CHAPTER I.

_PAUL._

"I DO think it, and I will say it!" cried Paul Harley, with impatience. "Of all days in the week, a Sunday is the worst for New Year's Eve. It stops all fun, all larking, all hope of adventure. The New Year steals in like a thief when one is fast asleep in bed; unless, like that stupid fellow James Barton, one goes to some midnight service in church, to pray in the New Year, as he says. As if one had not had enough of that sort of thing all the Sunday!"

"My dear boy—" began his grandfather, Silas Harley, an aged man, who sat with his arm leaning on the table, and his Bible before him.

What Harley was going to say I cannot tell, for his grandson cut him short. Paul had been to school, and had learned many things there, of the knowledge of which he was not a little vain. But one thing, worth more than mere book-lore, he had not learned, which was to honour his father and his mother, which includes grandparents also. Paul was puffed up with pride, as a balloon is puffed out with gas.

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He stood erect by the table, grasping the back of a chair, and looking down on the venerable man before him, whose white hair Paul should have honoured, with a saucy look, which seemed to say, "I don't want advice from you!"

"I wish that I could do this year what I did on last New Year's Eve," cried Paul. "A lot of us young fellows got on the top of a coach, and were off to Enfield for a spree at a farm. How the horses plunged through the snow; we were upset as nearly as could be!"

"No great fun in that," observed Harley.

"We had no end of snow-balling each other at Gale's farm, as long as daylight lasted," continued Paul; "and when night came on, we had dancing 'under the misletoe bough.' Ah! That night, what a merry one it was! We were just in the midst of a dance, hands round and down the middle, when the clock struck twelve, and in came the New Year!"

"And Sunday too," observed old Mrs. Harley, who was seated by her husband. "I hope, Paul, that you left off your dancing?"

Paul only, in reply, gave a saucy laugh, which pained his good grandparents. They had brought up the orphan boy ever since he had been a helpless baby, and had now, in return for their loving care, but disrespect and disobedience.

On the year of which I am writing, the thirty-first of December fell on a Sunday, and it was on the evening of this Sunday that Paul stood talking to his grandparents in the little parlour of their home, in one of the suburbs of London.

"We were sorry not to have you with us at church this morning, Paul," observed Harley. The old man and his feeble wife had with no small difficulty made their way to the house of prayer, to praise their Maker for mercies received through the closing year, and to ask for His blessing on the year so soon to open. The New Year to one or both of them, as they thought, was likely to be the last, but neither of them feared to "go home" to the rest prepared for the people of God.

"I don't care to go to morning service," replied Paul, bluntly; "I take my ease, and lie late in bed on Sundays, at least in such freezing weather as this. But I mean to go to-night to seven o'clock service; for I like to see the church all lit up, with the gas-lights flaring on the evergreens and the wreaths with which it is decked. I like, too, the hymn which is to be sung, it has such a pretty tune." And without the least reverence of manner, Paul rather bawled out than sang the first lines of a well-known hymn—

"'A few more years shall roll, A few more seasons come, And we shall be with those who sleep At rest within the tomb.'"

"Hush, my dear child, hush!" cried Mrs. Harley, with a shocked look. "You don't seem to think of the meaning of the words which you are singing."

Paul took no notice of the gentle reproof. "It's time for me to be off to church," said he; "it must be just on seven; I think the bells have stopped their ringing. Don't stay supper for me; I'm going to Uncle Sam's after I've been at church; he's to have lobster salad for supper on New Year's Eve, and I like that a deal better than your porridge. I mean to stop the night at Uncle Sam's, and get some fun with his boys on New Year's morning."

"Take your comforter!" cried the grandmother. "You're not the lad to stand sharp cold; remember that you nearly died of rheumatic fever last March!"

"I'm not going to coddle myself like an old woman!" exclaimed the boy. "Cold only catches those who have to creep like snails!" Paul took down his cap from its peg as he spoke, and went off to church, certainly not in a mood either to praise or to pray.

The church was not full on New Year's Eve, for the weather was so extremely cold that some persons who would otherwise have come, dared not brave the piercing night air. Paul took his usual place in a dark part of the church, where he could see without being much seen. He sat during the prayers, and stared about him. Paul looked at the wreaths and the gas-lights, noticed the fashion of the ladies' bonnets, and amused himself with his own thoughts. There was no reverence either in the posture or in the spirit of Paul. He behaved himself in the house set apart for the worship of the Almighty as he would not have dared to behave in the Queen's palace; nay, as he would not have dared to behave in any gentleman's private dwelling.

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Paul's body was in church, but his heart was not there. Now he thought of to-morrow's sports, now of his lobster supper. Then the lad's thoughts took a more evil course. Malice and spite were shown in such reflections as these:—

"I wonder how that James Barton can bear to stay up till midnight in a church! 'Pray in the New Year,' to be sure! That may be well enough for old folk, who are not likely to live many more years, but young chaps like James and me have fifty or sixty before us, and I can't see the use of all that praying. James wants to be thought better than any one else. He has given up playing skittles on Sundays, and has taken, I hear, to keeping a missionary-box. Catch me following his example! I've something better to do with my pennies.

"I don't like James Barton at all. I have owed him a grudge ever since our quarrel in a field three years ago, when he got me into a scrape with a farmer's wife by saying I'd stolen her apples. I've been on the watch ever since to pay him off for that bit of mischievous meddling. If I did take the dame's apples, that was no business of his. Fine fun I had last summer, when I crept up unseen to the neat model of a ship which James had taken weeks to rig out, and tore her sails, and knocked a hole in her keel, while he was wandering about in the brushwood gathering flowers and ferns! I made off as soon as I had done the job, but I'd have liked to have seen the lad's face, when he came to the place where he had left his pretty ship, and found her lying broken and spoiled in the mud! I wonder if he guessed who had played him the trick? He did not see me, I'm sure of that, for I stole away like a fox. I suppose that James has now grown so mighty good that, had I smashed him instead of his ship, he'd have taken it as meek as a lamb. The next time that we meet, I'll try how he likes a box on the ear."

But I will put down no more of the worse than idle thoughts which, even in church, passed through the mind of the boy. I have said quite enough to show that Paul did not for one moment reflect that he was in the presence of his Maker; that the eye of God was upon him; that his secret malice was laid bare unto Him who hath declared in His holy Word, "The thought of foolishness is sin," Prov. xxiv. 9.

Paul only gave over making plans for teasing James when the clergyman gave out the hymn. We have seen that Paul was vain; and of nothing was he more vain than what he considered to be a very fine voice. A loud one it was, without doubt, and Paul took care that it should be heard all over the church.

A lady, speaking of church music, once said to me, "It makes me tremble to hear the children sing." My readers may think these very strange words, but to my mind there was cause for the lady's feeling of fear. Oh, my young friends, have you ever thought how you may displease the Lord, even whilst singing a hymn! "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh His name in vain." Is it a light matter to sing of the glory of the Almighty, or the agonies of His dear Son, as carelessly as if you were but shouting out some idle ballad? A dark stain of sin was spreading over the soul of Paul as he boldly sang out, at the top of his voice, even words so solemn as these:—

"''Tis but a little time, And Christ the Lord shall come To take His ransomed people up To their eternal home. Then, oh, my Lord, prepare My soul for that great day; Oh, wash me in thy precious blood, And take my sin away!'"

Paul's hymn-singing was a mockery; his very prayer was "turned into sin!" What thought he of the great Day of Judgment? What thought he of the "precious blood," of which he dared so loudly to sing?