THE WORKER'S FRIEND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9212, 15 April 1908, Page 4

THE WORKER'S FRIEND.

ZAM-BUK BALM HEALS ALL INJURIES. Bruiees, Gashes, Wounds and other injuries inseparable from the callings of the great army of out-door workers, are soothed and speedily healed by Zam-Buk Balm. The following case of Mr E. M. Hughes, of Alma. Avenue, Marrickville, Sydney, is an instance. He says: "During my occupation as Drainer, licensed under the Water and Sewerage Board, I am constantly knocking and cutting my hands, and through the action of cement on the wounds, they become inflamed and fester. I happened to receive a sample of Zam-Buk Balm, and it proved so effective that I procured a large pot from the chemist's, and continued with the treatment. The festering was quickly allayed and the ©ores healed. I also use Zam-Buk on my children for small sores, with like satisfactory results. I always recommend Zam-Buk Balm to my friends for soothing and healing purposes." Zam-Buk is a Balm of sterling merit. By virtue of its remarkable healing and anti-septic power over all injured, diseased, irritated and inflamed conditions of the skin, a pot should be kept handy in every home. Price Is 6d per pot, or 3s 6d, family 6ize, containing nearly four times the Is 6d.

tache of raven blackness. It was only a 'dream, but it put new life into the tired legs of the boy. That was a watch to work for. Even the twice seven years of Jacob's servitude came to an end, and at last August reached its final Sunset. With scrupulous care Wesley did the chores for the last time— and, " for good measure," greased the top-buggy. Then he went to the hog-lot, where Gil was leaning against the fence and making, mental calculations against the day of market. The supreme hour of attainment had at last arrived ; the lust for possession was at the. moment of gratification ! In the soft moonlight, with his wide brimmed slouch-hat tilted on his head at reckless angle, the brother-in-law looked more than ever the " bad man " of the boy's dream. ( Timidly Wesley touched his arm and i said, "I've greased" th' top-buggy,' Gil." " All right." The indifference of the reply and the silence which followed it were ominous. Could it be that anything might possibly come between him and the watch at this last moment? "Can't I have it — now — to-night? I've done the work I" Abstractedly and with tantalising deliberation the wordless Gil unhitched the chain from its anchorage, and passed both watch and chain into the eager trembling hands of the boy. As Wesley started towards the house he overheard the words, " Odd little : devil!" !

For houTS, far into the night, Wesley sat in his chamber gloating over his treasure, opening the inside cover and breathlessly watching the antics of " the woTks," turning it over and over, absorbing every letter, line, and scratch upon its shining surfaces, " hefting " it in one palm and then in another. But finally he shed his clothes in a heap upon\the floor and slid into bed, his watcn under his pillow. It gave him an exquisite thrill of pleasure to hear through the thickness of the pillow, the steady, muffled tick of the timepiece, like the beating of a faithful and friendly heart close beside him. Hero was companionship beyond any he had ever known ! What delicious joy to lie there in the dim moonlight, listening to the vibrant ticking of his treasure, and dreaming of the things it had seen, of the journeys it had taken, of the secrets it had known, of the happy and perhaps the " fatal " hours it had marked! x j Then came the thought: What if someone should enter the room and take it away from him I — for it seemed to him inevitable that all the world must somehow understand he was now the possessor of 1 the thing best worth having." i - j " It'll be over my dead body," he said — and started at the sound of his own voice. He arose and barred the door by slipping the back of the only chair in the chamber under the lateh — his thin limbs, guiltless of conventional night-gown, spotted with the "black and blue " marks from bruises received in his service for the watoh. Again and again he drew the treasure from under his pillow, scanned it rapturously, and said to himself: "It's mine. I got it!" Next day, as he entered his appearance at home, his mother seemed to j Wesley to be mor c irritable than ever, j He had learned that the way of happinew lay in attracting the least possible attention to himself in the family circle, and now. with his great secret his ambition was complete effacement from the parental mind. 1 Therefore he answered his mother's inquiries m monosyllables, and watched tor the first chance to make good his escape and join the boys. " Wha* y° u been doin'-out ther c at HiVsi' she inquired, as she bore heavily upon the flatiron with which she was polishing the bosom of the pastoral shirt. "Oh, working some, an' '■' j Working? What have you done! with all your wages?" " He didn't pay me no wages," answered Wesley. "Well, I guesg h e didn't come out much ahead of that," sadly commented the mother, and then added, "Now, don t you hang around up town. If you aren t home to supper at seven o'clock you 11 go to bed hungry. T just wonder how it would seem to have a husband who wasn't nervous, a church that paid its minister enough to keep a family decently, and a boy who had some idea of helping out his father and mother. There was only one serious check to Wesley's pride in displaying his watch ; he could take only his trustworthy mates into his confidence. To have ; worn his treasure onenly and received the envious admiration of the entire tribe of/ boys would have involved the swift percolation of the news to the parsonage. He ,had learned too, that parish sentiment forbade the possession on the part of the preacher's boy of things in which other boys might indulge freely. " Making; talk " among : the members of the church and con- i negation had become early charted in Wesley's experience as one of the snags which ho must ©teer clear of. Now ' that he had his watch, he wished more earnestly than ever before that ho had not been born to the life of public scrutiny which centred in the parson- ■• a ? e -. , •" . j But the days were rich in secret do- | ligbts, and he finally came to feel a sense of safety in his possession, the ioy of which steadily grew upon him. Hw only fear was that tne watch mipht he stolen from his elotlws while he was in the swimming-hole. The disappearance of several pocket-knives from "pants" left on the bank was a warning which he quickly heeded, and when he was going swimming he stowed the watch away in a hiding-place which he felt to be cunningly secure • from discovery. Returning from one of these expeditions to the river, he went at once to his chamber. A moment later he called down the sairway: "Ma! Where's my old rubber boots?" "T exchanged them with the rag- > man from Town Line for tinwaTe." I "When was oV Stnmpy here?" came from the white-faced boy at the head of the stairs — a boy whose knees shook under him so wildly that he leaned against the wall for support.

" Oh, early — just after you xeft. Why?" " Nothin'." Town Line was seven miles away, and the old peddler was of evil reputation, and commonly spoken of in Gray Willow as being " crooked as a dog's hind leg." Wesley knew that he could not follow on the trail of the rascally ragman until morning without running the danger of stirring up a rescue party, for the Rev Milton Merritt u f as a light sleeper, who often worked off his midnight " nervous spells" by . taking a census of his family. He did not dare to absent himself from the supper-table, and even the abstracted preacher, in the Friday deptha of his sermon throes, noticed the ashen tinge of the peaked face opposite him and asked : — "What is the matter, Wesley? You look as pale as a sheet." " Stayed in too long an' swallowed a lot of water when Juicy Simpson ducked mo." This explanation was a mas-ter-stroke of diplomacy. " Haven't I warned you," exclaimed the father, " not to associate with that Simpson boyP He's a scamp — a shiftless, hardened little vagabond." "He come after I'd gone in," interrupted Wesley, " an' I couldn't drive him out Ihe swinrminNhole. He c'n lick the whole lot of us, and he'd beat . us all up if we was to say anything." i And the meal passed safely in a toblo 1 sermon on the influence of evil associates. But the night dragged dismally. His watch was gone! IJnless he could recover his treasure there was nothing more to live for. Somehow he would recover it. If old Stumpy, the peg-legged peddler, had discovered the watah in the toe of the boot he would never give it up voluntarily. But perhaps he had not found it? There was his only hope. Anyhow, he would follow him as relentlessly as Peadshot Dan had pursued the villain who had ' ' robbed the defenceless inmates of an erstwhile happy home." When the interminable night gave place to dawn Wesley sneaked down the stairway, filled ,his pockets with doughnuts and cookies, and left a note on the kitchen table explaining : "I have gone to the country. A boy I hias give me a lame Rooster." ; Here was a grist for ■ the parsonage mill, and he shrewdly calculated that his mother would concern herself more about this unexpected addition to the family larder than with his 'absence. And it would take him only two miles out of his way to pick up the fowl which had been promised him by the new boy who had lately started in, to Sunday school. He covered the seven miles to Town Line in panting haste. As he approached the peddler's shanty he saw •the waggon was there, and his heart leaped with hope. " I want t' buy back them rubber boots ma sold you yesterday at Gray Willow — if you don't ast too ,much fer 'em."

" They're in there, somewhere," answered Stumpy, pointing to a pile of rags under a shed. "Wesley dove into the junk-heap like a rabbit-dog into a brush-pile. Yes j there were the boots ! Instantly his arm slipped into one and then another. He was weak and dizzy with the discovery that his treasure was not there. But to accuse the old peddler of having found the watch was not a part of the plan of relentless pursuit which he had worked out in the night. Instead, he visited the local jewellery store and scanned the trays in the showcase for the watch. Then he hung about the depot and scraped acquaintance with the boy who was learning telegraphy. Before he left, in the afternoon, his new jack-knife, a rabbit's foot and a dog-eared copy of " The Demon Huntress " had been transferred to the " cub " operator in exchange for a solemn promise that if old Stumpy sent a watch by express Wesley was to be notified. Then the disconsolate j young detective turned his face towards Gray Willow and gathered in the rooster. More than once, on the homeward way, his hand went instinctively to the empty pocket where his watch had once reposed. What an empty world it was ! j j The week which followed was the first of the fall term, but Wesley moped about in spiritless indifference to the doings of the playground. But he haunted the post office, and was first at the window after the distribution of each incoming mail. The day after the pastor and his wife had departed for the annual denominational conference at Metropolis, Wesley roamed Main Street in a restless, indifferent surveys of the displays in the, dingy , windows of the little stores. From force of habit he entered Deacon Frink's jewellery store and asked, j "Got any broken watch-springs?" While the jeweller removed his mag- ' nifying-glass from its anchorage in a mesh of wrinkles and poked about in a tray of scraps, Wesley again followed j the leadings of habit, rubbed against ! the showcase, and listlessly syed the • contents of the trays under the glass. 1 . Suddenly his 'heart stopped beating, his face went white, and the cords of his throat knotted tight. There, against the black plush of a tray, was the Avatch — his watch ! It had been, polished . until it shone with an unfamiliar splendour — but it was his watch ! The training in discretion which came j from his schooling as a preacher's hoy I served him mightily in this supreme j test of self-control. As he quietly waited for the fragments of shining watch-eprings, apparently listening to the " foreordination " argument between the " Universal" freethinking cattle-buyer and the Deacon, the riddle unfolded to him: the new set of silver-plated spoons which had suddenly appeared on the family table ! There had been no donation party in the church for months, no weddings, and only funerals in families too poor or too . stingy to make fine presents to the preacher. Here was the only thing which would account for the new tableware! Rebellion burned in. his heart with so fierce a flame that he moved quickly out of the 6tore, lest he should madly smash the show-case, snatch his treasure, and run away with it. He would have it back again, someway — but not that way 1 Quickly 'he ran back to the solitary house, dropped down upon ,the wood-shed steps, and took counsel of his wounded arid outraged feelings. And so it was not the ; sly and thieving old Stumpy, but his own mother, who had found his watch and swapped it away. His mother! , Ho would have the watch back;- and after that — revenge ! Hot tears trailed Htreakily down his thin, unwashed clteoke, and ho wwaJlowed hard at the , eonHl/nk'thig lumps of grief in his tforwut. Afc length, »« tho house cat rubbed hor <ira)i~Bfd@s iiguinufc his bare legs and purred comfortingly, ho raised his yes. j'hoy took in th« oofcuto-patoh, the bigflrm oi' v/UU'h lifuf appalled him at the j>Jii.hU/i/s, ftn( J gjvoi) him hours of backjut'htt in i'h*> biJK^ftgJitiiift campaign before hrt h«<! <vss«perl tit thu farm. He junijiwl quickly to hi* feet, ran to the nntirettt n>i^l»bonr'», and returned with a fmftdiflg-fork 41m) two baskets. Then ho bogan ft whirlwind attack upon the potaUh-ilaU]. Th« afternoon school-bell wm ringing whftn ho began the ouulaught, but he <li<l not hear it. He forgot that ho had not eaten, at noon, and at ovening ho was still fiercely plunging tho fork into the soil, throw-

ing his weight deftly against it, and ' uncovering hill after hill and row upon row of the potatoes. The yield was big. This observation and the details of his plau drove the thought of supper from his mind. The moon was bnght when he threw down the spading-fork and ran down the road to Harlow's — the only boy in the community who had the free use of a team and the liberty to pick up odd jobs of light hauling. i His swift feet soon brought him in at the farm bars. Harlow was sitting alone on the horse-block, and Wesley ■ panted out tho story of his mission — with reservations as to its real motive. " I'll be there with the team a few minutes after sunrise," said Harlow. Once more at the parsonage, the boy took up the spading-fork and plied it by moonlight. The village was in its slumbers by the time he finished the last row. The rattle of Harlow's waggon awakened him at sunrise, and together they fell to the work of picking up the potatoes, sorting them as they went along down the rows. Scarcely a word escaped Wesley, j and the frantic speed with which he ) "picked up" caused Harlow to rel mark: " Wes, you act like our dog when he's digging a chipmunk out of a rotten log!" The swiftness with which Wesley ate the doughnuts Harlow'e mother had sent made Harlow wonder if it were not really true, as the cattle-buyer had once said, that the preacher didn't get more than half enough to feed a family on. They were at the cross-cut station before the potato-buyer had finished his leisurely breakfnst. Ho needed, he said, just another good load to fill out his car. Wesley, therefore, drove a bargain for a price which the buyer declared " fancy." With hard, glistening eyes Wesley watched him count the money. Fifteen dollars! Would it be enough to buy back the watch? "Whip 'em up, Harlow I" ho exclaimed impatiently as the boys again climbed up to the waggon seat. " This ain't any funeral, and I got t' get back and 'tend to a lot of things 'fore th' stores close." As the clattering waggon shook and jolted ita email passengers Wesloy " paid off " Harlow and then fell into moody silence. Out of deliberations he evolved the conclusion that Harlow, was a bit too squeamish and conscientious to be entrusted with the execution of the remainder of his plan. He would call to his assistance the grandson of Squire Tamlin, who had more money to spend than any other boy in tlie village, whose expenditures, consequently, were less under suspicion. At the village Wesley gave a whistle which, brought Clarence out of the store, and Wesloy unfolded hie plan — as Harlow started home, wondering what j scheme the preacher s boy was up to \ now. and wishing iihat he was as "smart" in his lessons as Wesley. A few moments later Clarence visited tho jewellory ©tore, and then joined Wesley in the honse-sheds behind the church.

"Got it ft" eagerly questioned We«leyj reaching out an impatient hand wmoh he could not keep from trembling. " sTou bet! but I had to jew the old skinflint to git it fer th' money." " I'll do somet-hin' t'er you some time," responded Weelsy, turning on his heel and bolting towards home. He wanted to be alone with his treasure — doubly dear to him now that it ha/1 been lost and recovered. But the bitterness at the injustice he had "suffered did not vanish ; the watch under his pillow eeemed that night to tick thb words : " Ven-geance ! Re-venge I Venguance I" He thought of what Deadshot Dan would do if he "stood in his boots." He could think of no way more effective in showing his mother the wild resentment which he felt than by " mussing up" the clean beds; consequently, he migrated from, one sleeping room to another, leaving behind him, upon the clean sheets and.pillowslips, the tell-tale marks of his labours in the potato-patch. When he arcs© in the morning he felt that he had planned his entire life. He was going to leave behind him the testy surveillance of parents who misunderstood and mistreated him— who had tried to rob him of the dearest thing he had ever possessed — and he would strike out into the great world and make a place for himself. At Sterling he would stop and work in the watch factory long enough to earn m<yiey to carry him out into the West — the splendid West of Deadehot Dan 1 i A new hardness had crept into his face, and this look came with increased flintiness into his eyes as they chanced to re><ad the motto over the sitting-room door : " God Bless Our Home." "There's too much talk like that here for me," he muttered, as he passed out of the door and tucked the key under the mat. Then, with a backward look, he took the State Road towards Sterling— -sullen determination speaking from every angle of his thin, worldweary little figure.,

The gauzy haze of the Indian summer draped, the hills which shut about Gray Willow when the liey Milton. Merritt gavo his w|fe her medicine from the tumbler on the stand beside the bod, and stopped on. his way back to the study to look down the road — a habit he had formed in the weeks since his return from the conference, There, turning in at the gate, w&e Wesley, his head up and a hard, defiant look on his sharp face. Thq rfather's first blush of joy at seeing the ( boy, and his realisation that the appealing letters had brought him back, suddenly turned to anger. The sensitive, irascible nature of the man whose dreams had turned^ to ashes ever sine© he had left the seminary easily fluctuated, in the turn of a hand, from tenderness to anger. \ Ho stood in tlio doorway with the threat of chastisement in his eyes. But the boy did not flinch. He looked steadily into fhe flashing eyes of tho preach- ! er, and his gaze carried a message of ' something beyond the sullen defianco of a boyish culprit. Swiftly the «yes of the father flushed and softened. Hr> held out his hand and said, " Wesley !" Then they wont into tho study, and as he softly closed the door, Wesley slumped wearily into the chair beside the study table. As the father settled wearily into the chair on the opposite side of the table the boy's prlance took note of how thin and wrinkled he had grown. Suddenly the tnan arose and stood looking out of tTie window, the polished surfaces of hie black clothefl shining with a lustro which told the story of "his ministry more vividly than words.

, Weeley broke the eilenoe. " She took my watch," ho said. , " It was mine. Gil give it to me. I worked hard all summer. She found it and traded it to ol' Frink for 6poons. "It was all wrong, Wesley," interrupted tho father, turning upon the boy a new look ; one Wesley had never seen excepting when the preacher was delivering that funeral sermon which had become tho standard of eloquenco in Gray Willow. v She sees it now. And so do I. I am as much to blaroe as she. It looked ri/rht to us then ; hut we know now that it wasn't. I'm afraid, Wesley, there's been very little in our^ lives where they've touched yours that has been rieht. But I'd like to tell you something about your mother, and how it all looked to her. Sb"ll T?" The hoy nodded dumbly, and the tall man eat down and leaned forward above the table. Th<» far. dreamy, " funeralsermon look " lighted his face when he con+ inned : "She was beautiful to look at then — when she was twenty, and w e were married. But she'd always been frail and petted. Her father wrb the banker, and her mother died when she was little. She had everything — almost everything— to make her hapny, until I came along. She thought I'd make iher happy, and I thought so, too. But '

her father didn't. He said I'd be a failure. He was a keen, far-sighted man, and— he was right. I heve been a hopeless failure. All h© said about my not being able to <?arn enough to keep a wife has been true ; so has his sneer that I would be harder to live with than a bear with a sore paw. It has all come true, Wesley. I'm the saddest example of a failure that over tried to teach men from the pulpit. But I've failed worst, of all a« a father. "But about your good mot l^!-; she kept up under it all with n ! face for the first few years; then v struck into her— the truth of what her father had said— tho pinching poverty of the life she'd come into, the nagging, rasping criticism that the wife of a. poor preacher has to stand — one who is married to a failure 1 Every bright thing she'd ever looked forward to shrivelled and faded.— and sho with it. There isn't a thing in this house, Wesley, that she didn't have when she was married that hasn't been sent in as a 'dona- j tion ' the chair you sit on, the bed | she's lying on, much of tho food we eat, I the dishes which hold it, and the table under the dishes— all donated — even her best dress, and the shoes she walks in. There is so little money comes in at the church door that the contribu-tion-box is the only thing connected with the church or parsonage that isn't worn out. , "Worn outl" — he repeated the words with, a peculiar and lingering emphasis — " and the little woman in there — your mother — is the most worn of all. Why, boy, the silver-plating was so worn off the spoons she started housekeeping with that they looked as if they were made of brass. I've seen her cry over 'em more than onee — especially lately. And when she expected my sister to visit us, this cut her deeper than ever. " Then you came home from a summer's work without bringing backi a cent to help out in the cruel, wearing pinch that is growing tighter and tighter. Finally she discovered that you'd given your Bummer's work for a watch — a watch — when she Hardly had a decent pair of shoes or a hat that wasn't a scandal. ' He'll fool it away,' she told me. ' He'll let some boy wheedle it from him for something that'll never do him or anybody else I any' good — and we need it so much.' That's the way it looked to her, boy. And to me, too. It seemed a sinful waste io let it go that way. • v ßut it , was all wrong, Wesley. All wrong. We should have " !

It ivas a very crumpled little figure which faced the preacher ; but tho liard, defiant look had vanished from the thin, peaked face ; the bluo eyes, blurred with tears, looked boyish again, and reminded the man of how they looked in his babyhood. Silently, save for much sniffing and choking, Wesloy reached into his pocket, drew forth , the precious watch, and put it on the worii, green baize of the little study table. Then, with a supreme effort of self-control, he finally stammered as he shoved his treasure across the table 7 : " Ma — she — c'n have it. it's all — all right.';