old sea captain's Bible stolen forty years ago? Of what good the promises
and tears of repentance, when this thing that seemed to rise out of
forgotten seas could come and jump up on his window sill and bewitch him
as if he were a heedless boy? When it could sit laughing at him until in
its laugh he heard the sounds of old winds roaring and old seas standing
on their heads, and he put on his black sweater--the moth-eaten badge of
his sinfulness--and he put on his wooden leg and lifted out the handful of
money from under the corner of the carpet?

What good were the prayers if they couldn't keep him pious? Yes, that was
it. And here the habitues along North Clark Street grin. For Tobias
Wooden-Leg is coming down the pavement, his head hanging low, his beard no
longer bristling and his soul on a hunt for a new God. A strong God. A
powerful and commanding God, stronger than the long-locked, bronze-winged
one of the window sill.

They grin because this is an old story. Tobias is an old character. Once
every two or three months for ten years Tobias has come like this with his
head lowered searching for a new and powerful God that would keep him
pious and that would kill the devil that seemed never to die inside his
old Norske soul.

So he had taken them all--a jumble of gods, a patchwork of religions.
Every soapbox apostle in the district had at one time converted him. Holy
Roller, Methodist, Jumper, Yogi, Swami, Zionite--he had bowed his head
before their and a dozen other varied gods. And the missions in the
district had come to know him as "the convert." He had been faithful to
each of the creeds as long as he remained sober and as long as he sat in
his room of nights reading in his Bible.