Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/181

 he had rescued from the wreck. Thrusting his hand into his bosom he drew it out.

"Darling mother!" he said, "when she gave me this she told me to consult it daily, but especially in times of trouble or danger. I 'll look into it now, Sam."

He opened the book, and, selecting the verse that first met his eye, read: "In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them and carried them all the days of old."

"That's a grand word for us, isn't it?—from Isaiah," said Robin.

"Well, what do you make of it?" asked Sam, whose religious education had not been attended to as well as that of his friend.

"That our God is full of love, and pity, and sympathy, so that we have nothing to fear," said Robin.

"But surely you can't regard that as a message to us when you know that you turned to it by mere chance," said Sam.

"I do regard it as a special message to us," returned Robin with decision.

"And what if you had turned up an entirely unsuitable or inapplicable verse?" said Sam.

"Then I should have concluded that God had no