men
say--experienced a cheerful change of mind, and began to pour into his
ears the eager, earnest, gratifying tale of its rights and its wrongs.
What honest voices as compared with the human--sometimes. No question
of sincerity could have been raised by any one who heard THEM speak. It
may not have been music; but every note of it was God's truth.

The man laughed heartily as he paused a moment and listened to that
rejoicing uproar. But he was touched, also. To them he was the answerer
of prayer. Not one believed that he ever refused to succor in time of
need, or turned a deaf ear to supplication. If he made poor provision
for them sometimes, though they might not feel satisfied, they never
turned against him. The barn was very old. The chemical action of the
elements had first rotted away the shingles at the points where the
nails pinned them to the roof; and, thus loosened, the winds of many
years had dislodged and scattered them. Through these holes, rain could
penetrate to the stalls of the horses, so that often they would get up
mired and stiff and shivering; but they never reproached him. On the
northern side of the barn the weather-boarding was quite gone in
places, and the wind blew freely in. Of winter mornings the backs of
the cows would sometimes be flecked with snow, or this being stubbornly
melted by their own heat, their hides would be hung with dew-drops:
they never attributed that fact to him as a cruelty. In the whole
stable there was not one critic of his providence: all were of the
household of faith: the members being in good standing and full
fellowship.

Remembrance of this lay much in his mind whenever, as often, he
contrasted his association with his poor animals, and the troublous
problem of faith in his own soul. It weighed with especial heaviness
upon his heart, this nightfall in the barn, over which hung that
threatening sky. Do what he could for their comfort, it must be
insufficient in a rotting, windswept shelter like that. And here came
the pinch of conscience, the wrench of remorse: the small sums of money
which his father and mother had saved up at such a sacrifice on the
farm,--the money which he had spent lavishly on himself in preparation,
as he had supposed, for his high calling in life,--if but a small part
of that had been applied to the roof and weather-boarding of the
stable, the stock this night might have been housed in warmth and
safety.

The feeding and bedding attende