CHAPTER II.

Treasure Found.

ON a bright sunny morning in the beginning of April, Silas Mytton harnessed his donkey to the cart, and led it to the shed, where he and his two younger sons loaded the cart with the bundles of wood on the sale of which their livelihood depended. The air was mild; Amy's chair was dragged by May to the doorway, where the sunbeams came streaming in; and there the little invalid sat watching her father and her brothers, Joe, the elder of the two boys, standing in the cart to receive the bundles that were tossed up to him, and pile the firewood in something like order. It was always with goodwill that the boys helped to load the wood-cart, for on the days when it went to the town, the noise of chopping was silenced, and the axe and knife might lie still on the block in the shed.

"Hard work they've cost us, and little enough they'll bring us!" muttered Mytton, as the last bundle was put on the top of the rest. He gave a blow with his stick to the patient donkey to make it move on, and slowly the wood-cart creaked along the rough road across the common, Silas Mytton walking beside it.

May followed it awhile with her eyes, and then ran up to her sister.

"Amy, you're better, much better!" cried the affectionate child. "I know you'll soon be quite well."

"What makes you think so?" asked Amy.

"Oh your eyes are so bright, and you look so happy—happier than you ever have looked since mother died, and Silas went off to sea."

"I am happy, I was having such pleasant thoughts," said Amy.

"I daresay you was telling yourself a nice story, such as you used to tell me," observed May, "about our being very rich and grand, and wearing—oh I such fine clothes! Very different from this old thing!" added the child, laughing, as she touched her father's fustian jacket, which lay across Amy's knee.

The sick girl had been attempting to put a patch on one of the sleeves, but the weight even of an old garment wearied her wasted arms, and she had put it down on her lap.

"I was thinking of royal robes—white and shining, like those beautiful clouds up yonder," said Amy, softly, "and crowns all glittering like the dew on the grass, when the sun is shining upon it."

"For us to wear?" asked May.

"Yes, for us to wear," replied Amy; and again that expression of peace and joy which, had struck her little sister before, lighted up the sick girl's sunken features.

"Oh! Amy, I want you to tell me a story, like as you used to do," cried May, with eager pleasure. "There's father gone away with the cart, Joe and Davy are off to see if they can't find a bird's nest in some hedge-row, there's no one here but you and me, and won't we be cosy together! I'm going to make another pillow, for that one's got a bit flat;" (rather flat it had been from the first, notwithstanding being often beaten up by the thick little fingers that had made it.)

"Look, I'll bring the three-legged stool and sit at your feet," continued the child; "but first I'll run and get some paper to tear up into bits—I know where I can find some, quite enough for a tiny pillow."

Away ran the little cottager, cheerful and blithe as the bee that was humming over the common on that sweet morning in early spring. Her fears for her sister had quite passed away—childhood is seldom long burdened with cares. And the discovery of an old bag which might, with very little trouble, be turned into a tiny pillow-case had sufficed to make May quite happy.

The child soon returned to Amy, holding up with one hand her print dress, so as to enable her to early in it a supply of loose pieces of paper, which she intended to tear into fragments for stuffing, while with the other hand she dragged the three-legged stool which was to serve as her seat.

"I must take care that the wind does not blow all my paper away!" cried May, as the breeze which she met at the cottage door sent some fragments fluttering behind her. "I'll sit with my back to it—just here; or, stay—please hold my papers for me, Amy, while I run for the bag to put the little bits into as fast as I tear them up, or they'll be blown all over the common."

When May returned with the bag, she found Amy eagerly looking over the papers which had been left in her charge.

"Oh! May, darling, where did you find these?" exclaimed Amy, without raising her eyes from her occupation, as soon as she heard the step of her little sister.

"In the boys' room," replied May; "them papers was all turned out of the old box that Joe made into the hen-roost; it was full of dirty old papers that warn't no use to nobody."

"No use!" exclaimed Amy, with unwonted energy. "Oh! May, look—look—here are leaves from a Bible, from God's own Word! I am so happy, so thankful to get them!" And the sick girl pressed a fragment, yellow with age, to her lips.

"I thought you'd a whole Bible of your own—what you got at the school as a prize," said May, who did not share, nor understand the pleasure of her sister on finding a few torn leaves.

"I gave it to Silas, 'twas my parting present, and oh! How I've longed for a sight of a Bible since!" exclaimed Amy, whose affection for her brother had led her to make what had been to her a sacrifice indeed. "And now God sends me these precious papers! Let's gather out every piece, May, that has any of the Word printed upon it."

"Not such a little scrap as this surely," said May, picking up a small fragment that had fallen on the ground.

"Let us see what that little scrap holds," said Amy, and taking it from May she read aloud, "'an inheritance undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for'—" *

Here the paper was torn, it contained but a part of a verse. But the gaze of Amy rested on it with joy as she cried, "May, May, these few words describe what we look for, long for, the Home prepared up above!"

* 1 Peter i. 4.

"I don't know what they mean," said May; "what is that long word ''heritance?'"

"It has something to do with coming into property, I think," replied Amy. "Don't you remember what father said yesterday evening about the great inheritance in Shropshire which some one of our name had a long long time ago?"

"Oh! That meant the great house, with all the hundreds and thousands of acres about it that we hear about, but never see!" laughed May.

"But we believe—we believe that there is such place," said Amy.

"I don't care much about it, for I know I shall never have it!" cried May.

"But if you believed that you might have it, that you certainly would have it one day, that it had been bought and was reserved—that means kept for you, would you care then?" asked Amy, with an eagerness which brought on a violent fit of coughing.

It was some time before she had recovered her breathing sufficiently to enable her to go on with the conversation. As soon, however, as Amy could speak, she continued, but in a fainter tone, "Now, May, this is just what I believe about the inheritance in Heaven, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. I believe that there is a bright, happy, glorious Home which the Lord Jesus bought for us, for me, for you, with His own precious blood, and which He is keeping for us, until He has made us ready to enter in, and dwell there for ever."

"You mean when we die?" said May very gravely, looking full into the pallid face of her sister; the fear which she had dismissed was rising up again in the mind of the child.

"Oh! What is dying to a Christian! It is going home—getting possession," cried Amy, faintly but joyfully. "His treasure is in Heaven, and he is going to enjoy it! You should have heard, May, how our teacher used to speak of the beautiful land above!

"'There fairer bowers than Eden bloom, Nor sin nor sorrow see—'"

Again the cough interrupted the words of the young invalid. Amy, after the fit was over, leaned back on her pillow in a state of exhaustion.

May ran and brought her some water; Amy drank it, and smiled.

"You must not speak, it makes you cough so," said May.

"I mayn't have much time left for speaking, darling," faltered Amy; "and I wish so much to tell you things that may make you happy, as I am, when God has taken me up to my Home. May, what does it matter now to that Mytton who lived so long long ago that he was so rich and so great, had servants and horses in plenty, and all else that money could get! He had his inheritance, but he could not keep it, he could not take anything with him into his grave."

"But he may have been a good man," observed May, "some rich people are good, you know."

"If he was a real, true Christian, as I hope he was," said Amy, "then he left his earthly inheritance for one ten million times better! See, May, see, here is another description of it in this leaf torn from the Bible; listen how beautiful it is:

"'The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.'" *

* Rev. xxi. 21, 22, 23.

"Who is the Lamb?" asked May, who had listened with a kind of wondering awe.

"The Lord Jesus Christ," replied Amy, pronouncing the sacred Name with reverence. "He is called the Lamb, because as a lamb was killed by the Jews in the old-old times as a sacrifice for sin, so the Blessed Saviour was killed as a Sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. He is 'the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.' † That is the wonderful history which I used to read in my Bible. May, the Lord suffered, willingly suffered all the pain that cruel men could inflict, that He might wash away our sins, and make us the heirs of Heaven. Was not that wonderful love! He lay, as a Babe, in a manger, and died, as a Man, on a cross, that we might dwell in glorious mansions and live for ever and ever. Was not that love—oh! Such love!"

† John i. 29.

Amy closed her eyes, and May, glancing up at her sister, could see that their lashes were moist with tears.

The little child laid her hand upon Amy's. "We will love the Lord too," said she.

Amy opened her eyes, and, smiling on May, softly murmured, "'We love Him because He first loved us.' * It is so sweet to love the Lord Jesus, and rest on His love; to serve Him now, and then see Him, as I hope to do—very soon."

* 1 John iv. 19.

There was nothing more said on the subject at that time. May busied herself in carefully separating every fragment of the torn Bible from the rest of the papers which she had brought, putting "the holy words," as she called them, into her bag.

Amy intended to stitch them all carefully together, to keep as a treasure, when she should have strength to sort and arrange them. In the meantime, the few verses which she had read to May were as manna for her soul to feed on.

In her coarse, faded black print dress, seated at the door of her humble home, with deadly sickness upon her, the cottager's child felt happy and rich; was she not, through redeeming love, an heir of the kingdom of light and glory? Yea, far firmer than the mountains stands the promise of Christ to the lowly believer, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." †

† Matt. v. 3.