hey are born. I made all sorts of excuses for
myself, but all the time I knew I was wrong; a man can't fool himself.

"So it went along for years. I got married and we had a little girl."

He paused for a long moment.

"I thought _that_ was going to help me. I thought the world and all of
that little girl----" He paused again.

"Well, _she_ died. Then I broke my wife's heart and went on down to
hell. When a man lets go that way he kills everything he loves and
everything that loves him. He's on the road to loneliness and despair,
that man. I'm telling you.

"One day, ten years ago this fall, I was going along the main street in
Quinceyville. I was near the end of my rope. Not even money enough to
buy drink with, and yet I was then more'n half drunk, I happened to look
up on the end of that stone wall near the bridge--were you ever there,
Mister?--and I saw the words 'God is Love' painted there. It somehow hit
me hard. I couldn't anyways get it out of my mind. 'God is Love.' Well,
says I to myself if God is Love, he's the only one that _is_ Love for a
chap like me. And there's no one else big enough to save me--I says. So
I stopped right there in the street, and you may believe it or explain
it anyhow you like, Mister, but it seemed to me a kind of light came all
around me, and I said, solemn-like, 'I will try God.'"

He stopped a moment. We were walking down the hill: all about us on
either side spread the quiet fields. In the high air above a few lacy
clouds were drifting eastward. Upon this story of tragic human life
crept in pleasantly the calm of the countryside.

"And I did try Him," my companion was saying, "and I found that the
words on the wall were true. They were true back there and they've been
true ever since. When I began to be decent again and got back my health
and my job, I figured that I owed a lot to God. I wa'n't no orator, and
no writer and I had no money to give, 'but,' says I to myself, I'm a
painter. I'll help God with paint.' So here I am a-travelling up and
down the roads and mostly painting 'God is Love,' but sometimes 'Repent
ye' and 'Hell yawns.' I don't know much about religion--but I do know
that His Word is like a fire, and that a man can live by it, and if once
a man has it he has everything else he wants."

He paused: I looked around at him again. His face was set steadily
ahead--a plain face showing the marks of his hard earlier life, and yet
marked with a sort of high beauty.