feel bad, that--well"--Leach's voice clogged up here, and he wiped his
twitching lips with his slender hand--"well, Seventy-two said that a
look had come in my face which showed that peace was mine at last. He
said he was going to keep on praying for me, and advised me to try to
do good among the prisoners.

"He went away, and I _did_ try to follow his advice. I read my Bible
every spare chance I got and told the convicts that I believed in a
merciful God who was ready and willing to forgive all sins and lighten
punishment. I got so I loved to talk to them, and sometimes when the
chaplain was sick or away he let me take his place on Sundays, and it
was there that I learned to preach. I served my time out. A sharp blow
met me on the day of my release. I was thinking of going back home to
make a new start when a letter from my father told me that my mother
had been dead a month. A young sister of mine was to be married to a
fellow high up in society, and father wrote me that he wished me well,
but thought that perhaps I ought not to come home branded for life as
I was.

"Friends, that was a lick that only God's omnipotent hand could
soften. I was without home or blood-kin. There was nothing I could do
to make a living, for an ex-convict is never encouraged by the world
at large. That's how I came to take up this work. It seems to me at
times that I was made for it--that all my trouble was laid on me for a
divine purpose."

The speaker paused to take a drink of water from a dipper Wartrace was
holding up to him, and Mostyn slipped back into the store. Going out
at a door in the rear, he went into the adjoining wood and strode
along in the cooling shade toward the mountain. The sonorous voice of