had left, than he also wished that those around him should be taught of
His love. The helpless women and children were, he felt, a sacred charge
for him and his companion, to teach and guide.

Accordingly morning and evening prayers were established in the island,
and a sort of school was begun for the children, John Adams being partly
a teacher, partly a scholar, and so preparing to take his comrade's work
when, a little time after this change of heart and life, Edward Young
died, and left his comrade alone on the island with his untaught charge.
He, the only one who had the key to God's book, the only one in whose
memory were stored any lessons of His truth, in whose life lay, as it
seemed, the only hope that this little colony might be saved from all
the cruelty and ignorance of savage life, and added to the number of the
servants of Christ.

* * * * *

Nearly twenty-five years had passed since John Adams was left on
Pitcairn's Island, the sole protector and teacher of the women, and of
the young children who were growing up around him. He was himself but a
common sailor, who had enjoyed only a few advantages of education, his
only acquirements the simple lessons which had been taught him in his
boyhood, and a new but straightforward and earnest desire to serve God
in the way which God should teach him, and in penitence and faith to
walk himself and to lead others to walk in the way that leads to
everlasting life.

But God does not choose only the wise and the great and the strong for
His workmen: often the weak things of the world are chosen to confound
the mighty, and the poor and lowly to do the work of the High and Mighty
One who inhabiteth eternity.

We have seen how evil passions indulged were like a seed of sin, growing
and spreading into a mighty and poisonous tree. Then there was planted
by its side, through the mercy of God, a germ of good and of life--has
that too lived and spread, or has it withered and died beneath the shade
of evil?

Two English vessels are approaching the island. At first the crews do
not see it, but as evening draws on, the look-out man in the larger ship
gives the signal that he has caught sight of land. "Land ho, land!"
passes from mouth to mouth among the sailors. What land can it be? No
island, no rock even, is marked on the chart, and the officers gather on
deck to look over the darkening sea toward that darker point where the
n