CHAPTER XII.

SOUGHT AND FOUND.

"Ring the bells of heaven! There is joy to-day, For the wanderer now is reconciled: Yes! A soul is rescued from his sinful way, And is born anew—a ransomed child!"

OUR scene changes from the Highland glen to a large mercantile house in the city of London. It was three o'clock on a winter day, and the gas had already been lighted indoors and in the streets; but work was going on busily yet. Clerks were running here and there giving orders to the many porters who stood awaiting them, while several still worked hard at the desks to which they had been chained for hours.

The season was a busy one, and work-hours were longer than usual then; but there was no look of discontent on the faces—visions of holiday-time and Christmas were rising before most and cheering them on. Besides, the heads of that firm had always a kindly word for their employes. Here and there, in a pause of the busy work, the young men might be heard discussing their plans for the coming evening or the approaching Christmas week.

"I'm off to the theatre to-night," said one, addressing a gentle-looking lad who sat beside him. "Will you come with me, Farran? There is a famous new actor to appear, and the play is a good one. There's no use asking Macintosh or any of his set, for they never go; they're a dull lot. But you're different. Besides, you've seen so little of the world, it will do you a deal of good. Say yes, and I'll manage about a ticket."

The lad thus addressed hardly seemed to hear the question put to him, for just then he was looking fixedly at a neighbouring desk, at which sat a handsome young man, with a look of quiet joy on his face that told of a heart at peace.

Then he turned quickly, as if awakening out of a dream. "A dull lot, did you say, Perkins? Then Macintosh does not belong to it. He is always so happy; you never see him sulking and disagreeable, like some of the other fellows. I was just looking at him now, and wondering how he contrives always to be so cheerful?"

"Oh, well, I suppose he's happy enough. I bear him no ill-will, but I hate cant. Now, what about the theatre? Let us leave Macintosh alone; he can go his way, we'll go ours. A short life and a merry, say I!"

Farran hesitated; he liked neither the tone of his companion's voice nor the words he spoke. Was it merely his own thoughts, or did whispered words really reach his ear—"If sinners entice thee, consent thou not"?

In any case, the effect was the same. A whitewashed house in a country village rose before his eyes; and there, with a bunch of pure white roses in her hand, stood his gentle, loving, widowed mother as he had seen her last, when she said farewell to him, and repeated the very words which now sounded in his ears:

"My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not."

He turned to his companion, and in a tone of decision said, "Thanks, Perkins, for your offer of a ticket to the theatre, but I would rather not go. I am not ashamed to confess that I know my doing so would grieve the most loving-hearted mother that ever a lad possessed; and so, although she never said to me not to go, still I believe she trusted me to respect her wishes in this matter, and I mean, God helping me, to do it. You know I am the only son of my mother, and she is a widow."

Perkins's only answer was a low whistle of contempt, and any further conversation was stopped by the head of the firm, Mr. Arbuthnot, tapping young Farran on the shoulder. "Look here," he said, "I have to go off in a hurry; take this letter to Macintosh, and tell him I forgot to give it to him when I was speaking to him just now. It came for him just after he had left the house this morning. See, he has left his desk and moved to the other end!"

Farran rose to fulfil Mr. Arbuthnot's order.

Macintosh took the letter with thanks, then began to speak to Farran. "It seems strange," he said, "that we two, who spend our days in the same place, have never yet exchanged words. My cousin told me that you were, like myself, from the country—a stranger in London. If your Saturdays are not always engaged, would you join me in a walk? It is pleasant on the Heath if the day be fine. Say, to-morrow?"

Farran gave a hearty response to the proposal, adding, "I often long for a breath of country air in this smoky town, but walking alone is stupid work."

And so a friendship, which we have not time to follow out, was struck up between these two; and to Ronald was given once more the joy of lending a hand to hold up the faltering steps of a weak child of God, who had well-nigh slipped amidst the temptations of a crowded city and the attractions of thoughtless companions.

Ere long Farran could write to his mother that he "believed that God had given him Ronald Macintosh as a friend and companion in answer to her prayers." And who shall say that it was not even so?

Snow fell on the evening of the day we are writing of, and the children at many a window in the comfortable houses of luxury in the west of London watched with delight the merry snowflakes, as they called them, as they fell whirling about with every breath of air. All over the great city they fell, covering up the dirt in the crowded, dingy streets and courts, as well as whitening the large parks and gardens.

Very fast they seemed to fall on the window-sill of a poor lodging-house, where a lad, sick unto death, tossed from side to side on his comfortless bed. Far from home and friends, he lay forsaken and desolate, reaping the bitter harvest of a wasted life, experiencing even now the truth of the Scripture words, that "the wages of sin is death;" "the way of transgressors is hard." Yes, he felt it now; and somehow it seemed to him as if the little snowflakes were repeating the words to him over and over again: "The way of transgressors is hard." No other words would come just then to his memory; but before his eyes floated a far-off vision of a lowly Highland hut, and an old woman, and of just such a snowy winter day, when he had stolen away from his happy home, enticed by wild companions, to escape the dull life, as they termed it, of the Highland glen, and try his fortune in the great city.

He had not meant then to leave his home and kind grandmother for ever. He had had visions of making a fortune, and returning to keep her in comfort in her old age. But the wrong step taken, he gradually fell, first into ways of idleness, and then into worse ways; had roamed about from land to land, weary and unsatisfied, till now he lay dying in a comfortless London lodging-house, his only friend obliged to leave him, while he had refused to let him tell his Scotch friends anything about him. So now, he said to himself, there was no help for it—he must die. Scripture words of hope, blessed invitations of love from God's own lips, were well known to him; his Scotch Bible education had left him no stranger to those words of psalms and paraphrases sung in the quiet country church on Sabbath days. They often rose to memory. But he refused to take the comfort; he said they were not for him. He could join the many in saying, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;" but as yet he stopped there.

And so on that winter evening he lay, before his eyes a picture of high mountains, on which the snowflakes were falling even then, and in his ears the rush of the Highland river as it dashed through the pass, near which stood the home of his childhood. Oh, to see it once again! To hear, but for one moment, the dearly-loved accents of the Gaelic tongue, to him sweeter and more melodious than any other language in the world—to feel once again the loving hand of his grandmother laid on his brow, as she was wont to do in his boyish days when she gave him her goodnight blessing!

As he thought of these things, the tears fell fast, and an agony of bitter repentance filled his heart; and for the first time the words, spoken in what to those around him was an unknown language, broke from his lips, "God be merciful to me sinner!"

The landlord of the house, who had strolled in at that moment, heard the words, and turned hastily away. He said to himself, "I do wish some friend would turn up; that lad Finlay said he had written to his people in the north."

But the words had struck on the ear of a young man who was just entering the room, after having asked "if a lad called John Robertson lodged there."

Quickly he strode to the bedside, and spoke a few words in the same strange language. They seemed to act like a charm on the sick lad. He raised himself in bed, a bright light sparkling in his eyes, and said, but not in Gaelic, "Who are you, sir? And where do you come from? Oh, speak again in my native tongue, that I may make sure that it is not all a dream!"

Then ensued a conversation in Gaelic, which it is well I am not called upon to write, or my readers to peruse; but every word of the strange guttural language sounded as soothing music in the ear of the dying lad. Great was his surprise when he discovered that the handsome young gentleman beside him was the Master Macintosh with whom he had often climbed the hills and fished in the river near his northern home.

Not long had Ronald to tend the dying lad, for his days were numbered; but to him was given the joy of being used as God's instrument to set free one of Satan's fettered captives. To the cry for pardon, which were the first words that had greeted his ear, he could give, in all their fulness, the Lord's words of free forgiveness, could tell how Jesus "came to seek and to save them that were lost."

And the heavy, sin-sick heart grasped with a firm grip the precious promise, "He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."

And so, even at the eleventh hour, Johnny Robertson fell at the feet of his mother's Saviour, and was able to say:

"My Lord and my God!"

"Herein indeed is love, not that I loved God, but that he loved me."

"Tell grannie," he said, "her and my mother's prayers are answered now, even to me, the chief of sinners. Sing to me, Master Macintosh, once more the psalm I used to sing wi' grannie, and at the kirk, with the high hills around—'The Lord's my shepherd.'"

And when Ronald came to the words, "Yea, though I walk through death's dark vale, yet will I fear none ill: for thou art with me—" a feeble voice broke in, in the lad's native tongue, "That's so, that's so."

One deep-drawn breath, and the soul of the Highland laddie was with the Lord.

They buried him in an old London grave-yard around which the hum of busy life was perpetually heard; far from home and kindred he lay, miles and miles away from the calm quiet of the grand old hills which overshadowed his childhood's home. A single stone, put up by Ronald, marked his resting-place, and on it were the words, "With the Lord."

There were tears shed in the quiet hut over the letter which told of the death of the wandering one; but they were not all bitter: joy mingled with the grief—the erring child was at rest now in the Father's house above.

"The Lord is a promise-keeping God," said the old woman. "The Good Shepherd has gone into the wilderness after the lost sheep, and borne it safely back to the fold. For ever blessed be his holy name. And may his blessing rest on the head of the young lad who sought him out, and soothed his lonely dying bed, by telling him of that hidden treasure which is better than gold and above rubies."