CHAPTER X.

THE CONCLUSION.

‘Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.’

The joyful day arrived at last when our friend John was rewarded for his industry and honesty. He was the owner and commander of the ‘Sally.’ Captain Sam was so gratified that he gave a great dinner on the occasion. But there was no one more pleased with John’s fair prospects than his friend Antonio. He gave thanks aloud in the fulness of his heart, clasped John in his arms, hugged Harry, and at last fairly cried for joy. The old sailor did not, however, long enjoy the pleasure of working under his young captain. Being exposed to a heavy rain, he took a severe cold, which settled on his lungs; and when spring came, with its sweet breezes and warm sun, Antonio was not able to enjoy them.

John brought him home, where his mother and sisters nursed him tenderly through his long illness, and he devoted to him all the time he could spare from his business; for it revived the sick man’s spirits to see John’s face.

Many an hour through the summer did the young man pass by the bedside of the suffering Christian, reading to him the precious promises of God, and uniting with him in praise and prayer.

‘It was you,’ said Antonio, ‘that showed me the way to Jesus. Oh! that reading of the Bible--it was my salvation!’

When the leaves began to fall before the winds of autumn, the old sailor was called home to rest. In his last moments he clasped the hand of John, and employed his dying breath in blessing his ‘own boy,’ as he had always called his young friend.

John followed Antonio to the grave with sincere grief. He erected a stone to his memory. It had only his name ‘Antonio’ engraven on it, but that was sufficient for John’s heart; and there was no one else to care for the poor sailor who rested in that humble grave. But precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. However humble may be the Christian’s lot on earth, or obscure his last resting-place, he has a happy home in heaven. A few moments in that blessed world will make us forget all the sorrows of a long life of trouble.

John, or Captain John as he is now called, still sails in the ‘Sally,’ and has as much work as he can do. He has bought a comfortable house in a pleasant suburb, where he has settled his mother and sisters. It is painted white, and the porch is shaded with sweet roses. It looks like a cottage of content, and it is so indeed. Mrs Leddam and John do not forget their dear Henry, nor their old friend Antonio, but they hope to meet them at last; and while they enjoy their quiet home, they often unite their hearts and voices in thanking that merciful God who had thus kindly guided and blessed the poor fatherless boy.

WHAT A LITTLE BOY CAN DO.

‘I wish, I wish, I wish,’ said a little boy, who awoke early one morning, and lay in bed thinking; ‘I wish I was grown up, so as to do some good. If I was governor, I’d make good laws; or I’d be a missionary; or I’d get rich, and give away so much to poor people; but I am only a little boy, and it will take me plenty of years to grow up.’ Was he going to put off doing good till then? ‘Well,’ he said to himself while he was dressing, ‘I know what I CAN do. I can be good; that’s left to little boys.’ Therefore, when he was dressed, he knelt and asked God to help him to be good, and try to serve Him all day with all his heart, and not FORGET. Then he went down stairs to finish his lessons.

No sooner was he seated with his clean slate before him, than his mother called him to run into the wood-house for his little brother. He did not want to leave his lesson, yet he cheerfully said, ‘I’ll go, mother;’ and away he ran. And how do you think he found ‘bubby?’ With a sharp axe in his hand. ‘I chop,’ he said; and quite likely the next moment he would have chopped off his little toes. The little boy only thought of minding his mother; but who can tell if his ready obedience did not save his baby brother from being a cripple for life?

As he was going on an errand for his mother, he saw a poor woman whose foot had slipped on the newly-made ice, and she fell; and in falling she had spilled her bag of beans and basket of apples, and some wicked boys were snatching up her apples and running off with them. The little boy stopped and said, ‘Let me help you to pick up your beans and apples,’ and his nimble fingers quickly helped her out of her mishap. He only thought of being kind; he did not know how his kind act comforted the poor woman long after she got home, and how she prayed God to bless him.

At dinner, as his father and mother were talking, his father said roughly, ‘I shan’t do anything for that man’s son; the old man always did his best to injure me.’ ‘But, father,’ said the little boy, looking up into his father’s face, ‘does not the Bible say we must return good for evil?’ The little boy did not know that his father thought of what his son had said all the afternoon, and said within himself, ‘My boy is more of a Christian than I am; I must be a better man.’

When he came home from school at night, he went to the cage and found his dear canary-bird dead. ‘Oh, mother! and I tended birdie so, and I loved him so, and he sang so sweetly;’ and the little boy burst into tears over his poor favourite. ‘Who gave birdie’s life, and who took it again?’ asked his mother, stroking his head. ‘God,’ he answered through his tears, ‘and He knows best;’ and he tried to hush himself.

A lady sat in a dark corner in the room. She had lost her two birdies; and though she hoped they had taken angels’ wings and gone to nestle in the heavenly land, she would rather have her little sons back to her nest again. But when she beheld the little boy’s patience and submission to his Father in heaven, she said, ‘I too will trust Him, like this little child.’ Her heart was touched, and she went home with a little spring of healing gushing up there, and she became henceforth a better mother to the children yet left to her.

When the little boy lay on his pillow that night, he thought, ‘I am too small to do any good; but oh, I do want to be good, and to love the Saviour who came down from heaven to die for me. I do want to become one of the heavenly Father’s dear children.’

The heavenly Father’s children are sometimes called children of light; and does it not seem as if beams of light shone from this little child, warming, blessing everybody that came in his way? Who will say he did not do good?

_A NEW BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS_

MILESTONES AND OTHER STORIES

_BY JESSIE M. E. SAXBY_

EDINBURGH & LONDON OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER

_NEW BOOK OF ADVENTURE FOR BOYS_

RICHARD TREGELLAS

A MEMOIR OF HIS ADVENTURES IN THE WEST INDIES,

IN·THE·YEAR· OF·GRACE 1781.

BY

D. LAWSON·JOHNSTONE

EDINBURGH & LONDON OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER