Archies Mistake | Page 6

consciousness. But he was in such a weak state that nothing seemed of any use.
"Father, I've been a suspicious brute," cried Archie, flinging down the letter. "But for my cold looks and constant spying, which I daresay he's noticed, he might have told me all this, and I might have helped him. Now he's starving and friendless. But I'll try to make up now, if it isn't too late. Do let me carry him home, father--may I?"
"No," said Mr. Fairfax; "I'll go back and order some brandy, and send for the doctor. You stay here and take care of him and the mill."
He went away, and very long did the time seem to Archie before the doctor arrived. Now he had time to think over his own unkind--nay, cruel--suspicions, founded on nothing but Stephen's shabby appearance.
"It's my way, I know, to make up my mind too quickly, and by a fellow's outside," he thought. Then, somehow, the words of the last Sunday's epistle came into his mind--"Charity thinketh no evil." He knew that charity means love.
"No," he said to himself, "I shouldn't have thought evil of him, and I certainly had no right to say what I did to father and Mr. Munster. Poor fellow! how lonely and miserable he must have been; and I might have stood his friend, if I'd only given him the chance of speaking about his troubles, instead of glaring at him as I did. Is it too late now to make up?"
Just then the doctor came in; but for a long, long time he could not restore Stephen to consciousness.
He was trying still when three o'clock struck.
"Now he is really coming to--look, Dr. Grey," cried Archie, who had watched all the doctor's efforts with breathless anxiety.
Just then Stephen gave a great sigh, and opened his eyes.
"Where am I?" he asked feebly.
"All among friends," said Archie, "and going to have a jolly time, and be nursed up, and made as strong as a horse.--Now, Dr. Grey, let's get a cab. I'll go and call one," and he bustled off.
Outside he met a disgusting sight. It was Timothy Lingard, staggering towards the mill, very much the worse for what he had been drinking.
"You can't go there; go home at once," said Archie.
"Night-watch--caretaker--said I'd be here," mumbled Timothy, trying to brush past him; and then finding Archie still stood as a hindrance in front of him, he tried to strike him--of course not knowing who it was--only he missed his aim, and fell down into the gutter.
There Archie left him, to seek a cab, which is not an easy thing to find at three o'clock in the morning. However, before long he did succeed in procuring one, and in it Stephen was conveyed to the nearest hospital.
* * * * *
Mr. Fairfax was just starting for his office the next morning when he was accosted by a respectable-looking working-man.
"Do I speak to Mr. Fairfax, sir?" he asked, touching his hat.
"Yes, that is my name. Can I do anything for you?"
"Would you be good enough, sir, to tell me where my son, Stephen Bennett, is? I hear he was taken ill last night."
"He's in the hospital. I'll take you--I was just going there myself," said Archie, who was with his father.
"Your son has had a hard life, I fear, in your absence," said Mr. Fairfax, glancing curiously at the stranger, who did not look at all like a man capable of crime.
"Yes, sir," he answered somewhat bitterly; "it has pleased the Almighty to send me a heavy trial. First, I lost my wife; then I was accused, along with my fellow-workers in a brick-yard, of stealing fagots. I was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and my time would have been out next week. My boy, which he's one in a thousand--though he was that weakly he was hardly fit for work--he brought the little 'uns, five of 'em, all under fourteen, to this place. 'We shan't be known at Longcross, father,' he says, 'and I'll work for 'em all till you're out.' So he come here. And yesterday they come to me in the jail, and they says, 'Bennett, we find you're innocent. The man what took the fagots, he's up and confessed, and he says as you've had nothing to do with it.' So they wrote me this paper to say I'm pardoned, as they call it, and I come away; but they couldn't give me back the three months of my life."
"No," said Mr. Fairfax; "you have suffered indeed. But I trust that even yet you may find good come out of evil, as it so often does. We have come to know and respect Stephen, and as soon as he is well he shall be moved into a comfortable house, which I have now to