Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/53

 over-anxious, and to make my children uncomfortable by my fears. What did you stray from the path for?'

'Only to chase a little owl, mamma; but I didn't catch her after all. I got a roll down a bank, and caught my jacket against a thorn-bush, which was rather unlucky. Ah! three large holes I see in my sleeve. And so I scrambled up again, and got into the path, and asked at the cottage for some beer. What a time the woman kept me, to be sure! I thought it would never come. But very soon after Mr. Davis drove up in his gig, and he brought me on to the gate.'

'And so this account of your adventures being brought to a close,' his father says, ' we discover that there were no adventures to tell!'

'No, papa, nothing happened; nothing particular, I mean.'

Nothing particular! If they could have known, they would have thought lightly in comparison of the dangers of 'the jib-boom end, and the main-top-mast cross-trees.' But they did not know, any more than we do, of the dangers that hourly beset us. Some few dangers we are aware of, and we do what we can to provide against them; but, for the greater portion, ' our eyes are held that we cannot see.' We walk securely under His guidance, without whom 'not a sparrow falleth to the ground!' and when we have had escapes that the angels have admired at, we come home and say, perhaps, that 'nothing has happened; at least nothing particular.'

It is not well that our minds should be much exercised about these hidden dangers, since they are so Rh