Storyteller.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 35, 25 November 1893, Page 13

Storyteller.

THE BABY’S BANK.

(Selected.)

“No,” said the engineer, as he closed one valve and opened another, “ I wasn’t always an engineer. I wasn’t anything for a long tine. I liad the knowledge in my head all the time, but it was lost under a heap ©f rubbish. What fools men are when they’re left to themselves sometimes! Ifoi look at me. Would you say I was ever a tramp P ’ A tramp ! his white muscular throat . white and wholesome under the coal dust —his strong, well-knitted fame, clear eye and firm hand, denoted a man of pluck and courage, a practical worker, not the idle, nerveless, relaxed object which is dominated a tramp, and which is a blight on the face of nature. No, this man, guiding the good engine Mohawk, was never a tramp, and we told him

80. “ But I was, gentlemen,” lie said, coolly sighting a long stretch of road ever the back-bone of his engine, and lettino- her out a little for a dead level lieat. ° “ I was not only a tramp, but the meanest kind of one, and I worked liarder and suffered more to get myself into that condition than I ever did to reach this,” and he looked proudly at the polished trimmings of his flying Bteed.”

“ I’ll tell you how it was,” he said at last, as he slowed up to round a curve, and then went easily on past the fields clad in their summer verdure, past woods that were panoramic in a flash of beauty, and away into ©pen country. “ I was a tramp —no matter how 1 came to be one, or why. I lost home, friends, self-respect, all that makes up manhood —but 1 didn’t wear a red ribbon at my watch charm then, and my brain was muddled—there are many more like me —and I went from bad to wcrse, but I had never broken the laws ; ne ev wronged anyone but myself, when I fell in with some fellows who thought they ■had found a tool, and they had. They say every man has his price and they offered me mine ; it was the price of my soul, too, and I agreed to take the money and do the work. “It was this —to sneakround and get acquainted with the inside of a house the house of the richest man in the place, and to showthemthe way; they said I looked the most respectable for the purpose. Gentlemen, you wouldn’t have trusted one of the gang with a ten cent bi f , least of all me as I looked then but I felt proud of the compliment, and that afternoon I was to go up to the house to look for work ©r to ask for food, just as it happened to strike me, when there was no one 3iome but the women folks, and look xound to see how we could get in that might- —for robbery, and perhaps murder, was what they meant. “It was just such a pleasant, peaceful afternoon as this, and all the doors and windows were open and not a soul saw me as I lounged in through the garden and up to the verandah. The gang I had fallen in with had made ©ne mistake —they had kept me sober for the work, not entirely clearheaded, but sober enough to make me feel I was doing a mean, dastardly trick, to make me for the first time in many £. day feel ashamed of my own company. But I bad gone so far I must go on. I bad walked up to the steps and into the bouse without meeting a soul, and I stepped into a long, cool room, and there I saw on the mantle in a great, clear, gold-framed glass, a white face and two red, bloodshot eyes —my own ; but what a fright they gave me, and then I saw something else, a small iron-bank, such as children keep pennies in. It was made of latticed bars of wrought iron, and between every bar was the gleam of silver quarters, and halfdollars, and smaller gold coin. I hadn’t a penny to my name. I was hungry, tired, footsore and disgusted with what I had undertaken. It came ©ver me like a flash that I could take this money, and get out of reach of the gang ; it would be a dishonesty

but not such as this they had planned. I reached out my hand and stopped. There at my very feet, a white lace pillow, and all white and fluffy like an angel —lay the loveliest baby I ever saw in my life ! She was asleep, but as I looked at her in startled wonder, she opened her eyes as wide and blue as d. x ies, held up both pretty hands, laughed like a bird singing, and said ‘Joe, Joe,’ which wasn’t my name at all. I didn’t touch the baby’s hand, and I didn’t touch the baby. While I stood there a pale little woman came out of her room and nearly fainted when she saw me, and I sat down there and told the whole story, and asked her to have me sent to jail for protection from myself and others ; she sent for her husband, and all the time we were talking the baby laughed and cooed and called me by the name she gave me, ‘Joe,’ and the rest of the gang were waiting at a turn of the road for me to come back to them.

“ I didn’t give them up —it wasn’t worth while, when I bad put the people they had designs on on their guard, and they left the town that night ; I did’nt go to jail ; the man whose house was to he robbed gave me some work, but I didn’t reform sll in a minute, and he never could have reformed me at all—it was the baby who did it. She trusted me ; when I felt the old boy getting the better of me I went to the baby, and she smiled at me and I grew strong right off —it made a man of me. I never could tell what that baby saw in my face to make her help me in that way, but it wasn’t of this world. She knew she could save me, and she did. That was ten years ago, gentlemen, and I’m more of a man to-day than I ever was, and it’s her doing.” “ She must be quite a large girl now,” we said inquiringly. “ Maybe so ! I don’t know how that is, some folks say they don’t reckon them by months and years! I’d like to feel she’s the same sweet, smiling baby, holding out her hands in that confiding way and calling me Sloe’ —she loved to call me that—but I never wanted anyone else to use the name since she said it—one night. She was going to never to wake up, the doctor s: ii; they told me she wouldn’t know me, that I won’cl disturb her. I went in on my knees. I crawled up to the bed and looked at her ; dear saint, she was as white as the sheets, and her pretty curls never s birred a hair, and her sweet eyes closed, and I groaned in my heart, ftr I thought she was gone, and then, then she opened her eyes and then came a g-reat struggle for breath, and oh, my God, I’d have died to help her, died twenty times to have saved her, and she just looked at me and put one hand up —I fancied she was pointing up there —and she smiled at me and says she all at once, ‘ Joe ! ‘ Joe !’ and then she made her mother understand that she wanted something. It was the little bank, and she wanted me to have it. I took it to humour her, and thought how I would give it back to her when she got well, and then she smiled again and I listened to hear her say ‘Joe’-—and all was still ! Ton see I could never go wrong now, but how did she know about that little bank and my wicked thoughts ? And she forgave and loved me, too, pretty dear. The smoke makes me cry. There’s our depot at the next station, and we’re running on schedule time, as you see, gentlemen.”