y long months to overcome, and
while the earnest missionary from Africa was pleading the cause of the
heathen, the pastor praying with all his might for his own
congregation.

When the wonderful sermon was finished, and Mr. Strong saw the unusual
interest in the faces before him, he determined to strike while the iron
was hot, and though that Sunday was not scheduled for a missionary
collection, he sprang to his feet and made an urgent plea for more funds
for the grand and glorious cause.

"Give from the depths of your heart," he urged. "Think of these millions
of people needing the Gospel. Brother Peak has come direct from the
field, he knows conditions better than anyone else can know them. He
tells us they need more missionaries. How are they to get them? Through
us in our civilized countries. We can't all go in person, but I don't
think there is a soul here this morning but can give something to help a
little. The ushers will now wait upon you. Who will be the first to
give, and what shall it be,--yourself, time, m--"

"My cirkis money!" cried a shrill voice from the organ loft, and there
stood Peace, fishing coin after coin from the depths of her pocket and
dropping them over the pulpit into the missionary's outstretched hand.
"I earned it so's me and Allee and Cherry could go to the cirkis--that
is, if Gail would let us--and then, come to find out, it was last
summer, and on 'count of the rain it never stopped at all. Next best to
seeing the cirkis is hearing what that man said about the little black
babies in Africa,--that's where the cirkis animals come from, too,--and
I couldn't help wondering how I'd feel s'posing I had to live there and
be black and eat such horrible things and be boiled in a kettle to take
the dirt off, and buy my wife for a junk of cloth and wear strings of
beads for clo'es. Here's my eighty cents, Dr. Missionary, to buy them a
little more Gospel, and when I'm grown up if there are still heathen
living in that country, I b'lieve I'll come down and help."

Whether it was the missionary's sermon, Mr. Strong's plea, or Peace's
postscript that did the work, perhaps no one will ever know, but when
the ushers brought their loaded baskets to the pulpit and the
extraordinary collection was counted, it was found that over one hundred
dollars had been raised for the missionary cause that morning in the
Parker Church.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HAND-ORGAN MAN

Hardly had the four younger gir