Read Online The Boy Patriot by Edward Sylvester Ellis - Free Book Online Page A

look on. My heart yearns after her when I’m far away, but I don’t let her write to me. I wouldn’t have such men as I live with know where my flower hides its little head. I wouldn’t have her run a chance of seeing any body who knows Derry Duck, and might tell her of his wild ways. It would break her little heart, it would. I can’t write to her; not but what I was scholard somewhat, long ago; but these hands have had other work to do than holding a pen and making letters that a wise little girl like her would think all right. I couldn’t either put into words just what I want to say. It a’n’t much that I would say, neither, but a kind of letting out how I set all the world by her, and want her to be just so much better than other folks as I am worse. Something would slip in that shouldn’t, if I was to try; I know there would. But you can write for me. You would know just how to put it. She says she yearns after me when I’m gone, and would be so full of joy if she could once have a letter from me, all her own, to read over and over when she can’t throw her arms round my neck and put her little loving face close up to mine. Will you write for me, boy, something for the dear girl to read over, and think the right kind of a father is talking to her, a man she wouldn’t be ashamed of before the company her mother keeps up there ?”
    The last words were spoken reverently, and formed a strange contrast to much that had gone before. We have omitted the oaths and rough expletives with which Derry interlarded his speech. There is the taint of sin even in the repetition of such language.
    Blair Robertson had listened with a throbbing heart and tearful eye to the sailor’s story. It seemed to him that God had not quite cast off one who had such a tender care for the happiness and purity of his child. Blair gently laid his slender hand on Derry’s brawny fingers, and looked up earnestly into his face as he said, “Why can’t you be just such a father, Derry?”
    Derry laughed a sorrowful, derisive laugh, and then said almost fiercely, “You don’t know me, lad. It would chill your very blood to know what I’ve done, and where I’ve been. There are spots on me that nothing can wash out. I’ve grown into it, boy. It’s my life. I’m hard and tough, soul and body. There’s no making me over. I’m spoiled in the grain. I tell you it’s too late. I a’n’t a father for her to know. I can’t be made into one. That a’n’t what I came here to talk about. Will you write my letter, that’s the question?”
    â€œCertainly I will write for you in the way that seems to me the best. But, Derry, ‘there is a fountain opened for sin and all uncleanness.’ ‘The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.’ ‘If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature ; old things have passed away.’ ‘With God all things are possible.’ ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’ ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’”
    As Blair spoke these words, he fixed his earnest eyes on the sailor’s face, and seemed pleading for his very soul.
    â€œThere is a look about you like her, like her up there ,” said Derry, almost trembling. “I see her face in the dark night when I’m on the watch, and her eyes speak to me just as yours do—Oh, so pleading. Hush! There’s some one coming. Write the letter as if it was one of your own. They wont hector you now. I’ve taught ’em better manners. Let me see ’em touch a hair of your head, and I’ll finish ’em quick.”
    As Derry spoke, he gave a thrust with his clenched fist as at an imaginary enemy. The eyes that had lately been softened into tenderness had their old fierce twinkle, and