G
reenbriar Valley lay almost hidden by the lowhanging clouds that spilled intermittent showers. As I plodded through the muddy barnyard preparing to do my chores, I glanced at the road that led past our place and wound on through the valley. A car was parked at the side of the road a little way beyond the pasture corner.
The car was obviously in distress. Otherwise, no man so well-dressed would have been tinkering with it out in the rain. I watched him as I went about my chores. Clearly, the man was no mechanic. He desperately plodded from the raised hood back to the car seat to try the starter, then back to the hood again.
When I finished my chores and closed the barn, it was almost dark. The car was still there. So I took a flashlight and walked down the road. The man was sort of startled and disturbed when I came up to him, but he seemed anxious enough for my help. It was a small car, the same make as my own but somewhat newer. It took only a few minutes for me to spot the trouble.
“It’s your coil,” I told him.
“But it couldn’t be that!” he blurted. “I just installed a new one, only about a month ago.” He was a young fel low. I would have guessed twenty-one, at most. He sounded almost in tears.
“You see, mister,” he almost sobbed, “I’m a long ways from home. It’s raining. And I’ve just got to get it started. I just got to!”
“Well, it’s like this,” I said. “Coils are pretty touchy. Sometimes they’ll last for years. Then again sometimes they’ll go out in a matter of hours. Suppose I get a horse and pull the car up into the barn. Then we’ll see what we can do for it. We’ll try the coil from my car. If that works, I know a fellow down at the corner who’ll sell you one.”
I was right. With the coil from my car in place, the motor started right off, and it purred like a new one. “Nothing to it,” I grinned. “We’ll just go see Bill David down the road. He’ll sell you a new coil, and you can be on your way. Just wait a minute while I tell my wife where I’m going.”
I thought he acted odd when we got down to David’s store. He parked in the dark behind the store and would not get out. “I’m wet and cold,” he excused himself. “Here’s ten dollars. Would you mind very much going in and getting it for me?”
We had just finished changing the coil when my little daughter, Linda, came out to the barn. “Mother says supper’s ready,” she announced. Then, turning to the strange young man, she said, “She says you’re to come in and eat, too.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t,” he protested. “I couldn’t let you folks feed me. I’ve got to get going anyway. No, no, I just can’t stay.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “After all, how long will it take you to eat? Besides, no one comes to our house at mealtime and leaves without eating. You wouldn’t want my wife to lie down in the mud in front of your car, would you?”
Still protesting, he allowed himself to be led off to the house. But it seemed to me as if there was something more in his protests than just mere politeness.
He sat quietly enough while I said the blessing. But during the meal he seemed very fidgety. He barely picked at his food, which was almost an insult to my wife, who is one of the best cooks in the state and proud of it.
Once the meal was over, he got quickly to his feet, announcing that he must be on his way. But he had reck oned without my wife.
“Now, look here,” she said, and she glanced at me for support. “It’s still pouring out there. Your clothes are all wet, and you can’t help being cold. I’ll bet you’re tired too; you must have driven far today. Stay with us tonight. Tomorrow you can start out warm and dry and all rested.”
I nodded slightly at her. It isn’t always advisable to take in strangers that way. Unfortunately, many people cannot be trusted. But I liked this young man. I felt sure he would be all right.
He reluctantly agreed to stay the night. My wife sent him to bed and hung his clothes to dry by the fire. Next morn ing she pressed them and gave him a nice breakfast. This meal he ate with relish. It seemed he was more settled that morning, not so restless as he had been. He thanked us profusely before he left.
But when he started away, an odd thing happened. He had been headed down the valley toward the city the night before. But when he left, he headed back north, toward Roseville, the county seat. We wondered a great deal about that, but decided he had just been confused and made a wrong turn.
Time went by, and we never heard from the young man. We had not expected to, really. The days flowed into months, and the months into years. The Depression ended and drifted into war. In time, the war ended, too. Linda grew up and established a home of her own. Things on the farm were quite different from those early days of struggle. My wife and I lived comfortably and quietly, sur rounded by lovely Greenbriar Valley.
Just the other day, I got a letter from Chicago. A personal letter, it was, on nice expensive stationery. Now who in the world, I wondered, can be writing me from Chicago? I opened it and read:
Dear Mr. McDonald:
I don’t suppose you remember the young man you helped, years ago, when his car broke down. It has been a long time, and I imagine you’ve helped many others. But I doubt if you have helped anyone else quite the way you helped me.
You see, I was running away that night. I had in my car a very large sum of money, which I had stolen from my employer. I want you to know, sir, that I had good Christian parents. But I had forgotten their teaching and had gotten in with the wrong crowd. I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
But you and your wife were so nice to me. That night in your home, I began to see what I was wrong. Before morning, I made a decision. Next day, I turned back. I went back to my employer and made a clean breast of it. I gave back all the money and threw myself on his mercy.
He could have prosecuted me and sent me to prison for many years. But he is a good man. He took me back in my old job, and I have never strayed again. I’m mar ried now, with a lovely wife and two fine children. I have worked my way to a very good position with my com pany. I am not wealthy, but I am comfortably well off.
I could reward you handsomely for what you did for me that night. But I don’t believe that is what you’d want. So I have established a fund to help others who have made the same mistake I did. In this way, I hope I may pay for what I have done.
God bless you, sir, and your good wife, who helped me more than you knew.
I walked into the house and handed the letter to my wife. As she read it, I saw the tears begin to fill her eyes. With the most serene look on her face, she laid the letter aside.
“For I was a Stranger, and ye took Me in,” she quoted. “I was hungered, and ye fed Me; I was in prison, and ye vis ited Me.”
- Hartley F Dailey
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
- Aesop