Lost Gip, by Hesba Stretton │ Project Gutenberg

LOST GIP has been reprinted from

THE DAY OF REST.

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LOST GIP.

CHAPTER I.

GOING along one of the back streets of the East End of London on a sultry summer day is by no means a pleasant or refreshing walk. The middle of the street is narrow, and the kennels bordering the side pavements are usually choked up with refuse thrown out from the dwellings on either hand. Heaps of rotting fruit, potato-parings, and decaying cabbage-leaves lie about the causeways, to be eagerly turned over and over in search of a prize by half-famished children, whose only anxiety, during the summer months, is to satisfy, if possible, the hunger always gnawing at them.

There is no sweet scent in the air—no freshness; what scents there may be, are the very reverse of sweet. The sun smites down upon the closely built houses and dirty pavement and un-watered street, till fever seems to follow in the trail of the sultry days. At each end of such streets there generally stands a busy spirit-vault, which carries on a thriving trade; for the dry air makes every one athirst, and the door swings to and fro incessantly with the stream of men, women, and children passing in and out.

But at the back of these thoroughfares, there lie close alleys and courts, where the heat is still more unbearable. No current of air runs through them; and they are so shut out of sight that those who live in them feel no shame, and no fear of being seen by any one less wretched than themselves. There is a dead level of misery and degradation. The dirt becomes more loathsome, and the diseases bred by it more deadly. Half the children born in them die before they have lived out their twelve months of misery. Only those who are singularly strong, or are specially cared for by their mothers, live into the second year. Babies' funerals are so frequent they excite no notice, except that of the children who have survived the common fate, and who follow the little coffin to the end of their own alley, leaving it there, to be carried away into some dim region, of which they know nothing. As for the mothers, the greater portion of them seem to have lost their natural love for their little ones, and are glad to be rid of a care which would have made their lives a still heavier burden to them.

It was in one of these close, pent-up alleys that a boy was idling, one hot summer noonday, about the door of a small dwelling in the corner farthest from the street,—a poor house, like all the rest, with more panes of brown paper in its windows than of glass. The four rooms of it, two on each floor, were tenanted by as many families, with their lodgers. There seemed to be a little excitement within, and several women were bustling about, and could be seen through the open door going up and down the staircase. At that time of the day there were but few men about the yard; for most of them were costermongers, and were away at work. But the alley was tolerably well filled with almost naked children, playing noisily in the open gutter, or fighting with one another with still louder noise.

The boy joined none of them, but looked on with an absent and anxious face, from time to time peeping in through the open door, or listening intently to every sound in the room at the top of the crazy staircase. All at once he heard a feeble wailing cry; and the tears started into his eyes, why he did not know, but he brushed them off his face hastily, and kept his head turned away, lest anybody should see them.

"Sandy!" shouted a woman's voice from the stairhead. "Sandy, give us your jacket to wrap the baby in."

If it had been the depth of winter, he would have stripped off his ragged jacket willingly for the new baby. He had a passion for young helpless creatures, and he had nursed and tended two other babies before this one, and had seen them both fade away slowly, and die in this unwholesome air.

He did not care much for his mother; how could he, when he seldom saw her sober? But the babies were very precious to him; dearer even than the mongrel cur he had contrived to keep in secret for a long time, but which had been taken from him because he could not pay the duty. There was no duty upon babies;—Sandy remembered that joyfully. The police would take no inconvenient notice of this new little creature. He might carry it about with him, and play with it, and teach it all sorts of pretty tricks, with no danger of losing it.

"Is it a gel or a boy?" he asked eagerly from the woman, who hurried downstairs for his jacket.

"A little gel!" she answered. "A reg'lar little gipsy, with black eyes, and black hair all over its head."

"Let me have her as soon as you can," urged Sandy, rubbing his hands, and dancing upon the doorstep, to let off a little of his pleasurable excitement.

He stole round the costermonger's barrow, sat down on
one of the baskets, and then peeped at the new little face.

"You can have her d'reckly," said the woman; "it's as hot as an oven everywhere to-day."

In a few minutes a small bundle was handed out to him, wrapped in his old jacket; and he trod softly and cautiously downstairs, with it in his arms.

He was at a loss for some secluded corner, where he could look at his new treasure; for he did not wish to have all the brawling, shouting children in the alley crowding about him, as he knew they would be in an instant, if he sat down on the doorstep with that mysterious little bundle on his lap. A rapid glance showed him a costermonger's barrow reared on one end in a corner, with a basket or two on the ground. He stole round it, and sat down on one of the baskets; then, slowly opening the jacket, peeped at the new little face.

How was it that the tears dimmed his eyes again? The recollection of Tom and little Vic, lying now in their tiny coffins deep down in the ground, came back so vividly to him, that he could not see this baby for crying. He knew it was a bad thing to do, and he was angry with himself, and dreadfully afraid of any one finding it out, yet for a minute or two, he could not conquer it. But after rubbing his eyes diligently with the sleeve of the jacket, he found them clear enough to look carefully at his prize.

A thorough gipsy, no doubt of that. Eyes as black as coal, and the little head all covered with the blackest hair. She lay quite content in his arms, looking seriously up into his face, as if she could really see it, and wanted to make sure what sort of a brother he was going to be to her. Sandy puckered up his features into a broad smile, whistled to her softly, put his finger into her small mouth, and trotted her very gently on his knee.

The baby was "as good as gold;" she did not cry, and so betray their hiding-place. But her black solemn eyes never turned away from their gaze at Sandy's face.

"Oh! I wish there were somebody as could keep it alive for me!" thought Sandy, sorrowfully.

He had a vague notion that there was some one, somewhere, who could save the new-born baby from dying, as Tom and little Vic had died. In the streets he had seen numbers of rich babies, who did not want for anything, and whose cheeks were fat and rosy, not at all like the puny, wasted babies in the alley. But how it happened, whether it was simply because they were rich, or because there was somebody who could keep them alive, and cared more for them than for the poor, he could not tell. He had often watched them with longing eyes, and knew how pretty they looked in their blue or scarlet cloaks and white hoods, and he wished now with all his heart that he could find some one who would keep little Gipsy alive for him. He called the baby Gipsy to himself and others, and no one in the alley took any trouble to give her another name. What was the good of registering a baby that was sure to be dead in a short time?

Sandy's mother was up and about her business again in a few days. She earned her living, when she took the trouble to earn it, by going about as a costermonger, as most of her neighbours did. When she had enough strength of mind to save four or five shillings from the spirit-vault at the corner of the street, she would hire a barrow for a week, and lay in a stock of cheap fruit and vegetables, and Sandy would go with her to push it. But that was very occasionally; it was seldom that her strength of mind did not fail before the temptation of another and another dram.

Then Sandy was thrown upon his own resources, and gained a very scanty supply for his wants by selling fusees near the Mansion House, or any other crowded spot, where one in a thousand of the passers-by might see him, and by chance patronize him. Often, when there was no baby at home, he did not go there for weeks, but slept wherever he could find a shelter—in an empty cart, or under a tarpaulin; even without a shelter, if this could not be had.

If his mother came across him during these spells of wandering, the only proof of relationship she manifested was her demand for any and all of the halfpence he might have in his possession, and her diligent search among his rags for them. It was only when there was a baby that Sandy went home as regularly as the night fell, carrying with him a sticky finger of some cheap sweetmeat, which contained almost more of poison than of sugar.

Gip was left to his care even more than the other babies. By this time his mother had become too inveterate a drunkard to take much interest in her. Now and then she would bear her off in her arms to the spirit-vault, and come reeling back with her, to Sandy's great alarm. But in general she took no notice of Gipsy, and left the boy to tend her as well as he could. It was a good thing for the baby. Sandy carried her out of the foul air into the broader and opener streets, often lingering wistfully at a baker's window till he got a wholesome crust for her to nibble at.

His jacket continued to be almost the only clothing she had, and as the winter came on, he shivered with cold, till his benumbed arms could scarcely hold her. But that he bore without a murmur, for who was there to complain to? He had never known a friend to whom he could go and say, "I am hungry, and cold, and almost naked."

He had never heard that it had once been said, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

There was, however, this great and last difficulty in Sandy's case. If any one had clothed him, doing it in remembrance of their Lord, his mother would have immediately pawned the clothes, and spent the money in the spirit-vault.

CHAPTER II.

WHETHER Gip was naturally stronger than Tom and little Vic, or whether Sandy had learned by experience how to take better care of her, she outlived the first fatal twelve months, and bid fair to struggle through another year. It is true, she was pinched and stunted, her poor little arms were thin, and her face was sallow, with great black eyes in it, usually very solemn, but ready to twinkle merrily upon Sandy. She had been fed with more gin than milk: Sandy could only recollect twice or three times that she had had a draught of sky-blue milk given to her by a kindly woman, who now and then spared them a bit of bread.

But her teeth were coming, which would be a help to her, if he could find anything for them to eat; and he watched their growth with much delight, often nursing her as she cried and moaned all night long upon his knees, while the mother was unconscious in a drunken sleep. Gipsy was growing cunning, too, and caught quickly at the pretty tricks which the other babies had died too soon to learn.

Now that she held out a promise to live, he began to wonder how she would grow up, and what he should do with her when she was a big girl. Anything would be better than being like their mother! If he could only find some way of getting on himself, that he might help Gip when she was growing up!

Small chance was there for Sandy to get on. His cares and duties were increasing fast; and with them, the urgent need for earning more money in one way or another. Gip wanted more food; and before long, his old jacket, which she wore, would be falling into shreds, to say nothing of his own ragged and tattered condition. He made himself very troublesome about the Mansion House, and other places, by pursuing gentlemen, and beseeching them to buy a box of fusees. More than once he had been handed over to the police, who had given him a not unfriendly cuff on the ears, and bade him be off about his business.

What was his business but to provide for himself and Gip, and by one means or another snatch up enough food to keep them alive? Unfortunately, there was a second branch of business—to buy now and then some old thing in Rag Fair, without which he would not be allowed to wander about the streets, and would be compelled to remain at home and starve. Sandy was sometimes on the very verge of despair; but at the worst, times would mend a little. His mother, in her drunken forgetfulness, would let fall a sixpence, or once even a shilling; and Sandy's quick eyes would see it, and his quick fingers would seize it, like a fortune. Or one of the neighbours would give him a day's work at pushing a barrow, paying him sixpence for it, with some small potatoes or frost-bitten turnips into the bargain, at the end of the long day. Then Gip and he would make quite a feast.

"Where are I to go, Gip?" he asked one day, after the police had been more than usually hard upon him. "Where are I to go, and what are I to do? Go about your bis'ness, eh? Well! suppose I ain't got no bis'ness? And I ain't likely to have no bis'ness anywheres, as I can see. I don't know what you and me was born for. They'll begin to tell you to go about your bis'ness as soon as ever you can run in the streets."

Gip looked shrewdly back at him with her bright black eyes, as if she understood the difficulty, but could not help him out of it. She could talk a little by this time, and could manage to get down to the entrance of the alley, and watch for him coming home, till she saw him, and then toddle to meet him, with such tottering steps—for her thin little legs bent under her weight—that Sandy's heart would throb fast with the fear lest she should fall. Sometimes she did fall; and with a shout that made all who heard it turn to look at him, he would dash forward, and pick her up in his arms before she had time to scream.

Gip could trot, too, beside her mother, holding on by her tattered skirt, as the woman dragged her slipshod feet down to the nearest spirit-vault. She swore at the child sometimes, but more often she took her inside, and poured the last drop or two of her glass of gin down Gip's throat, when her grimaces and antics made all around her laugh loudly, as though the puny creature's excitement was a source of great mirth. Gip was learning the road to the spirit-vault readily, and would make her way there herself, when she was tired of playing in the gutter with the other children, and wanted to find her mother; for she was too heavy now for Sandy to carry her out with him, and she was too young to run by his side as he tried to sell fusees along the streets.

Sandy returned home one evening very low and down-hearted. It had been a rainy day, and nobody had stopped in their hurried tramp about their business to look at his damp fusee boxes. They were completely soaked, though he had done his best to keep them covered under his jacket. But then he was quite wet through himself, and the water was dripping from his thick, uncombed hair, and trickling coldly down his face and neck. Night had set in; yet still the rain fell in torrents, driven along the streets by a strong westerly wind. The light from the lamps glistened in pools of water lodging on the pavement, through which he splashed heedlessly with his bare feet. The pipes that drained the roofs leaked, and poured down in waterfalls upon him, as he hurried along, keeping close to the houses for as much shelter as they could give.

Gip could not be waiting and watching for him such a night as this; and it was very well she could not, for he had brought nothing for her—positively nothing—not even one of the stale buns which he begged for her sometimes. It was harder than anything else, worse than the rain, to think that perhaps she would be forced to go to sleep hungry—crying for food, while he had none to give her.

No; Gip was not at the corner. He looked closely into the doorway, where she often sat, as he passed, and felt his heart sink a little lower, as if he were disappointed not to find her there.

For once the alley was quiet and deserted; not a creature who had a home was out that night. Two or three of the windows twinkled dimly with the light of a candle in the room within, and so helped him to avoid the gutter, where the water was running as noisily as a brook. But the room where his mother lived was all blank and dark—not a gleam of light in it, either of fire or candle.

He lifted the latch, and went in, calling softly in the darkness, "Gip! Little Gip!"

Not a sound answered him; Gip's dear shrill voice was silent. Perhaps she was still with her mother in the spirit-vault. Or, perhaps, she was only keeping quiet in fun; for it was one of her pretty tricks to hide, and be as still as a mouse when he came in, while he pretended to search for her everywhere: in their empty cupboard, and under their mother's bed, and even up the chimney, as if Gip could be there! till she would break out suddenly into a burst of laughter, and run at him from her fancied hiding-place, where he had seen her all the time.

Sandy stole carefully across the dark room to the candle, which stood in the neck of a bottle on the chimney-piece, and tried to strike a light with some of his damp fusees. But they sputtered and glimmered only for an instant, leaving him in the darkness of the quiet and perhaps empty room.

But at length he succeeded in getting a match to burn long enough to light the candle. He could see at a glance everything in the small bare room. There was his mother's old flock bed on the floor; and there was his mother herself lying upon it in a dead sleep, her face swollen and red, and her ragged gown drawn over her; for long since the only blanket and old counterpane had gone to the pawnbroker's shop, and there was no chance of their being redeemed.

But was Gip there? Sandy could see plainly enough there was no little Gip under his mother's gown, or beside her on the bed. She was not there; she was not anywhere in the room. He stood motionless in his bewilderment; his eyes wandering round the bare walls, and his heart beating painfully. If little Gip was not at home, where could she be?

He could not bear his pain and dread long. He ran to his mother's side, and shook her roughly by the shoulder, shouting as loudly as he could in her ear.

But she was almost like one dead. It was hard work to awake her, and still harder to bring her to her senses. She lifted herself up in bed, and struck at him; but Sandy slipped out of her way.

Once again, at a safe distance, where he was quite out of reach, he shouted his question at her.

"Gip?" repeated his mother, in her thick, drunken voice, "Gip? I lost her; couldn't find her anywheres. She's somewhere."

That was all. Sandy's mother fell back again on the bed, and sank into her deep sleep.

CHAPTER III.

FOR a minute or two Sandy stood still again, bewildered and motionless, as at first, staring at the place where Gip ought to have been by her mother's side, and hardly able to believe that he should not see her white little face looking up suddenly from among the rags, and hear her cry,—

The wind and rain beat against the window, and soaked through the paper that covered most of the panes. Down in the alley there was an unusual stillness. All at once he fancied he could hear Gip crying and wailing in the storm, and could see her toddling with her naked feet on the wet stones, with her damp hair hanging over her little face. What a many streets there were in London, with so many turnings! and Gip was lost among them, wandering about alone in the rain and the wind and the darkness, trying to find Sandy, and crying for him to come and carry her home again. He felt as though his heart would break at the mere thought of it.

It was only for a minute or two that Sandy lingered, for there was no time to lose. Then he crept very cautiously towards his sleeping mother, and felt carefully in her pocket. No; she had not come home till every penny was spent; neither had he a penny in the world.

But he carried away with him his stock of fusees; for he had made up his mind during that minute or two, that as soon as he found little Gip, he would bear her off to some distant part of London, and go home no more to their drunken mother. He felt almost triumphant when this plan crossed his mind, in spite of his deep distress. Gip would soon be old enough now to run by his side, and when she was tired, he would carry her; and they would live together in any hole or corner. He knew several, where, if he put Gip next to the wall, and lay outside himself, perhaps she would not feel the rain and cold so very much. Some of the other fusee boys would help him when they were in luck, and he would help them in his turn. One thing he was resolved upon—he would never go back to his mother again, never!

He went slowly down into the quiet alley, still hoping he might hear Gip cry from some dark corner.

He called to her, at first softly, then more and more loudly, until some of the neighbours opened their doors or windows, and asked what was the matter, and why he was making that row?

"Mother's been and lost Gip," he answered, catching at the hope that perhaps she was safely lodged in one of their dwellings; "is there anybody as has seen her? It is a awful night, fit to drown the cats as are out of doors, and she's sich a little gel. Mother's dead drunk, and doesn't know a word about her. Hasn't anybody seen little Gip?"

The women chattered to one another across the narrow alley about Nancy Carroll and her drunkenness, but not one of them knew anything of Gip, except that she had been seen with her mother going down into the street a little before dark. One or two hinted that maybe she had been made away with as a trouble, and Sandy's blood ran chill at the mere thought of such a terrible thing.

"No, no!" he cried. "Nobody 'ud have the heart to do that; she's sich a pretty little gel. No, no! Mother 'ud never do sich a thing as that; she'd be good to her at times, she would, when she were herself; and little Gip wasn't never a trouble."

"Drink 'ill make Nancy Carroll do anything!" said a sharp-voiced woman, who prided herself upon not getting drunk oftener than once a week, and then upon a Sunday, when business was slack.

Sandy did not linger to discuss the dreadful question with her; he was only the more eager to be off, and prove the suspicion false, by finding Gip somewhere. Tucking up his stock-in-trade, by which he was to support Gip and himself, as securely as he could under his jacket, he turned away, and ran down the dark archway into the street.

But once there, which way was he to turn—to the right hand or the left? In the alley this perplexity had not troubled him, for there were not two directions where Gip could wander. There were spirit-vaults which his mother frequented at each end of the street. Every way there stretched around him a tangled network of streets, with lanes and alleys and courts crossing one another, extending for hundreds of miles. True, little Gip could not have wandered very far off as yet, for she was too small and weakly; but if Sandy chose one direction, perhaps she would be paddling away just in the opposite one, and every step he took would set them farther and farther apart.

First of all, he went to both of the spirit-vaults, which were crowded this wet night, and searched in every corner, asking the busy assistants behind the counters if they had seen a little girl all alone. But she was not there, and there was nothing else to guide him to her. Yet a choice had to be made, and trusting himself to his luck, Sandy set off running as fast as he could through the now deserted streets, peeping into every doorway with his quick, searching eyes, and shouting "Gip! Gip!" up every archway and passage where she might have found shelter, if she had had sense enough.

It was a miserable night, one that Sandy could never forget, if he lived to be a hundred years old. The rain came down pitilessly, and the gusts of wind tore past him, blowing open his tattered clothes, as to force a way for the cold rain to beat against his bare skin. But his dread for Gip made him almost unconscious of his own wretchedness and weariness and hunger. She had no shoes, had little Gip, or a bonnet, or a jacket; nothing but a worn-out cotton frock, which he had picked up very cheaply in Rag Fair; so cheap and worn that his mother had not found it worth while to sell it again.

To think of Gip out in this rain and wind was agony to him; and he could very well bear the smaller misery of being wet and chilled to the bone himself. Along the silent streets, over crossings, round corners, Sandy pressed on at the top of his speed, resting now and then to take breath on a doorstep for a short minute or so, until the eastern sky grew grey and the clouds overhead were no longer black, and the morning came, and all the great city woke up slowly; but yet he had not found Gip. She was lost still.

As the streets filled, he knew his chance of seeing or hearing her would be very small. But he could not give up the search. It seemed as if he could not live without little Gip. Why to lose her in this way would be a hundred times worse than to see her lying dead in her small coffin, like the other babies, and watch the lid nailed over her peaceful face, and follow her with quiet tears to the cemetery a long way off; where the ground swallowed them up, and there was an end of them! They would never be cold, or famished, or beaten any more. Why had not Gip died rather than this dreadful misfortune happen to her? He would never give up seeking for her until he found out whether she was living or dead.

CHAPTER IV.

FOUR days after this, Sandy was still seeking his lost Gip, but with a forlorn and despairing heart. Never until now had London seemed so big to him; never before had he felt how crowded it was with people, all strangers to him; many of them, as it appeared, enemies to him. He did not know a single friend among them. There were a few fusee boys who were good to him when they were in luck, but they did not altogether approve of Sandy's plan, that he should do nothing but search for Gip, whilst they worked to feed him. There had been some hard words already spoken to him about it; and Sandy could see close at hand that even these old comrades would forsake him.

It was Sunday afternoon; but that did not make much difference to him, except that the streets were clearer again, and there was a better chance of seeing Gip. It was quieter, too, with less rattle of wheels, and she could hear him if he shouted to her. The day was fine, and the low autumn sun was shining behind the smoke and the mist. Sandy had lost his eager step and searching look; and though to find Gip was still all he lived for, he was sauntering along with languid feet and an aching heart.

Sunday had had its pleasures, even for him, in former days. He had carried Gip often on to London Bridge, where the fresh air from the river had blown about them, and made her laugh many a time. He was on his way thither now; but by-and-by he saw a cluster of people gathered in an open space, and he quickened his footsteps, for always in a little crowd like this there would be some small figure about the size of Gip, which made him fancy for a moment that he had found her.

There was a chair in the centre of the knot set against a wall, and a young man stood upon it, speaking in a clear and very earnest voice. His face was pleasant, and his bright eyes seemed to single out every face among those around him.

"The child was lost!" he said,
just as Sandy came within hearing, and the
words drew him at once into the circle of listeners.

"The child was lost!" he said, just as Sandy came within hearing, and the words drew him at once into the circle of listeners. "The child was lost; only think of that! He was with them when they left the city in the morning; He had walked along the streets with them, talking to His mother and father. Then they lost sight of Him; but they thought, 'He is gone with some of our neighbours' children;' and they went on their way without feeling any trouble.

"But when the night came, and they were going to have supper at the inn, Mary would say to her husband, 'Have you seen Jesus?' She would say it quite calmly, never thinking that He was lost. 'Have you seen Jesus?'

"And most likely he would answer, 'No, but He is sure to be with the other children; I will go and call Him.'

"But He was not with the other children. Then they became frightened, and they went from one to another among their friends and relations, asking, 'Do you know where our son Jesus is? We have lost Him!'

"Everybody answered them, 'No: He was with us this morning when we left the city; but it is a long time since we saw Him.'

"It was night then, and they could not return to the city before the morning came. Do you think Mary slept that night? Do you suppose she could lie down peacefully, and close her eyes, and forget her great and sudden trouble? Oh, no! She would be wondering where her lost child was, where he was sleeping, and if he were hungry and homeless in the great city they had left, or perhaps wandering about in the fields and woods outside, with no place to lay His head. She watched for the morning, and at the very first glimmer of light she was on her feet, ready to run all the way back to the city.

"And all the way back they would ask every one they met, 'Have you seen our son Jesus of Nazareth?'

"Then Mary did her best to describe Him as exactly as she could; for she knew every look upon His face, and every tone of His voice. But very likely the clearest thing she could say, the thing most people would know Him best by, would be, 'He wears a little coat which I made myself, and it is all in one piece, without seam, woven from the top throughout.'

"Most folks see clothes plainer than faces. But she did not get any news of Jesus before they reached the city.

"They wandered up and down the streets, seeking everywhere for the child Jesus. They sought Him sorrowing, sorrowing. Think what it would be to lose your child, perhaps the only one you had, in this great city of London; never to know where it had wandered, or whose hands it had fallen into; by night not to know whether it was sleeping under any shelter, and by day not to know whether any one was giving it bread to eat."

"Why, that's like me and Gip!" cried Sandy, pushing through the circle to get closer to the speaker, and listening with all his might, lest he should miss a single word.

"At last," he continued, "Mary said suddenly, 'How foolish we are! When we were here with our boy, we went scarcely anywhere but to the Temple, and that was where Jesus always liked best to go. Let us look for Him there.'

"So they went up to the Temple, where Jesus loved most to go; and there they found Him! Try to think how all this sorrow was turned in a moment into great joy; and how, as they were going home to Nazareth with their child, their hearts would dance for very gladness, whenever their eyes fell upon Him.

"And now Jesus, who was a lost child then, is seeking us, who are all like lost children, wandering away from the house and home of God, our Father. You know you are a long way off from God; you have lost your way, and do not know how to get home to Him again. We are like foolish little children, who follow some show along the streets till they lose sight of the way back, and can only wander on and on, farther and farther away, till in time, if they are not found, they will forget all about their old home, or that they ever had one.

"Have you forgotten your home with God? Or do some of you wish and long to get back to Him? Well, God has sent Jesus to seek for you, and to show you the way back. He is seeking for you now, as Mary sought for Him sorrowing; and if He find you, all His sorrow will be turned into great joy. He will be satisfied for all the sore pain you have given Him.

"You cannot see Him, you cannot hear His voice; but He is here amongst us, close beside us. I am speaking for Him, because you can hear my voice, and see my face. And I say to every one of you, Jesus Christ is seeking you, is calling to you. Are you willing to be found? That is the question. He cannot force you to go home. Do you wish to have a home with God?

"Lost, are you? Yes, you are lost. Some of you in drunkenness, perhaps; some of you in thieving: all of you are lost in sin and misery. But I have this message for every one of you:

"You have only to speak to Him, to call to Him, as a lost child calls to its mother, and He will save you."

Sandy did not miss a word; though he could not understand them all, simple as they were. There was a hymn sung, and a short prayer uttered, and then the small congregation melted away, and Sandy strolled on to London Bridge. He turned aside then, into one of the abutments, and stood leaning over the parapet, as if he were watching the river beating and whirling against the great pillars below him. The water was flecked with light from the setting sun, but he saw neither the river nor the sky. His mind was full to bewilderment of new ideas. His brain was pondering over this story of a Child who had been once lost like Gip, but who was now seeking those who were lost. A person whom nobody could see, but who went up and down the streets always to take people home to God. Could not this Jesus help him to find little Gip?

"You was lost once yourself," he said, speaking half aloud without knowing it; "and you was found again all right. When you're goin' about lookin' for folks now, maybe you'll come across little Gip, and please to take care of her for me."

Sandy turned round quickly, and almost angrily, ashamed of having been overheard.

Behind him stood a boy of his own height, supported upon crutches, with a face as wan and pinched as little Gip's. But there was a pleasant smile in his eyes as he gazed straight into Sandy's face. His clothes were shabby, but warm, and he had a red woollen comforter round his neck, and worsted gloves on his hands. He seemed almost a gentleman to the ragged and barefoot boy, who was about to steal away, half shy and half angry, when the stranger stretched out his hand to stop him, and, in doing so, dropped one of his crutches. He would have fallen on the hard stone pavement, if Sandy had not caught him in his arms.

CHAPTER V.

"WE are to be friends, you see," said the lame boy, cheerfully, as Sandy set him to lean against the parapet, while he picked up the crutch. "I thought I should never catch you, though I have been following you as fast as ever I could all the way from the place where Mr. Mason was preaching. You liked his sermon, didn't you? I saw you listening as if you'd never heard anything like that before; and it's every word true, and more. I thought I'd like to ask you how you liked it; and when you turned in here, I caught up with you. Now would you mind telling me who it was you were speaking to, half aloud?"

The lame boy's voice was frank, and his face was lighted up with a friendly smile, such as Sandy had never met before. He could not shut up his heart against him. Besides, he had been longing to speak to some one about little Gip; somebody who would neither jeer at him nor be angry with him, as the other fusee boys were. Yet he felt shy still, and his brown face grew crimson, and his tongue stammered, as he once more leaned over the parapet, and gazed down at the eddying of the water under the arch, with his head turned away from the stranger.

"I were talkin' to Him as that gentleman spoke of," he said, in a very low tone, "Him as were lost Himself when He were a little child; lost in the streets, you know. The gentleman said now he were growed up. He do always walk up and down the streets lookin' fur folks as were lost. So I were arskin' Him to take care of my little Gip, if He come across her."

"Oh! she's my little gel!" cried Sandy, laying his head down on the stone coping, but doing his best to speak calmly. "Mother's little gel, you know; and mother got drunk last Tuesday, that night it rained cats and dogs, and lost Gip somewheres; and I've been lookin' for her ever since everywhere, pokin' into every corner as I can think on; and I begin to be afeard as Gip's dead!"

It had been hard work for Sandy to say all this; but when he came to the word dead, his voice was choked, and the sobs he had kept down broke out vehemently. He felt the strange boy's arm stealing round his neck; and so astonished was he, that his sobbing ceased, and he held his breath to listen to what he was saying.

"If little Gip is dead," he whispered, "she is gone to heaven, to be with the Lord Jesus, and she can never, never be hungry, or cold, or lost again. There are thousands and thousands of little children there, all good, and happy, and safe; and He loves them so! Nothing can ever hurt them again, because He is always taking care of them. If little Gip is dead, she must be with the Lord Jesus."

"I didn't know that," murmured Sandy. "I don't know nothin'. I don't know as my little Gip is dead. I'd rather have her than let Him have her. She were so fond of me; and I could make her happy, I could; and keep her safe. I never see Him as you speak of, or heard tell of Him afore now. Gip didn't know Him any more than me, and she'd be a deal happier with me; and wherever she is, she'll fret for Sandy, as used to give her peppermint and candy, and carry her to look at the pretty shops. If Lord Jesus finds her, He ought to give her up to me again; for it isn't Him as has nursed her, and took care of her ever since she were born."

Sandy's shyness had worn off whilst he spoke out his mind; and now he faced the lame boy with an expression of indignation, almost of angry defiance, at the thought that anybody had a greater claim to Gip, or could make her happier than he.

The stranger looked somewhat saddened and perplexed; but he kept his hand on Sandy's shoulder, to prevent him from running away from him.

"I wish you would come and talk to mother about it," he said, after a pause. "She's had three children that are dead, and she says they are happier than they could have been with her. If little Gip is not dead, mother will know what to do, and how to set about finding her, for she's the cleverest woman in all London; and I'll help you to search for her. I'm not strong enough to work; but when it is a fine day like this, I can get about on my crutches, and go farther than you'd think. I call them my wings. Yes, I'll search for little Gip, as well as you, if you'll come along with me, and tell mother."

Sandy hesitated a little. Compared with him, the lame boy was so grand that he scarcely dared go home with him; but there was the hope of getting advice and help in seeking Gip, and he could not lose any chance. He watched the stranger getting himself balanced on his crutches with a new and tender sense of pity, and the very feeling that he could so easily run away from him kept him closer at his side. He would have walked behind him, but the boy did not seem to understand that.

"Keep close to me," he said; "I want to talk to you. My name is John Shafto, and we live in the place I'm taking you to. Tell me what your name is, and where you live, while we are going along. See! I can get on with my wings as fast as you, unless you run."

He was keeping up with Sandy quite easily, his white face turned towards him full of eager interest and friendliness. Sandy had never seen a face or heard a voice like his.

"My name's Sandy Carroll, sir," he answered, pressing nearer to John Shafto, for all his reserve had melted away like frost in the sunshine, "and mother's called Nance Carroll. She's never anythink else but drunk. If she's sober a bit of a mornin', it don't last longer than she can get a few coppers. I was a-gettin' afeard little Gip 'ud take to it, for mother 'ud give her drops of gin and such like; but now she's lost, I don't know what 'll become of her. Maybe it 'ud be better for her to die, and go to that place you spoke of, only I don't see how she's to get in. If I'd known of it before, I'd have tried to get Tom and little Vic took in, but it's too late now. They're buried and done for, I s'pose."

He spoke very regretfully, for he had been fond of Tom and little Vic, though they were nothing to Gip, who had lived to learn the pretty tricks he could teach her. Yet he was grieved to think that perhaps he could have managed to get these babies taken into a good place, where they would never be hungry or cold again, if he had only known of it.

"If Tom and little Vic are dead," answered John Shafto, "they are gone to heaven. Every little child goes there when it dies."

It was not long before they reached the house, which lay at the back of a small chapel, and in a corner of a little square grave-yard, where the grass grew rank and dark over the mounds, in spite of the smoke and soot falling upon it from the chimneys around. There was no other dwelling in the yard, but the blank high walls of some workshops enclosed it. Nor was there any symptom of the turf having been dug up for years, and the head-stones of the graves were black with smoke. All was quiet, and dark, and gloomy the sun could hardly shine into it at midday, and now it was evening. But it was very peaceful and still, hushed away from the great turmoil and bustle of the city, though it lay in the very heart of it.

Sandy lowered his voice when they turned into the grave-yard, and crossed it by a path paved with flat stones, which bore the names of persons long since dead and forgotten.

At the back of this grave-yard, in a corner where a sharp eye might by chance see it from the street, stood a little low old-fashioned house of two storeys, if the upper floor could be called a storey, when it was not more than seven feet high in the pitch of the roof, with two dormer windows in the front. On the ground-floor there was a large shop window, with a very dingy hatchment in the centre, and above it a bunch of funeral plumes, brown with age. On one side of the hatchment hung a card, framed in black, with "Funerals performed!" on it. Whilst in the opposite pane was another card, displaying the words, "Pinking done here."

One of the three large panes had been broken, and a stiff placard was pasted over it, to keep out the wind and rain. The old house looked as if it were skulking in the corner of the grave-yard to hide its poverty and decay; keeping out of sight as much as it could, yet forced to show itself a little, that those who dwelt in it might have a chance of earning a scanty living.

John Shafto's crutches seemed to tap more loudly on these flat gravestones than on the common flags in the streets; and before he and Sandy reached the house, the shop door was opened from within. A rosy, cheerful, motherly-looking woman, with blue ribbons in her cap, stood in the doorway as they drew near to it. So strange and odd and out of place she seemed beside the broken window and gloomy hatchment, that even Sandy felt a strange sensation of surprise.

Her voice, too, when she said, "Johnny!" was cheerful, and as she kissed the lame boy fondly, Sandy stood by, staring at her with wide-open eyes.

"And who have you brought home with you, Johnny?" she asked, holding out her hand to Sandy, as if she did not see his poor rags and dirty skin.

He did not know what to make of it; but she took his hand in hers, and gave it a warm, hearty clasp.

"He's lost his little sister in the streets last Tuesday," said John Shafto; "and I've brought him home to ask you what we must do, mother. You'll be sure to think of something. Now then, Sandy, you come in and sit down, and tell mother all about it."

He led the way into the house, and Mrs. Shafto gave Sandy a friendly push to follow him before her.

Inside the shop, on the counter, lay a little coffin, about the size that would fit Gip; and Sandy paused for an instant to look into it, as if, perhaps, he might see Gip's dear face and tiny limbs lying for ever at rest in it. But it was empty. And keeping down a sob which rose in his throat, he passed on into a small kitchen behind the undertaker's shop.

CHAPTER VI.

IT was a very bright cosy little kitchen, with a clear fire burning in the grate, and not a single pinch of ashes on the hearth. The grate was an old-fashioned one, with well-brushed hobs, and two balls of steel on each side the fire, which glistened and sparkled like silver in the dancing flames. A polished brass warming pan hanging against the wall was bright enough to see one's face in. The floor was quarried with deep rich red tiles; and in a wide recess near the chimney stood a large cupboard, looking almost half the size of the room, and as if it promised plenty and to spare within it. In the warmest corner there was an easy-chair, with arms and back well padded, and covered with patchwork; and a pair of slippers lay on the warm hearth before it.

There was not much daylight; for the window opened upon a narrow passage between two of the high buildings which overshadowed the small grave-yard, and only a strip of sky could be seen beyond their tall roofs. But one did not miss the daylight whilst the fire burned so clearly, and Mrs. Shafto's beaming face smiled upon every one who came within sight of her. Her face was better than the sun, at least in John Shafto's eyes.

"No, Johnny, it's not time yet," she answered, placing a chair in the very front of the fire for Sandy, and bidding him put his cold bare feet on the shining fender. He dared not look her in the face yet; but he could not help watching her when she was not looking at him.

"First of all," she said, "we must have something to eat. Eating before talking is my rule, Johnny."

Sandy watched her with hungry eyes as she went to the cupboard, and cut two slices from a loaf, one large, thick, and substantial, the other thin and delicate, but both well spread with treacle. It took him quite by surprise to have the large slice given to himself, and the little one to John Shafto. This was treatment he could not understand, nor could he speak about it. All he could do was to sit still in blissful silence, feeling the glow of the pleasant fire through all his veins; and discovering how hungry he had been by the delight of devouring his substantial slice of bread.

"Now, then!" said Mrs. Shafto, when he had eaten the last crumb. She had seated herself in a low wooden rocking-chair, opposite to the easy-chair in the corner, and was looking at Sandy with kindly eyes, as if she had known him a long while, and was an old friend of his.

He felt as if he could tell her anything, and could never wish to hide a thing from her. With great eagerness, he told her all his story about little Gip. While John Shafto listened, nodding from time to time, as having heard most of it before.

Mrs. Shafto also shook her head now and then, and cried, "Well, well, poor fellow! poor little Gipsy!"

Until Sandy's heart grew warm, and almost happy, with her sympathy, before he ended all he had to say.

"Poor little Gip!" repeated Mrs. Shafto, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Have you looked for her in every place that she'd be likely to be, Sandy?"

"Ay!" said Johnny. "When Jesus was lost, you know, His mother began to think where He'd most likely go to, and she found Him in the Temple. Where do you think little Gip would go when she found herself lost?"

"She'd know of nowhere but the gin-shop," answered Sandy; "mother never took her nowhere else. There were two gin-shops where mother gets drunk, and I did go there."

Mrs. Shafto's face had a cloud upon it for a minute or two, and he heard her say as if to herself—"Poor little baby!"

"Mother's quite lost when she's in drink," continued Sandy, sadly; "it 'ud be no good to ask her if she rec'lects anythink. All she'd know is as she lost little Gip somewhere. I've not been nigh her again, for I can't bear to see her now she's been as bad as that. I didn't think as she could ever be as bad as that."

Sandy raised his eyes, which had been staring gloomily into the glowing embers, to look at her. Johnny had drawn his chair close up to hers, and laid his head down on her shoulder, and put his arm round her waist. What made him feel so, he could not tell, but all at once, he wished in the very bottom of his heart that he could love his mother like that; he wondered how she could be so very different from Mrs. Shafto.

"Perhaps," she went on, in the same soft, gentle tone, "little Gip found her way home the very next morning; I think it is very likely she did, and now she's watching for you, and fretting after you, and wondering where you are. What are you going to do, Sandy?"

He had started to his feet, and sprung to the door; but he stopped for a moment as she spoke to turn round, and answer, in breathless haste,—

"I'm goin' to run home," he said; "p'raps it's like what you say. Little Gip's there, p'raps. Oh! why didn't I think of that afore?"

"Stay one minute, Sandy," cried Mrs. Shafto, "while I put on my bonnet, and I'll go with you; and we'll bring Gip here, and all have tea together, if father isn't at home. Johnny 'ud love to see little Gip, wouldn't you Johnny?"

"I should love it dearly," he answered; "and I'll get tea ready whilst you're away. Be sure you come back, Sandy; I'm so sorry for you, I can't say how sorry. But perhaps some day your mother will become good, and be like my mother."

Across Sandy's mind there glanced a happy thought of his mother, with a bright, cheerful face, and wearing blue ribbons in her white cap, like Mrs. Shafto; and of a kitchen like this, with its clean floor, and comfortable chairs, and warm fire. But it all vanished away in an instant; and he fancied he could see her instead, with her red and swollen face, dressed in dirty rags, and lying in a drunken sleep upon the floor. That was his mother, and little Gip's!

It was not long before he was walking away at a brisk pace beside Mrs. Shafto, in the direction of the alley where little Gip had been born. Mrs. Shafto had a good deal to say to him as they paced along about himself and Gip. If they did not find her at home, she said, she would speak to her husband about it. He was a very learned man, and could give as good advice as anybody she knew; and perhaps, if he felt well enough, he would go with him to the police-stations, and make inquiries there about the missing child.

Sandy had never thought of going to the police, whom he looked upon as his and Gip's natural enemies, with no interest in them, except to cuff him and order him about his business when he was too pressing in trying to sell his fusees. He was very doubtful whether they would not cuff him if he went troubling them about little Gip; but Mrs. Shafto talked in so hopeful a strain that he felt his spirits rise as if he were sure of finding her when they reached the alley.

They did reach it at last: and Sandy rushed up the stairs, and tried to lift the latch of their old room. But the door was fast locked, and no shrill little voice answered him, when he called Gip through the keyhole, in the hope that her mother had left her there for safety. His spirits sank again. There was no key in the lock, so it must have been fastened from the outside. They descended the dirty, creaking staircase again, Mrs. Shafto keeping her skirts well from the wall; and Sandy knocked at the door of the neighbour who lived in the front room on the ground-floor.

"Come arskin' after your mother, eh?" he said. "Well! she's gone, and a good riddance, I say. She was always a tearin' and a stormin' up and down the alley, till there wasn't a moment's peace and quietness. All women is averse to peace and quiet; but I never see one like Nance Carroll for blusterousness. She were larfed at so about losin' her baby as she couldn't bear it, and she made off on Friday. The key's here, but there's nothink left in the room but the bed, and that goes to the landlord. Have I seen little Gip? No, no. She's at the bottom of the river long ago, I bet. Babies aren't lost like that, you know, if they haven't been made quiet. It were high time for your mother to make off, for the police were beginnin' to poke their noses up this alley; and arskin' some very ill-convenient questions."

"Do you think the poor little creature has been made away with?" enquired Mrs. Shafto, with a faltering voice.

The man winked, and nodded significantly; half smiling at her ignorance of human nature, as he closed the door in their faces.

Sandy sat down on the lowest step of the staircase, and hid his face in his hands, rocking, himself to and fro.

Mrs. Shafto stood by, in silence, for a minute or so; and then she laid her hand gently on his rough head.

"She's my mother, you know," whispered Sandy, hoarsely, "just like you're Johnny's mother; and I rec'lect her kissin' of me once when I were a little chap. I don't want to think she could kill little Gip!"

"No, no," answered Mrs. Shafto; "she never could, I'm sure. It's not in a mother's nature; and who should know how a mother feels better than me, when I've had four, and lost them all, save Johnny? Come home with me, Sandy; and we'll talk it over with Johnny and Mr. Shafto."

CHAPTER VII.

MRS. SHAFTO and Sandy were leaving the alley, disappointed and cast down, when a policeman, who seemed to be lying in wait for them, crossed the street, and laid his hand firmly on the lad's shoulder. Sandy writhed and struggled, but he could not set himself free from the strong grip. A knot of people, principally the inhabitants of the alley, gathered round quickly, and Mrs. Shafto's rosy face grew pale and frightened.

"What has the boy been doing?" she ventured to ask the policeman; for she was hemmed in by the crowd, and could not escape and start away home, as in the first moment of terror she wished to do.

"He's been doing nothing that I know of just now," answered the policeman; "but we want him at the station for a few minutes; and I must take care he doesn't give me the slip. Slippery as eels all this sort are."

"Can I go with him?" she asked again. "I'm very sorry for the boy; and my son Johnny will never rest till he knows what's become of him."

"Are you any relation of his?" enquired the man, looking inquisitively at her decent dress and her face, so different from the women who were crowding about them.

"No," she said: "I never saw him till about an hour ago, when Johnny brought him home to our house. But I came here with him to look for his mother and his little sister, who has been lost all the week; and now his mother is gone away, and not left word where he could find her. Poor boy!"

"Don't you know anything about your mother?" asked the policeman, tightening his hold upon Sandy's arm.

"I've never set eyes on her since last Tuesday night," answered Sandy, earnestly. "She'd been and lost my little Gip, and I swore I'd never go nigh her again till I'd found out Where Gip was. It's my little Gip I wants, not her."

"Know Gip!" repeated Sandy; but his voice failed him before he could say any more. Know Gip! Why! he knew every little black tangled curl on her head; every funny little look upon her face; every tone of her voice, whether laughing or crying. Know Gip! There was not anything else in the world he knew so well, not even hunger and cold; his own little Gip, whom he had nursed and tended from the very hour she was born!

"Come along with me, then," said the policeman, in a gruff, but not unkindly tone: "it's not far to the station, and maybe I can show you Gip."

There was no need to grasp Sandy firmly now; he would have followed the policeman faithfully to any spot in London. Mrs. Shafto could scarcely keep pace with them, so rapidly did they walk. She could not spare breath to utter a single word; and neither of the other two spoke. Sandy's heart was too full for speech; and the policeman closed his lips tightly, as if no power on earth, except his superintendent, could open them.

Mrs. Shafto was not quite sure she was doing what her husband would like; but she could not bear the idea of Johnny's deep disappointment if she lost sight of Sandy, and they never knew any more about him and lost Gip. Breathless and panting, she reached the entrance of the police station, just as Sandy was vanishing through an inner door.

She found Sandy already standing in front of a high desk, over which appeared the head of an inspector, who was rapidly asking him questions, as if eager to get through the business, about his mother: where she lived, how she got her living, how often she was drunk, how many children she had had, and what they had died from.

"Was she kind to you and Gip?" he enquired, with his sharp eyes fastened on the boy.

"Not partic'ler," answered Sandy; "she'd knuckle me in the streets, and search me for coppers if she thought I'd got any. She weren't partic'ler kind, you know."

"She'd swear at me and Gip when she were in drink," said Sandy, "and wish we was all dead and buried, but she weren't a partic'ler bad mother. I know them as has worse. If she hadn't lost little Gip, I'd not say a word again' her, sir. It was all drink as did it. Nobody couldn't be cruel to little Gip, such a good little thing she were, and so pretty."

Sandy hesitated and stammered. He could see Gip before his eyes now; but how could he tell what she was like? He had not any words in which he could describe her; and he had never thought of her in that way.

"She were pretty," he answered, pausing between each word, "very pretty and good; and she'd such funny ways. She were like nobody but Gip, sir."

"I don't know what I are like," replied Sandy, looking down at his rough big hands and feet; "I don't think Gip were a bit like me."

"She were three year old last summer," he said; "mother were sellin' ripe cherries the day afore Gip were born; that I'm sure of, sir."

But Sandy did not move when the policeman came forward. He caught hold of the edge of the desk, to save himself from falling, and looked round the room with wild, terrified eyes; eyes that saw nothing which was before them. Everything had faded from his sight, and he saw only little Gip's pretty face mocking at him on every side. What was it the inspector had said? Take him to see the body. He knew well enough what that meant. He was not so ignorant as not to know that all the young children who perished in the streets and alleys about his house did not die simply from illness and bad air and unwholesome food. Often he had heard whispers going about from mouth to mouth that such and such a child had been made away with. But now those words seemed to burn in his brain as if he had never known of such things. He had put away angrily such a thought about his mother and little Gip, when the neighbours had hinted at it. And now she was lying, somewhere close at hand, dead! Not only dead, but murdered! No one touched him, no one spoke to him. His terror-stricken face kept all around him silent for a minute or two.

"Sandy! Sandy!" cried Mrs. Shafto, being the first to speak, and putting her arm round him as she might have done to her own lame son, "my poor dear boy! Perhaps it isn't Gip, after all. Nobody knows that it's Gip. Come with me to look at her. And if it should be Gip, I'll tell you where her soul is gone. It 'ill be nothing but her poor little body here; but Gip 'ill be gone to heaven, where Jesus is. You know nothing about it yet; but I can tell you. Come and see, and then I'll tell you all about it."

"Ay! I'll go," said Sandy, catching her by the arm, and walking with unsteady steps, for he felt sick and giddy. "Take us to see if it's my little Gip."

They passed on without another word, following the policeman down a long narrow passage, to a room, the door of which was locked. Sandy heard the grating of the key as it turned in the wards, and the opening of the door; but he did not dare to lift up his eyes. He held back for a moment, turning away his head, and shrinking as if he could not cross the door-sill. At last he looked in. The policeman had lit one jet of gas just above a long, narrow table; and underneath the bright light lay a small still figure, about the size of Gip, with a covering thrown over it. The man quietly turned down the covering, and in a gentle tone called Sandy to come in, and look at the dead little face.

Mrs. Shafto led him across the floor, whispering that she could tell him where Gip was really gone to, and that she was happier than he could think. Sandy's eyes had grown so dim again that he could see nothing clearly. There was such a haze before them, that the tiny face and little quiet form all seemed in a mist. Mrs. Shafto could see it plainly,—the pinched, worn features, a child's face, with the suffering look of a woman's; but it was at rest now, and at peace, with all the trouble ended, and all the suffering ceased. Her tears fell fast; and she bent over the dead child, and kissed it tenderly.

That awoke Sandy, who stood beside her and it as if in some dreadful dream. He rubbed his bedimmed eyes, and looked closely, though shudderingly, at the little child.

"Why, it's not my Gip at all!" he cried. "She'd black hair, and she were like a gipsy, not a bit like this little gel. No; that isn't Gip!"

He could hardly keep himself from breaking out into laughter, and dancing about the bare, empty room in this sudden deliverance from his agony of dread. But a second glance at the dead face sobered him. What this child was, his little Gip might be somewhere—a terrible thought, which would haunt him all his life long, if he could not find her.

They returned to the inspector's office, for Sandy to declare that the child found was not his lost sister; and after being warned that the police would have an eye upon him, he was allowed to go away in the care of Mrs. Shafto, who had voluntarily given her address, and promised that she also would keep her eye upon the homeless lad.

CHAPTER VIII.

SANDY had no desire to slip away from the friendly guardianship of Mrs. Shafto. Her words had strengthened the new hope in his heart, that the grave was not the end of those children he had seen buried in it, and he wished to learn more about this strange and good news. He kept close beside her, though she seemed less inclined to talk to him than when they were going to look for his mother. She could not trust herself to speak, for her heart was full of the sad and terrible sight she had just left.

Mrs. Shafto was also a little anxious about Sandy, who followed her so closely, as closely as a stray and homeless dog might have done, and for whom she had undertaken a kind of responsibility. Though they were not as miserable and degraded as the people she had been seeing, they were very poor, she and her husband; so poor that, but for her own hard and incessant work as a needlewoman, they would often have to go without sufficient bread to eat.

What was she to do with this great, growing lad out of the streets, as wild and ignorant as a young savage; a thief very probably; with no spark of good in him, except his love for his little sister? She knew very well that her husband would grudge any help given to Sandy if it deprived him of the least comfort, or demanded of him any self-denial. But she could not endure the thought of thrusting him away, uncomforted and unhelped, into the open street, with no sort of home to find refuge in. She could not treat a dog so; and of how much more worth was this boy than a dog! Besides, it was Johnny who had found him first, and brought him home—her lame lad, who seemed to know so well what Christ would have him do, and how to tread gladly in his Lord's steps. She could not go back to the house, and tell him she had cast off Sandy, and left him in the great wilderness of London.

On went Mrs. Shafto, still sadly and in silence, across the square grave-yard, and through the gloomy shop, with its small coffin open on the counter—a coffin that would have just fitted the dead baby she had kissed. Sandy followed her, his bare feet making no sound upon the floor; but he stopped at the door of the kitchen, for there was a strange person there—not his new friend, Johnny Shafto.

This person was a tall lanky man, about forty-five years old, whose thin long legs were stretched quite across the hearth, as though no one else needed to sit by the fire. He was lolling in the comfortable padded chair in the best corner, his hands hanging idly from his wrists, and his arms from his shoulders, as if he never had done and never could do one hearty task of work. His face was narrow and gloomy, with straight hair falling over it; and his head drooped as if he found it too much trouble to hold it upright. He looked up lazily as Mrs. Shafto went in, and spoke to her with a fretful voice.

"What a time you've been," he said, "gadding about on a Sunday evening on other people's business, and I've been wanting my tea this half-hour. Nobody asked me to stay at the school; I suppose they think nothing of me for being an undertaker, without any business either. If I had a thriving trade, and kept a mourning coach or two, it would be a different thing. They never seem to remember that I'm a Shafto, and my grandfather was their minister in his time. If my father had done his duty by me, they would have been ready enough, every one of them, to invite me to tea. Where have you been to, Mary?"

She was hastily taking off her bonnet and shawl before getting the tea ready, and now both her face and voice quivered as she answered.

"I've been seeing a sad sight," she said; "Johnny will have told you about the poor boy that has lost his sister? Well, him and me have been to a police station—a place I was never in before, and we've seen a poor dear dead little creature, no bigger than my Mary when she was taken from me; a poor murdered baby, and I cannot get the sight out of my head."

"You've got such a poor head," said Mr. Shafto, "always running on other folks. I dare say you never thought of mentioning that your husband was an undertaker, and had a coffin he could sell cheaply, and would bury it as reasonably as anybody in London; now did you?"

"That's just what I say," he continued, triumphantly; "you never do remember things useful, when we've a child's coffin in stock. Why don't you shut that door?"

Mrs. Shafto stepped back to the doorway, and whispered to Sandy to sit down in the dark shop for a few minutes, till tea was ready. Then she shut him out of the bright little kitchen, and went softly up to her husband, speaking in a voice lower and unsteadier than usual.

"Dear John," she said, coaxingly, "it was our Johnny that brought yonder poor lad to our house. He's taken such a fancy to him, it would grieve him sorely if we turned our backs upon him. Maybe Johnny won't be spared to us much longer; and I could never forgive myself if I'd hurt him about anything. Besides, don't you remember, John—you that are such a scholar yourself, and your grandfather minister at the chapel—how the King says, when the Last Day is come, that He counts all we do for these poor creatures of His as if it were done to Him? It looks as if God had brought this boy and Johnny together, and we must not set ourselves against anything He does."

"He's in the shop, in the dark. I'd light the gas, and give him something to eat there, if you think he's not fit company for us. But it's not pleasant to eat among coffins and plumes. And, dear! dear! how ever shall we be fit company for angels? Though my Johnny 'ill be fit for them, I know; only I'm afraid I shall never be."

"But I want it to be your way too, my dear, fully and freely," she continued, patiently. "I want you to feel, when Sandy's eating our morsel of bread, that he's here in the place of the Lord Jesus. I'm sorry I never thought to say my husband was an undertaker, and would bury the baby reasonably. I know I'd have made it a pretty shroud, poor thing! But that's past and gone; and you must forgive me, John. Why, that's rhyme I've made, you hear. Ah! you're a great scholar, and I don't mind your laughing at me. I may call Sandy in, and put him in a corner where you needn't see him, if you like, for Johnny's sake, you know?"

"Well, he may come in," said Mr. Shafto, dropping his head down again, and stretching out his legs still farther across the warm hearth.

Mrs. Shafto opened the door quietly, and called Sandy in a whisper, placing a chair for him in a corner, as much as possible out of sight of her husband, who did not appear to take any notice of the boy. But he groaned aloud several times, causing Sandy to start nervously, for his mind had been over-strained, and his body was faint with excitement and fatigue. Mr. Shafto's groans seemed to betoken some new and dreadful calamity, and Sandy could scarcely keep himself from bursting into a vehement fit of crying.

But it was not long before tea was ready, and Mrs. Shafto went to the foot of a staircase, which wound like a corkscrew up to the two low rooms in the roof. She called "Johnny!"

And the next moment the tap, tap of a pair of crutches sounded on the floor; and John Shafto came down the crooked staircase slowly and laboriously, till he reached the last step, and his pale face and dazzling eyes peered in at them from the darkness. It was a radiant face, unlike any that Sandy had ever seen, with a happy smile upon it, as though he had learned some great secret, and could never more be overwhelmed by sorrow.

"Where is Sandy?" he asked, for his eyes could not see him in the sudden light. "Have you found little Gip, mother?"

"Not yet, Johnny," she answered, cheerfully; "there's Sandy. Go and sit by him, dear heart; and he'll tell you about what we've been doing."

John Shafto sat down by Sandy, with his hand through his arm, ready to listen eagerly to all he could tell him, asking him questions, and talking about little Gip in his low pleasant voice. Until Sandy felt that, even if little Gip were lost, he would have another friend who would love him, and whom he could love. They whispered together till bed-time, forming plans for seeking and finding poor lost Gip.

That night, after Mr. Shafto had gone to bed, Mrs. Shafto made up a place for Sandy to sleep on the kitchen hearth, with an old mattress and a brown moth-eaten velvet pall out of the shop, which had not been in use for years. It made so grand and magnificent a bed, that Sandy was almost afraid to lie down upon it, and could scarcely believe it was not all a dream.

Once when he awoke, before the fire had quite burned out, and saw the polished warming pan twinkling, and the steel balls glittering in the dim light, he sat up to rouse himself, and think where he could be. Then the remembrance of the lame boy's tender face and pleasant voice came back to him, and he went to sleep again with a strange sense of peace at the thought of the new friend he had found.

CHAPTER IX.

But when the morning came, and Mrs. Shafto went to rouse Sandy, and kindle the kitchen fire, what was her surprise and disappointment to find that he was gone! The mattress had been dragged into a corner, and the pall roughly folded up, and laid upon it, but there was no other trace of the guest who had been made so comfortable by her last night.

John looked exceedingly grave and troubled, though he did not put his anxiety into words. Only Mr. Shafto, when he came down to a late breakfast after the fire had burned up well, and the room was warm, displayed some triumph; and declared, with more energy than was usual to him, that the lad was a rogue and a thief, no doubt, and they would find he had not gone off without carrying some plunder with him. Nothing, however, was missing from the kitchen; and there was no plunder in the shop, except a few rusty plumes, and the hatchment, with its faded painting, in the window.

Yet it was a sad day for John Shafto and his mother, though Sandy was not proved to be a thief. Their hearts had warmed so to the desolate boy, and they had felt so keen a sympathy with him about little Gip that this desertion pained them to the quick. John Shafto, as he lay awake all the early part of the night, had pondered over every possible means of tracing the lost child; and had prayed to God, with intense earnestness, that she might be found. He had felt so comforted by these prayers and ponderings, that he had made haste to get up in the morning to talk to Sandy; and not only to talk, but to set off in search himself upon his crutches, as soon as he could learn anything by which he might know little Gip if he saw her. Now all this was over. Sandy was gone, without a word to his new friend. A great blank fell upon John Shafto, as though all his love had been thrown back upon him carelessly and ungratefully.

Very slowly the hours of that autumn day passed by. John Shafto limped along some of the back slums near his own home, gazing with fresh interest and attention at the starved and puny children playing about the doors and in the gutters. There had never seemed such swarms of them before, nor so much sadness in their lives. He saw them fighting with one another for a crust of mouldy bread or the rind of an orange: the strongest always gaining the victory over those younger or weaker. He heard little children, who could hardly speak, stammering out bad words, which had no meaning for them, but which showed what the sin was of those about them. Now and then a baby looked at him over the shoulder of a drunken mother, who was entering or leaving a gin-palace.

Because his heart was full of little Gip, he saw all these things as he had never seen them before. Two or three times he had called to a child moping alone, as if it were an entire stranger to the other children about it, but none of them had answered to the name of Gip. At length he went home, heartsick and very sorrowful.

Mrs. Shafto had been sewing away busily whilst Johnny was absent, fretted by her husband's persistent fears that Sandy had carried something off with him, and by his slow, lazy search through all the shelves and drawers which the boy might have rifled. Several times he fancied something was missing, and would not let her rest until she put down her work, and found what he was moaning over as gone. She was in very low spirits herself. It was so odd of the boy, she thought; he had seemed to cling so much to her last night. Could it be that he was afraid of her promise at the police station, that she would keep her eye upon him? Did he suppose she meant to make a sort of prisoner of him? If Sandy tried to keep out of their way, there was very little chance that either she or Johnny would come across him again. London was too wide a place for that.

It was growing quite dusk in the quiet grave-yard, and the tall head-stones looked taller and blacker than in the day-time; the gas was lit, though it was turned very low, in the gloomy shop, not for the chance of any customers coming to Mr. Shafto, but for the sake of the persons who employed his wife to sew for them. John was lingering about the grave-yard, hardly caring to carry his sad face into his mother's presence, and feeling that his father's fretful speeches would be too hard for him to bear, when a shrill, low whistle just behind him made him start as if he were frightened. It was still light enough for him to see Sandy, whose bare feet had made no sound at all upon the flagged pathway.

"Oh! Sandy! Sandy!" he cried. "How could you run away from us? I'm so glad you're come back."

"Why, I didn't run away," answered Sandy. "I crept away early this mornin', because I don't want nothink of you, but to come and see you at odd times. The master, he don't like me bein' here, he don't. So I crept away quiet; and one of my pals lent me arf-a-dozen of fusees, and I were in luck to-day, and sold 'em sharp, and bought some more; and now I've got fourpence halfpenny, besides a meat pie I've bought. Oh! I wish little Gip were here!"

He could not bear to think of little Gip's delight, if she could only see the meat pie, and go with him to spend the money, which was safely tied in a corner of his ragged pocket with a bit of string.

"Ah!" sighed Sandy. "But you'd never know her if you see her. I'd know her miles and miles away. I s'pose Jesus 'ud know her, wouldn't He? Or it's no use me arskin' Him to look out for her."

"To be sure He knows her," answered John, earnestly. "He knows us all by our names, and He's sure to know all the little children when He's so fond of them; every one of them, every one of them. Don't doubt that, Sandy. He's sure to take care of Gip. Don't you know that once He lived in heaven with His Father, but when He saw how lost and miserable we were, and how we should never, never find the way to heaven ourselves, He came down into the world, and lived like we do, and was always seeking those that were lost?"

"Sandy," continued John Shafto, his voice growing more and more earnest, "I don't think I could bear to live if I didn't know all that. Sometimes when I'm in great pain at nights till I can hardly keep from crying out—and I don't like to wake mother, she has to work so hard—I feel as if I heard Him speak to me. Sometimes He says, 'John, lovest thou me?' And I say, half aloud, 'Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.' Then He says, 'Bear this a little while, for my sake.' And I remember what pain He bore for me; and all my pain seems as nothing. Sandy, if you could hear Him say, 'I'm taking care of little Gip and if you love me, some day you shall have her again,' that would help you to bear it, wouldn't it?"

"'For the Son of man,' that's Himself, you know; 'the Son of man is come to save that which is lost. How think ye? if a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine, and go into the mountains, and seek that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety and nine that went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.'

"Not one of them, Sandy; not one of the hundreds and thousands of little children in London. He is looking after them all, every one; and He knows little Gip as well as you do. I thought of that when I saw such lots and lots of them, and I was afraid one might be little Gip, and me not know her.

"'Lord,' I said, 'Thou knowest her quite well. Take care of her for Sandy, and bring her back some day.'

"I will tell you the very words Jesus said Himself,"
replied John. "Listen!"

"Mr. Johnny," said Sandy, in a frightened voice, "you're not goin' to die, are you?"

"By-and-by, Sandy," he answered quietly; "the doctor says there's no hope for me, and mother and me have talked about it; and we are going to be as happy as we can till the time comes, and she's to wear her blue ribbons in her cap, because I like it so. It's harder for poor mother than me, because she'll have to wait, and now she has nobody but me."

"But you'll be put into a coffin," said Sandy, "and buried deep down in the ground."

"That's not much," replied John Shafto, "that's only my body; but I shall go to the other children. Mother says all this world is like one large room to God; and He is among us, like a mother is with her children when she sits at work in the same room with them, seeing all they do, and hearing all they say, but perhaps not seeming to take much notice of them. And to die is only like going into the next room, where we shall see Him and hear His voice, and be no longer like little children at play, but be more like His grown-up sons and daughters; and He will talk to us more, and teach us harder things than whilst we are so little. I shall be glad to be called into the next room for everything, save leaving mother."

"I don't know nothink about it," answered Sandy; "only we'd two babies as died, and were nailed up in coffins, and buried. Are they gone into that next room?"

"And if mother's killed little Gip—" began Sandy, but he could not finish the sentence.

"She's there, too," said John, "safe and happy; God's little girl, you know. Where else could little children go to, save to Him, straight to Him? But, Sandy, you don't think she's been killed?"

"Not quite," whispered Sandy; "but ever since I see that dead baby I've been scared."

There was no time to say any more, for Mrs. Shafto had opened the shop door, and was looking out anxiously across the dark grave-yard.

"Sandy's come back, mother!" shouted John joyously. "Make him come in. I want to talk to him about hundreds and hundreds of things he doesn't know. Make him stay all night again, mother. I'll go in and coax father to let him."

John disappeared; but he was not away long, and he returned to Sandy to urge him to go in. Mr. Shafto looked at him through the corners of his eyes, and muttered some words. But the other two made up for his grudging reception, and Sandy was not in a mood to take offence readily. It was too good fortune for him to sit in the clean cosy room, with John Shafto to talk to him, that he should throw it away for a trifle. He kept as far back as he could, and did not lift his voice above a whisper; but he felt happier than he had ever done in his life, except at a few rare times with little Gip.

CHAPTER X.

SANDY was off again by daybreak, before Mrs. Shafto could get down. But he had promised John the night before to return every evening until Gip was found. He had done his utmost to describe her to him, though he had not been very successful; except in giving him to understand that she had black eyes and black hair, curling all over her head. But the vague idea he had gained of another Person, who knew Gip as well as he did, and who was looking for her, had lifted the heaviest part of the burden from him. He had listened eagerly to all John Shafto and his mother had been able to tell him about the Lord Jesus Christ, who had lived a sorrowful life, and died a painful death for the sake of a lost world; and though there was very much that he could not understand, he began to feel that he was not left alone. The true and tender Friend, whom John Shafto knew to be always near to him, would surely take a little notice of the poor boy John Shafto was befriending!

It was rather earlier than it had been the night before when Sandy turned out of the street into the quiet grave-yard that evening. It was quite light enough for him to see at the first glance the tall lanky figure of Mr. Shafto, loitering along the smooth path of gravestones, in slipshod shoes trodden down at the heels. He called to Sandy, and pointed out to him an old smoke-stained tablet fixed against the wall of the chapel.

"No, sir, never a word," replied Sandy, putting his head on one side, and staring at the blackened stone, as if he could by staring make out the inscription upon it.

"That," said Mr. Shafto, "is my grandfather's tombstone, John Shafto, minister of this chapel. He was a very learned man; and large numbers of people flocked to hear him preach—rich people and grand people. He ought to have been rich himself; but he left nothing more to his children than yonder poor tumble-down hovel. He never thought that his great-grandson would make a friend of a boy out of the streets."

"I'm very sorry, sir," remarked Sandy, as Mr. Shafto paused in his speech. "I s'pose, sir, you took to buryin' folks because it were so handy bein' near the buryin' ground?"

"There was nothing else to take to," said Mr. Shafto, in a slow, dreamy manner, as if he forgot he was speaking to Sandy; "I had the hatchment on hand, and every one told me I had such a solemn manner at a funeral. But the city grave-yards were closed immediately after, and now the family vaults even are not opened. Nothing has come of it. But boy," he continued, in a voice less languid, "I don't consider you a fit companion for my son; and I can't allow it. You must not get into the habit of coming here every night, as if it was your home."

Mr. Shafto had come to this conclusion during the day, and had resolved to put a stop to the thing. A boy picked up out of the scum of the street to be the chosen friend of Johnny Shafto! That could not be. Sandy listened in dismay, but he had no idea of rebelling against Mr. Shafto's orders. He knew himself to be quite unfit for such a place, and such friends; and he was not in the least surprised to hear that he must not think of it as his home. There were disappointment and regret in his heart, but no bitterness, as he heard Mr. Shafto's speech. But here was a chance of asking a question or two that had puzzled him during the day, whenever he thought of what John and his mother had tried to teach him. He drew a little nearer to Mr. Shafto, and spoke in a low, mysterious voice.

"You don't b'lieve the same as them others?" he said, pointing over his shoulder to the house.

"As He's everywhere, hearkenin' to us, and watchin' of us," whispered Sandy: "God, you know? I didn't think as it were true, only Mr. Johnny were so sure of it."

"Of course it's true," answered Mr. Shafto; "I believe it as surely as my son does."

"I didn't think as you did," pursued Sandy. "If I b'lieved of it, it 'ud make a difference to me, it would. I couldn't go on doin' as I'm used to do. I don't see how folks can b'lieve in it; they goes on doin' jest the same as if it weren't true. Does God know as you don't like me to have a bite of bread, and sleepin' on your floor?"

Mr. Shafto was not ready with an answer. He looked at his grandfather's tablet, and from that to Sandy's brown, weather-beaten face, alive with earnest feeling; but neither of them helped him to any words.

"You don't think, do you," went on Sandy, "as Lord Jesus Christ 'ud do all they say He'll do for a poor boy in the streets, without shoes to his feet or a cap to his head? Or as He'll look for a ragged little gel like Gip, and take care on her for me? Oh! no. You don't b'lieve that; and maybe it's not true. You know lots more than they do; I heard Mr. Johnny's mother say so."

Sandy spoke earnestly and sadly, with no look or tone as if he intended to give him any offence; he was only putting into words the difficulties that had come to his mind during the day.

A strange, new sense of shame smote the conscience of Mr. Shafto. All his life long he had professed to believe that God was everywhere, taking note of all that was said and done by every human being. He had professed also to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ had died for all, making no difference between rich and poor, learned and ignorant. Yet now, when this poor, untaught boy stood before his face, demanding of him if he really believed these things, he dared not say that he did.

"If it ain't true," continued Sandy, very sorrowfully, "there's nobody taking care of little Gip. I could get along somehow for myself, but I don't see what's to become of her. I were beginnin' to be glad again, I were; but now, if it's not true, Gip's lost, and mother's lost, and there's nobody to care a straw about it. I wish I'd never heard tell of such a thing!"

No answer yet from Mr. Shafto. If it was true that God was beside him, what a miserable fool he had been all his life! If God had been hearing, day after day, his fretful murmurings and his conceited boasting about his grandfather; if He had been watching all his idleness and selfishness, what a wretched, sinful man he had been! If Jesus Christ, the Saviour, who had laid down His life for him, knew how he had spent his own life, wasting it, and casting away all the golden opportunities of being good and doing good, why, then he was as much lost as poor little Gip or Sandy's drunken mother. There was as much need for the Lord to come seeking him, in long-suffering patience, as ever there had been for Him of old to seek and save the publican and sinner.

As for Sandy, his heart was very heavy again. The strange good news told to him by John and Mrs. Shafto had all turned out untrue. Nobody else believed these things. Even Mr. Shafto, living in the same house, and hearing all about it, did not believe it; that was very plain. Yet to turn away from this new hope and this new love, just dawning before him, would make the old life he must go back to a hundred-fold darker and sadder than it had seemed before. There was no unseen Friend seeking him and little Gip; no home for them to go to after death. The grave was the end of all; and even those who were rich or learned had nothing left to them when they died, but gravestones, growing black with time and the smoke of the busy city.

Sandy stole away silently, and without speaking again to Mr. Shafto, whose head had dropped down, and whose eyes had closed, not now in sheer laziness, but in something like shame and repentance.

The boy was at no loss for a shelter to-night; for one of his comrades had urged him to share an empty sugar-cask he knew of, where, lying close together, they might keep one another tolerably warm. It was not that he cared about; but it was the thought of little Gip, with no one now to care for her, except himself, and the loss of his new friend, John Shafto.

When Mr. Shafto roused himself from his reverie, and found that Sandy had disappeared, his first feeling was one of relief. The boy's questions had stung him too keenly for him not to be almost glad to be rid of him. But as the evening passed away, and he did not return to the house, and John Shafto wondered what had prevented his keeping his promise, Mr. Shafto began to listen eagerly for a low tap at the door, and was ready to fetch the boy in and make him welcome to his fireside. But no Sandy came; and at a late hour the shop door was locked, and John went upstairs to his little room, with a sad face and a sadder heart.

CHAPTER XI.

MR. SHAFTO could not sleep that night. Generally his sleep was sound and long, lasting far into the morning, after his wife had been up for an hour or two, and was busy with her sewing. But to-night he heard the clock strike again and again; yet his brain would not rest. Neither would his conscience, for it kept filling his brain with accusing and tormenting thoughts. He saw himself as he had never done before, worthless, indolent, and selfish; depending for the very bread that kept him alive upon the woman whom he had once professed to love.

The memory of his children came back to him; how unloving he had been to them; how peevish when they were noisy; how indifferent when they were ill; and how he had been almost glad to know they would need no more provision made for them, save a coffin and a grave. All Johnny's life seemed to pass before him, so full of pain, and empty of all boyish pleasures; but full also of love, and patience, and quiet trust in God, and empty of selfishness and repining, as if he had been sent into the world to be a complete contrast to his father.

Then the thought of Sandy came to reproach him; a lad picked out of the gutter, who knew not a word about God and the love of Christ; yet this boy had a love in him deeper than all his ignorance and wretchedness, which proved him to be a truer child of the Heavenly Father than he was with all his learning. How could he sleep When he did not know where Sandy was sheltering; when a small still voice was saying to him, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to him, ye did it not to Me"?

He could scarcely wait for the fire to be kindled the next morning, but was downstairs before John and Mrs. Shafto had begun their breakfast. He felt awkward, and his face grew red, as John made haste to quit his easy-chair, in the warmest corner; the chair that had been kept for him ever since John could remember.

He took a seat by the table, on a hard, straight-backed chair, such as his wife was used to sit upon. There was an embarrassing silence among them, which was broken by Mrs. Shafto, who spoke in a forced tone.

He liked her to call him Mr. Shafto; it sounded more respectful; but he wished she had said John to him just then.

"Are you ready for your breakfast?" she asked. "Shall I do a little rasher of bacon for you?"

He saw the next moment that it was dry bread she was eating, though Johnny had a little butter upon his. He took a crust of bread, and ate it; every morsel threatening to choke him. He had never troubled himself to ask what sort of a meal his wife and boy had, an hour or two before he took his own comfortable and tasty breakfast, at which he had so often grumbled. He could not look much about him, for he was afraid of meeting the eyes of either of them; and all the three were very quiet, scarcely speaking a word to one another.

"Mary," he said, as soon as breakfast was over, "I think, as there is nothing for me to do, I'll go and see if I can find Sandy, and look about a bit for little Gip."

Mrs. Shafto could not believe she had heard him aright. It was so long since he had cared to go out into the streets, except on a Sunday, when he had his black suit on, and went to chapel, that she felt sure she was mistaking what he said. She stood at the table, with his empty cup in her hand, gazing at him in bewilderment; and as he happened to look up, once more his face grew red.

"I have been thinking of Sandy all night," he said; "and as there's nothing for me to do at home, I'll go and see if I can meet with the boy about the Mansion House or one of the stations. Don't soil your hands with my boots, Mary; I'll brush them myself."

Again Mrs. Shafto could not trust her own ears. She had cleaned her husband's boots for him every day ever since they were married, even when her work was very pressing; and he had never offered to brush them before. Now she saw him carry them away into the little scullery behind the kitchen, and presently he returned with them on his feet. He held himself more upright than usual, and there was a light in his eyes, as if they really saw what was lying before them.

"You're sure there's nothing amiss with you, Mr. Shafto?" she said again, with more anxiety than before.

"Nothing that you can set right," he answered; "but, please God, it will come right by-and-by. Good morning, my dear; don't expect me to dinner. Good-bye, Johnny."

They followed him to the shop door, and watched him crossing the grave-yard with a firmer and brisker step than John Shafto could ever remember in his father. But Mr. Shafto felt almost dazed when he turned into the bustling, working-day streets. He had remained so long indolently at home, except on a Sunday, that it was altogether a new thing to be pushed and jostled about as he threaded his way slowly along the crowded pavement. More than once he felt that he must give up his purpose, and go back to his quiet corner and his easy arm-chair, where he could stretch his tired legs across the hearth, and be warm and comfortable. The noise and hurry wearied him; and his head ached with the constant rattle and roll of wheels along the streets. What he was doing would be of no benefit to himself, or to any one belonging to him. A strong temptation came over him to return. What was Sandy, or what was little GIP to him, after all?

"What were you to Christ?" asked the still small voice that haunted him. "What were you to Him, that He should seek after you? Was it any benefit to Him that you should be found and brought back to God? Did He leave nothing, give up nothing, to save you? Was all the world pleasant and smooth to Him whilst He sought you? Go home to your own ease and comfort, if you will; but do not think He will own you as one of His. Remember what He said, 'Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord! Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.'"

Mr. Shafto plodded on through the noisy and dirty streets, in spite of his weary limbs and aching head. He pursued his way resolutely amid the throngs of people and conveyances, looking carefully through his short-sighted, dim eyes at every boy who was selling fusees, and asking one now and then if he knew anything of Sandy Carroll. None of them knew Sandy Carroll, though, if he had enquired for "Carrots," many could have given him the information he wanted. There seemed to him a vast army of fusee boys and newspaper boys, who quickly caught his eye turned upon them, and pursued him instantly as a possible customer. He felt badgered and worried, but he would not give up his search.

He turned at last towards the neighbourhood where Sandy had lived, and wound his way in and out among the back slums and alleys, asking many a question of the terrible-looking women dawdling about them. There was something in his solemn face and voice which impressed them, as if they thought him some important personage going about in disguise, and they were mostly eager to tell him all they knew and suspected of Nancy Carroll. There was not very much doubt among them that she had made away with Gipsy, perhaps in a drunken fit, scarcely knowing what she was about. But she had quite disappeared from her old haunts, and Sandy had not been seen since Sunday evening.

The policeman on that beat knew nothing more than the neighbours; for since Sandy had positively sworn that the murdered child was not his sister, the enquiry after his mother had ceased. "There was no chance," he said, "of finding the missing child now that more than a week had passed by with no news of her. She was dead, without doubt, by this time, whether she was murdered or no."

It was quite late in the afternoon when Mr. Shafto reached home again, so worn-out with his unusual exertions that he could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Heart sore, as well as foot sore, he was. He had seen strange sights that day—women lying drunk upon the pavement, unable to reach their own miserable homes, and hide there; children shivering with cold, and starved almost to skeletons. Once when he had sat down on a doorstep, too weary to go farther without resting a few minutes, a child had called to him through a broken cellar window, begging for a morsel of bread. He had made a pilgrimage through some of the dreariest places in the great city; and he went home forgetting himself in the thought of the sin and misery seething about him.

He was very quiet as he sat in his arm-chair, watching Mrs. Shafto get ready the tea. Both she and John guessed he had no good news about Sandy; and they did not venture to ask him where he had been looking for him, lest he should answer in a vexed and angry manner. But he did not stretch out his tired legs so as to take up all the hearth; and he smiled faintly, as if it were a difficult thing to smile, at his wife's attention to him.

John Shafto had heard a slight, very slight sound about the shop window, as if a dog were prowling round it. But, until his father spoke, he had not liked to move, lest it should disturb him. Now he drew his crutches to him with readiness, and started off to see what this unusual noise might mean.

He returned in a few minutes, his face glowing with pleasure, but with a little hesitation in his manner. Mr. Shafto had just begun his tea; but he put down his knife and fork, as though he would not listen to John's intelligence whilst he was eating. His wife could not understand what this change might mean.

"But he must come in!" exclaimed Mr. Shafto, eagerly. "Mary, my love, do you go and make him come in. Perhaps he would give me the slip if I went, and I could never catch him if he took to running. We must have him in."

Mrs. Shafto had not waited to hear all he said, but was already at the shop door, with her hand on Sandy's arm, urging him to come inside, and not listening to any objection from the boy. Not that he wished to make any objection, for he had been longing to have a look at John Shafto and a word with him all day. He followed her with timid steps and hanging head into the kitchen, where Mr. Shafto was sitting.

"Come up to the fire, my boy," said Mr. Shafto, cordially; "there's plenty of room for us all. And, Mary, pour him out a cup of hot tea to warm him. He's welcome to it. Johnny, sit down to the table, and let us all be comfortable together."

Sandy hardly knew what to do; but at a quiet sign from Mrs. Shafto, he sat down on a stool near the fire, and took a large cupful of tea from her, without a word. All this was quite different from what he had expected when he had stolen across the grave-yard, and scratched against the window, and whined like a dog, in the hope that John Shafto would come out; ready, if Mr. Shafto appeared, to hide behind one of the tall head-stones. It was so different, too, from hanging about the bakers' shop windows till they were closed, and then going to sleep in a cask. So different! He wished it could only last.

"Sandy," said Mr. Shafto, when tea was over, "I've been searching for you all day to tell you that it is all true what my Mary and Johnny believe. It is true that God sees and hears all, and that He loves you as much as He loves the Queen upon her throne. It is true that the Lord Jesus Christ is seeking to save you, and your mother, and little Gip, as much as if you were as rich and learned as anybody in London. He's been seeking me many and many a long year, but I've been keeping back from Him; I did not want Him to find me out in my selfishness and idleness. But He has found me to-day, and shown me what I am; and I believe He sent you here to help me to find myself out. It is not much that we can do for you, at any rate, till I can get some work; but what we have, we will give to you; and please God, Sandy, we'll help you to find both Christ and little Gip."

Mrs. Shafto was wiping away her tears quietly; and John pressed close to his father's side, and slipped his thin hand into his. It was one of the happiest evenings they had ever known, whilst they discussed ways and means of how Sandy could be clothed, and taught, and put into some way of getting his living, less uncertain than selling fusees.

"Mary, my love," said Mr. Shafto, as bed-time drew near, "would it do for Sandy's mattress to go into Johnny's room, beside his bed? For we are not going to let him live in the streets again. I'll come upstairs with you, and see what can be done."

That night Sandy slept in a corner between John's bed and the wall, where the low roof slanted over him. If John lay awake in the night, he would never again feel lonely; and if Sandy roused up out of his sound slumbers, he would know that John was close beside him. Both the boys were filled with delight at this arrangement; but it was John who, during the sleepless and painful hours of the night, thanked God again and again for having given him Sandy for a companion and friend.

CHAPTER XII.

BUT Mr. Shafto found it no easy task to shake off the chains of idleness and selfishness which he had allowed himself to be bound by so many years. One effort and one day's labour did not set him free; the habits of his life were too strong for that. Besides, he had no real business to turn to. He had taken up with the undertaker's trade out of sheer idleness; and since the grave-yard had been closed, and no funerals permitted in it, all his chance of employment in that way had gone. This he had not cared about, so long as his wife's industry had supplied him with his own comforts. The little house they lived in belonged to turn having come to him from his grandfather, the minister, whose smoky tablet still remained on the chapel wall. It was not much, he had often said in his heart, for his wife to earn the mere food and clothing.

So now there was positively no work he could do. He sauntered about looking for Gip a little; but there was no hope of success to encourage him. After he had been to a few police-stations and workhouses with Sandy, it seemed nothing but a waste of time to go on strolling about the streets enquiring after a child who had been lost so long. Even Sandy began to feel this, though he could not bring himself to give up the hope of finding her somewhere and somehow. Whenever he caught sight of a tiny ragged girl, or heard the voice of a little child, he could not help looking and listening if it were not his little Gip. But he had not much more time for the search; for Mr. Shafto found regular work for Sandy, though he could find none for himself.

This was in a wood-yard, where a number of poor friendless boys were employed in chopping wood, and tying them into bundles of chips for lighting fires. It belonged to Mr. Mason, the young gentleman whom Sandy had heard preaching that Sunday he first met with John Shafto. Fortunately for him, there was a vacant place which Mr. Mason could put him into at once. So there he was, in regular work, with small but regular wages; a night-school which he was expected to attend; and the prospect of soon gaining enough to live upon in more comfort than he had ever known.

"If it weren't for little Gip," said Sandy to John Shafto, "I'd be as happy as a king. I can't b'lieve it's me at times. But there's little Gip; she's never out of my head. I'm afeard she'll grow out of my knowledge if I don't come across her soon. It come over me sometimes, s'pose I never see her again for years and years, till she's growed up, and then I don't know as it is Gip? That scares me so I'm ready to run away from the wood-yard, and never leave off going about the streets till I find her. She can't grow out of His knowledge, though, can she?"

"Him! Lord Jesus, as is lookin' for her as well as we. He'll be sure to know her, won't He? I only wish I could see Him just for once, to tell Him all about her. I'd like so to see how He looks, when He hears me tell of her. It's so drefful hard to shut my eyes, and speak to nothink like, when I talk of little Gip. If I could only look in His face, and hear Him say, 'Never you fear, Sandy, I'll find her, and keep her safe for you,' just for once, you know, I'd be content."

"But He is doing that," answered John Shafto; "wherever little Gip is, He's taking care of her for you, and will let you have her again some day. We can never, never see His face here; but I shall see it by-and-by, and perhaps tell Him about Gip myself."

"You'll have to die to do that," said Sandy, very gravely. To think that John would tell the Lord Jesus Christ about little Gip was a great comfort to him; but he could not bear to think he must lose him himself.

"Yes," said John; "but if it wasn't for mother, I shouldn't mind that. I've always been used to think of it, ever since we used to play about the graves, and learn our letters on the tombstones, me and the other children who are dead. At nights when I sit up in bed, I can see the graves through my window. I'm not afraid at all of those things, Sandy; and now you're come, you must take my place, and grow up and be a good son to poor mother."

"And when I find little Gip, she'll be her little gel," answered Sandy, eagerly. "I don't believe as mother 'ill ever turn up again now, do you? I couldn't be the son of two mothers."

That was Sandy's secret dread, which haunted him day by day as he went to and fro about his work. He was always fearing lest his mother's hand should seize him by the collar, and hold him fast whilst she searched his pocket for halfpence; or that she would strip him of his decent working jacket, and pawn it at the nearest shop. He was sure she would dog him to his new home, and molest his friends there, till they would be compelled to give him up to her, and he would be driven back into the old wretchedness and degradation. It was a great terror, constantly besetting him; and whenever he had to pass the swinging doors of the gin-palace, which were not far between in the streets he had to walk along, he would dart by quickly, as if it were the den of some ravenous beast of prey, lying in wait to devour him.

"Lord," he said often in his prayers, "let mother be lost always, and never be found again; but please find little Gip for me soon."

CHAPTER XIII.

IT was strange how the thought of little Gip took possession of John Shafto's mind. The winter days, dark and cold, had fairly set in, and he could not creep along the streets with his crutches, looking wistfully at the ragged children whom he found in numbers about them. Yet if the summer warmth had filled the air, he could no longer have gone in search of her, for the little strength remaining to him was slowly ebbing away; and he was surely going down to the grave, the dark passage through which he was to reach his Father's house beyond.

But he scarcely seemed to feel the painful steps of the journey he was making, so full was his mind of little Gip. Perhaps it was because he and Sandy talked of little else; or because there was always a faint vague hope in his heart that when Sandy came in from his work in an evening, he would bring the joyful news that Gip was found. With this hope stirring in him, he never missed watching for Sandy's return; and when the usual hour would come, he turned the gas in the shop window higher, so that Sandy might see his face looking out beside the hatchment as soon as he turned into the grave-yard.

A whistle would bring him to the door in time to open it as Sandy reached it; and he always looked to see if there were not a little tattered figure standing beside him in the darkness. But Gip was never found; and the hearts of both boys grew hopeless and very sorrowful about her.

Mrs. Shafto thought but little of Gip in comparison with her boy, who was so soon to be lost to her. She kept her kitchen cheery and cosy, and wore blue ribbons in her cap, and tried to wear a smile upon her face for Johnny's sake; but no one knew how heavy and sad her heart was at times. She must keep up, she said to herself, lest she should make her boy miserable and low-spirited on her account; but it was very hard work. Mr. Shafto could not master himself as she did, having had no long practice in self-denial; and often he would sink down in his easy-chair, hide his face in his hands, and groan aloud when he thought how soon John would be gone away, and he should never more hear the tap of his crutches about the house.

Sandy was the greatest comfort they had, coming in fresh from his work, with all sorts of bits of news picked up in the street or at the wood-yard, and with curious questions to ask, which diverted them all from their own sorrow. The evenings, when he was sitting with them by their fire, were far less sad than the dark days.

At last the time came when John Shafto had not strength to rise from his bed and come downstairs to the cheery little kitchen, which had been kept so bright for him. He could only lie still now in the low room, with its shelving roof and the dormer window, from which he could see the gravestones. The change frightened Sandy, though he could not bring himself to believe that Johnny was going to die, while his face was so happy and cheerful, and his weak voice so pleasant. When the warm weather came again, he said, Johnny would be sure to feel better, and get about once more. He could not bear to think of losing him as well as little Gip.

"Mother," said John Shafto one Sunday morning, after he had lain in bed some days, and knew that he would never more get up and walk about upon his crutches, "mother, you'll take to Sandy, instead of me? I'm always saying to myself, Sandy 'ill be like a son to her, and she'll be his mother when I'm gone."

"You're not gone yet, dear heart!" she said, stroking the soft hair from his forehead, and speaking as calmly as she could.

"No, but I'm going, mother," he answered; "and I like to think of you having Sandy to take my place."

"Not just at first, but by-and-by he'll be like your own son," continued John Shafto; "he'll be a good boy, I know, for he loves to hear me tell him of Jesus Christ, and he's beginning to understand it all better now. Mother," and John put his arm fondly round her neck, "I want you to let Sandy have my Sunday clothes, and let me see him go to chapel with father. I could watch them go across the grave-yard together, if you'd only raise me up in your arms for a minute."

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny! I cannot!" she cried, falling on her knees, and hiding her face on her boy's pillow.

He stroked her cheek tenderly with his wasted fingers, whispering, "Poor mother, poor mother!"

It was a long while before she could recover herself, or finish a sentence when she began to speak it, but at last she conquered her tears and sobs.

"Do you wish it very much, dear heart?" she asked. "It would be hard to see Sandy in your Sunday suit, but if you really wish it—"

"Oh, mother, I do," he said: "it's as if Sandy was my own brother, and little Gip my sister. I think of them so when I lie awake of nights. I feel as if I almost knew how Jesus longs to find those who are lost, and have them with Him in heaven. I found Sandy, and now it seems as if he belonged to me, and must share all I have. If we could only find little Gip before I die!"

It was a very sore trial for Mrs. Shafto, but she went through it bravely for Johnny's sake. She brought out his Sunday suit from the drawer in her own room, where she kept it neatly brushed and folded up; and she looked for a clean collar and a necktie, such as John Shafto had been used to wear. It seemed almost as bad as stitching Johnny's shroud—a sorrowful task that would fall upon her before the spring was over. She laid them on his bed; and then went downstairs to find Sandy, and bid him go and dress himself in her boy's best suit.

This was a very important and difficult business to Sandy, and John Shafto lay watching him with quiet but very great delight. His old rags had disappeared one by one, and he had learned to keep himself clean and tidy; but he had never put on any clothes at all to be compared with these, though they were rubbed a little at the elbows and knees, and all the seams were somewhat frayed. He brushed his hair before the small looking glass, and tried anxiously to part his rough, strong curls as smoothly as John Shafto's fine and thin hair. Very carefully and slowly he put on the clean white collar, and did his best to fasten the blue necktie under his chin as neatly as John would have done. But, after all his efforts, he felt sure he did not look like him, and he was almost ready to cry with vexation and disappointment. His brown healthy face and rough hands were very different from John's delicate appearance.

"Come here, Sandy," said John Shafto, in his low, feeble voice: "come here, and kiss me."

He had never asked him to kiss him before, and Sandy felt frightened. But he bent over the pale, sunken face, and touched it as softly with his lips as he had been used to kiss little Gip when she was asleep.

"Why, nobody 'ud know you now," said John, looking at him with critical and admiring eyes. "I don't believe your mother 'ud think who it was if she met you in the streets dressed like this."

"But little Gip 'ud never know me!" cried Sandy, dejectedly. He was proud of his new clothes; but if they were to stand in the way of his finding Gip, he would rather return to his old rags. He began to think that perhaps he was out of the way of finding her, now that he had been lifted out of their old life. What good would it be to him if he lived well, and had a comfortable bed to sleep on, and wore fine clothes, if his little Gip were starved, and cold, and almost naked? He would give up all, even Mrs. Shafto and his friend Johnny, and go back and down to the former degradation and misery, if he could only save Gip by doing so.

"But you'll know little Gip," answered John Shafto: "you couldn't pass by her, and not know her."

"Ay!" said Sandy: "I'd know her if there were thousands and thousands of little gels; I'd pick her out among 'em all."

"That's how it is," murmured John Shafto; "we don't know Jesus Christ, but He knows us. I see plainer how it is. He is seeking us just as you are seeking Gip. All the world is like little Gip to Him, lost, and miserable, and starving; and He couldn't be happy, even in heaven, till He has found us. I think He must be troubled, like you are, about Gip; but he will find us all some day, though we do not wish Him to find us."

"But can He find us when He likes?" asked Sandy, lifting up his sorrowful face to look at John.

"Not when He likes," answered John, "or all the world would be safe and happy now. It's like as if little Gip kept running away from you, and hiding herself anywhere she could out of your sight. That would be very hard for you, wouldn't it?"

"Ay!" said Sandy, with a heavy sigh. "But little Gip 'ud never do that with Sandy."

"But that's what we do with the Lord Jesus Christ," continued John Shafto, solemnly; "we run away from Him, and hide anywhere, anywhere so that He should not find us. Oh! Sandy, if all the world would only be found by Him!"

"I'll be found!" cried Sandy. "See, Lord Jesus! I'm lost from You like little Gip from me. Find me, wherever You are: find me, and let me never be lost again. And when You've found me, please let me find my little Gip."

"Amen!" whispered John Shafto, his face smiling brightly. "He'll find you, Sandy, never fear; and little Gip as well. Now go down, and I'll watch you and father walk together across the yard to chapel."

Sandy stole slowly downstairs, half ashamed of his new costume; but when he stepped into the kitchen, and saw Mrs. Shafto at the sight of him fall into a chair, and cover her face with her apron, he forgot all about it, and ran to her side.

"Has anythink hurt you?" he asked earnestly. "Isn't there nothink as I can do for you? I'm very strong, and I'd do anythink in the world for you and Johnny. Only you say the word. What are I to do?"

"Nothing!" she answered, still sobbing, and laying her head upon his shoulder, upon Johnny's jacket.

Whilst Sandy, in utter amazement, ventured to touch her blue ribbons gently with his finger.

"Nothing, my boy. Only I saw you come down in these clothes, and you looked partly like Johnny, and yet so very, very different! It's not all trouble, dear heart! that I'm crying for. I know where he's going to, and I'm sure you'll be a good boy; but I can't help crying a little. There, you must go now; Mr. Shafto's quite ready, and it's high time you were off; and I'll run upstairs, and hold Johnny so as he can see you."

So John Shafto, held up in his mother's arms, watched Sandy and his father walk together side by side across the grave-yard. When they reached the tablet on the chapel wall, Mr. Shafto paused a moment, and Sandy, turning round, waved his cap for John to see him, though it was impossible for him to catch a glimpse of John in the dark, low room.

"He'll be a good boy, I know," murmured John Shafto; "and now, if he could only find little Gip!"

CHAPTER XIV.

BUT all this time, while John Shafto was drawing nearer and nearer to the grave, and what lay beyond it, Sandy had never realized the fact. He had often seen people as ill, who lay on comfortless beds in crowded rooms, with faces quite as worn and pale, but without the pleasant smile that always shone in John Shafto's eyes whenever he looked at him. More than this, though John sometimes spoke of dying, it was always as of something so familiar to him, and so little dreaded by him, that it never seemed as if he meant the same gloomy thing as death was when it came into the dark homes Sandy had known, and carried away one after another to nothing else but the pauper coffin and the forgotten grave.

The truth broke upon Sandy at last, with the shock of a great surprise and bitter sorrow. He had bid Johnny good-bye in the morning, and gone away whistling merrily to his work, dreading no trouble during the day.

But when he reached home again in the evening, he found Mr. Shafto weeping bitterly, with his face hidden upon his hands, and his head resting on the little table, round which they had been used to sit together. The fire had burned low, and the ashes were strewn about the hearth—all the room looked as if some sudden calamity had fallen upon the house. The only light came through the door into the shop which he had left open, through which could be seen the child's coffin lying on the counter, and the rusty plumes hanging heavy and dark against the wall. Mr. Shafto was groaning heavy heart-breaking groans, which made Sandy shrink and shiver with a feeling of dread.

"Is there anythink very bad the matter?" he ventured to ask, after standing silent for a little while.

"Johnny's wanting you," said Mr. Shafto; "he's been asking all the afternoon how long it would be before you came home."

Sandy scarcely heard the last words, for he was already mounting the winding staircase with a swift though quiet footstep. The low room where he and John slept was lighter than the kitchen below, though dim enough with only the light of one candle. But he could see John's face, white and shining, with a brightness in the eyes such as he had never seen there before, and a look which seemed all at once as if it must break Sandy's heart.

"Oh, Johnny!" he cried. "Little Gip's lost; and now you're goin' to die and leave me!"

He fell down on his knees at the foot of the bed, and buried his face in the clothes. Was it not too dreadful to be true? The love he had felt for little Gip had been transferred to John Shafto. After losing her, his heart, which had been hungry for something to love, had turned to him and clung to him as it had done to her. Very gradually he had been comforted for her loss, though he had never ceased to think of her; and now he was going away too! He did not see how he himself could continue to live in a world where there was neither little Gip nor John Shafto.

"I can't let you go!" cried Sandy, "don't you die, Johnny. Don't you go away and leave me. What am I to do if you die, and I can't see you again, never? Oh, Johnny! don't you die, and leave me."

"Sandy," said John's failing voice again, "I must die; and you'll have mother, you know. She's promised me to be like your own mother, and I want you to promise you'll be like me to her. You must take my place. Oh, Sandy! I shall die happier if you promise always to love mother, and be like a son to her."

"I can't be like you," answered Sandy; "I'm not good, like you. I don't know hardly anythink yet about God, and Jesus, and heaven. If it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have known anythink about it; and I'm afeard I shall forget it all if you die, and go away."

He could not bear the thought that he should forget God; yet it seemed in this hour of darkness that if John Shafto died, he must fall back into the old ignorance and wickedness, and know nothing more than the sin and misery of this world. Who was to teach him as John had done? Who would there be to tell him so plainly and so surely that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was seeking him, was ready at every moment to take care of him? He could not see Christ, nor hear Him; and if John were gone, how could he feel certain that it was all true?

"By-and-by," continued the faint, low voice, "You'll feel like that towards Jesus Christ. It's just the same thing. You'll love me and believe me after I'm gone, when you can't see me or hear me. And you must love and believe in Him exactly the same, though you can't see or hear Him. He loves you more than I do, a hundred times, a thousand times more. I don't think it's a different kind of love, only it's a thousand times more and better. He's done everything I've asked Him for you, save one."

"What's that?" asked Sandy, lifting up his head to look with dimmed eyes into John's face.

"I did so want you to find Gip before I died," he whispered; "poor little Gip! I'd like to see her. And you'd have been so happy, it wouldn't have been half the trouble to you for me to die. If she's in heaven, I shall see her there; and perhaps Jesus Himself will show me which one of the little children she is. I should tell her all about you, Sandy. But if she's not dead, I did so want to see her just for once."

"I've almost forgot what she's like," said Sandy, with some bitterness in his tone; "I ought to have found her afore this, if I are to know her again."

"Perhaps she's in heaven!" murmured John, and then his voice was silent, and his languid eyes closed.

A shiver of dread ran through Sandy; but John had only fallen asleep through weakness for a few minutes, and Mrs. Shafto, whom he had not noticed before, leaned forward, and held up her hand to warn him not to make any noise. He did not stir, and scarcely dared to breathe, but knelt still, watching John with intent, eager eyes, as if he could not bear to look away, and lose sight for one moment of that dear face, which was so soon to be hidden from him.

"Sandy!" said John, waking and speaking again suddenly, as if he had not been sleeping at all. "Do you see my mother?"

Sandy could not speak again, but he covered his face once more with his hard brown hands.

"I'll promise for him," he said; "he'll be a good son to you, and some day you'll wear blue ribbons for him and be very happy again. Look at him, mother. Why! isn't it something like what Jesus said upon the cross to John? 'Behold thy mother!' And to His mother, 'Behold thy son!' It is something like that. 'And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.' Sandy's sure to be a good son to you, mother."

"I'll take him in your place," said Mrs. Shafto; "but oh, Johnny, Johnny! if the Lord had only spared you to me!"

They were silent again for a minute or two; and John Shafto, with his feeble fingers, drew his mother's hand across his lips, and kissed it tenderly.

"I'm not going just yet," he said soothingly; "we shall still have a little while together. Mother, I wish I could see Mr. Mason again; but, if I do, it must be soon. It will be too late to-morrow."

"I'll run and fetch him," cried Sandy; "he were askin' after you only this mornin, and he'll be glad to come. Only don't you go while I'm away."

He stopped for one moment to kiss John Shafto, with a sharp pang of fear lest he should never see him alive again. Then he ran downstairs, and rushed away through the dark street, at a swifter pace than he had ever run before, crying to himself over and over again, half aloud, "Johnny 'ill be dead afore I can get back again."

CHAPTER XV.

IT was nearly a mile to the street where Mr. Mason lived; but Sandy did not pause to take breath in his rapid race. He tore along the pavement, and dashed over the crossings, as he might have done if a policeman had been in chase of him. When he reached Mr. Mason's house, he knocked at the door with an earnestness that procured an immediate attention.

"I'm come for Mr. Mason!" he gasped. "John Shafto's dyin', and he wants to see him."

"I'll go and ask," answered the servant, leaving him on the doorstep, panting for breath, and sitting down to take rest for one minute.

It was very hard to find Mr. Mason gone out; for if he were not back quickly, perhaps John Shafto would be dead, and he would never, never hear him speak again. Would it not be best to return at once with the news that Mr. Mason was not at home? But then John was so fond of him, whom he had known and loved years before he had picked up Sandy in the streets. And Mr. Mason would be deeply grieved if he found John dead, without any good-bye between them. It would be a sore disappointment to them both. Yet suppose neither he nor Mr. Mason could be in time, and each of them lost the sad pleasure of seeing Johnny once more! Surely it would not be wrong to go back at once, and make sure of it for himself!

Sandy had not quite made up his mind, when the door was opened again by the servant; and he sprang to his feet to hear what she had to tell him.

"Masters only gone to a farewell tea-meeting at Miss Murray's," she said. "She's going to start for Canada to-morrow with a lot of children; and master's sending out two of the boys from his Refuge, so he's gone to see them for the last time. It's about twenty minutes from here, the place is."

"I know the place," interrupted Sandy; "we took a load of wood there this mornin' for Miss Murray's boys to chop up."

It was a mile farther on, a long mile: and every step would increase the distance between himself and John Shafto. He started back towards home, and ran swiftly to the end of the street, feeling that he could not go the other way. But he paused again there. How grieved John would be! And Mr. Mason, what would he say when he heard John Shafto was dead, without one word of good-bye? Would he suffer anything like the sorrow he was feeling? Suddenly Sandy set off again in the opposite direction, and did not waste another instant, or pause again, until he reached the place where he would find Mr. Mason.

It was a large building—a home for destitute children, who found their way to it from all parts of London. Every window was lighted up, and there was a great stir about it, of people passing in and out busily. To-morrow a number of orphan boys and girls, taken out of the very gutters of the City, were about to start for a new home in Canada; and many of their friends had met for the purpose of bidding them good-bye, and giving them little keepsakes for them to remember the old country by in after-life.

Sandy made his way to the entrance of the large room, where they were assembled, but he could not push in at first, for the crowd in the doorway. He could hear Mr. Mason's voice speaking; and he listened impatiently. But he did not know that he might not be hustled out, if he interrupted his speech, and perhaps be given in charge of the policeman he had seen near the outer door.

By degrees Sandy pressed into the room, eager to catch Mr. Mason's eye, and stop him in his long farewell speech to the boys and girls, which was eating away the little time left to John Shafto and himself. He could see the emigrants now; boys, like himself, who had known the worst of the City life, and who had starved, and shivered in rags, and slept out in the cold, and trodden the pavement barefoot never knowing from day to day what they should eat, or where they should lay their heads. And there were girls too, whose lives had been as bad; but who were now sitting together in warm scarlet hoods and blue dresses, making so bright a spot amid the dingy crowd that they drew Sandy's eyes to them. He glanced at them for a moment, thinking how pretty little Gip would look dressed so; and then he pushed still nearer to Mr. Mason.

Now he could see Miss Murray herself, with a very little girl upon her lap, the smallest and the youngest by far of the emigrants; a child in a scarlet hood and blue frock like the others.

Sandy's eyes were fastened upon her; and he stood as still as if he had been turned into stone, every other object vanishing quite out of his sight. This little girl had her face towards him, a tiny face, but not pinched like Gip's; a rosy face, with bright black eyes, and pretty black hair curling under the scarlet hood. It could not be Gip! Was it possible that it could be his little Gip? He dared not breathe or move. But all at once she raised her little hands to her face, and peeped through the open fingers at the people around her; just one of Gip's pretty tricks, the very one he had taught her himself! No. It could not be any other child than Gip!

"Gip!" he shouted suddenly, at the highest pitch of his voice, till the roof rang again; "Gip! My little Gip!"

Mr. Mason stopped in his speech, and every eye was turned upon Sandy. But he did not see a single face about him; no face but little Gip's, with wide-open, searching, wondering eyes, gazing everywhere in search of him. He heard no sound, except Gip's shrill little voice, calling, "Here I are, Dandy! Here little Gip are. Where's Dandy?"

In another second, Sandy had forced his way to the front, and held out his arms to Gip, who ran into them, with a shrill scream of delight.

In another second Sandy had forced his way to the front,
and held out his arms to Gip, who ran into them,
with a shrill scream of delight.

He sat down on the floor, with her on his lap, and hid his face on the little scarlet hood, scarcely knowing whether they had not both died, and gone into that heaven of which he had only heard since he had lost her.

"Oh! Dandy, Dandy!" cried little Gip, clinging to him with all her strength. "Dandy's come back again to Gip!"

Sandy did not notice how quiet every one was around them. There was no sound, except that of deep-drawn sobs; for many of the people who had gathered round were in tears. Mr. Mason came down from the little platform, where he had been standing, and laid his hand on Sandy's head.

"Ay!" answered Sandy, holding her tightly in his arms, and looking anxiously about him to see if he could make his escape from the room with her; "ay! it's my little Gip. Nobody mustn't take her away from me again, you know. She belongs to me, and I'll take care of her now. She mustn't be took off to Canada away from me."

"No, no," said Mr. Mason, "we will not take Gip from you, my boy. If she goes, you shall go. But stand up, Sandy, and tell Miss Murray all about her."

He rose to his feet very slowly and reluctantly, not loosening for an instant his hold of Gip. All he could see was an indistinct ring of faces of people closing him in, so that he could not get away; but he spoke out in a loud, clear voice.

"Mother was always a-gettin' drunk," he said, "and one bitter night she lost little Gip in the streets; and I've been searchin' for her up and down, everywhere, ever since. If it hadn't been for Johnny Shafto, I'd have died maybe. But I want you to let me take her, and keep her; and I'll be very good to her. Gip 'ud never be happy without me; and Mrs. Shafto and Johnny 'll be very good to her. Oh! if you please, Johnny's dyin', and he sent me to ask you to come d'reckly."

"Wait one minute," said Miss Murray, as Mr. Mason was about to hurry away. "I must tell my friends here how this little girl came under my care. She was found crying in the streets one night by a girl who had a sister in this Home; and she brought her direct to me. None of us could learn from her either her name, or where she lived; and we kept her with us, whilst I made every enquiry I could. I shall be sorry to go to Canada without my little girl to-morrow; but Mr. Mason will take care of them both, and perhaps they will come out with me next time."

Sandy heard very few of these words; for now his terror lest John Shafto should be dead awoke again with greater force. If he were still alive, he would see little Gip after all! He was all impatience to be off; and in a few minutes he found himself, with Gip still in his arms, sitting beside Mr. Mason in a cab, the driver of which had been ordered to go as fast as he could to Mr. Shafto's house.

CHAPTER XVI.

THEY had to leave the cab in the street, and walk across the chapel yard. A bright light shone through John Shafto's window, and fell upon the gravestones and the almost level graves, covered with rank grass. What a quiet place to live or die in, in the very heart of the City!

Mr. Mason trod softly, as if his step might already disturb the dying boy; and Sandy tenderly hushed Gip, who was chattering merrily in his arms. The kitchen was dark and empty, for Mr. Shafto was no longer in the arm-chair in the warmest corner; and they passed through, and very gently climbed up the old staircase. The door of John's room was open, and they could see him before they entered, his head lying against his mother's shoulder, and her arm about him, while the tears stole slowly down her cheeks. John's white face still wore a smile lingering about the mouth, though his eyes were closed. Mr. Shafto stood at the foot of the bed watching him, as if he could not bear to lose one moment of the few that were left in which he could see his boy's living face.

"Sandy's found you!" murmured John, opening his heavy eyelids; "I thought it would be too late. Where is Sandy?"

"I'm here, Johnny!" cried Sandy from the doorway. "Me and little Gip. Little Gip's found at last, Johnny!"

"Little Gip!" he said, rousing himself. "Bring her to me for one moment, Sandy."

"Gip must be very good," said Sandy, coaxingly, and pulling back the scarlet hood from her small face, "Gip must love Johnny, and kiss him, and say good-bye."

"Me be good," promised Gip, looking about her without any shyness; "me kiss everybody, and say good-bye. Me go across the great sea to-morrow."

"No, no," cried Sandy, "little Gip's not going away; it's Johnny that's goin'; and she must put her little arms round his neck, and kiss him; there's a good little gel!"

He laid her down on the bed by Johnny, and the dying boy turned his face towards her, while she put her arms round his neck, and kissed his cheek gently, as if she knew how ill he was. He took her small, soft, warm hand into his own chilly one, and held it fast, while Sandy stood by, scarcely knowing whether joy or sorrow was nearest to him at that moment.

"That about Him leaving the rest, who are safe, and coming after that which is lost," he said, compelled to pause often between the words to gather strength to speak again; "and when He finds us, He is so glad! He's more glad than I am! And He calls all the angels to Him, and says, 'Rejoice with me.' All the world's like little Gip; but He'll be gladder than we are some day when He finds us. It's all true."

Sandy fell on his knees beside John Shafto, and stretched his arm over him to feel little Gip.

"He's taken care of little Gip for you," he said; "you must never forget that, or leave off loving Him, though you cannot see Him. You'll be like a son to mother; I'm leaving her to you."

"Oh! Johnny! Johnny!" said Mr. Shafto, in a lamentable voice, "I've been a poor father to you, and a very poor husband to Mary; but say a word to me, as if I'd been all I should have been. Can Christ save me from my idleness and selfishness? If you could but live, and see what a father I would be!"

"Have you been a poor father?" asked Johnny, smiling. "I never thought that, never. But perhaps I've loved mother most; she's been so good to me. She'll be good to Sandy and little Gip now."

There was so deep a stillness for some minutes after that, that all the indistinct sounds from the busy streets seemed to grow and come nearer. Gip lifted up her little head to look about her; but when Sandy held up his hand, she laid it down quietly again on the pillow beside Johnny's white, still face. His fingers dropped her tiny hand. Which of them was Sandy to gaze at? Gip's rosy cheeks and glittering eyes, or John Shafto's pale, cold face, with a film creeping over his sight, and the smile dying away from his lips?

"Oh, Johnny!" he sobbed. "Couldn't you stay just a little bit longer? Wouldn't you like to stay with little Gip just for one day? Don't die to-day, Johnny, just when I've found my little Gip."

"I'm very glad she's found," he whispered, his lips so near to Sandy that he could catch every word; "but I cannot stay. Lost and found! Dead and alive again! Rejoice with me! He is saying that."

They were all looking at Johnny's face; even little Gip's black eyes were fastened upon it, for it shone with a strange light. His lips moved slowly, though Sandy himself could not hear what they were speaking. His eyes shone with a steady beam of gladness. Then his head fell lower upon his mother's breast; and she uttered a single cry of great anguish, for she knew that he was dead.

CHAPTER XVII.

LITTLE Gip's curly head was still resting very quietly on Johnny's pillow, and Sandy's arm was stretched across his friend to touch Gip's soft hand. But now Mr. Mason lifted the child from the bed, and told him in a whisper to take her away.

He carried her downstairs into the dark and desolate kitchen below, where the grey ashes of the dead fire held no spark of light or heat. Could all that he had passed through that evening be really true? Was this indeed lost Gip whom he held so closely to his heart? Little Gip, for whom he had searched, with a heavy heart and a spirit bowed down by dread, through so many long months, and in so many miserable places? If it were true, why was he not leaping and shouting for joy? What was it that made him sink down on the solitary hearth, with no other light than the glimmer of the gas, burning amid the funeral plumes in the shop beyond the kitchen, and hide his face on Gip's head, and break out into deep sorrowful sobs? Oh, if John Shafto could only have lived one day longer!

"Gip's goin' across the great sea to-morrow," muttered Gip, in a very sleepy tone, as she nestled down comfortably on Sandy's lap.

He knew well that he was not about to lose her again in such a way, but where was Johnny gone? What great sea had he crossed over? What strange country had he gone to, where none could follow him at his own choice and will? Sandy had learned by this time that the deep grave swallowed up no portion of the real life, and that it was nothing more than the poor shell of the body which was buried away out of sight. John Shafto himself had already entered into some new, unknown dwelling-place; and even whilst he was but stepping over the threshold of it, whilst he was lingering for a moment longer with his mother and Sandy, he had caught a glimpse of a face, and heard the first sound of a voice that he loved more than he loved theirs.

Then, in the gloom and dusk, there came before Sandy a kind of vision of what Johnny's friend must be—that Lord whom he had loved so deeply. The face seemed to him to be something like John's face, with the same tender, patient, even suffering look upon it, but with so divine a smile lighting it up, that the suffering itself seemed to be a gladness. He fancied, too, that he heard a very low and quiet voice, saying, but whether in his ear or in his heart he could not tell, "Sandy, I have taken care of little Gip for you, and given her back to you; now I will take care of him until you see him again. Only love Me."

And Sandy whispered back into the gloom, "Lord, I will love You! Only make me as good as Johnny."

Perhaps he was sleeping then, or he must have fallen asleep directly afterwards on the hearth before the fireless grate, with Gip slumbering soundly in his arms; for after a long while, he woke up suddenly, and saw Mrs. Shafto coming quietly down the narrow staircase, with a light in her hand. Her face was very white and sad, though there was no trace of tears in her eyes. Sandy could hear the loud, heavy groans of Mr. Shafto in the room overhead; but Johnny's mother did not sob: and but for the whiteness of her cheeks, and the set sorrowful line of her mouth, there was no sign to be seen of her grief. She came close to him, and looked down pitifully upon little Gip. Then she stooped, and lifted her gently into her arms.

"Poor little heart!" she said. "Poor dear little heart!" But there her voice failed her, and her silent tearlessness passed away. She sat down with Gip pressed closely to her, and rocked herself to and fro, and cried out, with a passion of tears, "Oh! Johnny! Johnny! Oh! my last child!"

Sandy did not know how to comfort her, or what to say to her. He stood beside her, and put his arm about her neck, as he had often seen John do, and drew her head to lean upon his shoulder. When her sobs grew quieter, after a long spell of weeping, he ventured to speak at last.

"Mother," he said, thinking to himself that John Shafto would like him to call her mother, "me and little Gip between us 'ill perhaps be as good as Johnny to you. I'm going to try to be like him, I am; and I'll teach little Gip everything as he's taught me. I promised him I'd work for you, and take care of you, when you are too old to work any longer. He used to say he were glad I were so strong; and not like him in that. But I'm going to do all I can to be like him in everything else."

And Mrs. Shafto, after another burst of tears, drew his face down to hers, and kissed it silently. Then she undressed little Gip very tenderly, not to wake her from her sound sleep, and Sandy carried a light upstairs for her when she went to lay the child softly in her own bed.

The door into the other room was half open, and he could see John Shafto's head lying on his pillow, silent and still, yet with a smile about his lips. And here was little Gip's round and rosy face, with the eyelashes quivering as If she were just about to open her bright eyes, resting peacefully on his mother's pillow!

It was a trying time for Sandy until the body of his friend was buried out of his sight. To see little Gip playing about Mrs. Shafto, whilst she was stitching John's shroud, was such a mingling of great pleasure and great pain to him, that he could scarcely bear it. To hear Gip's voice calling him from the dull grave-yard, and to find her watching for him, and running to meet him, instead of John, with his pale face and slow tread upon his crutches, made the coming home each evening a moment of tangled trouble and delight.

But after the funeral was over, when the deaf and dumb and blind corpse had vanished from the house, by little and little, he grew accustomed to John's absence, and could take a pleasure in the merry presence of Gip, with her pretty tricks and funny little ways, which often won a smile into Mrs. Shafto's sad eyes. Mr. Shafto himself learned to play with Gip, after his own grave and solemn fashion, and even taught her to call him father. As for little Gip, she had altogether forgotten her drunken mother, and knew of no other parents than these who had adopted her.

But it was very disheartening to Mr. Shafto to be quite unable to find any work for which he was fit. He had so long allowed younger men to push him out of his place, that now he really wished to exert himself, there seemed no room for him in the bustling city. He had grown rusty through long indulgence in selfishness and indolence; and a hard fight would it be to thrust his way into the crowded ranks of busy men. Sandy could not yet gain more than his own living; and it seemed as if Mrs. Shafto must continue to work hard, from early in the morning until late into the night, to earn food for her husband and little Gip.

CHAPTER XVIII.

IT was a little sooner than usual one evening when Sandy returned from the wood-yard, with a bundle of wood under his arm, which Mr. Mason had sent for Mrs. Shafto. Gip was not yet waiting for him at the street corner, ready to jump about him gleefully along the narrow pavement which led across the grave-yard; and Sandy loitered for a minute to give her time to see him.

The place had grown into a dear home for him. He knew every blackened tombstone, and could read all the English words on the tablet in memory of Mr. Shafto's grandfather. What a quiet spot it was! how little Gip's laugh echoed round the high walls! And the fleeting beam of sunshine that peeped round the angle of the tallest chimney, just about the time when he reached the house, how bright it always seemed! He had ceased to think that he had ever lived anywhere else. The small house, too, looked more cheerful than it used to do; for the hatchment was gone, and the plumes, and the child's coffin, which had so much distressed little Gip that it had been disposed of immediately. The shop window was quite empty now, except for the single announcement of "Pinking done here."

Sandy was looking wistfully at this home of his, when Gip caught sight of him, and ran to meet him with merry shouts and laughter.

But all that evening Mr. Shafto's face was more serious even than ordinary. True, he nursed Gip on his knee, and at her urgent request gave her one brief ride upon it; but it was evident that his thoughts were elsewhere. Mrs. Shafto watched him anxiously, though it was a long while before she ventured to speak; for she had not yet grown accustomed to her husband's change of character.

"Mary, my love," he answered, hesitatingly, "what would you say to us all four going across the sea to Canada next time Miss Murray goes?"

"Oh! no, John," she cried. She was thinking of her children's graves, and of the old house where they had all been born, and had died. How could she leave them?

"My love," he continued, "I wouldn't mention it if it could be helped. But you must be told sooner or later; and perhaps it is better sooner than later. I've been turning things over and over in my head, and I don't see what we can do better than go to Canada, and buy a farm; and all work upon it ourselves, you and me and Sandy."

"Buy a farm!" exclaimed Mrs. Shafto, while Sandy's face shone at the mere mention of such a magnificent scheme.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Shafto. "After all I've begun to tell you at the wrong end. Why, my dear, be brave now, and bear it like a woman! The fact is, a railway is coming right through our grave-yard, and the chapel, and our poor little house; so we are compelled to turn out and leave it, you see. I'm to have £400 for my house and business; and with that we could cross the sea, buy a small farm, and settle on it, all four of us. You were born and bred on a farm, my love, and know how to make excellent cheese and butter, and manage cows and poultry. Sandy can chop timber famously, and he hasn't one idle bone in his body, nor little Gip—I'll answer for her. And, please God, I'll turn my hand and my head to doing anything that has to be done."

It was no wonder that both Mrs. Shafto and Sandy should be bewildered at the sudden turn in their affairs. The house must be quitted; there was no question about that, for they could not set a railway company at defiance if they wished it. If, then, they were compelled to give up the old home, why not make the change complete, and leave the noisy streets of London for some quiet country home in the great new land beyond the sea? The farm would be their own;—a place for Sandy and Gip to grow up in, and live in perhaps for years after both Mr. and Mrs. Shafto were dead.

When she came to think it over, Mrs. Shafto felt herself growing young again at the prospect of having cows and poultry to look after, and cheese and butter to make.

In three months' time, everything was arranged; their berths were taken on board the ship that was to take out Miss Murray with another band of destitute children. The goods they were carrying away with them were all packed up—among them Johnny's crutches, which were to be kept in some open place in their new home, where they would be always in sight. The last day was come, and Sandy had been busy since very early in the morning, journeying to and fro between their old home and the Refuge, from which Miss Murray's emigrants were to start the next day. It was evening now, and he was returning to sleep once more under the roof that had given him shelter in the hour of his deepest sorrow and despair.

The east wind was whistling shrilly down the narrow streets, and meeting him with a biting chill in it round every corner; for it was scarcely spring-time yet, and only the darkness of the winter was gone, whilst the cold still lingered. Yet it could not make Sandy shiver, so warmly wrapped up was he in the thick greatcoat Mr. Shafto had bought for him in anticipation of the severe winters of the country they were going to.

But the ill-clad people whom he met looked pinched and blue, and slouched along close to the houses, as he could recollect doing in the old times, which had almost passed away out of his mind. The spirit-vaults were all full to the doors, as though every one who could find a penny or two had crept into them for warmth; and Sandy felt a vague sort of dread as he ran by, as he had done when he first went to the wood-yard for work, before little Gip was found. But surely his mother would never know him again for the ragged, barefoot, and bare-headed fusee boy he was when she forsook him!

His vague fears quickened his pace, and he was running rapidly across the grave-yard, when his quick eye caught sight of a figure sitting on the ground under the chapel wall. His feet felt heavy as though they would not move another step, and his heart seemed to stand still, for a throb or two, and then beat painfully, till he could hardly breathe. He felt that some great calamity to little Gip and himself was close at hand. He did not turn quite round so as to face the figure, but he took a stealthy sidelong look at it; and then stole softly onwards to the shelter of the house, as he had been wont to creep cunningly away round some street corner, whenever he saw his mother appear in sight.

There could be no mistake that the tattered and wretched woman, who was half lying and half sitting on the rank grass, with her head resting against the wall just below old Mr. Shafto's tablet, was his mother. Sandy felt giddy and frightened. She had found out him and little Gip at the last moment. Was she come to claim them both, and drag them back to their old misery and degradation? She looked as though she were asleep, for her head had fallen forward, and her thin bony arms hung helplessly at her side. If she were drunk now, she would perhaps forget what had brought her there, and crawl off to some of her old haunts as soon as she was roused up again. The best thing he could do was to go on noiselessly, so as not to disturb her, and close the door between him and the hateful and dreaded sight. Then he must think how he could save little Gip and himself.

Little Gip was nursing a doll on the warm hearth, where a bright fire was burning for the last night; and Mrs. Shafto was busily packing the bags they were to take on board with them for the voyage. It was twelve months since Johnny had left them, and her face had grown happy again, and her smile came almost as readily as it had done when he was about the house. Sandy stood in the doorway, gazing at her with a great sorrow and yearning of heart. Oh! if his mother had only been like John Shafto's mother!

But he could not get the sight of her as she was out of his head, though he had shut the door and bolted it so carefully between her and them. He could see her still, ragged and starved-looking, with her withered face half hidden by the old black bonnet he recollected so well. And the east wind was wailing through every crevice, and bringing even a touch of chill to their pleasant fireside. His mother! He tried to forget her as he played with little Gip; but he was on the alert all the time; his eye upon the door, and his ear strained to catch every sound. What ought he to do? What would John Shafto, what would the Lord Jesus Christ, have him to do?

He went out into the shop after a while, and peeped through the window, half hoping that she might be gone away. The night had set in by this time, and it was quite dark; but a lamp at the corner of the chapel had been lit, and he could see she was yet in the same place, and in the same posture. Well, whatever must be done, little Gip must be saved, even if he himself had to go away and dwell once more in the old haunts. Gip must not be taken from Mrs. Shafto, though, maybe, he would be compelled to remain behind in London to work for their drunken and miserable mother.

But, by-and-by, as Sandy stood with his eyes fastened upon the motionless figure, thinking bitter thoughts, another kind of fear crept over him, which made him tremble so much that he could hardly walk across the shop again and open the kitchen door.

"Mrs. Shafto," he called, in a husky voice. He had always said mother to her since Johnny died, but he could not call her that now.

Mrs. Shafto came to him at once, with a look of great surprise on her pleasant face.

"Hush!" he said. "Shut the door. Don't let little Gip know. Mother's there, out in the yard, and I'm scared to death almost. What must I do? She hasn't stirred since I came in more than an hour ago; and I'm more scared now than when I first see her sitting agen the wall there."

"Are you sure it's your mother?" asked Mrs. Shafto, looking through the window at the miserable creature.

"Ay, I'm sure and certain," he answered, bitterly. "She's found us just at the last, and she's come to hinder little Gip and me going to Canada. If she'd only leave Gip alone, I'd stay behind; but I could never go without little Gip."

"No, no," said Mrs. Shafto, "she'll never hinder you from going with us. I know how a mother feels; and the worst of mothers wouldn't do such a thing as that. We'll go and talk to her; and we'll tell her Mr. Mason will help her, and take care of her. And if she can give up drink, we'll send money for her to come after us by-and-by; and, it may be, some day you'll be proud of your own mother yet, Sandy."

She had opened the outer door, and was leading him across the grave-yard to the corner where his mother lay asleep. Sandy almost resisted the gentle force of her hand upon his arm; but when they were quite close to the figure, and it did not move, though the wind ruffled the ragged shawl a little, the vague fear that had taken possession of him grew stronger, and began to have a definite meaning. Even a drunken sleep was seldom as death-like as this.

Mrs. Shafto stooped, and laid her hand upon the thin shrivelled fingers which hung down by the woman's side.

Sandy's heart gave a great bound of relief. All his fear and dread were gone in an instant. Little Gip was safe now for evermore. From this time both she and himself would belong to Mrs. Shafto only, and could call her mother, with no one else to have any claim upon them.

Yet the next minute he felt a sort of sorrow, very faint and fleeting, as if, after all her wickedness, there was a little natural love for his mother lingering in his heart. He knelt down by her, and drew the old shawl more closely round her, as though she could even yet feel the east wind blowing coldly about her.

"Don't let little Gip see her," he said, mournfully; "don't let little Gip ever know. I'll run and fetch Mr. Mason, and he'll know what to do. But I'd liked to have told her as she might come after us to Canada, if she'd only give up the drink."

CHAPTER XIX.

NEXT day the Shaftos, with Sandy and little Gip, left London for Liverpool, whence their ship was to sail. There were a hundred other children, from the streets of our large cities going out to settle in new homes in Canada. And Mrs. Shafto found so much to do among these little ones, that she had not time to fret over the thought of Johnny's grave, which she was leaving farther and farther behind her.

Mr. Shafto also had a good trial as to whether he was really conquering his old besetting sin of selfishness and idleness, and he passed through it triumphantly, to his own secret delight and the great gladness of his wife.

Gip was the life of the party, growing prettier and merrier every day, and Sandy's happiness was complete. A farm had been found and bought for Mr. Shafto, by a friend of Miss Murray's; and before the autumn came, they were settled in a log-house of their own, within sound of the lapping of the waves of the Lake Huron.

The last time Sandy was seen by any of his English friends, he was driving a yoke of oxen in a strong substantial waggon, with Mrs. Shafto and little Gip seated comfortably in the back of it. He and Mr. Shafto were taking it in turns to walk at the head of the oxen, and urge them on over the rough roads. It was Mr. Shafto's turn to walk, and he was striding along cheerfully, as though he had been used to hard work all his life; his face was brown and sun-burnt, and the palms of his hands were hard.

It was noticed that Mrs. Shafto had blue ribbons in her cap, and that her cheeks were almost as rosy as little Gip's. Sandy had grown into a strong, active boy, with a bright and happy expression on his face.

"Ay! tell him," said Sandy, "as I'm trying to be as good as John Shafto. And tell him I'll never forget hearing him preach about the Lord Jesus being lost, like little Gip. Father bought me the verse when he went to Montreal, and it's printed in scarlet and blue and gold, and hangs over our chimney-piece at home: 'The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost.'"

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lost Gip

LOST GIP.