The School Friends: or, Nothing New

Sass Gange had not appeared at either of the stations.

Liverpool was at length reached. He looked about expecting to see Sass, but he was nowhere to be found. His own portmanteau was in the luggage-van, but the sailor’s bag was not with it.

Where to go he could not tell. His eye caught the name of a hotel. He took a cab and drove to it.

It was too late to change any notes that night; but he determined in the morning, as early as possible, to get rid of those evidences of his guilt. In the meantime, he went to bed utterly miserable.

Story 1-Chapter VII

Mr Padman became anxious when neither Emery nor Sass Gange returned at the expected time. On sending to the bank he found that no money had been paid in. He made inquiries if they had been seen, and learned that Emery had sent for his portmanteau in the morning. He at once despatched a messenger to Gange’s lodgings. Gange had left with his bag in the afternoon. Mr Padman immediately suspected the truth. He sent to the police, and to each of the railway stations. Lance’s master, Mr Gaisford, was his lawyer. He hurried to consult him as to what other steps it would be advisable to take. Lance was in the room receiving instructions about a draft, and not being told to withdraw, remained. With sincere grief he heard of Emery’s guilt.

“He comes from Elmerston, do you know him?” asked Mr Gaisford, turning to Lance.

“Yes,” said Lance, “he was a schoolfellow, and I saw him but a few days ago. I have also frequently seen the man who is supposed to have accompanied him.”

“If we can find out where they have gone to I will send you down with an officer and a warrant. It will save much trouble, and you will be able at once to identify them, and the sooner they are captured the less money they will have spent.”

The number of the cab happened to consist but of two figures; a fellow-lodger of Sass had remarked it, and heard him order the cabman to drive to Euston Square station. A clue was obtained in the course of a few hours, and a telegraph message sent to stop the fugitives. Before Emery had reached Liverpool, Lance and the officer, having warrants for his and Gange’s apprehension, were on their way.

The cunning old sailor, however, having obtained all the gold as his share, had quitted the train and gone off to Hull, leaving his unhappy dupe to follow his own devices. The Liverpool police being on the look-out for an old man and a young one allowed Emery to pass, though not altogether unnoticed; and when Lance and the London officer arrived, the latter, suspecting the true state of the case, inquired if a young man of Emery’s appearance had arrived alone. The hotel which he had driven to was at once discovered, and he was still in bed when the officer, followed by Lance, entered the room. He awoke as the door opened. As the officer, turning to Lance, asked, “Is that the man?” Emery gazed at Lance with a look of the most abject terror, unable to utter a word.

“Yes, I am sorry to say he is Emery Dulman,” said Lance, his voice choking with emotion.

The usual form of arrest was gone through. The officer examined his clothes, and found the pocket-book with the remainder of the stolen notes.

“Is this your doing, Lance?” asked Emery, at length making an effort to speak.

“No, it is not; I wish that I could have prevented you from committing the crime, and I am anxious, to serve you as far as I have the power,” answered Lance; “I advise you to confess everything, and to restore the money to your employer.”

The unhappy youth was allowed to dress, and while at breakfast told Lance everything that had occurred. Of Sass Gange he could say nothing, except that he believed he had entered a second-class carriage.

The wretched Emery, instead of enjoying the liberty and pleasure he had anticipated, as he sat waiting for the train, with his hands between his knees and his head bent down, looked the very picture of misery and despair.

“I have been befooled and deceived by every one – right and left!” he murmured, evidently wishing to throw blame on others rather than to condemn himself. “Mr Padman shouldn’t have given the money to me to carry to the bank, and he ought to have known what an old rascal that Sass Gange is. To think that the villain should have played me so scurvy a trick, and have gone off and left me in the lurch! Then to have lost so much money to these cheating card-sharpers. I expected only to meet gentlemen in a first-class carriage. I would punish them for robbing me if I could catch them – that I would, and they would deserve it! And now to have you, Lance, whom I looked upon as a friend, ferret me out and assist to hand me over to prison, and for what you can tell to the contrary, to the hangman’s noose, if the matter is proved against me. I wish that I was dead, that I do. If I had a pistol, I’d shoot myself, and get the affair settled at once!” he exclaimed, jumping up and dashing his fists against his forehead.

Lance did his utmost to calm the unhappy youth. “My poor Emery, Satan has duped you as he dupes all those who listen to his agents, or to the evil suggestions of their own wicked hearts. ‘All our hearts are deceitful, and desperately wicked above all things,’ the Bible tells us. Notwithstanding which, had you sought for strength from God’s Holy Spirit, you would assuredly have resisted the temptations thrown in your way. I have ever been your friend, and I wish to remain so. You remember the line in our Latin Grammar – ‘A true friend is tried in a doubtful matter.’ As a friend, I rejoice that through God’s mercy you have been arrested in the downward course you had commenced. It must have led to your utter destruction. Think what you would have become old Sass Gange as your counsellor and guide. You will have much that is painful to go through – from that you cannot escape; but thank our loving Father in heaven for it. Far better is it to suffer a light affliction here for a short season, than to be eternally cast out. Never – let me entreat you – again utter the impious threat of rushing into the presence of your Maker; but turn to Him with a penitent heart, seeking forgiveness for all your sins through the one only way He has appointed – faith in our crucified Saviour: and oh! believe me, He will not deny you, for He has promised to receive all who thus come to Him. He has said, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ Text upon text I might bring forward to prove God’s readiness to forgive the greatest of sinners. Trust Him. Throw yourself upon His mercy. Do not fear what man can do to you. Submit willingly to any punishment the just laws of our country may demand you should suffer. Not that imprisonment or any other punishment you may receive can atone for the sin you have committed in God’s sight – not if you were to refund every farthing of the sum you stole. As the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin, so through that precious blood alone can the slightest as well as the deepest shade of sin be washed away. I say this now, Emery, in case I should be prevented from speaking again to you on the subject. Reflect, too, on the condition in which you would have been placed had you committed this crime a few years ago, for then an ignominious death on the scaffold would have been your inevitable doom, and bless God that you will now be spared to prove the sincerity of your repentance in some new sphere of life.”

Happy would it be for criminals if they had, when placed as Emery Dulman now was, faithful friends like Lance Loughton to speak to them. Emery now and then, as Lance was addressing him, looked up, but again turned aside his head with an expression of scorn on his lips. Lance, however, was too true a Christian, and too sincerely desirous of benefiting his former acquaintance, to be defeated in his efforts to do so. Again and again he spoke to him so lovingly and gently that at length Emery burst into tears. “I wish that I had listened to you long ago, when you warned me of my folly, and it would not have come to this,” he exclaimed. “I will plead guilty at once, and throw myself on the mercy of my employer whom I have robbed.”

“I do not know whether he will be inclined to treat you mercifully. It may be considered necessary, as a warning to others, to punish you severely,” answered Lance. “But, my dear Emery, I am very sure that our Father in heaven, whom you have far more grievously offended, will, if you come to Him in His own appointed way, through faith in the Great Sacrifice, with sincere repentance, not only abundantly pardon you, but will inflict no punishment, because the punishment justly your due has been already borne by the Just and Holy One when He died on the Cross for sinners.”

The officer, looking at his watch, interrupted Lance by saying that it was time to start. Emery was conveyed to the station, and in a short time they were on their way back to London.

The officer made inquiries at the different stations, and at length discovered the one at which Gange had left the train. He sent to London for another officer to follow on his track.

Emery was conveyed to prison. He was tried, convicted, and sent to gaol for twelve months’ imprisonment. Old Sass, however, was too cunning to be caught, and got off to sea.

Lance obtained leave frequently to visit his unhappy schoolfellow, who, now left to his own reflections, listened to him attentively when with gentle words he impressed on him the truths he had hitherto derided. Before he left the prison Emery became thoroughly and deeply convinced that he was an utterly lost sinner, and that so he would have been, had he not been guilty of the crime for which he was suffering, or the countless others he had committed which his memory conjured up. Often had he cried, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner!” That prayer had been heard, and he now knew that God is merciful, and that He has given good proof of His mercy by sending Jesus, the pure and sinless One, to suffer on the cross for every one who will trust to that sufficient atonement which He thus made for sin.

“God as a Sovereign with free grace offers pardon to rebellious man,” said Lance. “He leaves us with loving gratitude to accept it, and if we reject His mercy, justly to suffer the consequence of that rejection, and to be cast out for ever from His presence.”

“I see it! – I understand! – I do accept His gracious offer, and from henceforth, and with the aid of His Holy Spirit, will seek to obey and serve Him,” said Emery. “And I feel thankful that all this has come upon me, for I might never otherwise have learned to know Him in whom I can now place all my trust and love.”

At the end of Emery’s term of imprisonment, with the help of Mr Gaisford, Lance was able to procure him a passage to Australia, where he had in the meantime learned that his father had obtained a situation of trust, and would be able to find employment for his son.

Lance went on as he had begun, and as soon as he was out of his articles his loving and faithful Maddie became his wife, his mother having the happiness of seeing him the partner of his former employer before she was called to her rest.

He heard frequently from Emery, who, ever thankful for the mercies shown him by his heavenly Father, continued with steady industry to labour in the humble situation he had obtained.

A decrepit beggar one day came to Lance’s door with a piteous tale of the miseries he had endured, and Lance, ever ready to relieve distress, visited him at the wretched lodging where a few days afterwards he lay dying. He there learned that the unhappy man was Sass Gange. Lance told him that he knew him. Sass inquired for Emery.

“I’m thankful I did not help to bring him to the gallows,” he murmured. “The way I tempted the lad has laid heavier on my conscience than anything I ever did, and I’ve done a good many things I don’t like to think about.”

Lance endeavoured to place the gospel before the old man, but his heart was hard, his mind dull. In a few days he died.

The End

Story 2-Chapter I.

STORY II – ALONE ON AN ISLAND

The Wolf, a letter-of-marque of twenty guns, commanded by Captain Deason, sailing from Liverpool, lay becalmed on the glass-like surface of the Pacific. The sun struck down with intense heat on the deck, compelling the crew to seek such shade as the bulwarks or sails afforded. Some were engaged in mending sails, twisting yarns, knotting, splicing, or in similar occupations; others sat in groups between the guns, talking together in low voices, or lay fast asleep out of sight in the shade. The officers listlessly paced the deck, or stood leaning over the bulwarks, casting their eyes round the horizon in the hopes of seeing signs of a coming breeze. Their countenances betrayed ill-humour and dissatisfaction; and if they spoke to each other, it was in gruff, surly tones. They had had a long course of ill luck, as they called it, having taken no prizes of value. The crew, too, had for some time exhibited a discontented and mutinous spirit, which Captain Deason, from his bad temper, was ill fitted to quell. While he vexed and insulted the officers, they bullied and tyrannised over the men. The crew, though often quarrelling among themselves, were united in the common hatred to their superiors, till that little floating world became a perfect pandemonium.

Among those who paced her deck, anxiously looking out for a breeze, was Humphry Gurton, a fine lad of fifteen, who had joined the Wolf as a midshipman. This was his first trip to sea. He had intended to enter the Navy, but just as he was about to do so his father, a merchant at Liverpool, failed, and, broken-hearted at his losses, soon afterwards died, leaving his wife and only son but scantily provided for.

Tenderly had that wife, though suffering herself from a fatal disease, watched over him in his sickness, and Humphry had often sat by his father’s bedside while his mother was reading from God’s Word, and listened as with tender earnestness she explained the simple plan of salvation to his father. She had shown him from the Bible that all men are by nature sinful, and incapable, by anything they can do, of making themselves fit to enter a pure and holy heaven, however respectable or excellent they may be in the sight of their fellow-men, and that the only way the best of human beings can come to God is by imitating the publican in the parable, and acknowledging themselves worthless, outcast sinners, and seeking to be reconciled to Him according to the one way He has appointed – through a living faith in the all-atoning sacrifice of His dear Son. Humphry had heard his father exclaim, “I believe that Jesus died for me; O Lord, help my unbelief! I have no merits of my own; I trust to Him, and Him alone.” He had witnessed the joy which had lighted up his mother’s countenance as she pressed his father’s hand, and bending down, whispered, “We shall be parted but for a short time; and, oh! may our loving Father grant that this our son may too be brought to love the Saviour, and join us when he is summoned to leave this world of pain and sorrow.”

Humphry had felt very sad; and though he had wept when his father’s eyes were closed in death, and his mother had pressed him – now the only being on earth for whom she desired to live – to her heart, yet the impression he had received had soon worn off.

In a few months after his father died, she too was taken from him, and Humphry was left an orphan.

The kind and pious minister, Mr Faithful, who frequently visited Mrs Gurton during the last weeks of her illness, had promised her to watch over her boy, but he had no legal power. Humphry’s guardian was a worldly man, and finding that there was but a very small sum for his support, was annoyed at the task imposed on him.

Humphry had expressed his wish to go to sea. A lad whose acquaintance he had lately made, Tom Matcham, was just about to join the Wolf, and, persuading him that they should meet with all sorts of adventures, offered to assist him in getting a berth on board her. Humphry’s guardian, to save himself trouble, was perfectly willing to agree to the proposed plan, and, without difficulty, arranged for his being received on board as a midshipman.

“We shall have a jovial life of it, depend upon that!” exclaimed Matcham when the matter was settled. “I intend to enjoy myself. The officers are rather wild blades, but that will suit me all the better.” Harry went to bid farewell to Mr Faithful.

“I pray that God will prosper and protect you, my lad,” he said. “I trust that your young companion is a right principled youth, who will assist you as you will be ready to help him, and that the captain and officers are Christian men.”

“I have not been long enough acquainted with Tom Matcham to know much about him,” answered Humphry. “I very much doubt that the captain and officers are the sort of people you describe. However, I daresay I shall get on very well with them.”

“My dear Humphry,” exclaimed Mr Faithful, “I am deeply grieved to hear that you can give no better account of your future associates. Those who willingly mix with worldly or evil-disposed persons are very sure to suffer. Our constant prayer is that we may be kept out of temptation, and we are mocking God if we willingly throw ourselves into it. I would urge you, if you are not satisfied with the character of those who are to be your companions for so many years, to give up the appointment while there is time. I would accompany you, and endeavour to get your agreement cancelled. It will be better to do so at any cost, rather than run the risk of becoming like them.”

“Oh, I daresay that they are not bad fellows after all!” exclaimed Humphry. “You know I need not do wrong, even though they do.”

The minister sighed. In vain he urged Humphry to consider the matter seriously.

“All I can do, then, my young friend, is to pray for you,” said Mr Faithful, as he wrung Harry’s hand, “and I beg you, as a parting gift, to accept these small books. One is a book above all price, of a size which you may keep in your pocket, and I trust that you will read it as you can make opportunities, even though others may attempt to interrupt you, or to persuade you to leave it neglected in your chest.”