unclean with blaspheming God's name. He remembered all the good
resolutions he had made and broken the past quarter of a century. And
during these midnight musings he seemed to see two lily-white hands
beckoning him to come somewhere; he knew not where. These hands he
readily recognized as the hands of his own baby Rose, who had gone from
him one day near the close of her fifth summer. Mentally he found
himself again at the bedside of his darling Rose. He saw again her ruddy
cheeks glow with fever and heard the tremble of her voice as she said,
"Daddy's Rose is going to heaven. Daddy come some day." Again he saw the
death-glare in the sky-blue eyes when the little soul flitted away. He
saw himself again as he sat and looked into the sweet and lifeless face
of his darling girl, and he remembered how he resolved on that day to
live in such a way as to be reunited with his child. But his resolves
had all been unfilled, and he saw the path of his past strewn with
broken vows. In reality, God was speaking to the man's soul. Jake saw
himself in his true condition, a lost sinner. His sins seemed like
horrid black mountains rearing themselves eternally between him and his
child. His profession of religion and his church-membership seemed to
mock him rather than to comfort him.

But Jake was silent. He said not a word with his lips; but how his
bleeding heart did talk to God. Hot tears flowed from his sleepless eyes
and dampened the dry leaves that formed his pillow. He supposed the two
ministers asleep. Their opinion of him was the same. Finally Jake was
astonished to see, in the glimmering light of the moon that stole
through the cracks in the clapboard roof, the two preachers slip from
their bed, and kneel on the floor. His ear caught their whispering
prayers that were heard in heaven. As nearly as he could hear, the
prayers ran something like this: "O Lord, thou didst have a purpose in
sending us through these wooded hills. May we be instrumental in