Part 39 (1/2)

”Lord, help me!”

No earnest cry like that ever goes up without an instant answer in the gift of divine strength. The man felt it in a stronger purpose and a quickening hope. He was conscious of a new power in himself.

”G.o.d being my helper,” he said in the silence of his heart, ”I will be a man again.”

There was a long distance between him and a true manhood. The way back was over very rough and difficult places, and through dangers and temptations almost impossible to resist. Who would have faith in him?

Who would help him in his great extremity? How was he to live? Not any longer by begging or petty theft. He must do honest work. There was no hope in anything else. If G.o.d were to be his helper, he must be honest, and work. To this conviction he had come.

But what was to be done with Andy while he was away trying to earn something? The child might get hurt in the street or wander off in his absence and never find his way back. The care he felt for the little one was pleasure compared to the thought of losing him.

As for Andy, the comfort of a good breakfast and the feeling that he had a home, mean as it was, and somebody to care for him, made his heart light and set his lips to music.

When before had the dreary walls of that poor hovel echoed to the happy voice of a light-hearted child? But there was another echo to the voice, and from walls as long a stranger to such sounds as these--the walls in the chambers of that poor man's memory. A wellnigh lost and ruined soul was listening to the far-off voices of children. Sunny-haired little ones were thronging about him; he was looking into their tender eyes; their soft arms were clinging to his neck; he was holding them tightly clasped to his bosom.

”Baby,” he said. It was the word that came most naturally to his lips.

Andy, who was sitting where a few sunbeams came in through a rent in the wall, with the warm light on his head, turned and looked into the bleared but friendly eyes gazing at him so earnestly.

”I'm going out, baby. Will you stay here till I come back?”

”Yes,” answered the child, ”I'll stay.”

”I won't be gone very long, and I'll bring you an apple and something good for dinner.”

Andy's face lit up and his eyes danced.

”Don't go out until I come back. Somebody might carry you off, and then I couldn't give you the nice red apple.”

”I'll stay right here,” said Andy, in a positive tone.

”And won't go into the street till I come back?”

”No, I won't.” Andy knit his brows and closed his lips firmly.

”All right, little one,” answered the man, in a cheery sort of voice that was so strange to his own ears that it seemed like the voice of somebody else.

Still, he could not feel satisfied. He was living in the midst of thieves to whom the most insignificant thing upon which they could lay their hands was booty. Children who had learned to be hard and cruel thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel, that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child subjected to ill-treatment. He had always fastened the door on going out, but hesitated now about locking Andy in.

All things considered, it was safest, he felt, to lock the door. There was nothing in the room that could bring harm to the child--no fire or matches, no stairs to climb or windows out of which he could fall.

”I guess I'd better lock the door, hadn't I, so that n.o.body can carry off my little boy?” he asked of Andy.

Andy made no objections. He was ready for anything his kind friend might propose.

”And you mustn't cry or make a noise. The police might break in if you did.”

”All right,” said Andy, with the self-a.s.sertion of a boy of ten.

The man stroked the child's head and ran his fingers through his hair in a fond way; then, as one who tore himself from an object of attraction, went hastily out and locked the door.