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AN UNEXPECTED PRIZE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 2, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 47.

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"AN UNEXPECTED PRIZE."

By Mrs. F. A. Reynolds

CHAPTER II.—THE ACCIDENT.

PAUL and HOPE MANTON were intelligent children, and enjoyed any tax on their memory and reasoning powers. They were full of this new Bible study. They readily committed the commandments to memory, and recited them perfectly, and had their eyes open to observe their neighbors and themselves.
They attended the public graded school. Paul, about fourteen years old, had entered the A grade. Hope, two years younger, was only one grade below him, and declared her intention of entering the High School with him. A large number of their mates were interested in the study of the commandments, but few were so well prepared as they to understand them.
On Wednesday, after school, Paul asked permission to go with some boys to a favorite pond, fishing. Mrs. Manton hesitated. "I don't know, Paul, about those boys. Just run down to the office and ask your father."
Paul ran down street a few blocks and entered his father's office, breathless.
"No, my son," said Mr. Manton gravely.
"Those boys are poor associates for one who has a dear little sister to live with. Besides, that fishing spot is dangerous. There is a deep hole there, and the boys fish off a rotten log, liable at any time to break and make trouble."
Paul was disappointed, and his face showed it.
"I'll go with you before long," added his father kindly.
Paul still looked sulky, and when he reached home, he threw himself face downward on the broad lounge.
"What's the matter?" asked Hope anxiously.
Mrs. Manton listened for his answer.
"Father won't let me go fishing with the boys," he half growled from among the pillows.
"Oh, is that all? 'Honor thy father and thy mother,' you know," she added with a half laugh.
"Well, I am," replied Paul savagely, if not grammatically.
"Excuse me, Paul," said his mother, "you are far from obeying the fifth commandment. Christ taught that the spirit in which one indulges determines his guilt. If one hates another so he would like to kill him, he is guilty of murder. You have obeyed your father in remaining at home, but you really have not submitted to him. You really want to go, and would if you dared, so you are not really honoring your father."
"That's a new idea," cried Paul, rolling over, the sulky look disappearing in his interest.
"Why, that makes the commandments hard enough to keep."
"That is the way Christ's followers should keep them," said Mrs. Manton.
Paul thought silently a few moments.
"What is your idea of obeying the fifth commandment, under the circumstances?" he asked.
Mrs. Manton smiled.
"I would get up and go cheerfully to work about the chores and lessons, and say to myself, 'God gave me parents to care for me, and it is my place to do their bidding cheerfully.' They know best. You will be happy at once if you try it."
Paul laughed a little, then rolled off the low lounge to the floor, and sprang to his feet.
"I'll try it," he said. "Might as well, seeing I can't go anyhow," and he went whistling out of the room.
Before long the evening chores were faithfully done, and Paul was hard at work at his lessons.
When, in the quiet rose-scented twilight, he sat with the others on the broad porch, he felt, as his mother had predicted, a sense of unusual happiness.
Just as they were thinking of going into the house, they heard hasty footsteps and a quick click of the gate. Hope was the first to recognize in the breathless boy Arthur Glenn, one of Paul's classmates. She sprang to her feet. "What is it?" she cried.
"O Hope! O Paul!" cried Arthur, dropping on the upper step. "Have you heard—" he panted, "have you heard of poor Frank Ellis?"
"No! What?" cried Paul.
"Drowned!"
"Drowned!" echoed all.
"Yes, in Forest Pond. You know the boys went fishing—"
"Yes," replied Paul with a side glance at his father, "yes, I know; but Mrs. Ellis told Frank not to go. I heard her."
"I know it," sighed Arthur, "but he would go."
"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Manton.
"Oh, Frank wanted to get the best place, and he went out too far on the log! It cracked, and when Frank saw it was breaking, he tried to scramble back in a hurry, and slipped off into the water. It is awfully deep there, you know, and he went down with such force he went completely under, and got to strangling, and lost his head. To add to the rest, his foot was tangled in his line. Joe Lathrop tried to catch him and was pulled off and nearly drowned too."
"Well, Frank went down three times, and when a man came and helped us get him out, it was too late. They worked over him an hour, but he was dead. Poor Mrs. Ellis is about crazy. Frank was her only child."
"And no comfort to her," said Mr. Manton sternly, "but that will not prevent her mourning for him. Indeed, I presume her grief is more hopeless."
Arthur sat some time talking, then went away, and the saddened group adjourned to the house.
"Paul," said Hope, as they were piling up their books for the night, "I've just thought about the meaning of the last part of the fifth commandment,—'that thy days may be long upon the land,'—you know.
"Just think, if Frank Ellis had honored his mother—"
"Yes," said Paul shuddering, "and, Hope, I really did think once of disobeying father and going. It might have been me."
"Paul," said Hope softly.
"Well?"
"I think we ought to thank God especially that it was not you."
"Yes, and ask for a spirit of real obedience," added Paul. "I never saw what it was before."
(To be continued.)