Sue, A Little Heroine | Page 6

alone would have
made him so. Sue was essentially an everyday child, but Giles had a
clear complexion, dark-blue eyes, and curling hair. Giles as a baby and
a little child was very beautiful. As his poor, feeble-looking mother
carried him about--for she was poor and feeble-looking even in her
palmy days--people used to turn and gaze after the lovely boy. The
mother loved him passionately, but to the father he was as the apple of
his eye.
Giles's father had married a wife some degrees below him both
intellectually and socially. She was a hard-working, honest, and

well-meaning soul, but she was not her husband's equal. He was a man
with great force of character, great bravery, great powers of endurance.
Before he had joined the Fire Brigade he had been a sailor, and many
tales did he tell to his little Giles of his adventures on the sea. Sue and
her mother used to find these stories dull, but to Giles they seemed as
necessary as the air he breathed. He used to watch patiently for hours
for the rare moments when his father was off duty, and then beg for the
food which his keen mental appetite craved for. Mason could both read
and write, and he began to teach his little son. This state of things
continued until Giles was seven years old. Then there came a dreadful
black-letter day for the child; for the father, the end of life.
Every event of that torturing day was ever after engraved on the little
boy's memory. He and his father, both in high spirits, started off for
their last walk together. Giles used to make it a practice to accompany
his father part of the way to his station, trotting back afterwards safely
and alone to his mother and sister. To-day their way lay through
Smithfield Market, and the boy, seeing the Martyrs' Monument in the
center of the market-place, asked his father eagerly about it.
"Look, father, look!" he said, pointing with his finger. "What is that?"
"That is the figure of an angel, lad. Do you see, it is pointing up to
heaven. Do you know why?"
"No, father; tell us."
"Long ago, my lad, there were a lot of brave people brought just there
where the angel stands; they were tied to stakes in the ground and set
fire to and burned--burned until they died."
"Burned, father?" asked little Giles in a voice of horror.
"Yes, boy. They were burned because they were so brave they would
rather be burned than deny the good God. They were called martyrs,
and that angel stands there now to remind people about them and to
show how God took them straight to heaven."

"I think they were grand," answered the boy, his eyes kindling. "Can't
people be like that now?"
"Any one who would rather die than neglect a duty has, to my mind,
the same spirit," answered the man. "But now, lad, run home, for I must
be off."
"Oh, father, you are going to that place where the wonderful new
machinery is, and you said I might look at it. May I come?"
The father hesitated, finally yielded, and the two went on together. But
together they were never to come back.
That very day, with the summer sun shining, and all the birds in the
country far away singing for joy, there came a message for the brave
father. He was suddenly, in the full prime of his manly vigor, to leave
off doing God's work down here, doubtless to take it up with nobler
powers above. A fireman literally works with his life in his hands. He
may have to resign it at any moment at the call of duty. This
trumpet-call, which he had never neglected, came now for Giles
Mason.
A fire broke out in the house where little Giles watched with keen
intelligence the new machinery. The machinery was destroyed, the
child lamed for life, and the brave father, in trying to rescue him and
others, was so injured by falling stones and pieces of woodwork that he
only lived a few hours.
The two were laid side by side in the hospital to which they were
carried.
"Father," said the little one, nestling close to the injured and dying man,
"I think people can be martyrs now!"
But the father was past words, though he heard the child, for he smiled
and pointed upwards. The smile and the action were so significant, and
reminded the child so exactly of the angel who guards the Martyrs'
Monument, that ever afterwards he associated his brave father with

those heroes and heroines of whom the sacred writer says that "the
world is not worthy."
CHAPTER IV.
SOLITARY HOURS.
Giles was kept in the hospital for