A SOUL IN NEED.

Two days after Walter’s fall in the night, he had leave of absence extending from sunrise to sunset. He did not care to take it, his time at the station was so brief, and especially as he was anxious to prove his purpose to be loyal to all obligations resting upon him.

“It is your turn to be off, Walter,” said the keeper. “You are fairly entitled to it, and I want you to have what is yours. Be on hand at sunset. You may learn something in your favor, and you had better improve your chance.”

With the keeper’s apparent kindness went an insinuation that Walter’s course had not entirely been swept clean of every shadow of suspicion, and if he could find a broom to do this sweeping, it was plainly suggested that he had better secure it. That remark decided Walter in his course. He left the station in no pleasant mood of mind, and the keeper’s words had occasioned it. “If I can, I will get that help,” thought Walter, walking off rapidly, “but—where?”

He was puzzled. One memory came to him, however. It was what his father said once: “Walter, if things go wrong, if people say we are wrong and yet we know we are right, but can’t somehow show it and prove it, then wait and let God do the proving. He is as much interested in good character as we, more so even, and He will bring things round right. Tie up to that post.”

“I will tie up to that post,” declared Walter.

He did not go directly to his uncle’s, but took the road to The Harbor.

“Walter!” said a voice as he was passing the post–office. He turned quickly. A young woman had just left Miss P. Green’s headquarters, and was calling to him. It was May Elliott. She looked at him in her earnest way, her blue eyes brightening as she said, “I only want to say that I hope you won’t care for those stories about you at the station. Your friends have confidence in you, and don’t believe what has been said against you.”

“Thank you. That does me good. It’s pretty hard to be accused when you are innocent.”

“Well, you wait. The truth will come out; and when it comes, you will be justified. Oh, there is something else on my mind. Did you know that Chauncy Aldrich was sick?”

“I only heard that he was indoors with some trouble.”

“They say he is pretty sick, and Miss P. Green, where he is boarding, says he is low–spirited. I did not know but that you might like to call and see him.”

Waiter declared that he would go at once. He found Chauncy in a little room with a single window. From this there was a view across the white snowfields to the blackish ocean, scowling angrily like an immense eye under a dark, heavy lid of cloud. Chauncy was lying on his bed, his head raised a little that he might look out upon the winter scenery. His eyes were bright but somber, and his hands were thin and white. That cold bath to which his uncle had unceremoniously treated him, and which he afterwards attempted to explain as a “little joke,” had provoked the sickness so bleaching and weakening and thinning the once vigorous young trader. Every feature showed the effect of the hard fever that had attacked him. Even the knob of hair that was so accustomed to bristle on Chauncy’s head and silently to defy all the world, had now been humbled. His hair in a thick, tangled mass, suggested a fort in ruins.

“Plympton, how are you? I’m real glad to see you. Sit down, old boy. Where have you been all this time?”

“At the station, you know. They tie us pretty tight, but it is my day off. I’m real sorry you are sick, Aldrich.”

“O thank you! Guess I shall pull through it, but it’s awful hard to be cooped up here,” and as he said this, he kicked at the bed–clothes with a sudden energy. “A business man, you know, that is used to stirring, can’t come down to this easily. I’m real glad you came in. Say, are you going up to your uncle’s?”

“I thought I should.”

“Well—”

Chauncy hesitated. He wished to say something about his Uncle Bezaleel. He did not know very much about Baggs’ business relations to Boardman Blake. In spite of Baggs’ blustering display of confidence in his nephew, any ostentatious intimations that Chauncy knew everything about his business in general, Chauncy knew very little. One reason was that the uncle’s business, after all the brag, was very limited, and then Bezaleel knew that Chauncy had too much principle to back him in certain dishonest schemes. The young man now hesitated, impelled to say something about his uncle, and yet held back by an unwillingness to damage one with whom he had been associated.

“I guess you had better go to your uncle’s, Plympton. There is going to be a conference there, I believe, my uncle and his lawyer, and your uncle and his lawyer, and oh, I don’t know what else. Miss Green told me; and bless me, what that mail–bag don’t know, isn’t worth the knowing. She will hold more news than an ocean steamer. Now mind, Plympton, I don’t know what is up. Take my word for it. But there is something to pay, and I would go there.”

“I shall, most certainly,” and Walter’s eye flashed like that of a watch dog who starts in the night as he catches the stealthy step of a burglar. “I hope it is nothing serious with my uncle.”

“I don’t know how it is; but two lawyers—that means a rush in the market, Plympton; yes, a rush.”

Chauncy ceased talking. His efforts at conversation had already wearied him. He lay upon his bed silently arguing a point. This “rush in the market” meant a very significant movement by his enterprising uncle, though its exact nature was a mystery to Chauncy. His uncle’s slippery ways had suggested to him one occasion when he himself had been false to Walter, and almost involuntarily he exclaimed, as one may do in sickness that weakens the control of the mind over itself,—”I don’t think I ever tried to deceive you, save once. I hope though you won’t hold it against me.”

Walter caught this confession imperfectly; and what made him guess the occasion to which Chauncy referred? Was it a chance look out of the window toward the rocks of the Crescent, about which the surf had wound its scarf of snow? Walter thought of the day when he saw Bezaleel Baggs on the shore looking off toward the Chair. He was reminded of Bezaleel’s resemblance to the mysterious form he saw one morning in Boardman Blake’s store, that morning when Chauncy Aldrich so persistently tried to call off Walter’s attention from the store. Walter now turned suddenly to the invalid.

“Aldrich, see here. What do you mean by saying you deceived me once? I can only think of one time when I guess you did try to pull the wool over my eyes, and I want you to own up if it was so. Do you remember one morning when I first came this way to stop? I was opening my uncle’s store and you drove down in a wagon, and I came out to the door and saw you there, and I fancied I saw somebody else in the store?”

Chauncy nodded his head in assent. Then he added slowly, “That’s—the time—I mean, too.”

“Look here! Wasn’t that your uncle inside the store?”

Chauncy hesitated. He spoke at last, and with sudden force. “Plympton, I don’t want to deceive you now; but I did then, and am sorry. It was my uncle in the store. Now, I don’t want to go back on anybody, sick as I am. He is my mother’s brother, if he isn’t what he ought to be.” His lip quivered. He was thinking of a mother, long ago at rest in death.

“Perhaps you mean that you don’t want me to say anything about it, and that it will look as if you had turned against your uncle. I don’t think I need to speak of you. I saw him with my own eyes, though I don’t know what he was up to there in the store.”

“I don’t,” whispered Chauncy.

“It is a satisfaction to have you confirm my opinion, and as for yourself anything between us is all settled.”

“Thank you.”

“There, I have bothered you too long. I didn’t mean to stay here all this while.”

“I kept you, I kept you. Don’t go. It’s fearful lonesome here, save when Green comes up; and then she may look at me and say I make her think of her brother who died, and cries—well, that don’t help a feller; and I stay here and think, you know. Say, Plympton!” Chauncy’s eyes shone out bright and sharp. “Say, I don’t want to die!”

“Oh, I don’t believe you will. I am thinking of this: soon as I get off from the station,—and my time is up in a few days,—how would you like to have me be your nurse? I could sit with you, you know, and I am strong and could lift you easily when you wanted to change about.”

Strong? The very sight of the young surfman so muscular and healthy was an elixir to Chauncy. He seemed to take strength from Walter at once, and certainly his own stock needed reinforcement, for he was very feeble.

Walter pitied him; “Poor fellow!” he said, and Walter laid his hand on Chauncy’s forehead and gently stroked it. “I’m sorry for you, and I’ll help you.”

The tears came in Chauncy’s eyes.

“Weak, you see, Plympton, weak as a baby. I should like to have you come first rate. You make—me—think—of my mother when she was alive—she did that—put her hand there, you know.” The tears came faster now.

“Now I would be quiet,” said Walter soothingly.

“Oh, this don’t hurt me, only when Green comes and looks at me, as much as to say: ‘A bad bargain, a bad bargain!’ See here, Plympton! Do you remember May Elliott’s composition at the Academy?”

“Yes, I’m sure I do.”

“Well, I have thought of that a lot. You might not think so, but I have, driving round you know, a business man, watching the market, you know. She said the life—what was it?”

“The life that does not take others into account, God and another life—that’s the idea—was making a great mistake.”

“Yes, that’s it; and lying here, I have said to myself, ‘Aldrich, you’ve made a mistake. You are buying stock that will fetch precious little. Yes, a mistake.’”

“Well, Aldrich, I won’t keep you talking; but before I go, why not take God into account, let me ask? Why not tell Him how much you need Him, that you are sorry, and want Him to help you to a better life, and that you give yourself to Him?”

“He’d get a tremendous poor bargain if He took me. All run down now.”

“God knows all that. Let’s see. What is that verse about God commending His love toward us, saying while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us?”

“Christ died for us! That does me good. That’s like cold water when the fever is on and you are fearful thirsty,” and Chauncy moved his lips as if drinking.

“Then there is another verse—I don’t know as I say it exactly, but I can give the idea—that when we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly.”

“Yes, yes,” and again a thirsty soul drank of this cool goblet of good news.

“Plympton, I say!”

He spoke with much emphasis, as if he had a matter of great importance to relate or a favor to ask.

“I don’t know as you have a prayer handy you could say, have you?”

Walter hesitated. What prayer could he say that would help another? There was the Lord’s Prayer, though. He could say that. Kneeling and holding Chauncy by the hand—how tightly Chauncy clung to that strong, friendly hand—Walter began, “Our Father!”

“Our Father,” repeated Chauncy, and then followed Walter through the prayer.

Walter added a few more words in which he tried to approach an ever present, ever willing Saviour, beseeching that Chauncy might be helped right there to give himself entirely up to God; braiding into his words, the touching, solemn collect: “Assist us mercifully, O Lord, in these our supplications and prayers.”

Walter then rose from his knees.

“That was another good drink,” Chauncy said.

“I did not mean to stay so long, Aldrich. Why, the tide is almost in,” said Walter, glancing out of the window. “The Crescent is pretty well covered.”

“Oh, don’t go!”

“Pretty well covered! What’s that verse? It is about God’s forgiveness. I read it in the Psalter last Sunday; ‘And covered all their sins.’ That is the way it is with God’s mercy.”

And Walter thought of the tide coming in everywhere, and everywhere covering and hiding the black rocks, the long, sandy bars, the unsightly flats of mud, burying all under its bright, shining, softly singing current.

Chauncy appreciated Walter’s meaning; and when the latter left, Chauncy with a smile in his face was looking afar and watching the tide coming in.