Chapter V: Dick’s “yoke.”

“Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of
bondage.”

You would suppose, now, Dick would be more in earnest than ever; but we all have to learn that when circumstances are most favorable and pleasant is the very time Satan will contrive to lay a temptation in our way and trip us if he can. For some time Dick had been very regular at the prayer-meeting. The boys sneered and laughed, but Dick had never minded, and now that his father went with him and Deacon Carter frequently commended his perseverance, and even the minister occasionally added a word of approval, Dick began to pride himself on the fact.

“Remember, we go against the Lyntown Winners to-morrow night. Don’t fail us for the world!” said Tom Lawrence to him one day. Dick was decidedly the best player in the base-ball club.

“I must,” said Dick, “because I can’t get back in time for our meeting.”

Possibly Dick did not know how grand a tone he assumed.

“_Our_ meeting!” mimicked Tom. “S’pose they couldn’t run the thing without his lordship. I say, Dick, it will be a shame! Carter’ll be hopping mad.”

“I can’t help it. Carter knows nothing will take me away _that_ night!” and Dick walked rather consequentially off, quite right in his refusal, but entirely wrong in the spirit of it.

“Won’t, hey!” muttered Tom. “We’ll see!”

Somehow Dick did not enjoy the meeting that evening half as much as usual. He would keep thinking about the “base-ball players,” wondering which side had come out ahead, what kind of new uniforms the “Winners” had, and how soon the “Catapults” could afford the same.

It was queer, after that, how many things happened on Thursday night. All the croquet parties, the boating, fishing, riding. Perhaps Tom could have explained the “happen,”—Tom and Will Carter.

The prayer-meetings grew duller and duller to Dick. There were only a few there regularly, and they always said the same thing. Dea. Carter’s prayers were dreadfully long, and the minister talked as if he never would stop. And then the minister must go and start a young people’s meeting on Tuesday evening. Tuesday, Thursday, and a Bible-class Saturday nights! What was he thinking of? As if it wasn’t hard enough to bone down to rules and walk Spanish all day long without having every other minute full of prayer-meetings and that sort of thing. Dick’s father, too, as if to make amends for the long, prayerless years, had prayers twice a day. Dea. Carter only had them in the morning. Really, it seemed as if duty was leading poor Dick a slave’s life.

“Be over to the Squire’s, to-morrow night I suppose?” said Tom, the day before the annual party given by Esq. Ellis to the young people in “peach time.”

“Yes, after meeting. I must do my sums before that. May get over in time for the spread,” rejoined Dick somewhat dubiously.

“Pho! that won’t answer. Didn’t you know the Squire had set up half a dozen croquet sets, and we’re to be prompt at six o’clock? The best player has some sort of a gim-crack, and nobody stands half a chance beside you. I told the Squire so. He’ll think you backed out. Most likely Carter’ll come in next. Better be on hand.”

“Well, perhaps. I’ll think it over.”

And Dick thought it over,—how Dea. Phelps and Dr. Sault and Mr. Bugbee were very seldom at the prayer-meeting; how many church-members never came at all; how even Miss Cox stayed away for lectures and concerts. How many of us, young and old, like Dea. Phelps and Mr. Bugbee and Miss Cox, will find, away on in eternity, that we have helped somebody to just such a wrong decision as Dick came to!

He was on the croquet-grounds precisely at six, and played his best. The Squire applauded vociferously, and there was no end of complimentary remarks, enough to turn an older head than Dick’s.

“Worst of it is, I stayed too late,” he said to Tom the next morning; “and there’s those examples,—not a single one done. Had to help father every blessed minute after I got up.”

“Never mind, here’s my key. Just copy ’em right out,—everybody does. Don’t be squeamish now; just for once, you know.”

“Pity to fail, so near the end of the term,” said Will Carter. Will would not have used a key for the world; he was very particular on such points; but he had not the least scruple about tempting Dick to forfeit his honor. And after a little hesitation, Dick yielded.

Once it would have seemed cute and quite the thing to deceive Mr. Blackman; now, it made him feel mean and uneasy, especially when that gentleman remarked, “I think you are almost sure to take the prize in mathematics, Dick.”

But for that remark, however, I don’t believe Dick would ever have touched the horrid old key again. As it was, Tom _would_ lay it so “handy,” and Satan was sure to raise a doubt in Dick’s mind about the correctness of a certain multiple or divisor. Just one glance would determine; and so the glances multiplied and divided into a very common denominator.

“You’ll be over to base ball to-night, won’t you?” asked Tom one Thursday morning, not long after.

“Of course he will,” remarked Will Carter passing by, “or he’ll be turned out of the Catapults; _that’s_ sure.”

Turned out! just as they’d got their new uniforms! Of course he must go.

“And look here,” continued Tom, “didn’t you see me have a paper, my grammar exercise, in my hand all finished, when we came over the marsh yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Dick. “You said you hadn’t once thought of it.”

“Oh, fudge, now! What a poor memory! Why, man, don’t you remember seeing me lose it? slipped on the stones, you know. Come now, if you don’t, Blackman’ll keep me in to-night, sure as pop.”

“But you wouldn’t have me tell a lie, I hope?”

“Oh, no; _we_ don’t do such things _now_, _we’re_ too good,—only when it comes to them examples,” said Tom, forgetting the practical part of his grammar. “But mind, now, if you don’t trump up something to get me off—you used to be up to that sort of thing—I’ll let on to Blackman all about that key; and then where’s your prize?”

Dick turned it over and over in his mind as he walked slowly home at noon.

“My guesses you doesn’t know what this is,” called Tod from his father’s steps, holding up a leathern belt with something like shoulder-straps attached.

“No; what is it?” said Dick absently.

“It’s what my mamma used to tied me up wif, when my was vewy little, so my wouldn’t eat gween apples and curwants an’ goo-woose-berries. Her don’t have to, now.”

“Why not? Don’t you like ’em?”

“Yes, but my likes my mamma better-er; an’ her says th’ other fings is weal much nicer, so my doesn’t want ’em. Here’s anover some-fing,”—Tod was helping Jackson overhaul the tool-room. “It’s to catch fings in; and once my mamma said, my mustn’t touch, an’ my did, and it pinched—awful. My couldn’t get away one bit; the more my pulled, the tighter-er it wouldn’t let go.”

“Quite a lesson for you and me in all that,” remarked Miss Marvin, overtaking and walking along with Dick.

“Was there?”

“Yes; did you never think how full Moses’ law is, of ‘Thou shalt not’s’? while Jesus’ commands are, _Do_ this and that ‘because you love me.’ The Jews were like children, knowing so little about God they had to be ‘tied up,’ as it were, with strict laws; but when Christ came, He set His people free from rites and ceremonies, and made _love_ the motive power. And that trap reminded me how Satan catches and holds us,—the ‘tighter-er’ the more we try to get away, you know.”

Yes, Dick knew. He, Satan, was holding him fast now, at least Tom Lawrence was, for him; and if he tried to get away, oh, how hard it would pull! How did he ever come to put his hand in?

“Miss Marvin,” he broke out suddenly, “if we love God shall we like to do everything He tells us?”

“I think so, when we love Him with all our hearts.”

“But—there’s the prayer-meetings, you know. Don’t they ever seem dull and tiresome to you?”

“Yes,” said Miss Marvin frankly. “I think God knew His service would sometimes conflict with our selfish and worldly hearts when He said, ‘Take my _yoke_ upon you’; a yoke, more or less _restrains_ and compels; but almost in the same breath He added, ‘My yoke is easy.’ You and I, who once wore Satan’s yoke, know that Christ’s is easy, in comparison, don’t we, Dick? And the more we love Him the easier it becomes.”

“Yes,—I mean I did,” stammered Dick when she paused for a reply. “You see, I used to go to meeting, at first, because I loved to, but lately it’s been more because I _had_ to. I’ve just left the love right out, and _that’s_ where I fell in. Miss Marvin, please excuse me. I don’t dare wait a minute for fear it’ll pull so hard I sha’n’t get clear away.”

He ran down the street to Mr. Blackman’s, surprised that gentleman at dinner, made a full confession, and although with no hope of winning the prize, went away happier than he had been for weeks.

“Got that little thing all arranged for me?” asked Tom, with a wink, as they went up the school-house steps together.

“No, Tom. I don’t wonder you thought I could lie or do anything, but I’m just going to begin all over again,” said Dick meekly.

“No objections, I suppose, to my telling Mr. Blackman a few things to start with?”

“Not in the least, Tom, for I’ve told him the whole story myself. And I don’t mean to draw, in that ‘yoke’ again right away.”