CHAPTER III.

WANDERINGS—_continued._

JOHN ASPINALL had come up by the night train to London—a place which he had never visited before—on account of a telegram received from Mr. White on the preceding day at Greenside Farm. Never before had a telegram been seen, or scarcely heard of, in that quiet secluded spot, and its contents had filled the hitherto peaceful home with mourning and woe. Had the tidings been those of David's death, they would not have caused more anguish. His sisters cried bitterly, little Nelly the loudest of all, though she could not, of course, understand the cause of the trouble; she only knew that something dreadful had happened to Davy.

Jenny was indignant at the thought of her brother—her darling brother—being brought before a magistrate.

"He is as innocent as a lamb, I'm certain that he is," she exclaimed through her sobs. "This is the doing of some wicked, cruel enemy, who wants to ruin our Davy. Are you not sure that he is innocent, Minnie?"

Poor Minnie could only hope so. Her love was as tender as Jenny's, but not so blind. She was too well-aware that poor Davy had not made duty the rule of his conduct at home, and she knew that when a stone is set rolling down a steep hill, no one can tell where it will stop. The tone of the very few short notes which David had written home during the last six months had made his sister very uneasy; of late he had written none at all. Minnie was less surprised than distressed when the sad news came. She tried, though with a very sore heart, to cheer her mother, and speak hope to her father, but her great resource was pouring out her heart in prayer to God.

Mrs. Aspinall could not weep, and would not complain, but she trembled, and a feeling of faint sickness came over her frame. Her boy, her darling, her pride, he to whom she had once looked as her future comfort and the support of the family, was he to bring down the grey hairs of his parents with sorrow to the grave?

"Wife," said the farmer abruptly, "I must be up to London; there's a train starts at ten to-night."

Mrs. Aspinall cast a sad look out at the chill wintry landscape, but she knew it would be vain to attempt to prevent her husband from taking the journey. She pulled out of her large pocket a purse, for she usually had charge of the money of the family. She emptied the purse on the deal table with her cold trembling fingers; there were a few small pieces of silver, and several of copper, but "not" one of gold.

The farmer looked at the little store for a moment or two with a knitted brow, then muttered as if to himself, "Cobbs said last week as how he'd be glad to buy Crummie; I'll just step over and see if he's in the same mind."

"We'd spare anything for our boy," said Mary Aspinall. These were the first words which she had trusted herself to utter since the arrival of that dreadful telegram paper.

So Crummie was sold, the favourite cow that the farmer had reared from a calf; that had been the pride and pet of his children, and whose milk had been the chief means, as his wife often said, of bringing him through his long illness. With a full purse but a fuller heart, the unhappy father started on his journey to London, on a dark, cold, drizzly night. He would not have started alone, for Mary yearned to go with him, had the mother not feared that all the spare cash would be wanted for David, and had she not felt that it was needful for her to stop and take care of the girls and the farm.

After once catching a glimpse of his father in the police-court, David could hardly give his mind to attend to what was passing around him. The voices sounded like a confused babble in his ears; he seemed conscious only of one thing, that he was a guilty wretch, deserving any amount of punishment that might be inflicted upon him. How had he repaid all the love that had been lavished on him since his birth; how had he fulfilled the fond hopes of which he had long been the object?

David Aspinall was convicted of misdemeanour; the sentence was fine or imprisonment. John paid the fine at once; his son, who was well-aware how scanty were the means of his parents, could not bear to think, though he could easily guess, how the money had been procured. His uncle White, who was present, led the unhappy father, and yet more unhappy son, out of the court, called a cab, and took them at once to his home. Not a word was uttered during the long rattling drive. The farmer sat opposite to David, leaning both hands on his crutch, with his head bowed down; a heavier weight than that of years was crushing the honest man to the dust!

And then could David realise to some extent the misery described in the words of the Psalmist, the anguish of remorse "without" confession, remorse uncheered by the hope of God's forgiveness. The Lord's hand was heavy upon him; his moisture was indeed "changed into the drought of summer!"

David made a not uncommon mistake at this time of shame and anguish. He thought that "remorse" was "repentance;" he hated himself for his sin; but he had yet to learn that to "hate self" is not always to "give up self," and that the heart may be wrung with misery, yet the stubborn will remain unbroken.

"You'll come back with me, lad? Your mother won't be easy till she sees you; you're wanted more than over at the farm."

These were the first words which John Aspinall addressed on that day to his son, and they were uttered in a hoarse, husky voice.

"I'll never go back!" exclaimed David, with passionate excitement. "This will be known all over the village—I could not look any one in the face! No, no; I'd sooner die than go back!"

"But what if it be your duty to go," said Mr. White, in a tone of grave reproof. "We must sometimes put our likes and dislikes out of the question, and try—to make up for the past."

"I'll go out to one of the colonies, and work my way in a place where I am not known," exclaimed David, who had hardly listened to his uncle, and who dared not look at his father.

Yet again the two ways, the right and the wrong, were before the young lad. Had "his" been true godly repentance, he would "at any cost" have tried to make the only amends that he could make to his family for all the grief that he had caused them. He would have sacrificed his self-will to what he knew to be the clear duty before him. He would have obeyed the wishes of his earthly father, and so have followed the guidance of his heavenly Father. But David was not prepared to do this. Once again, after all the bitter lessons of the past, he chose the way of his own inclination, and decided on working his way out to the African coast.

David did not even go back with his afflicted father to spend Christmas at Greenside Farm. He would not have done so, even could he have afforded the expense of the journey. As it was, all his wages had gone in selfish pleasures, and he had to borrow from his uncle what was required for bare necessaries to fit him out for the voyage.

Before a fortnight had passed, David was tossing in the British Channel, encountering the hardships of life at sea, and in vain straining his eyes, as he passed the Dorsetshire coast, to catch a glimpse of the distant church spire rising from the clump of old elms.

"The way of transgressors is hard."

This is declared in the Bible, and millions, by sad experience, can testify to its truth. Every one who habitually chooses to follow his own will, disregarding duty and conscience, will find in the end—if he find not at once—that sorrow follows as the shadow of sin.

David was no longer a thoughtless, light-hearted lad, he was a burdened sinner, ashamed to think of his home, afraid to think of his God! After a "miserable" voyage, which had seemed to him as if it never would end, David arrived at the Cape of Good Hope. He was almost unprovided with money, and did not find it as easy as he had expected to obtain good employment. He got a few odd jobs, but no permanent engagement.

After a while he was tempted by the offer of high wages, and also by the hope of adventure and sport, to go a considerable way inland, to enter the service of Hans Kuhe, the Dutch Boer, to whom I have already introduced the reader. The lad spent all his little means in making the long journey, and then found himself at Heinbok Kloof in the position almost of a prisoner, or rather of a slave, to the coarse-minded hard-hearted man whom he had chosen as master. David had no power to get away, for it was impossible for him, without money or oxen, to return to Cape Town through a dry barren tract, the haunt of wild beasts, and of tribes of men almost as wild.

Young Aspinall was chained to the service of one who so disliked England and the English that he gave the name of "Britain" to his most obstinate ox, for the express purpose of having something to thrash which bore that hated name. Oh how bitterly did David contrast the rude dwelling of Hans, seen under the furnace-like glare of an African sun, to his own peaceful home in the valley; the yellow thick-lipped Hottentots, who, whenever they dared, left their work to be done by the English lad, to the dear ones whose faces and forms were so familiar to memory; his father, with his broad sun-burnt brow; his gentle mother, his rosy-checked sisters. David even contrasted the lean long-legged oxen with sides seamed by the traces of the cruel rhinoceros hide, to the sleek cattle that grazed in English pastures, or stood, as he so often had seen them, in the pool enjoying the fresh cool waters in the stillness of a summer eve. Sorely did David repent that he had ever wandered from Greenside Farm.

But still David's was not that repentance which leads the sinner to God, it was not laying down the burden of his sins and his sorrows at the feet of his Saviour, and trusting to that Saviour's mercy and merits for pardon and peace. It was not until the night on which my story opens, when David was returning from an expedition still further inland, undertaken by his master for purposes of barter with the natives, that the poor Wanderer had had a glimpse of the blessed truth that he might yet return to his heavenly Father, that his transgressions might be forgiven and all his sins blotted out.

Great as were his sufferings and dangers, that was a night of blessing to the penitent lad. It was then that he found his God and looked up to Him in faith, not as the stern Judge who would execute judgment upon a criminal, not as the awful King who would crush the rebel who had broken His laws, but as the compassionate Saviour, deeply wronged, yet loving still, stretching forth those sacred hands once pierced for the sake of sinners, and calling to His wandering sheep, "Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?"

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