"Here's father!" suddenly exclaimed Benoni, as he heard a familiar step on the stair, and rose to meet his parent.

"Oh, may he bring us good news!" sighed Sophy. Instinctively she turned her head in the direction of the door, longing to be able to read in the face of her adopted parent whether he had met with success in his quest for employment or assistance. All was darkness with Sophy; but Benoni saw in a moment, from the heavy cloud on his father's brow, the compressed lips, the haggard cheek, that he had met with severe disappointment. Benjamin Isaacs almost threw to Benoni the single loaf which he brought, as with suppressed bitterness he said, "Take it—I got it by pledging the last of my tools."

"God has forsaken us!" muttered Sophy, putting up her hands to each side of her head. There had been a shooting pain through it at that moment, but a sharper pang still had pierced through the poor girl's heart.

The one chair in the kitchen had been left for Benjamin Isaacs, but he did not take it; he was too restless to sit down. Under a manner usually quiet, he was a man of passions naturally fierce. These had been kept under control, first by a habit of reserve, then by the principles which he had adopted with the Christian religion, but now and then they broke through restraint, and a short but vivid glimpse was given of an impetuous, fiery spirit.

"Man at least has forsaken us!" he exclaimed, with but half-suppressed passion. "I went first to Elkanah da Costa, him under whom I worked as a journeyman for years. There he was in his shop, surrounded by the silver and the gold and the gems that are dear to him as his soul. I told him of my difficulties; how anxious I am to find work, even if my wages be much reduced. He knows how I work,—many of the glittering jewels in his cases had been set by these hands. 'I don't see you, Benjamin Isaacs, in the synagogue now,' he drawled forth; he who cares less for religion, be it in Christian or Hebrew, than for the lightest grain of gold dust that falls from the graver! 'No,' I replied; 'for these three years and more I have attended a Christian church.' 'Then go to the Christians,' he said, mockingly, waving me out of the shop. 'You will at least give me a certificate of character,' I began. He cut me short with, 'Go to the Christians for that,' with a sneer on his face which made the blood mount to mine; and I turned my back on that place with its glittering wealth—forever!

"I had not walked many paces from the shop," continued Benjamin Isaacs, "when whom should I come upon suddenly, on turning a corner of the street, but my near blood relation, my cousin Reuben. He and I had played when children together, shared the same meals, read out of the same book, slept in the same room at night. I had written to Reuben after my conversion, but I had received no reply. I did not doubt that he would be angry at my having left our common faith; but he is under obligation to me,—deep obligation,—and I scarcely thought that even religious differences would entirely break the threefold tie of gratitude, friendship, and blood."

Benjamin Isaacs paused, knit his dark brows, and pressed his lips tightly together. Benoni thought of that which is written, Brother shall rise up against brother, and silently thanked God that he and his father, at least, had at the same time given themselves to the Lord. Isaacs continued his narration; it seemed a relief to him thus to pour out the bitterness of his spirit in words,—

"'Reuben,' said I, and held out my hand; he drew back, and looked as if he would as lief have grasped a viper. 'Turncoat, dog of a Christian!' he hissed forth, and passed me with a gesture, which, had I not been a Christian, would have made me strike him to the pavement, and stamp upon him as he lay there!" The dark eyes of Isaacs seemed to flash fire as he said this, and intuitively he clenched his thin hand.

"O father, dear, then you'll have your scars to show!" cried Benoni. The soft, sweet voice of the boy sounded to Sophy like music after a storm.

"Scars! what do you mean?" asked Isaacs.

"Ned Franks said that what we have to suffer for Christ, because we are his faithful soldiers, will be to us at last like the scars left by wounds got in battle."

There was something soothing in the idea to one who was at the moment smarting from persecution borne for righteousness' sake. The furrows on Isaacs' brow smoothed down; he seated himself wearily on the chair, and drew his little boy towards him.

"You seem to have a good memory, Benoni, for everything done or said by your good friend the sailor, though you were so young when we left the village of Colme."

"We had such happy days there," said Benoni; "the happiest days in all my life, when you and I lodged in the pretty cottage with old Mr. Meade and dear Persis, and every evening Ned Franks came to court her for his wife. He used to take me on his knee, and tell me stories, and I think of them now so often,—most of all at night when I can't get to sleep; it seems as if they brought those dear old times back again." Benoni, in that gloomy London kitchen, could not repress a little sigh. As memory may have recalled to Adam the sights and sounds of Eden, so she pictured to Benoni the cottage mantled with creepers, buried in its green wooded dell, with the gurgle of the stream and the clack of the mill and the happy voice of Persis singing hymns at her grandfather's door.

"And what was it that Franks said about wounds and scars?" asked Isaacs.

"You know that Ned Franks had served the queen, and had been in more than one battle; yet he told me that he had never so much as received a scratch in fight, and that he half envied the fellows that carried away some marks that they'd been in the struggle; for that though wounds may be sore at the time, an old soldier or sailor likes afterwards to look at his scars. Franks said, that if the bright angels in heaven, who have nothing but peace, happiness, and love, could envy us poor mortals anything, it must be the opportunity of giving up something and suffering something for the sake of the Lord Jesus, who suffered so much for us. The angels may have the harps of gold and the crowns of life, but they can't have the victor's scars, for no one has ever hated or persecuted them for righteousness' sake. Sometimes," continued the boy, nestling closer to his father, and speaking on, because he felt that his simple words were giving comfort,—"sometimes I like to think of all the Lord's faithful soldiers marching in glory before him, when all their trials and battles are over, and when everything which they have borne for him will be remembered. There will be Joseph,—he got his scar when he was thrown into prison; Daniel, his in the den of lions; the three brave Jews, in the burning, fiery furnace. And then there will be the scars of those who have been reviled and spoken against and laughed at because they would serve the Lord; scars of those who have lost money for Christ, who have given up Sunday gains, or wouldn't take bribes, or get gold in any bad way, and so were sometimes hungry and poor while they lived upon earth. And sometimes it has seemed to me," continued Benoni, "that even if I could get so easily through life as never to have a hard word or want a comfort because I served the Saviour, I would rather have some little scars to show,—not because they would make me deserve anything as a reward from my King, but because they would be like marks to prove how dearly I had loved him."

"Ay, ay," said Isaacs, calmly and even cheerfully, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake. It is the Master himself who bade his wounded servants rejoice and leap for joy. If we have never received so much as a scratch in the long struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, it looks as if our fighting had been but a sham,—that we had kept out of the fire, and thought a great deal more of our own comfort than of the honor of our Leader. He bore shame and loss for us; we should welcome shame and loss for him." The thought was taking from Isaacs all the venom that had been rankling in his wounded spirit.

"Such sorrows are blessings and honors," cried Benoni, and his pale face brightened as he said it.

"But what are sorrows," thought poor Sophy, "that come upon us, not because we have followed the Lord, but because we have wandered from him?" She had listened to the preceding conversation in silence, bitterly conscious that the wounds which festered in her heart were not those received in Christian warfare, but rather, in part at least, the consequences of her early folly and neglect of religion. Sophy knew too well how entirely her mind had been set on the world. A gay ribbon or dress, a gaudy bead necklace, a Sunday "lark," or a dance, had been more to her silly, sinful heart than all the truths contained in the Bible. She had not given up one folly for the sake of her Lord; she had not through sense of duty ever renounced the smallest gain; her dangerous pleasures had been torn from her,—not yielded up of her own free will; she had clutched them as long as she could; she had been made poor, desolate, and blind; but this had been because her waywardness had rendered chastisements needful, not because her faithfulness to God had led her into persecution or trouble. And yet Sophy was far more disposed to repine than were Isaacs and his son; she was more tempted to distrust God's love, though her very afflictions were a token of it. Sophy had been a wandering sheep, straying upon the mountains of sin and folly, now near to the brink of the precipice, now close to the den of the lion who lurketh in wait for souls to destroy them. She would not then hear the voice of the Shepherd: she chose her own dangerous path. When her friend, Norah Peele, under the influence of her uncle, had begun to try in earnest to lead a new life, Sophy had done all in her power to hinder and keep her back; had first laughed at her good resolutions, and then quarrelled with Norah because she could not be persuaded to break them. It was in mercy indeed that sorrow and sickness had been sent to Sophy, like the rough sheep-dog after the straying lamb to frighten or drag it back to the fold; Sophy, if left to herself, must have been lost forever. It is not always that trials are blessings, but such they had been to her. Sophy had been suddenly checked in her mad career, shut out by blindness from many temptations which she had never been able to resist,—love of dress, of flattery, of folly,—temptations which were drawing her farther and farther away from her God. Sophy in her misery had learned to pray, but she had not yet learned to praise; as a penitent she was sincere, but as a believer she was weak. She reverenced the Lord as her king, had hope in him as her Saviour; but she did not cling to him with rejoicing trust as the Friend, the loving Friend who bids us cast all our care upon him, because he careth for us.

"Shall we never go back to Colme, father?" asked Benoni, after along interval of silence, during which the boy's thoughts had been wandering back to what he considered the pleasantest spot upon earth.

"There would be no opening in a village like Colme, for a jeweller like me," replied Benjamin Isaacs. "I finished the business that took me there,—that of arranging and getting into order the curiosities and gems at the Hall. My patron, Sir Lacy Barton, is dead, and his heir knows nothing about me. I would never go to Colme to be a burden upon the kindness of Ned Franks and his wife,—better enter a poor-house, or starve!" There was an independence of character in the Jew which he carried almost to a fault; Benoni knew that his father would suffer the extremity of want rather than beg or borrow from a friend.

"It is long, very long, since we have heard either from the Frankses, or from my dear friend Norah," said Sophy.

"They know not where a letter would find us, my daughter; I have twice changed our lodgings since last I wrote, which I did when returning money most kindly offered. Franks has his own family to care for; I accept nothing but from those who are my relations by blood."

"Or by adoption," added Benoni, glancing kindly at Sophy, and then at her basket of knitted goods.

"You and Sophy are alike my children," said Isaacs; "our purse shall always be one; our good or bad fortune we share together. So," he added more cheerfully, "take yon loaf, my boy, and divide it between your sister, yourself, and me. 'Better the dinner of herbs where love is, than the stalled ox and hatred therewith.' We'll thank God for the bread which he gives to-day, and trust him to send more on the morrow."