his voice made the child spring to his feet with a bound, and flushed his thin-face with the joy of a glad recognition.

Mrs. Paulding received him with a true motherly kindness, and soon a bath and clean clothing wrought as great a change in the child as they had done in the man.

“I want your help in saving him,” said Mr. Graham, aside, to the missionary. “He was once among our most respectable citizens, a good church-member, a good husband and father, a man of ability and large influence. Society lost much when it lost him. He is well worth saving, and we must do it if possible. God sent him this little child to touch his heart and flood it with old memories, and then he led me to come down here that I might meet and help him just when his good purposes made help needful and salvation possible. It is all of his loving care and wise providence of his tender mercy, which is over the poorest and weakest and most degraded of his children. Will you give him your special care?”

“It is the work I am here to do,” answered the missionary. “The Master came to seek and to save that which was lost, and I am his humble follower.”

“The child will have to be provided for,” said Mr. Graham. “It cannot, of course, be left with him. It needs a woman’s care.”

“It will not do to separate them,” returned the missionary. “As you remarked just now, God sent him this little child to touch his heart and lead him back from the wilderness in which he has strayed. His safety depends on the touch of that hand. So long as he feels its clasp and its pull, he will walk in the new way wherein God is setting his feet. No, no; the child must be left with him—at least for the present. We will take care of it while he is at work during the day, and at night it can sleep in his arms, a protecting angel.”

“What kind of a place does he live in?” asked Mr. Graham.

“A dog might dwell there in comfort, but not a man,” replied the missionary.

Mr. Graham gave him money: “Provide a decent room. If more is required, let me know.”

He then went away, taking Mr. Hall with him.

“You will find the little one here when you come back,” said Mr. Paulding as he saw the anxious, questioning look that was cast toward Andy.

Clothed and in his right mind, but in no condition for work, was Andrew Hall. Mr. Graham soon noticed, as he walked by his side, that he was in a very nervous condition.

“What had you for breakfast this morning” he asked, the right thought coming into his mind.

“Not much. Some bread and a dried sausage.”

“Oh dear! that will never do! You must have something more nutritious—a good beefsteak and a cup of coffee to steady your nerves. Come.”

And in a few minutes they were in an eating-house. When they came out, Hall was a different man. Mr. Graham then took him to his store and set him to work to arrange and file a number of letters and papers, which occupied him for several hours. He saw that he had a good dinner and at five o’clock gave him a couple of dollars for his day’s work, aid after many kind words of advice and assurance told him to come back in the morning, and he would find something else for him to do.

Swiftly as his feet would carry him, Andrew Hall made his way to the Briar street mission. He did not at first know the clean, handsome child that lifted his large brown eyes to his face as he came in, nor did the child know him until he spoke. Then a cry of pleasure broke from the baby’s lips, and he ran to the arms reached out to clasp him.

“We’ll go home now,” he said, as if anxious to regain possession of the child.

“Not back to Grubb’s court,” was answered by Mr. Paulding. “If you are going to be a new man, you must have a new and better home, and I’ve found one for you just a little way from here. It’s a nice clean room, and I’ll take you there. The rent is six dollars a month, but you can easily pay that when you get fairly to work.”

The room was in the second story of a small house, better kept than most of its neighbors, and contained a comfortable bed, with other needed furniture, scanty, but clean and good. It was to Mr. Hall like the chamber of a prince compared with what he had known for a long time; and as he looked around him and comprehended something of the blessed change that was coming over his life, tears filled his eyes.

“Bring Andy around in the morning,” said the missionary as he turned to go. “Mrs. Paulding will take good care of him.”

That night, after undressing the child and putting on him the clean night-gown which good Mrs. Paulding had not forgotten, he said,

“And now Andy will say his prayers.”

Andy looked at him with wide-open, questioning eyes. Mr. Hall saw that he was not understood.

“You know, ‘Now I lay me’?” he said.

“No, don’t know it,” replied Andy.

“‘Our Father,’ then?”

The child knit his brow. It was plain that he did not understand what his good friend meant.

“You’ve said your prayers?”

Andy shook his head in a bewildered way.

“Never said your prayers!” exclaimed Mr. Hall, in a voice so full of surprise and pain that Andy grew half frightened.

“Poor baby!” was said, pityingly, a moment after. Then the question, “Wouldn’t you like to say your prayers?” brought the quick answer, “Yes.”

“Kneel down, then, right here.” Andy knelt, looking up almost wonderingly into the face that bent over him.

“We have a good Father in heaven,” said Mr. Hall, with tender reverence in his tone, pointing upward as he spoke, “He loves us and takes care of us. He brought you to me, and told me to love you and take care of you for him, and I’m going to do it. Now, I want you to say a little prayer to this good and kind Father before you go to bed. Will you?”

“Yes, I will,” came the ready answer.

“Say it over after me. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’”

Andy repeated the words, his little hands clasped together, and followed through the verse which thousands of little children in thousands of Christian homes were saying at the very same hour.

There was a subdued expression on the child’s face as he rose from his knees; and when Mr. Hall lifted him from the floor to lay him in bed, he drew his arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.

How beautiful the child looked as he lay with shut eyes, the long brown lashes fringing his flushed cheeks, that seemed already to have gained a healthy roundness! The soft breath came through his parted lips, about which still lingered the smile of peace that rested there after his first prayer was said; his little hands lay upon his breast.

As Mr. Hall sat gazing at this picture there came a rap on his door. Then the missionary entered. Neither of the men spoke for some moments. Mr. Paulding comprehended the scene, and felt its sweet and holy influence.