The Bishop's Shadow Part 11

"Go out and buy what you need. It will be better for you to get it, than for me to. The breath of air will do you good, and I will see to the children until you come back."

She hesitated for a moment, then with a word of thanks, threw a shawl over her head and was gone.

The bishop gathered the three older children about him, one on each knee and the third held close to his side, and told them stories that held them spellbound until the sick baby began to stir and moan feebly. Then the bishop arose, and taking the little creature tenderly in his strong arms, walked back and forth in the small room until the moaning cry ceased and the child slept. He had just laid it again on the bed when the mother came back with her arms full of packages. The look of dull despair was gone from her worn face, and there was a gleam of hope in her eyes as she hastily prepared the medicine for the baby, while the bishop eagerly tore open one of the packages, and put bread into the hands of the other children.

"G.o.d bless you, sir,--an' He will!" the woman said, earnestly, as the bishop was departing with a promise to come soon again.

Tode, from his seat in a corner had looked on and listened to all, and now followed the bishop down to the street, and on until they came to a big building. The boy did not know then what place it was. Afterward he learned that it was the poorhouse.

Among the human driftwood gathered here there was one old man who had been a cobbler, working at his trade as long as he had strength to do so. The bishop had known him for a long time before he gave up his work, and now it was the one delight of the old man's life to have a visit from the bishop, and knowing this, the latter never failed to come several times each year. The old cobbler lived on the memory of these visits through the lonely weeks that followed them, looking forward to them as the only bright spots in his sorrowful life.

"You'll pray with me before ye go?" he pleaded on this day when his visitor arose to leave.

"Surely," was the quick reply, and the bishop, falling on his knees, drew Tode down beside him, and the old cobbler, the child and the man of G.o.d, bowed their heads together.

A great wonder fell upon Tode first, as he listened to that prayer, and then his heart seemed to melt within him. When he rose from his knees, he had learned Who and What G.o.d is, and what it is to pray, and though he could not understand how it was, or why--he knew that henceforth his own life must be wholly different. Something in him was changed and he was full of a strange happiness as he walked homeward beside his friend.

But all in a moment his new joy departed, banished by the remembrance of that pocketbook.

"I found it. I picked it up," he argued to himself, but then arose before him the memory of other things that he had stolen--of many an evil thing that he had done, and gloried in the doing. Now the remembrance of these things made him wretched.

The bishop was to deliver an address that evening, and Tode was alone, for he did not feel like going to the housekeeper's room.

He was free to go where he chose about the house, so he wandered from room to room, and finally to the study. It was dark there, but he felt his way to his seat beside the bishop's desk, and sitting there in the dark the boy faced his past and his future; faced, too, a duty that lay before him--a duty so hard that it seemed to him he never could perform it, yet he knew he must. It was to tell the bishop how he had been deceiving him all these weeks.

Tears were strangers to Tode's eyes, but they flowed down his cheeks as he sat there in the dark and thought of the happy days he had spent there, and that now he must go away from it all--away from the bishop--back to the wretched and miserable life which was all he had known before.

"Oh, how _can_ I tell him! How can I tell him!" he sobbed aloud, with his head on the desk.

The next moment a strong, wiry hand seized his right ear with a grip that made him wince, while a voice with a thrill of evil satisfaction in it, exclaimed in a low, guarded tone,

"So! I've caught you, you young cheat. I've suspected for some time that you were pulling the wool over the bishop's eyes, but you were so plaguy cunning that I couldn't nab you before. You're a fine specimen, aren't you? What do you think the bishop will say to all this?"

Tode had recognised the voice of Mr. Gibson, the secretary. He knew that the secretary had a way of going about as soft-footed as a cat. He tried to jerk his ear free, but at that Mr. Gibson gave it such a tweak that Tode could hardly keep from crying out with the pain. He did keep from it, however, and the next moment the secretary let him go, and, striking a match, lit the gas, and then softly closed the door.

"Now," he said, coming back to the desk, "what have you to say for yourself?"

"Nothing--to you," replied Tode, looking full into the dark face and cruel eyes of the man. "I'll tell the bishop myself what there is to tell."

"Oh, you will, will you?" answered the man, with a sneer. "I reckon before you get through with your telling you'll wish you'd never been born. The bishop's the gentlest of men--until he finds that some one has been trying to deceive him. And you--you whom he picked up out of the street, you whom he has treated as if you were his own son--I tell you, boy, you'll think you've been struck by lightning when the bishop orders you out of his sight. He never forgives deceit like yours."

Tode's face paled and his lips trembled as he listened, but he would not give way before his tormentor.

His silence angered the secretary yet more. "Why don't you speak?" he exclaimed, sharply.

"I'll speak to the bishop--not to you," replied the boy, steadily.

His defiant tone and undaunted look made the secretary furious. He sprang toward the boy, but Tode was on the watch now, and slipped out of his chair and round to the other side of the desk, where he stopped and again faced his enemy, for he knew now that this man was his enemy, though he could not guess the reason of his enmity. The secretary took a step forward, but at that Tode sped across the room out of the door, and up to his own room, the door of which he locked.

Then he sat down and thought over what had happened, and the more he thought of it the more certain he felt that what the secretary had said was true.

A long, long time the boy sat there, thinking sad and bitter thoughts. At last, with a heavy sigh, he lifted his head and looked about the bright, pretty room, as if he would fix it all in his mind so that he never could forget it, and as he looked at the soft, rich carpet, the little white bed with its fresh, clean linen, the wide, roomy washstand and bureau, he seemed at the same time to see the bare, dirty, cheerless little closet-like room to which he must return, and his heart ached again.

At last he started up, searched in his pockets for a piece of paper and a pencil, and began to write. His paper was a much-crumpled piece that he had found that morning in the wastebasket, and as yet his writing and spelling were poor enough, but he knew what he wanted to express, and this is what he wrote:

DEAR BISHOP:

I hav ben mene and bad i am not def and dum but i acted like i was caus I thot you wood not kepe me if yu knu I am sory now so i am going away but i am going to kepe strate and not bee bad any more ever. I thank you and i lov you deer.

TODE BRYAN.

It took the boy a long time to write this and there were many smudges and erasures where he had rubbed out and rewritten words. He looked at it with dissatisfied eyes when it was done, mentally contrasting it with the neat, beautifully written letters he had so often seen on the bishop's desk.

"Can't help it. I can't do no better," he said to himself, with a sigh. Then he stood for several minutes holding the paper thoughtfully in his hand.

"I know," he exclaimed at last, and ran softly down to the study. It was dark again there and he knew that Mr. Gibson had gone.

Going to the desk, he found the Bible which the bishop always kept there. As Tode lifted it the leaves fell apart at one of the bishop's best-loved chapters, and there the boy laid his letter and closed the book. He hesitated a moment, and then kneeling down beside the desk, he laid his face on the cover of the Bible and whispered solemnly,

"I _will_ keep straight--I will."

It was nearly nine o'clock when Tode returned to what had been his room; what would be so no longer. He undressed slowly, and as he took off each garment he looked at it and touched it lingeringly before he laid it aside.

"I b'lieve he'd want me to keep these clothes," he thought, "but I don't know. Maybe he wouldn't when he finds out how I've been cheatin'

him. Mrs. Martin's burnt up my old ones, an' I've got to have some to wear, but I'll only take what I must have."

So, with a sigh, he laid aside his white s.h.i.+rt with its glossy collar and cuffs, his pretty necktie and handkerchief. He hesitated over the shoes and stockings, but finally with a shake of the head, those, too, were laid aside, leaving nothing but one under garment and his jacket, trousers and cap.

Then he put out the gas and crept into bed. A little later he heard Mrs. Martin go up to her room, stopping for a moment to glance into his and see that he was in bed. Later still, he heard the bishop come in and go to his room, and soon after the lights were out and all the house was still.

Tode lay with wide open eyes until the big hall clock struck twelve. Then he arose, slipped on his few garments and turned to leave the room, but suddenly went back and took up a little Testament.

"He told me to keep it always an' read a bit in it ev'ry day," the boy thought, as with the little book in his hand he crept silently down the stairs. They creaked under the light tread of his bare feet as they never had creaked in the daytime. He crossed the wide hall, unfastened the door, and pa.s.sed out into the night.

VI. TODE'S NEW START

A chill seemed to strike to Tode's heart as he stood on the stone steps and looked up to the windows of the room where the bishop was sleeping, and his eyes were wet as he pa.s.sed slowly and sorrowfully out of the gate and turned down the street. Suddenly there was a swift rush, a quick, joyful bark, and there was Tag, dancing about him, jumping up to lick his fingers, and altogether almost out of his wits with joy.

Tode sat down on the curbstone and hugged his rough, faithful friend, and if he whispered into the dog's ear some of the grief that made the hour such a bitter one--Tag was true and trusty: he never told it. Neither did he tell how, night after night, he had watched beside the big house into which he had seen his master carried, nor how many times he had been driven away in the morning by the servants. But Tag's troubles were over now. He had found his master.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Adrift Again.]

"Well, ol' fellow, we can't stay here all night. We must go on," Tode said at last, and the two walked on together to the house where the boy had slept before his accident. The outer door was ajar as usual, and Tode and the dog went up the stairs together.