of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of
them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes
it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words
were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts
are full and we can't help it. And those were always times of great
blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before
a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little
children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite
suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work
that was laid upon me."

"But tell me the circumstances--just how it was, the very day you began
to preach."

"It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged
man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps--that's a
village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines,
and where there's no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep
without a shepherd. It's better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so
we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a
wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where
there's no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look
smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel
the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother
Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for
he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying,
and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his
trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village, the people were
expecting him, for he'd appointed the time and the place when he was
there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were
assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might
be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn't stand up to preach, and
he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to. So I
went to tell the people, thinking we'd go into one of the houses, and I
would read and pray with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and
saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the
men, who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the
Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to
the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, an