CHAPTER VII.

HER LAST COMMAND.

ISHMAEL loosed his hold of his mother, but he did not rise from the place where he was kneeling beside her. A faint gleam coming up from the room below lit up Ruth's face as she looked earnestly and searchingly into his.

"I can't quit my mother," he answered, speaking in a loud but forced tone; "she's dyin', and if I go, maybe I shall never see her again."

"Ishmael," said Ruth, "thee has never forgiven Nutkin yet."

"No," he muttered, "no; it's been too much to forgive. He drove me away from home; and I'd have been a man by now, instead of a wastrel, if he hadn't been hard on me. Thee 'd not ha' worked thyself to death, mother, if it hadn't been for him. No; I've not forgiven him. Let him find his little lad for himself!"

"You must come, Ishmael," called Elsie. "Willie's been missing five hours or more; and we can hear him crying in the old quarry; and nobody knows it like you do; and the opening's too small for a man to crawl through, and it's no use sending in a boy, if any of them would go alone. Oh, come quickly! Suppose he strayed into one of those pools you told me of and was drowned. Come down this minute!"

But Ishmael did not move; holding his mother's hand between his own, and gazing mournfully into her beseeching face.

"If I bid thee go," she murmured, "thee would not disobey me now I'm dyin'?"

"Don't send me," he cried; "don't bid me go!"

"Nay," she said tenderly, "I'm bound to bid thee, and thee art bound to go. It 'ud be no comfort to see thee nigh me, if I couldn't die happy for thinkin' o' the little lad in the pit. And it's partly because thee hasn't forgiven Nutkin. And if we forgive not men their sins, neither will our Heavenly Father forgive ours. That's what the blessed Lord says. And oh, if thee forgives him, the Lord will forgive thee. Go, Ishmael; I shall see thee again—not here, maybe—but in some better place."

"I'll go," he said, looking into her face very sorrowfully; "but, oh, if I never see thee again in this world, it 'll seem hard to wait till we get to heaven."

Still Elsie's impatient and entreating voice reached their ears, urging him to make haste, and his mother's sunken eyes were fastened upon him with a look in them as if she was beseeching him to go. It might be the last time he would ever see her face. With a deep and heavy sigh, Ishmael stooped to kiss her, and, as if afraid to trust himself to linger another moment, he sprang down the ladder, and, pushing on through bramble and brushwood, quickly reached the entrance of the cave.

It was no longer dark and solitary. Many of the villagers were there, and the glimmer of several lanterns produced a lurid and fitful light. Nutkin knelt at the far end of the cave before the low and narrow inlet, through which, when there was a moment's silence, he fancied he could hear in the black darkness the voice of his child crying.

"The men will be here with pickaxes soon, Nutkin," said the squire, who stood beside him, "and we'll get the little fellow out in a very short time, my man."

"I'm more afeard of the picks bringing the old roof in than aught else, sir," answered Nutkin, in a voice of despair; "there's been a deal o' heavy rain o' late, and there's been two or three hollows given in above ground; and if the roof gave way betwixt us and the little lad he'd die o' fright before we could dig him out. If the hole was but big enough for a man to creep through! But nobody could creep through a hole no bigger than a rabbit-bury; only a teeny creature like little Willie."

A profound silence followed Nutkin's speech, for no man or woman there could risk the life of any of their boys by sending them into the workings of the old quarry. And amid the silence there was heard plainly enough a low stifled voice speaking.

"I can crawl through," it said; "I know every step o' the old pit."

"Ishmael Medway!" shouted half a dozen voices, joyously. "He's the lad, if there is one."

He felt himself pushed forward to the far end of the cave, where the light was strongest. The thin, stunted, undersized lad, in his tattered clothing, and with his mournful face, stood in front of the squire, and of his old enemy, who gazed at him half in shame and half in hope.

"Mother's sent me," he said, touching his old ragged cap to the squire. "She's dyin', and I don't s'pose as I shall ever see her again; but she couldn't die happy with the little lad lost in the pit. And mother says if I forgive him here, God 'll forgive me, and take me, some day, somewhere, to the place where she's goin'! I slept here last night, and I heard the ground give way. Don't set any picks at work."

Ishmael did not wait for an answer, but lying down on the ground, crept through the narrow, winding tunnel he had often crawled through as a boy. He called back to them when he had reached the shaft, where he could stand upright, and they saw that he had struck a light; but presently all sound and sign of him was lost, and Nutkin and the squire rose from their knees where they had been watching and listening, and the fitful light of the lanterns shone upon the tears in their eyes.

"I'll make a man of that lad," said the squire, in a broken voice.

"God Almighty bring him and Willie safe back," cried Nutkin, sinking down on his knees again, "and I'll treat him as my own son, I will; as long as ever I live! So help me, God!"

So silent for some time was the crowd of villagers now thronging the cave, that they could hear the heavy splashes of water falling from the rain-sodden earth into the little pools collected below in the subterranean alleys of the old pit; and once a low rumbling like distant thunder, telling of the earth giving way in one of the many galleries, made them hold their breath in speechless dread, and look anxiously into one another's faces. But, as if Ishmael too had heard it, and wished to reassure them, there came the sound of his voice, calling back to them from the hidden pathways.

"God bless him!" exclaimed the squire, a smile for a moment crossing his anxious and clouded face.

"Ay!" cried Chipchase. "He was as good a lad as ever breathed before he went to gaol for stealing them pheasant's eggs; and old Ruth, his mother, you might trust her in a room full of golden guineas. She's as good an old soul as ever lived. Ishmael said she was a-dying, didn't he, sir?"

"Yes," answered the squire.

"And she'd send him away from her to save Nutkin's little lad!" said Chipchase. "That's what I call being a Christian. Any minute might bring the roof over his head, and bury him alive; and old Ruth knows it. But if any soul in Broadmoor believes in God, it's Ruth; and, please God, I'll be a better man myself from this day forth."

The farmer's voice trembled as he finished speaking, and he turned his face away from the light, ashamed to let his neighbours see how much he felt.

"Old Ruth's had a hard, bitter life," said Mrs. Chipchase, sobbing; "she was near brokenhearted when Ishmael went to gaol; and she's never been the same woman since. He was like the apple of her eye, Ishmael was; and he'd worse luck than any of her children, thanks to Nutkin, I always said, and always shall say to my dying day. What was a boy's taking a few paltry eggs, I'd like to know?"

"I'll treat him like my own son," muttered Nutkin, not looking up.

"We must make it up to him," added the squire. "If I'd known he was a good lad, he should never have gone to gaol."

"Hush!" cried Elsie, who was standing beside Mrs. Chipchase.

Instantly there was a breathless stillness in the cave, and every eye was turned towards the low outer entrance, through which they could hear the dragging of weary footsteps. Bent almost double, and tottering as if every step must be the last, came old Ruth herself.

"Where's Ishmael?" she asked, looking round at her neighbours' faces with eyes dim and glazed.