Thus went the feasting. Hunger had brought its appetite to the
plentiful table, and the well cooked viands provoked its indulgence.
If the past of any of the Trapper's guests had been sorrowful, the
unhappiness of it for the moment was forgotten. Stories crisp as
snow-crust and edged with aptness, happy memories and reminiscences of
frolic and fun, sly hits and keen retorts, jokes and laughter,
rollicked around the table and shook it with mirthful explosions. The
merriment was at its height when a loud summons sounded upon the door.
It was so imperious as well as so unexpected that every noise was
instantly hushed, and every face at the table was turned in surprise
to wait the entrance.
"Come in," cried the Trapper, cheerily; "whoever ye be, ye be welcome
ef ye be a leetle late."
The response of him who so emphatically sought admission to the feast
was as prompt as his summons had been determined. For, without an
instant's delay or the least hesitancy of movement, the great door was
pushed suddenly inward and a man stepped into the room.
A sturdy fellow he was, swarth of skin and full whiskered. His hair
was black and coarse and grown to his shoulders. His eyes were black
as night, largely orbed under heavy brows, not lacking a certain
wicked splendor. His face was strongly featured and stamped in every
line and curve and prominence with the impress of unmistakable power.
In his right hand he carried a rifle, and in his left a bundle, snugly
packed and protected from the storm in wrappings of oiled cloth. The
strong light, into the circle of which he had so suddenly stepped,
blinded him for a moment, while to those who sat staring at him it
brought out with vivid distinctiveness every feature of his strong
and, save for a certain hardness of expression, handsome face. It was
evident that the man, whoever he was and whatever he might be, was
under the pressure of some impulse or conviction which had urged him
on to the Trapper's cabin and the Trapper's presence. For, no sooner
had he closed the door and shaken the snow, with which he was covered,
from his garments, than, regardless of those who sat staring in
startled interrogation at him, he strode to the head of the table
where the Old Trapper sat, and, looking him straight in the face,
said:--
"Do you know who I am, John Norton?"
"Sartinly," answered the Trapper, "ye be Shanty Jim, and ye have
camped these three year and more at the outlet of Bog Lake."
"Do you know that I am a thief, and a sneak thief at that?" continued
the newcomer, speaking with a fierce directness that was startling.
"I've conceited ye was," answered the Trapper, calmly.
"Do you know it, know it to a certainty?" and the words came out of
his mouth like the thrust of a knife.
"Yis, I know that ye be a thief, Shanty Jim," replied the Trapper,
"know it to a sartinty."
"Do you know that I have stolen skins from you, old man, skins and
traps both?" continued the other.
"I laid in ambush for ye once at the falls of Bog River, and I seed ye
take an otter from a trap that I sot," replied the Trapper.
"Why didn't you shoot me when I stood skin in hand?" queried the
self-confessed thief.
"I can't tell ye," answered the Trapper, "fer my eye was at the sights
and my finger on the trigger, and the feelin' of natur' was strong
within me to crop one of yer ears then and there, Shanty Jim, but
somethin', mayhap the sperit of the Lord, staid my finger, and ye went
with yer thievin' in yer hand to yer camp ontetched and onhindered."
"Do you know what brought me to this cabin and to your presence--the
presence of the man whose skins and whose traps I have stolen--and
made me confess to his face and before these men here that I am a
thief and a scoundrel; do you know what brought me here, a miserable
cuss that I am and have been for years, John Norton?" And the man's
speech was the speech of one who had been educated to use words
rightly and was marked with intense, even dramatic, earnestness.
"I can't conceit, onless the sperit of the Lord."
"The spirit of the Lord had nothing to do with it," interrupted the
other fiercely. "If there is any such influence at work in this world
as the preachers tell of, why has it not prevented me from being a
thief? Why did it not prevent me from doing what I did and being what
I was in my youth,--me, whose mother was an angel and whose father was
a patriarch? No, it was nothing under God's heavens, old man, but your
invitation scrawled with a coal on a bit of birch bark inviting anyone
in these woods who needed victuals and clothes and a right spirit to
come to your cabin on Christmas day; and had you written nothing else
I would not have cared a cuss for it or for you, but you did write
something else, and it was this: 'Vagabonds included in this invite.'
"When I read that, old man, my breath left me and I stood and stared
at the letters on that bark as a devil might gaze at a pardon signed
with the seal manual of the Almighty, for in my hand was a trap that
bore the stamp 'J. N.' and the skin of an otter I had taken from the
trap. And there I stood, a thief and a scoundrel, with your property
in my hands and read your invitation to all the needy in the woods to
come to your cabin on Christmas day and that vagabonds were
included."
"That meant you, by thunder!" exclaimed Wild Bill.
"Yes, it did mean me," returned Shanty Jim, "and I knew it. Standing
there in the snow with the stolen skin and trap in my hand, I realized
what I was and what John Norton was and the difference between him and
myself and most of the world. I went to the tree to which the bark
that bore the blessed letters was nailed; I took it down from the
tree; I placed it next my bosom and buttoned my coat above it and,
thus resting upon my heart, I bore it to my shanty."
"It was as good as a Bible to you," said Wild Bill.
"A Bible!" rejoined the man with emphasis. "Better than all Bibles.
Better than churches and preachers, better than formal texts and
utterances, for that bit of bark told me of a man here in the woods
good enough and big enough to forgive and forget. All that night I sat
and gazed at that piece of bark and the writing on it, and as I gazed
my heart melted within me. For there it was ever before my
eyes--'Vagabonds included in this invite.' 'Vagabonds included in this
invite.' And finally the words passed into the air, and wherever I
looked I saw, 'Vagabonds included in this invite.'"
"Yis, them be the very words I writ," said the Trapper, gravely.
"And I saw more than the words written on the bark, John Norton,"
resumed the man. "For looking at it I saw all my past life and the
evil of it and what a scoundrel I had become; my eyes saw with a new
sight, and I said, when the sun comes I will rise and go to the man
who wrote those words and tell him what they did for me. And here I
am, a vagabond who has accepted your invitation to spend Christmas
with you, and here in this pack are the skins and the traps I have
stolen from you, and I ask your forgiveness and that you will take my
hand in proof of it, that I may come to your table feeling that I am a
man, and a vagabond no longer."
"Heart and hand be yours now and forever, Shanty Jim," cried the
Trapper, joyfully; and, rising from his chair, he met the outstretched
hand of the repentant vagabond with his own hearty grasp. "And may the
Lord be with ye ever more."
"Amen!" It was Wild Bill, the once drunkard, who said the sweet word
of prayer and assent, and he said it softly. And that murmur of amen
and amen went round the great table like the murmur of prayer and of
praise. And then it passed out and rose up from the cabin, and the air
in its joy passed it on, and the stars took it up and thrilled it
around their vast courses of glorified light, and through the high
heavens it sang itself onward from order to order of angels until it
reached Him whom no man hath seen or may ever see, in all and over
all, God! blessed forever!
Has Nature knowledge? Is she conscious of the evil and the good among
men, and has she a heart that saddens at their sorrow and rejoices in
their joy? Perhaps. For, suddenly, even as the two men joined their
hands, the fury of the storm checked itself, and a stillness--the
stillness of a great calm--fell on the woods, and through the sudden,
the unexpected, the blessed stillness, to the ears of one of the two
men--yea, to him who had forgiven--there came the melody of bells
swinging slowly and softly to and fro.
Oh, bells, invisible bells! Bells of the soul, bells high in heaven,
swing softly, swing low, swing sweet, and swing ever for us, one and
all, when we at our tables sit feasting. Swing for us living, swing
for us dying, and may the cause of your swinging be our forgiving and
forgetting.
"John Norton," said the man, "you have called me Shanty Jim, and that
is well, for in the woods here that is my name, but in the city where
I lived and whence I fled, fled because of my misdeeds, years ago, I
have another name, a name of power and wealth and honor for more than
two centuries. There I have a home, and in that home to-night sits my
aged father and white-haired mother. I am going back to them clothed
and in my right mind. Think of it, Old Trapper, going back to my home,
my boyhood's home, to my father and my mother. All day as I tramped on
the trail toward your cabin, my mind has been filled with memories of
the past, and the words of a sweet old song I used to sing when too
young to feel the tenderness of it, have been ringing in my ears."
"Sing us the song, sing us the song!" cried Wild Bill, and every man
at the table cried with him, "Sing us the song!"
"Aye, aye," assented the Trapper, "sing us the song, Shanty Jim; we be
men of the woods at this table, and some of us have had losses and
sorrers, and all of us have memories of happy days that be gone. Stand
here by my side and sing us the song that has been ringin' in yer ears
all day. This is a table of feastin', and feastin' means more than
eatin'. Sing us the song that tells ye of the past, of yer boyhood's
days and father and mother."
Oh, the secrets of the woods! How many have fled to them for
concealment and refuge! In them piety has built its retreat, learning
has sought retirement, broken pride a mask, and misfortune a haven.
And in response to the Trapper's invitation there had come to his
cabin and were now grouped about his table more of ability, more of
knowledge, more of struggle and failure, and more of reminiscence than
might be found, perhaps, in the same number of guests at any other
table on that Christmas day in the world.
Never did singer sing sweeter or more touching song, or to more
receptive company.
"Backward, turn backward, oh, Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night.
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart, as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair,
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;--
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.
CHORUS:--"Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;--
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.
"Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours;
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;--
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep.