she said,
and surely he would be good enough if he was as good as his Master,
and she "'lowed that Christ drank wine at a wedding spread onct.
Surely he wouldn't refuse a little cider with Sally?"

Perhaps it would be best. Perhaps he was trying to be too good. Aye,
perhaps one drink would give him a good chance to escape. So Job
thought, and he took the glass. But then came a vision of that bar at
the horse-race, of that cider at Malden's mill, and the winter night
and the snow, and his hand in his pocket touched the old temperance
pledge he had signed again on Sunday night when he got home, and up
from his heart went a silent cry for help. At that, he seemed to hear
a voice saying, "With every temptation, a way of escape," and he said
in a firm voice, as he sat down the glass:

"Best wishes for Sally, Mrs. Dean, but I cannot drink the cider."

Just then a shrill cry from outside sent both Sally and her mother
flying to help rescue three-year-old Ross, whose father was hauling
him out of the well.

In the excitement, Job started home with a light heart, singing to
himself:

"Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin, Each victory
will help you some other to win."

CHAPTER VII.

THE OLD MAN'S BIRTHDAY.

They were sitting together at Pine Tree Ranch, on the side porch of
the neat little white farmhouse, over which the vines were trained and
from which the well-kept lawn and flower-bordered walks rolled away to
the white picket fence. It was a late August evening, which had merged
from sunset into moonlight so softly and quietly that one hardly knew
when the one began and the other ended. Job, in old coat and overalls
and a broken straw hat, just as he had come in from his evening
chores, sat on the veranda's edge. Back of him, in a low-bottomed, old
cane rocker, was Andrew Malden in a rough suit of gray, his white
beard reaching far down on his breast, while his silver locks were
blowing in the breeze.

For once, at least, he was opening his heart and memory to the lad
whom he secretly loved; the lad who often wondered why the latch
string of Pine Tree Ranch was out for him, and what matter would it be
if some day, when he and Bess went off over the Chichilla hills, they
never came back again.

To-night the old man was talkative. It was his birthday and he was in
retrospective mood. "Seventy to-night, Job--just to think of it!
Twenty years more, perhaps, and then--well, a coffin, I supp