r, who gave his
services as janitor to the church, used often to tell how, when he was a
young man and a scoffer, bent on the destruction of both body and soul,
his Saviour had come to him in the Michigan woods and had stood, it
seemed to him, beside the tree he was felling; and how he dropped his
axe and knelt in prayer "to Him who died for us upon the tree." Thea
always wanted to ask him more about it; about his mysterious wickedness,
and about the vision.

Sometimes the old people would ask for prayers for their absent
children. Sometimes they asked their brothers and sisters in Christ to
pray that they might be stronger against temptations. One of the sick
girls used to ask them to pray that she might have more faith in the
times of depression that came to her, "when all the way before seemed
dark." She repeated that husky phrase so often, that Thea always
remembered it.

One old woman, who never missed a Wednesday night, and who nearly always
took part in the meeting, came all the way up from the depot settlement.
She always wore a black crocheted "fascinator" over her thin white hair,
and she made long, tremulous prayers, full of railroad terminology. She
had six sons in the service of different railroads, and she always
prayed "for the boys on the road, who know not at what moment they may
be cut off. When, in Thy divine wisdom, their hour is upon them, may
they, O our Heavenly Father, see only white lights along the road to
Eternity." She used to speak, too, of "the engines that race with
death"; and though she looked so old and little when she was on her
knees, and her voice was so shaky, her prayers had a thrill of speed and
danger in them; they made one think of the deep black canyons, the
slender trestles, the pounding trains. Thea liked to look at her sunken
eyes that seemed full of wisdom, at her black thread gloves, much too
long in the fingers and so meekly folded one over the other. Her face
was brown, and worn away as rocks are worn by water. There are many ways
of describing that color of age, but in reality it is not like
parchment, or like any of the things it is said to be like. That
brownness and that texture of skin are found only in the faces of old
human creatures, who have worked hard and who have always been poor.

One bitterly cold night in December the prayer-meeting seemed to Thea
longer than usual. The prayers and the talks went on and on. It was as
if the old people were afraid to go