ug in his pocket, he and Bess were soon daring the storm, bound for
Gold City.

It was a wild night. Wet to the skin, Job rode up to the Palace Hotel,
late, very late, where he found a group of solemn-faced men waiting
for him.

"Change your clothes, Job," said the hotel-keeper; "here's a dry suit.
Hurry now! Yankee Sam is dying upstairs, and he won't have no one but
you; says you're his preacher, and he wants to hear you read out of
some book."

[Illustration: "Listen, Job; I want to tell you."]

Job grew white. Yankee Sam dying, and he to hear his last confession,
he the priest to shrive him, he the preacher to console him! The boy
lifted up his first true prayer for months, and followed the man
upstairs to a low garret room, where the door closed behind him and
left him alone with a weak old man lying on a low bed, his eyes
shining in the dim candle-light with an unnatural glare.

"Oh, Job, I'm mightly glad you've come to help an old man die! Yes, I
am dying, Job; the old man's near the end. I'll no more hang around
the Miners' Home and beg a drink from the stranger. Curse the rum,
Job! It's brought me here where you find me, a good-for-nothing, dying
without a friend in the world--yes, one friend, Job; you're my friend,
ain't you?"

Job, frightened and touched to the heart, nodded assent.

"I thought so, Job. I take stock in you. That night you came here, a
blue-eyed, lonely boy, I took you into my heart--for Yankee Sam's got
a heart; and I felt so proud of you that night when you said, 'I
renounce the devil and all his works,' and I wished I could have stood
by you and said it, too. But Job, my boy, the devil has a big mortgage
on Yankee Sam, and he's foreclosing it to-night, and--"

The tempest shook the building, and Job lost the next words as the old
man rose on his elbow, then sank back exhausted. The wind died down,
and Job tried to comfort him with some words that sounded weak and
hollow to himself. But the dying man roused again, and, raising his
trembling hand, said:

"Wait, Job. Get the Book. See if it has anything in it for me."

Job opened to those beautiful words in Isaiah: "Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool."

The old man bent his ear to listen. "Job, let's see it. Is it in
there--'red like crimson, white as wool'? Oh, no, my sins are too red
for that! Listen, Job, I want to tell you. I am dying a poor lo