me you prayed for her! She wants you to do it again!"

It was plain he thought the praying had been a sort of joke with
Courtland.

Courtland looked up, the color rising slowly in his face. He saw the
accusation in Wittemore's sad eyes.

"Of course I know what you think of such things. I've heard you in the
class. I don't believe in them any more myself, either, now."
Wittemore's voice had a trail of hopelessness in it. "But somehow I
couldn't quite bring myself to make a mockery of prayer, even to please
that old woman. You see _my mother still believes in prayer_!" He spoke
apologetically, as of a dear one who had lacked advantages.

"But _I do_ believe in prayer!" said Courtland, earnestly. "What you
heard me say in class was before I understood."

"Before you understood?" Wittemore looked puzzled.

"Listen, Wittemore. Things are all different now. I've met Jesus Christ
and I've got my eyes open. I was blind before, but since I've felt the
Presence everything has been different."

And then he told the story of his experience. He did not make a long
story of it. He gave brief facts, and when it was finished Wittemore
dropped his face into his hands and groaned:

"I'd give anything if I could believe all that again," came from between
his long bony fingers. "It's breaking my mother's heart to have me leave
the faith!"

The slick hay-like hair fell in wisps over his hands, his high, bony
shoulders were hunched despairingly over Courtland's study table. He was
a great, pitiful object.

"Why don't you, then?" said Courtland, getting up and going to the
closet for his overcoat. "It's up to you, you know. You _can_! God can't
do it for you, and of course there's nothing doing till you've taken
that step. I found that out!"

"But how do you reconcile things, calamities, disasters, war, suffering,
that poor old woman lying on her attic bed alone? How do you reconcile
that with the goodness of God?"

"I don't reconcile it. It isn't my business. I leave that to God. If I
understood all the whys and wherefores of how this universe is run I'd
be great enough to be a God myself."

"But if God is omniscient I can't see how He can let some things go on!
He must be limited in power or He'd never let some things happen if He's
a good God!" Wittemore's voice had a plaintive sound.

"Well, how do you know that? In the first place, how can you be sure
what is a calamity? And say, did it ever strike you that some of the