sistance there can be in the
prayers of an old man who has been in this world long enough to love
most those who need most, you may be sure that you have them."

"God bless you, sir! God bless you!" said the cobbler, quickly.

"Have you connected yourself with any church here as yet?" asked the
priest.

"No, sir," sighed the cobbler: "one an' another has been pullin' an'
haulin' at me one way an' another, tellin' me that it was my duty to go
into a church. But how can I do it, sir, when I'm expected to say that
I believe this an' that, that I don't know nothin' about? Some of 'em
has been very good tryin' to teach me what they seem to understand very
well, but I don't know much more than when they begun, an' sometimes it
seems to me that I know a good deal less, for, with what one tells me
in one way, an' another tells me in another way, my mind--and there's
not very much of it, sir--my mind gets so mixed up that I don't know
nothin' at all."

"Ah, my son," said the good old priest, "if you could only understand,
as a good many millions of your fellow-men do, that it's the business
of some men to understand and of others to faithfully follow them, you
would not have such trouble."

"Well, sir," said the cobbler, "that's just what Larry's been sayin' to
me here in the shop once in a while in the mornin', before he started
out to get full; an' there's a good deal of sense in what he says, I've
no doubt. But what I ask him is this,--an' he can't tell me, an'
perhaps you can, sir. It's only this: while my heart's so full that it
seems as if it couldn't hold the little that I already believe an' am
tryin' to live up to, where's the sense of my tryin' to believe some
more?"

Father Black was so unprepared to answer the question put thus
abruptly, accompanied as it was with a look of the deepest earnestness,
that there ensued an embarrassing silence in the shop for a moment or
two.

"My son," said the priest, at last, "do you fully believe all that you
have read in the good book that I am told you were taught to read while
you were in prison?"

"Of course I do, sir; I can't do anything else."

"You believe it all?"

"Indeed I do, sir."

"And are you trying to live according to it?"

"That I am, sir."

"Then, my son," said the priest, rising, "God bless you and keep you in
your way! Far be it from me to try to unsettle your mind or lead you
any further until you feel that you need leading. If ever you want to