[Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: Wood Cottage] WOOD COTTAGE OR SHELTERED AT LAST _By_ M. E. DREWSEN _Author of "Ben and Kit" "Hazel Glen," "Gracie and Grant," "The Old House," etc._ PICKERING & INGLIS 14 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E. C. 4 229 BOTHWELL STREET, GLASGOW, C. 2 Made and Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS. Safely Sheltered Ben and Kit's New Clothes A Prayer in the Wood Shed Lambs of the Flock Difficulties in the Narrow Path Ben's Battle Begins Ben's Return Schoolboys In the Storm The Little Red House The Sick Man and the Fallen Foe What A Little Child can do A Visit to the Sea A Sunday Evening at the Sea-Side Kittie in Trouble Ben's Present WOOD COTTAGE; OR, SHELTERED AT LAST. CHAPTER I. SAFELY SHELTERED. It was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening, at the close of a hot summer's day. A few hours before there had been plenty of stir and excitement in the fields around Wood Cottage. One hundred children belonging to a Sunday-school in the great city, had been playing and romping about through the day, and enjoying their yearly treat. They had been shouting and capering about on the meadows, while the sun shone bright and sweet breezes blew, and two or three hours before my story begins they had sung some of their little hymns about the love of Jesus, and then had started away back to London; back to the crowded alleys and the dull cheerless streets,--but they carried with them a happy remembrance of that sunny day spent in the pleasant fields, where they had sat in long rows upon the grass, and eaten a plentiful tea of cake and nice bread and butter, while kind ladies and gentlemen handed them mugs of sweet fresh milk to drink. A hundred children had started forth in the morning, but only ninety-eight returned in the evening. Two of the little ones had found a new home. And now the sun had sunk behind a black, heavy cloud which was slowly coming up in the west, and the breeze which had fanned the faces of the children, was completely lulled; not a breath of air seemed to be stirring, and it had grown hot and oppressive; a solemn calm seemed reigning everywhere. The little birds had gone to their nests or crept under the bough of the trees. The sheep in the meadow adjoining Wood Cottage had huddled up close together. The old hen had gathered her chicks very close under her sheltering wings, and when the first distant roar of the thunder was heard, mothers came out of their cottage doors and called in the young urchins who "ought to have been in bed an hour ago." Harry Gray and his wife were sitting at their garden door when the pale lightning flashed across the sky. Mrs. Gray had her baby on her knee, for he was restless with the heat, and would not sleep.