A thirty-minute ride through the country in a neighbor's automobile and
once more in life Harry Benton stepped foot upon the premises of his
childhood. His prayer had been answered. His father seemed to be dying
during the night, but with the coming of morning he revived and regained
consciousness. When Harry and Eva entered the room where his father lay,
the old saint seemed as happy as a child and much rejoiced at seeing
Harry and Eva and their babies, who were the last of a great flock of
sons and sons-in-law and daughters and daughters-in-law and
grandchildren and great-grandchildren to arrive.

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Since
Jake Benton's conversion, more than a quarter of a century previously to
this time, his life had been one continuous sermon--a sermon more
eloquent than any ever preached from a pulpit. But if the sermon of his
life was eloquent, that of his death was more so. According to his
simple philosophy, life was just a sort of lodging-place beside the long
road to eternity, and death, to him, was not a leaving home, but rather
a starting for home.

When he gathered his loved ones about his bedside on the day following
the arrival of Harry and his family, to say goodbye, it was not the
goodbye of one who was entering upon a dark and perilous journey to
parts unknown, but that of one sustained by an unfailing faith that he
was entering upon an abode in the eternal mansion, where he should wait
but a brief period for the coming of those he loved.

Just as the purple shadows of the October evening were lengthening, the
end was drawing near. The hoary patriarch called his children all by
name--Harry and Eva, Joe and his wife, Albert and his wife, Nancy and
her husband, Hannah and her husband, and Hattie, the unmarried daughter