e open
window to where the strong man lay dying. He had been affected with the
delirium of fever during most of his sickness, but that was past, and he
was facing death with an unclouded mind.

"I think I am dying," he said, half inquiringly.

"Yes--is there any thing we can do for you?"

His eyes closed for a few moments, and his lips moved as if in mental
prayer. Opening his eyes, he said:

"Sing one of the old camp-meeting songs."

A preacher present struck up the hymn, "Show pity, Lord, O Lord
Forgive."

The dying man, composed to rest, lay with folded hands and listened with
shortening breath and a rapt face, and thus he died, the words and the
melody that had touched his boyish heart among the far-off hills of
Tennessee being the last sounds that fell upon his dying ear. We may
hope that on that old camp-meeting song was wafted the prayer and trust
of a penitent soul receiving the kingdom of heaven as a little child.

During my pastorate at Santa Rosa, one of my occasional hearers was John
I--. He was deputy-sheriff of Sonoma County, and was noted for his
quiet and determined courage. He was a man of few words, but the most
reckless desperado knew that he could not be trifled with. When there
was an arrest to be made that involved special peril, this reticent,
low-voiced man was usually intrusted with the undertaking. He was of the
good old Primitive Baptist stock from Caswell County, North Carolina,
and had a lingering fondness for the peculiar views of that people. He
had a weakness for strong drink that gave him trouble at times, but
nobody doubted his integrity any more than they doubted his courage. His
wife was an earnest Methodist, one of a family of sisters remarkable for
their excellent sense and strong religious characters. Meeting him one
day, just before my return to San Francisco, he said, with a warmth of
manner not common with him:

"I am sorry you are going to leave Santa Rosa. You understand me, and if
anybody can do me any good, you are the man."

There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke, and he held my hand in a
lingering grasp.

Yes, I knew him. I had seen him at church on more than one occasion with
compressed lips struggling to conceal the strong emotion he felt,
sometimes hastily wiping away an unbidden tear. The preacher, when his
own soul is aglow and his sympathies all awakened and drawn out toward
his hearers, is almost clairvoyant at times in his perception of their