THE GIPSIES.
“If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those
that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth
not He that pondereth the heart consider it; and He that keepeth thy
soul, doth He not know it? and shall not He render to every man
according to his works?”—PROV. xxiv. 11, 12.
Alie sat on the threshold of her home on a bright morning in May, eating
a cake which her uncle had given her, and now and then throwing a crumb
to the merry little swallows that were twittering in the eaves and
darting in and out of their nests.
Alie had not sat long when a tall, large-boned woman, in a red cloak,
with sun-burnt features and wild dark eyes, approached her, followed by
a miserable-looking little girl, about six or seven years of age, who
had neither shoes on her blistered feet nor bonnet over her tangled
hair. The gipsy stopped before Alie, and, in a tone which she intended
to be winning, said, “Good mornin’ to ye, my dear. Will ye cross my hand
with silver, and I’ll tell ye your fortin’?”
Alie promptly declined the offer, not only because she had been taught
by her mother never to encourage those who pretend to be able to look
into the future and to see what God has hidden from our eyes, but
because the appearance of the woman frightened her. And had the gipsy
said anything more to her, Alie would have retreated at once from the
door. The woman, however, passed on, and a few yards further on found a
willing listener in a flighty girl of the village, whose long gilt
ear-rings, red ribands and curl-papers, were the outward tokens of such
vanity and folly as might easily make her the dupe of a gipsy
fortune-teller.
But the thin little girl lingered behind, shily eyeing Alie’s
tempting-looking cake. Alie broke off a piece and held it out to her.
The child sidled up, took it, and devoured it as though she were
famished. Alie smiled and gave her another bit.
“What is your name, little girl?” said Alie, first glancing to see that
the gipsy was too much occupied to listen to her.
“Madge,” answered the child.
“And is that woman your mother?”
Madge nodded her head in reply.
“And you go wandering about the country with her?”
Madge gave some low confused answer, which Alie could not at first
understand; she made out from the child at last that the gipsy had
pitched her tent somewhere near, and that she could not tell how long
she would stay.
“Do you ever go to school, little Madge?”
The child only answered by a stare.
“Does any one teach you to read?”
Madge either did not comprehend the meaning of the question, or her eyes
were wandering to Alie’s white kitten, and she paid no attention to what
was said. Alie marked the curious glance, and setting down her cake,
went after her shy favourite, drew it from under the table where it had
crouched, and carried it to the little girl at the door.
Alie’s cake was nowhere to be seen, and the gipsy child was turning
away!
“My cake!” exclaimed Alie. The girl started, and the piece of cake fell
from her hand to the ground!
Alie, astonished as well as distressed, stood looking for a moment at
the little culprit, then said in a voice of pity, “Pick it up, little
Madge; you may eat it. I daresay that you are more hungry than I. But,
oh!” she continued, as the child obeyed with an awkward air and a look
of shame, “did you not know that it was very, very naughty to steal it?
Did your mother never teach you that it is wrong to take what is not
your own?”
[Illustration: ALIE AND THE GIPSY GIRL.]
A strange expression stole over the face of the wretched girl, which,
coupled with the gipsy woman’s appearance and what Alie had heard of the
character of some of the race, made her suspect that Madge would derive
little benefit from her parent’s instructions.
“Do you not know that God sees you?” pursued the young questioner.
“I know nothing about Him!” muttered the child.
“Not know about God!—never pray to Him!” exclaimed Alie.
But here the conversation was suddenly broken off by the gipsy woman
calling to the child. Madge looked frightened, like one who had often
found a word to be followed by a blow, and obeyed the call, though
reluctantly, casting a parting look of regret, not at Alie, but at her
pretty white kitten, and in a few minutes more both the gipsy and child
had disappeared down a lane.
“Oh, poor, wretched little Madge!” thought Alie; “no wonder that she
took the cake—no wonder if she grow up miserable and wicked! She does
not know about God—she does not know that He made her—that He watches
over her—that He hates sin, and will punish it! What will become of her
in this world? what will become of her in the next?”
When her brother Johnny came home from the fields, Alie told him of the
little gipsy girl.
“I’ve heard of the gipsies,” said he; “they’ve pitched their tent down
yon lane, and the farmer says that he must keep a good look-out after
his poultry. There’s a big woman, and an ill-looking man with a fur cap
and a patch over his eye, who offers to mend kettles and pans. Farmer
says he’s sure the fellow has seen the inside of many a jail, and hopes
the party won’t stay long in the place.”
[Illustration: THE GIPSIES.]
“Poor little Madge! it’s not her fault that she is the child of such
people!” said Alie.
“She’ll not get much good from them, I take it. She’ll learn to tell
falsehoods like her mother, and to steal like her father, and perhaps
end her days in prison,” observed Johnny.
Alie was silent for some time. Her fingers were now busily hemming a
seam, but her thoughts were far away from her work. At last she said
softly, as if to herself, “And yet that poor child is precious!”
“Precious to her parents! I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Johnny. “She
looks as though they half starved her; and didn’t you see the bruises on
her bare arms? I don’t believe they’d care if she died in a ditch.”
“She is precious in the eyes of the Lord,” murmured Alie. “That poor
little girl has a soul!”
Johnny did not answer for some time; and when he did so, it was with a
forced lightness of manner. “I don’t see what you and I have to do with
the matter, Alie; we are not the little beggar’s keepers!”
“_I am not my brother’s keeper_: I have read these words somewhere in
the Bible,” said Alie; “but I can’t at this moment remember what part of
it they come from.”
“Can’t you?” replied Johnny; “why, they were the words of Cain, when he
was asked about his brother Abel.”
There was another long silence.
“I wonder,” exclaimed Alie, clasping her hands, “if we could do nothing
to save that poor child?”
“I can do nothing, at least,” replied Johnny, and went whistling out of
the house.
But Alie’s mind was not so easily satisfied. She was one of those who
have learned, from such solemn verses as that which stands at the
commencement of my tale, that there is sin not only in doing the things
which we ought not to do, but in _leaving undone_ the things which we
ought to do; and _doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it_? She
knew that it is the duty, and ought to be the delight, of every
Christian to help others on in the road to heaven, or lending good
books, or assisting with the purse such valuable societies as have been
formed to carry out this holy work.
Alie thought at first of watching for an opportunity when Madge might
again pass the door, and giving to her a little copy of the “Young
Cottager,” which she had earned as a prize at school. But common sense
(and common sense should always be taken into our council whenever we
try to do good) showed her great objections to this. Madge could not
read the book, nor understand it even if she could read. She was so
ignorant, that whoever would teach her must begin with the very simplest
form of instruction.
Alie dared not go to the gipsy tent: she was afraid of the woman, and
yet more of the man; nor did she think that her mother would like her to
visit those who bore such evil characters. Much did Alie wish that she
could consult her mother, ever her best and wisest friend; but Mrs.
Morris was at this time absent from home. Alie was not sufficiently at
her ease with her uncle to speak to him on the subject; and as for her
brother Johnny, he cared nothing at all about the matter.
Many children in Alie’s place would have given up all idea of helping
the gipsy girl, as a thing quite out of their power to do, and would
have rested contented with the thought that this work was not intended
for them. But Alie, timid and gentle as she was, was not one to be
easily discouraged where her pity and her conscience were concerned. She
remembered how the attention of Madge had been attracted by her pretty
white kitten. Might not that kitten serve as a lure to draw the child a
little way from the tent? There was a spot well known to Alie, where an
old thorn-tree grew at the meeting of two lanes; it was about midway
between the village and the place where the tent was pitched, and in
sight of both. Alie thought that she might venture thus far, and seek to
win an interview with the poor gipsy girl. There was one great
difficulty in her way, at which the reader perhaps may smile: the old
thorn could not be reached without passing the carrier’s little yard,
and the tenant of this yard was a large, fierce dog! True, the dog was
chained; but Alie never felt as if iron or brass could stand the force
of his sudden spring; and the sound of his low growl, and sharp, short
bark, was to her terrible as the voice of a lion!
“Johnny,” said Alie, “I wish that you would go a little way with me this
evening; just as far as the thorn where the two roads meet.”
“Do you want your fortune told, Alie?” replied Johnny, looking up with a
saucy smile.
“No; but I wish to speak to little Madge, if you would only walk beside
me so far.”
“Oh, I wish you may get me!” exclaimed Johnny, chucking up a penny.
“I’ll have nothing to do with those beggarly gipsies!”
“If I go at all, I must go alone!” thought Alie; and alone she resolved
to go! She saved a piece of bread from her own dinner, and wrapping up
her white kitten in her checked apron, set out on her little expedition.
She repeated to herself, as she walked, one of Watts’ hymns for
children, which, she thought, contained much truth in very small space,
and might easily be both learned and remembered. The sound of it, too,
was so pretty, that Madge could not dislike to learn that. Alie forgot
all about the hymn, however, as she drew near the carrier’s yard, and
heard the rattle of a chain within. Almost as much afraid for her kitten
as for herself, she pressed it closely to her bosom, and, going as near
as she could to the opposite hedge, ran with a light, noiseless step
past the spot; then paused to congratulate herself on the dreaded danger
being over.
Alie reached the thorn in the lane, and to her pleasant surprise found
Madge seated on the ground beneath it! The tent was at some little
distance, though nearer than Alie liked to have it. A donkey was grazing
beside it, and smoke was rising from a fire kindled of brushwood, over
which a kettle was boiling.
I shall not dwell upon the conversation which passed between the two
little girls. Alie found Madge more intelligent than she had expected;
and the heart of the poor child, accustomed as she was to harshness and
neglect, readily warmed towards one who seemed to take an interest in
her welfare. Madge could not tell Alie how long the gipsies were likely
to remain in that neighbourhood, but she eagerly agreed, as long as they
stayed there, to meet her young friend every morning under the thorn.
The shadows were now growing long; the sun was sloping down to the west.
A heavy step was heard along the lane, and a dark and ill-looking man
approached, with a fur cap drawn low over his brow, and a stout
crab-tree cudgel in his hand. Madge started to her feet like a
frightened fawn, and, without a word of good-bye to her companion,
started off for the tent. The man called after her in language which
made Alie tremble, and it was the greatest relief to her when the gipsy
had passed her without addressing or seeming to notice her. Again
carefully wrapping up her kitten in her apron, Alie turned her face
towards the village. As she proceeded along the lane, the distant sound
of a sharp cry of pain coming from the direction of the tent, and then
the angry tones of a man’s voice, thrilled to her very soul. Full of
sorrow and pity for another, Alie never even thought of the dog, till
startled by a sudden bound and bark, which made her quicken her steps
towards her home.
[Illustration: THE GIPSY’S APPROACH.]
Madge was now almost constantly in the thoughts of Alie. To find some
way of helping one so unhappy, of teaching one so ignorant, of pouring
any sweetness into a cup so bitter, became the frequent occupation of
her mind. Alie took pleasure in mending up old things and making new
ones, reserving little dainties, contriving small surprises for the poor
gipsy child in the lane. She searched out the most suitable verses to
teach her, thought over improving stories to tell her, and never forgot,
morning and night, to pray earnestly for the unhappy little girl.
And was all this trouble in vain? No; there was one lesson which poor
Madge easily learned, and that was, to love her young teacher; and the
next step was not a very hard one—to love that which she taught. It was
glad tidings to the desolate girl to learn that there was a great and
good Being who cared even for her; that there was a glorious crown
prepared even for a gipsy child; that she who had never enjoyed the
comfort of a home upon earth, might, after death, dwell in a bright home
above the skies. Alie had not yet had many opportunities of serving God,
or benefiting her fellow-creatures; but she had _done what she could_.
She had sought out one wandering lamb; she had cheered one sorrowing
heart; she had been a guide to one who had no other to win her from the
way of misery and destruction. Oh! dear reader, could the same be said
of you? _If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and
those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it
not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that
keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall not He render to every
man according to his works?_
Souls are perishing before thee—
Save, save one!
It may be thy crown of glory,—
Save, save one!
From the waves that would devour,
From the raging lion’s power,
From destruction’s fiery shower,
Save, save one!
Not in thine own strength confiding,
Save, save one!
Faith and prayer thy efforts guiding,
Save, save one!
None can e’er, unless possessing
Heavenly aid and heavenly blessing,
To the work of mercy pressing,
Save e’en one!
Who the worth of souls can measure?—
Save, save one!
Who can count the priceless treasure?
Save, save one!
Like the stars shall shine for ever
Those who faithfully endeavour
Dying sinners to deliver—
Save, save one!
[Illustration: [couple surrounded by leaves]]