time and leave them alone they might manage; but he has spells of
getting half over it, and coming home and tearing around like all
possessed. Then they have times! I've been in there when it took all my
strength to manage him. If he would get killed in one of his rows I'd
have some hope of the rest of 'em; but he won't. That kind of folks
never do get killed; it's the decent ones. A fellow was carried by here
just with a broken leg,--a nice, decent boy; works hard to help his
sister. He's the sort now that gets his leg broken and gets laid up for
the rest of the winter. How do you account for that? He lives pretty
near Black Dirk's. Of course, he's got a drunken father; they all have
in that row; but if I was going in for benevolence I'd twice as soon do
something for young Calkins as for any of your set; they're a bad lot.
They aren't worth lifting a finger for. Now, that's a fact."

"And yet," said Mrs. Roberts, her voice tremulous with a feeling that
just then surged over her, "how can I help remembering that if the Lord
Jesus had said that of us, and stayed up there in his glory, we should
have been utterly without help or hope to-day?"

Very much astonished was Policeman Duffer. Ladies on all sorts of
errands had consulted him. He had been presented with many tracts in
his day; but rarely had a clear-voiced, earnest-eyed woman quietly
confronted him with that name, as if it contained an unanswerable
argument. However, he was not embarrassed; it took a great deal to
embarrass him.

"I don't take much stock in him," he said, with a lofty toss of his
head, and a careless tone, as though the question were one easy to
dispose of. "I don't believe in him myself."