Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/312

288 poured forth," and young and old blessed him for his kindly words and kindlier deeds.

And now what shall we more say? for tales must end while lives run on. Years—I need not say how many—have passed away since Benny again took up his abode in Liverpool. He is now partner with Mr. Lawrence, in a business that has become more prosperous than ever. He lives in a beautiful house of his own, and the angel that years ago brightened his childhood now brightens his home; and sometimes on winter evenings he gathers his children around his knee, and shows them a shilling still bright and little worn, and tells them how their mother gave it to him when she was a little girl, and he a poor, ragged, starving boy upon the streets; tells them how, by being honest, truthful, and persevering, he had worked his way through many difficulties, and how, by the blessing and mercy of God, he had been kept until that day. And Ben, the eldest lad, thinks how he will be brave and true like his father, and so grow up to be an honourable man.

Here, then, we will end our story—a story that contains more truth than fiction—and hope that the young people who may read it may learn the lesson we have aimed to teach, and so be helped to the cultivation of those virtues that will yield them in this world "a hundredfold more, and in the world to come life everlasting."