y.

"This," I said to myself, "may be something for me."

So I crossed the fence and walked down the neighbouring field. It was an
Indian summer day with hazy hillsides, and still sunshine, and
slumbering brown fields--the sort of a day I love. I leaped the little
brook in the valley and strode hastily up the opposite slope. I cannot
describe what a sense I had of new worlds to be found here in old
fields. So I came to the fence on the other side and looked over. My man
was kneeling again at the rock. I was scarcely twenty paces from him,
but so earnestly was he engaged that he never once saw me. I had a good
look at him. He was a small, thin man with straight gray hair; above his
collar I could see the weather-brown wrinkles of his neck. His coat was
of black, of a noticeably neat appearance, and I observed, as a further
evidence of fastidiousness rare upon the Road, that he was saving his
trousers by kneeling on a bit of carpet. What he could be doing there so
intently by the roadside I could not imagine. So I climbed the fence,
making some little intentional noise as I did so. He arose immediately.
Then I saw at his side on the ground two small tin cans, and in his
hands a pair of paint brushes. As he stepped aside I saw the words he
had been painting on the boulder:

GOD IS LOVE

A meek figure, indeed, he looked, and when he saw me advancing he said,
with a deference that was almost timidity:

"Good morning, sir."

"Good morning, brother," I returned heartily.

His face brightened perceptibly.

"Don't stop on my account," I said; "finish off your work."

He knelt again on his bit of carpet and proceeded busily with his
brushes. I stood and watched him. The lettering was somewhat crude, but
he had the swift deftness of long practice.

"How long," I inquired, "have you been at this sort of work?"

"Ten years," he replied, looking up at me with a pale smile. "Off and on
for ten years. Winters I work at my trade--I am a journeyman
painter--but when spring comes, and again in the fall, I follow the
road."

He paused a moment and then said, dropping his voice, in words of the
utmost seriousness:

"I live by the Word."

"By the Word?" I asked.

"Yes, by the Word," and putting down his brushes he took from an inner
pocket a small package of papers, one of which he handed to me. It bore
at the top this sentence in large type:

"Is not my word like fire, saith the Lord: and like a hammer that
breaketh th