sawed into
long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as
soon as the thaw came. The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance
of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with
sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead
of ringing sharp against the frozen ground.

John Ward, walking wearily home from a long visit to a sick woman, came,
as he crossed the lumber-yards, upon a group of raftsmen; they had not
heard his approach, and were talking loudly, with frequent bursts of
drunken laughter.

It was towards evening; the sky had been threatening all day, and when
the clouds lifted suddenly in the west, blown aside like tumultuous folds
of a gray curtain, the red sun sent a flood of color across the wintry
landscape; the bare branches of the trees were touched with light, and
the pools of black, clear ice gleamed with frosty fire. John's face had
caught the radiance.

He had come up to the men so silently that he had been standing beside
them a moment before they noticed him, and then Tom Davis, with a start
of drunken fear, tried to hide the bottle which he held.

"Damn you, mate, you're spillin' it!" cried one of the others, making an
unsteady lunge forward to seize the bottle.

"Let up, let up," said Tom thickly. "Don't ye see the preacher?" Though
Davis was not one of his flock, he had the same reverence for the
preacher which his congregation felt. All Lockhaven loved and feared John
Ward.

John had not spoken, even though a little boy, building block houses on a
heap of sawdust near the men, had come up and taken his hand with a look
of confident affection.

The man who had saved the whiskey stumbled to his feet, and leaning
against a pile of lumber stood open-mouthed, waiting for the preacher's
rebuke; but Davis hung his head, and began to fumble for a pipe in his
sagging coat pocket; with clumsy fingers, scattering the tobacco from his
little bag, he tried to fill it.

"Tom," the preacher said, at last, "I want you to come home with me, now.
And Jim, you will give me that bottle."

"I can't go home, preacher. I've got to buy some things. She said I was
to buy some things for the brats."

"Have you bought them?" John asked. Tom gave a silly laugh.

"Not yet, preacher, not yet."

"Listen, men," John said, with sudden sternness. "You have let this child
see you on the road to hell. If he can remember this sight, it will save