Bright Arrows (11 page)

"Oh, that is nice of you, and I'm very glad to have you here," said Eden with a sudden welcoming smile that left no question.

It was while they were still sitting in the living room talking with Mr. Worden that Janet arrived with a goody tray. Crackers and cookies, and even a few sandwiches, and tea. For in any stress of circumstances Janet considered tea a panacea for all ills and couldn't bear to let an occasion go by without it.

While they talked, there came a message from Mike. They thought they had a clue that led to the woods north of the town. There were woods all about the town of Glencarroll, so it was quite a proposition to hunt a fugitive in an area like that. Mike said they were getting bloodhounds, using some of the young man's clothes that had been in possession of the police department. They felt reasonably sure by this method they might find him. Unless, of course, he had been able to get away on a train or hitchhike a ride. Although the highways were being watched at every crossroad, and cars stopped and searched.

Eden caught her breath.

"Oh, this all seems so dreadful. How Father would have hated to have things like this happen."

"Yes," said her father's friend. "I certainly wish it could have been prevented, or at least that we could have kept the knowledge of it from you."

"Oh, but you couldn't!" laughed Eden. "It began with me. Ellery Fane walked into the library where I was going through some letters Father had told me to read and began to say that he and his mother were coming to take care of me, and that he would help me go through all the papers of the estate and get better investments! He said he was a financial expert!"

"The insufferable egotist. It sounds like some of the stuff he pulled off when he was a mere boy in the bank, carrying on his forgery schemes. Well, child, I guess we are fortunate that this has all come out in the open now, instead of having it smolder along out of sight. The whole trouble is that Ellery Fane did manage to get a good deal of information about your father's estate while he was with us, and he has never forgotten that there might be a rich mine for himself if he could only manage to get an entrance here. Well, I'm sorry, but I do hope the fellow will be caught, and soon. Now I must go, but I'll be over early in the morning, Eden, and Lorrimer will let me know sooner than that if anything more happens meanwhile."

When Mr. Worden and the policeman were gone, and while Janet was fixing a comfortable couch with blankets and pillows for the lawyer to sleep on, Eden lingered for a moment to speak to him.

"You know we have plenty of comfortable sleeping rooms upstairs where you could rest better than the library," she said, with a troubled look. "It doesn't seem right for you to have to sleep on the couch when you are so kind as to stay here."

"Oh, no," he said. "I really prefer to be down here tonight. I want to see if anything more goes on, and also I want to check up on Tabor every little while. I've talked with the doctor and the nurse, and I want to make sure that there are no mistakes made."

"You are very kind," said Eden. "I do appreciate what you are doing tonight. And also I want very much to ask you a question about something you said the other day. You said it was possible to know the Lord Jesus Christ, now, while we are living on this earth. Isn't that what you said?"

"Yes, I did," said the young man with a sudden eager light in his eyes. "Are you interested in that? I'm so glad. I've been praying that you would be."

"You
have
?" exclaimed Eden eagerly. "Well, I felt as if somehow somebody was helping me, and it must have been your prayers. Thank you. But now, would you please tell me how I can get to know Christ? I've been to church all my life, and Sunday school, but I can't remember ever to have heard that question discussed. Perhaps it was my fault. Maybe I just wasn't listening, or perhaps I was thinking of something else and missed what was said, but I really can't recall anybody telling me I could know Christ. Maybe my father just took it for granted I understood, for I'm sure he must have known Him."

"I'm sure he did," said the young man solemnly with a lovely smile in his eyes, "from all I've heard about him, and I'm sure that he is happy to be with Him now today. I'll be glad to tell you about it."

Eden dropped into a low chair covered with faded blue velvet, and the firelight played over her lovely hair, spinning some of it into threads of gold and touching the long dark lashes on her soft cheeks. In her simple dark blue dress that hung in graceful lines about her, she seemed just a lovely child, yet there was in her face a mature eagerness that spurred the young man to do his best to make plain the wonderful truths of eternity for her.

He sat down on the side of the fire where he could watch her, and with a quiet prayer that the Holy Spirit would guide him, he began.

"To begin with," he said in a quiet voice, "I think you told me that you believed in Christ. Does that mean that you accepted Him as your own personal Savior?"

Eden looked up shyly, perplexedly.

"I don't know," she said. "Does it? This book I have been reading, and perhaps only half understanding, has made me feel that I am a terrible sinner, and I never thought I was before. I thought if I just kept the Commandments and lived as right a life as I knew how, that I was pleasing to Him and would, of course, belong in heaven. But this book speaks as if everybody was a sinner, as if there were nothing pleasing to God in anybody, and it talks about Adam's sin. I've always heard about Adam's sin, but it never seemed to me it had anything to do with me, and now it seems to have. I am afraid I just don't understand it at all. I am terribly confused."

"Yes? But it is very simple after all. When God made Adam and Eve and put them in a perfect surrounding, He gave them only one commandment or law: they must not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden. It was their testing, to show whether they would be willing to obey God and choose His way. He told them if they did not obey, they would bring death into the world on themselves and all their children. And that first man and woman broke God's law and brought upon themselves and their children the tendency to sin, so that everyone born of Adam entered the world with a sinful nature, a nature that
wanted
to please
itself
rather than God. That was how death came into the world through Adam.

"But God loved the world, and so He made a way to be saved. He Himself, in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, came down to earth and took a human body, and though He had no sin Himself, He took on Himself the sin of the whole world, that anyone who would believe on Him and accept what He had done for them might be saved and be free from sin before the just God, who must keep His word, for He had said: 'The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' So He took the death penalty for all who would believe and thus accept Him as Savior. And then God raised Him from the dead as proof that He was satisfied with the atonement Christ's blood had made. God reckons that all who believe have died to sin and self with Christ when He died on the cross, and they may fully share life in His resurrection, even now in these bodies. The condition to enjoying the fullness of His life and power is that we are willing to reckon ourselves dead with Christ, saying with Paul, 'I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.' In that way, although we still have that sinful Adam nature that continually wants to do evil, we have also a stronger nature that is Christ's own. As we yield to that, His Holy Spirit makes us hate sin and gives us the power to please Christ."

He looked into the sweet earnest eyes of the girl as she eagerly drank in his words, and the voice of his heart became a prayer, as he went on to speak.

"That is the story very briefly, and perhaps rather crudely told, but believe me it is true. When we have more time, perhaps you will let me tell you how I came to experience these truths in my own life, and to
know
that they are true, as little by little I went on to study God's Word and yield myself to Him in prayer.

"God will talk with you through prayer, you know, and through the reading of His Book, and you will get to know Him so that you will trust your life utterly to Him and be willing to die to self and desires of the flesh. That might sound like a dismal life. It would be to unbelievers, but as you go on to know Him, you find out that the joy of knowing Christ and being one with Him far outweighs any sacrifice. I have found it the happiest life that can be lived. Just go to Him and tell Him you accept what He has done and rest on that. I would like to tell you more about it, but I know you have had a hard day, and you ought to get some rest."

Just then Janet appeared in the doorway.

"Yer bed is riddy, Meester Lorrimer, an' I'm certain ye're riddy for it."

So with a bright smile the young man turned to the girl.

"Good night," he said, giving Eden a quick handclasp. "We'll talk again about this if you like, and--I'll be praying for you."

"Oh, thank you," said Eden with a lovely smile. "You don't know how you've helped me. I think I understand, a little at least. And I do want to know Him. I really do!"

"Thank the Lord for that!" he said fervently, and Eden went away to her rest with a warm feeling around her heart.

As she lay down to rest, she went over all that the young man had told her, and somehow the book she had read began to grow plainer. Sin was in the world, and sin was in her, that is, the tendency to sin, but there was a cure for it. Christ Himself would live in her and guide her. That would be wonderful! Why did nobody tell her that before? When she understood it all, she would be able to tell other people who did not know about it yet. This must be the resurrection life that the book spoke of. It said a crucified Christian had a right to it because Christ rose from the dead. A resurrection life!

She went to sleep on that.

***

Word about the robbery and excitement began to get around, and newspaper reporters arrived and wanted to be told everything, but Mr. Worden and Lorrimer and Mike had strictly forbidden them all to give out any information. They were just to answer, "I have nothing to say," and refuse to let anyone talk with Eden unless it was some well-known friend she could trust. And even then they were to say nothing about the excitement. That would be the best way to let the matter die out.

So Janet put the morning newspaper away out of sight, and Eden didn't think to ask for it. She came down to breakfast quite rested and ready to begin a new day.

She knew there would be duties to perform. She had an appointment with Mr. Worden and the lawyer to sign some papers about the estate, and that would likely occupy a good part of the morning.

Soon after breakfast two or three of her girlfriends called up and said they were coming to see her right after lunch. They had just come home from extended summer vacations and were quite eager and excited over the news they had read in the papers. Wasn't it awful for her to have to go through a thing like that? Was she much frightened? They were most determined to get an answer even over the telephone.

But Eden managed very well.

"Oh, yes, we had a little excitement," she said, "but it's about over now, and I believe the whole matter is well taken care of. Why, yes, I'll be delighted to see you girls." That was all, and then she turned to greet the lawyer who had arrived ahead of Mr. Worden, having refused to stay to breakfast, as he said he had some matters to attend to before he met Mr. Worden.

So the two young people had a few minutes together before the conference began.

The young man looked into Eden's beautiful dark eyes and at once saw the cloud of anxiety in them.

"What is it you are troubled about? Has something happened?" he asked in a low, confidential tone.

Eden flashed a quick look at him and smiled shyly.

"Why, no, nothing exactly
happened
," she said hesitantly. "Some of my girlfriends called up and are coming to see me this afternoon, and they are so excited about our robbery that I just know I'm going to have a terrible time answering them. They tried to get me to talking over the telephone, but I put them off. I know it is going to be dreadful to refuse to tell them everything, and I don't want to talk about it."

The young man smiled sympathetically.

"No, of course not," he said. "But I suggest you put it all in the hands of your heavenly Guide. Just tell Him about it as you have told me, and ask Him to take over and show you what to say and how to courteously avoid answers. I think you'll find your worries will vanish."

"Oh, could I do that? About just little worries like that! Wouldn't He mind if I trouble Him about such trifles?"

"Of course He would not mind. Remember He has loved you and taken over your life and shared with you His own resurrection life, and He has promised to take over everything, if you let Him live your life for you. Don't you know the verse 'Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you'?"

"Oh," said Eden, her eyes shining with wonder, her cheeks flushing sweetly. "Why, that is wonderful! How grand life is going to be now if I can always do that."

"You most assuredly can," said Lorrimer. "Only remember that old nature is still in you, and your enemy Satan will try to stir up to persuade you that it isn't true."

Then the doorbell rang and Janet let in Mr. Worden, and their quiet time together was over for the present. But before Lorrimer went away, she said in a low tone as he took his hat to leave: "Thank you so very much. You have helped me a great deal."

"I'm glad," he said, giving her another smile like a ray of sunshine. So Eden went into her afternoon with new strength and comfort, feeling that she had not only found a real Savior who could give her victory over self, but she had also found a new earthly friend in her lawyer. He was somebody she would not be afraid to ask about her perplexities.

The conference with Mr. Worden was brief and friendly. She learned that Ellery Fane had not as yet been found, but that his mother had been safely placed where she could not do any harm. Court would be in session in a few days, and in the meantime, she had been taken to the nearby county seat and taken care of until the trial. They had been looking into her case and found that both she and her son were wanted for fraudulent acts in the far West, so there was no need to further worry about any trouble from them. At least, unless Ellery should turn up again, which was not likely.