CHAPTER X.

THE WONDERFUL BOOK.

UPWARDS of a week passed away, during which Matthew Reardon was still confined to his chair, for nothing could persuade him to take to his bed. He was not worse, he said, but then he was no better. A little paler, and thinner, and weaker, perhaps; at least his wife thought so; but he did not perceive it himself, or rather, would not admit that he did. And all that time no doctor had ever called; neither had they seen or heard anything of the old clerk.

"He must be ill," said Matthew.

"He is like the rest of the world," thought Mrs. Reardon, in the bitterness of her disappointment.

While the trembling children whispered together of their firm belief that the wolves had eaten him up that wild night when he went away.

"He must be ill, I tell you," repeated Matthew, impatiently. "Marshall is not the man to desert a sick friend in the hour of need. He would have come if he could."

"Anyhow," said his wife, "he might have remembered to send the doctor as he promised."

"It does not signify. He would not have done any good, perhaps. It's hard for you, Mary, I know, to sit there working as you do from morning till night for my sake and the children's; but it's a deal harder for me to see it and not be able to help—I often wish I was dead!"

"Oh, Matthew! Don't say that! Please don't!" sobbed his wife. "I can't bear it—it breaks my heart and I have no time to cry!"

She meant that the blinding tears hindered her from working, and made her eyes ache and smart, so that she had great difficulty in seeing to do the fine sewing and stitching which was to win their daily bread. It was a touching lament—the poor have very frequently no time for tears.

"Forgive me," murmured her husband. "I shall be better soon, 'please God,' as old Marshall would say."

Mrs. Reardon tried to return his smile, and then, by way of changing the conversation, asked Bessie what book it was that Mr. Marshall had promised to give her, and of which she was always talking.

"It's called 'The Pilgrim's Progress,'" said Bessie.

"What's it all about?" asked her father.

"We haven't read it all by a great deal yet, father. It's a wonderful book! It was made by one of those men who go about the streets mending old pots and kettles."

"Oh, Bessie!" exclaimed Polly.

"Teacher said so," replied the child, decidedly, "If he did not make it, he dreamt it, which is all the same."

"Never mind how it was made," said her father.

"Well, it's about a certain man named Christian who was always reading and praying, and crying out,—

"'What shall I do to be saved?'

"But no one seemed to have read the Bible, so as to be able to tell him about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. At last, he made up his mind to run away, and when his wife and children cried after him to come back, he only put his fingers in his ears, and ran all the faster."

"It was a good thought to put his fingers in his ears," observed Mrs. Reardon. "He would never have had the heart to leave them behind else."

"I don't think they wanted to go," said Polly; "but his wife came afterwards, teacher told us, and brought the children with her."

"There was no fear of their mother leaving them behind," said Matthew.

"You should see the picture of Christian, with a great bag on his shoulders!" continued Bessie, eagerly.

"Burden!" suggested her sister.

"Yes, that's the word, Polly. We have all our burdens to bear in this world; and very heavy they are sometimes, enough to break a man's back!"

"Mother has often a heavy burden to carry when she takes home her work," said Bessie, "but I don't think it means that."

"Perhaps it was a bag full of cares," observed Mrs. Reardon, who was pleased to see her husband interested in the conversation.

"No," answered the child, shaking her head gravely, "nor cares either. We know what to do with them. It tells us in the Bible—'Cast all your care upon God, for He careth for you.' It seems as if there was always something about everything in the Bible."

"Bessie is right," interrupted Polly. "I recollect now teacher telling us that Christian's burden was his sins."

"I am afraid he must have been a very wicked man," said Mrs. Reardon.

"I don't know," answered Polly. "It says in the text we have to learn for next Sunday—

"'All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.'"

"It appears to me," said Matthew, "that the more one thinks about this burden, the heavier it would be likely to grow; so that at last it would be more than a man could bear."

"No one need bear it if they don't like," replied Bessie. "They have only to go and leave it where Christian left his, at the foot of the cross. But we haven't come to that yet," continued she. "There's something about a 'wicket gate' first, with the words—'Knock, and it shall be opened' written over it, and which a man he met in the way told him of."

"Why those were the very words that old Marshall used," exclaimed Matthew.

"No, father, it wasn't Mr. Marshall," said Polly. "It was Evangelist. I don't wonder that Bessie could not remember the name."

"And did they open the golden gates when the man knocked?" asked Matthew.

"It does not say anything about golden gates, father, in the book."

"But Peter Marshall said so!"

"I think he must have meant farther on," replied Polly, "when Christian comes at last to the Celestial City."

"But there's a great deal before that," interrupted Bessie. "All about his falling into the pit."

"The Slough of Despond," interposed Polly.

"It was a pit all the same," said Bessie.

"I know it!" exclaimed their father. "I've fallen in myself many a time—I was nearly in to-night—eh, wife!"

The children looked bewildered.

"I think your father had better hear the rest of this wonderful story to-morrow," said Mrs. Reardon, as she folded up her work. "He is tired. You can sing to him if you like, and perhaps he will be able to fall asleep. I am going now to take home my burden."

She lifted up the heavy bundle of work as she spoke, and went away with a smile on her lips, but feeling very weak and giddy nevertheless. It might have been from bending so constantly over her sewing, or in consequence of having eaten nothing that day but a little bread and milk.

Matthew leant back in his chair with closed eyes, and listened to the children singing their little hymns. He did not feel inclined to sleep. There was one hymn which particularly arrested his attention, and which he never remembered to have heard them sing before. It may be that he had never noticed it.

"One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er; I'm nearer home to-day Than I ever have been before.

"Nearer my Father's house, Where the many mansions be; Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea.

"Nearer the bound of life, Where we lay our burdens down; Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown!

"But lying darkly between, Winding down through the night, Is the deep and unknown stream To be cross'd ere we reach the light.

"Jesus, perfect my trust, Strengthen the hand of my faith, Let me feel Thee near when I stand On the edge the shore of death.

"Feel Thee near when my feet Are slipping over the brink: For it may be I'm nearer home, Nearer now than I think."

"The many mansions," repeated Matthew, "that was what Marshall was speaking of the other day,—and the Saviour Christ having gone before to prepare a place for him, and having only to knock and give in the Lord's name in order to be let in. But there was something more he said about a wedding garment that I did not rightly understand. I wonder what makes me think so much of the old man to-night."