The table was strangely silent. Not one of the guests had ever before
known the depth of sympathy in the old Bishop till now. Every chord in
the nature of each man vibrated to the touch of his words.

[Illustration: "I asked him how he lived on the pittance he had
received."]

"It was ten years ago," went on the Bishop--"ah, how years fly fast to
the old!--a friend of college days, a bishop in an Eastern State,
wrote me a long letter concerning a young convert he had just
ordained. He was a lad of great talents, brilliant and handsome, the
son of wealthy parents, who, however, now cast him off, giving him to
understand that he would receive nothing from them. The young man was
filled with zeal, and he begged the bishop to give him to some
missionary diocese wherein he could work in obscurity for the greater
glory of God. He was so useful and so brilliant a man that the bishop
desired to attach him to his own household and was loath to lose him,
but the priest begged hard and was persistent; so the bishop asked me
to take him for a few years and give him actual contact with the
hardships of life in a pioneer state. Soon, he thought, the young man
would be willing to return to his larger field. The bishop, in other
words, wanted to test him. I sadly needed priests, so when he came
with the oil still wet on his hands, I gave him a place--the worst I
had--I gave him Alta. Some of you older men know what it was then. The
story of Alta is full of sorrow. I told it to him, but he thanked me
and went to his charge. I expected to see him within a week, but I did
not see him for a year. Then I sent for him, and with his annual
report in my hand I asked him how he lived on the pittance which he
had received. He said that it took very little when one was careful