a birfday present, see?"

The skin was lying in a bloody heap outside the back door. I arranged
"Franz" for dinner and the party was complete.

I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o'clock they went
home. The moment the front door was opened, about forty children--each
with a lighted candle in hand--sang a verse of my favourite hymn:
"Lead, Kindly Light." They knew but one verse, but that they sang
twice. It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.

After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing
me all sorts of things. Two nights afterward I had a different kind of
a party. A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about
midnight. Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots
in a neighbour's garden. I went to the high board fence and saw one of
my neighbours--a German--emptying a revolver at his wife who was
dodging behind a tree.

My first impulse was to jump the fence and save the woman but the man
being evidently half-drunk might have turned and poured into me what
was intended for his wife; and the first law of nature was
sufficiently developed in me to let her have what belonged to her! I
tried to speak but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was
positively scared.

The old fellow walked up to the tree, letting out as he walked a
volley of oaths. I recovered my equilibrium, sprang over the fence,
crept up behind and jumped on him, knocking him down and instantly
disarming him.

I went inside with them and sat between them until they seemed to have
forgotten what had happened. Then I put them to bed, put the light out
and went home. I examined the revolver and found it empty. Next
morning I went back and told the old man that I would volunteer to
give him some lessons in target practice; and that the reason I
knocked him down was because he was such a poor shot. This old couple
became my staunchest supporters.

I interested the students of Tabor College in the people of that
out-of-the-way community, and before I built the Chapel of the
Carpenter which still stands there I organized a college settlement
which was manned by students.

The small church, the chapel on "the bottoms," the work of the college
students and the increasing circle of converts and friends made the
work attractive to me, but I had entered the political field in order
to protest against and possibly remedy something civic that savoured
of Sodom; and fo