CHAPTER VI.

A NEW HOME.

AS soon as Boston Harbour was reached, a boat was seen approaching, to ascertain what cargo the Osprey carried, and whether she had any slaves for sale.

By this messenger, notice was sent to the town-crier, that any one wanting male or female servants could get their wants supplied at the Osprey. All would be sold by private tender, unless any objection were made against the proposed purchaser. This last condition was simply a formality, as a rule; but Sister Martin had decided that it need not be thus, where a man was known to be harsh in his treatment of his slaves.

The men and women they now had were above the average in many ways, and so there would be no difficulty in finding purchasers for them, and they could afford to wait if a man came forward who was known to be a hard master. She herself had been in the colony before, and would raise the necessary objection if she found it needful.

Soon after they came to anchor, buyers began to present themselves, and Sister Martin kept her eye upon each man as he came on board, to note his prevailing characteristics.

But these colonists were for the most part steady, reliable men, hard-working and thrifty, but not disposed to take an undue advantage of the irresponsible position the law placed them in, with regard to their slaves; and so no objection was raised against any one who came forward to buy.

During that day and the next, all the men and women who had come out from England were disposed of at good prices, so that Eric having been sold cheaply would easily be looked over. But now Sister Martin, having seen the rest depart to their several homes, had to consider what she should do with her purchase—how she should find a home and employment for Eric.

Fortunately, she had several Methodist friends in this country, and she arranged with the captain to go and see some of these, leaving Eric at the ship while she went. The cargo had yet to be unladen and disposed of, and in this work, the lad would find something to do; and the captain promised to pay him for his work, if he found him steady and trustworthy.

With this money and a little further help from his kind friend, Eric hoped to be able to buy a serviceable suit of clothes before he finally left the vessel, and so he was glad to be left behind, while Sister Martin went to pay her visit into the country.

All that he had seen of the place thus far disposed him to like it, and the people too. They were a little stiff and formal, perhaps, not so free and easy in their manners as his old master at The Magpie, and they spoke with a peculiar intonation; but still, that it was his native tongue in any form that was spoken in this distant country was something to be thankful for, and that they were not so disposed to resent the intrusion of strangers among them as the people of Summerleigh were, was also another cause for thankfulness.

So Eric worked with a will among the sailors and labourers, ready to help anybody or do any one a kind turn if he had the power, while the bales and chests were lifted out of the hold and carried to the shore. To be everybody's helper and servant was not an enviable position, and before night, Eric was tired out serving his many masters, so that when he saw Sister Martin come on board at the end of the third day of his service, he was glad to welcome her, and still more glad to hear that she had found employment for him a little way out of the city.

"My friend has a great many horses, and just now is in want of a careful lad to look after some of them, and when I told him how fond you were of the creatures, he agreed to take you at once, and to pay you good wages, if you suited him. But he is particular, Eric, very particular, as most good Methodists are. I have told him the story of your life, and I am sure he will be kind to you; but still, I could see he would like you to declare yourself a Methodist and join his class meeting."

Eric shook his head.

"I could not do that at once," he said.

"Don't you think you would like Methodists?" asked Sister Martin, in some surprise.

"I am not sure; I have not seen any one but you, and I have not thought of you as a Methodist. You have been as my own mother to me. I could not expect everybody to be like you, and so I want to see first what the common sort of Methodists are. I have thought about it since you have been gone, for one of the men who came to work on the ship here said he was a Methodist. He did not seem to be ashamed of the name, as people are in England. But though he said this, he shirked his work, I noticed, whenever he could, and wanted me to help him more than I did anybody else."

"And you think he may be a common sort of Methodist?" said his friend, with a smile.

"I don't know; but that is not the way my mother taught me to love and serve God. And so I should not like to call myself by a name I should be ashamed of afterwards. You see, this is something that is closer to me than anything else. I promised the landlord of The Magpie not to speak about God to anybody; but I also told him He was more to me than anything else in the world, and so I should still think of Him and pray to Him."

"But, my dear Eric, my friend would not even want you not to speak of God. Indeed, he would want you at the class meeting to do so. Methodists are a society of people who have banded themselves together to serve God and hold themselves aloof from the world that lieth in wickedness."

"Oh yes, I heard all that from the Methodist who was working here; but it seemed to me that laziness was the thing he ought to avoid, but being a Methodist didn't seem to make much difference. I dare say he would have been lazy anywhere."

"I daresay he would," answered Sister Martin; "and it may be the man is trying to overcome this fault just because he is a Methodist; but you do not see these efforts he is making—you only see the failures. You must not expect Methodists or any other set of people to be perfect. The very fact that they band themselves together for mutual help and encouragement is a confession that they are not, but are trying to follow in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Your mother was a good woman, living all alone, as it seems; but if she had gone to a place where there had been a few Methodists, and had joined them, she would have had friends ready and willing to help you when she died, and thus you might have been spared many trials and temptations. That God could and has led you in a very wonderful way to this place of safety, proves that as He fed His prophet of old by means of ravens, so He can lead and provide for His children now by the most unlikely methods. But if they can join themselves to other Christian people, and thus give them the opportunity of helping them in their time of need, they ought to do so. This is another reason why I should like to see you join the Methodists here before I return to England.

"In a few days I shall have to leave you among strangers; you may be ill, or find yourself in some trouble, needing the help of friends; if you join our society, every Methodist brother and sister is bound to help you in your hour of need; but if you choose to stand alone, I do not say you will not find friends, but you will not have the same claim upon them that you would have if you joined the society."

Eric sat silent for a few minutes after this.

"Thank you very much for what you have told me," he said; "you know I would do anything I could to please you, because you have the right to command me in anything; but still, I should like you to give me a little time to think about this."

"You know, Eric, the world at large is opposed to God and His servants; this is why the name of Methodist has come to be so hated by them. Mr. Wesley saw this long ago, and that was why he founded his society. Union is strength, and one can help another to be firm and faithful, and in time of trouble it becomes the duty of one Methodist to help another as far as he possibly can, and especially where it is needful to help him in the time of persecution, such as we often experience in England."

"I will join this society if I can, do not fear; but I cannot, even to please you, unless—"

"Unless these Methodists please you?" interrupted Sister Martin.

"No, not that exactly; but I must have time to think about it, and to see and hear them before I decide," replied Eric.

"They will not seek to control your belief beyond what is necessary."

"It is not that; I have not thought of that. But you see I must find out more for myself before I want to be called a Methodist."

From this position Sister Martin could not move the lad, though she tried several times in the course of the next day. She knew her friends would be disappointed that Eric refused to cast in his lot with the people of God; for this was how they would regard his refusal to join their society, she feared.

But still, nothing she could say was sufficient to remove his objection to declaring himself a Methodist; and so they set out the next day on their long walk to the farm, that lay some distance beyond the city of Boston.

Eric, in a new colonial suit of clothes, looked very different from the lad who had come on board the Osprey, ragged and dirty and half starved; and as the two walked together along the country road, Sister Martin could not help feeling proud of her young pupil.

After an hour's steady walking, they came within sight of her friend's farm, and she told Eric that the fields they now saw belonged to his future employer.

"Oh, look at the horses!" exclaimed Eric, in a tone of delight; for here, in the place of cows and sheep, with which the other farms had been liberally stocked, horses seemed to roam about at their sweet will.

"You will have horses enough here to please you," said his friend. "Mr. Consett supplies all the country round with horses, and takes them in to nurse when they are sick or growing old."

Eric was obliged to stand still and admire this paradise for the creatures he was so fond of. "If only my poor old Peggy could be here now!" he exclaimed, with a sigh. And then he told Sister Martin how he had learned to doctor Peggy the previous winter, and the suspicion it raised against him.

"You had better not try doctoring the horses here without consulting Mr. Consett first; but I am sure he will be glad to listen to anything you may be able to tell him about the matter," she said.

They found Mr. Consett looking out for them, and he would have taken them at once to the house for a meal, but Eric had seen a foal in one of the fields that seemed to him to be ailing, and so he told the farmer about this, and then the two set off together to see what it was, while Sister Martin went in to rest and have some dinner.

"I hope they won't be long before they come back," said Mrs. Consett, looking from the window of the big kitchen where the meal was spread.

"John is so taken up with the creatures sometimes, that he forgets his own meal times until long after everything is cold."

"I am afraid Eric will not be much better, for it seems to me dumb animals of all kinds are greater favourites with him than men and women, and as soon as he came near the fields where the horses were he could talk of nothing else."

"I wish the boy was a Methodist," said Mrs. Consett with a sigh. "We have had several lads, you know, and somehow, being with the beasts, or rather going with them to the city, as they have to do sometimes, leads them into temptation, and I am sorry to say that after they have left us, they have not been much good to anybody. That is why John said he would do without a lad, unless he could get one who was a Methodist, and could be treated as we would treat a son of our own if we had one." And again the good woman sighed, for this had been a sorrow to herself and her husband for many years now, that with all the prosperity that had crowned their labours here, there was no child given them to share or inherit the farm.

The two had their dinner, after waiting some time for Mr. Consett and Eric to return, and just as it was over, the master came hurrying across the field alone.

"Why, what can have happened to Eric?" asked Sister Martin, who was the first to see the farmer coming. "I hope he has not been hurt by any of those creatures. I don't fancy he would be very careful to keep out of their way."

"He would not be of much use here if he was afraid to go near a horse," laughed Mrs. Consett.

But just then her husband reached the garden gate, and she went to meet him.

"Dinner ready?" he called, in a cheery voice.

"Dinner ready?" she repeated reproachfully. "Sister Martin and I got tired of waiting for you, and so we had our meal without you. Where is the boy?" she asked, seeing Eric did not appear.

"Left him to look after Meg's foal; something ails her, and she wants seeing to for an hour," replied Mr. Consett.

"But he hasn't had his dinner," said both women in the same breath.

"Just what I told the lad; but true lovers of horses don't think of meals for themselves when the creatures need their attention. It is a test few can stand, I can tell you, Sister Martin," said Mr. Consett, with a quiet chuckle, as he took his seat at the table, and began helping himself to the ham and chicken.

"But the boy must be hungry, my dear," said his wife, in some concern for her friend's feelings about the lad.

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"I daresay he is, I have no doubt he is, but a lad who has the making of a man in him don't let his hunger or any other appetite master him when duty calls him the other way. I wouldn't have left him with Meg's foal, the most valuable creature on the whole place, if I couldn't have trusted him. It was his own wish to be left to watch her for a while. I told him dinner would be waiting, but he evidently thought less of your dinner than he did of the creature who was suffering. I don't think he thought much of me or my opinion; it was the foal he was concerned with. As to his own stomach, that was clean forgotten for the time."

"Then you think the lad will do, sir?" said Sister Martin.

"I haven't the smallest doubt of it. A lad who can forget himself and his own hunger, to relieve the wants and sufferings of a dumb creature, won't go very far from God, whatever he may call himself. He told me as we went along that he couldn't decide to be a Methodist all at once; and I must say the news didn't please me much at first, though I liked the lad for telling me. But when we got to the field, and saw this foal was bad, everything else was forgotten but that our help was needed, if anything was to be done for her.

"I'm going back as soon as I have finished, and you must have something ready for the boy when he comes in; for of course he is hungry, and must eat, though I was glad to see he did not mean to let hunger be his master.

"That is the secret, Sister Martin, of success in everything, I don't care what it is; if the man or boy is master of himself, instead of allowing his appetites and passions to master him, he may be trusted to choose for himself in most things. And so I have made up my mind to let this lad take his choice as to whether he joins our society or not. If he don't choose to call himself by the name of Methodist, why, I shall be sorry, I confess, but there it will end, for he is a God-fearing lad, I can see, and what I have told you about being master of himself settles it, so far as I am concerned."

"Then you will take him, Mr. Consett?" said Sister Martin, in a relieved tone.

"Take him? To be sure I will, and glad to get him, too. The old country turns out a pearl now and then with the supposed rubbish she sends to us as slaves, and this lad is one, or I am greatly mistaken; and living here opens a man's eyes, I can tell you; so that I am not often wrong in the judgment I form of the lads who come to me. I have bought one or two, as I might have bought this lad, but when they have run away because I was too strict with them, I have not thought them worth the expense of the town-crier going after them, they were of so little service to me."

"What became of them then?" asked the visitor.

"After spending a few days in the wood, where they were nearly starved, they would come back and ask to be forgiven, generally; but I soon found an opportunity of sending them elsewhere, for horses are ticklish beasts, and need a deal of care and watching when they are out of sorts, and very few ever learn this sufficiently to be of any use; so you may judge when this lad begged to be left to watch the foal for an hour, whether I am likely to part with him in a hurry."

It was evident that Mr. Consett had taken a great liking to Eric, and Sister Martin could but feel thankful that the responsibility that she had assumed for a time had thus been taken from her shoulders so easily. But still, she wanted to know what Eric himself thought of his master, and the place where the next few years of his life at least would have to be spent. And so, when he came back from the field to have his dinner, she was very glad to be left alone with him for a little while.

"The foal is better now," he said as he came in.

"Come and get your dinner, and tell Sister Martin all about it, while you eat it," said Mrs. Consett. And when she had set the dinner on the table she left the two by themselves to talk.

"So you think you will like this place, Eric?" said his friend, when his hunger had been somewhat satisfied.

"Like it? Oh, Sister Martin, if you could see the beautiful horses Mr. Consett has got here. Little things some of them are, that want looking after carefully too. There is nothing in all the world that could be to me what the dear dumb things are, and to think I shall have these to look after and take care of. How good the Lord has been to me! I can believe now that the landlord of The Magpie was God's messenger, for it was there I learned to know so much about horses, and I also had time to go into the woods and watch the other creatures as well. Yes, he might not know it himself, but my dear old master was God's messenger, and this was the best place I could have come to, though I thought it very dreadful to be sent away as though I was a thief, just because I was poor and had nothing to do; but I see now God knew better than I did what was good for me, and I don't think I shall ever doubt Him again."