o am I! I've had a good bit o' readin', too, 'tis a most
important thing, the Bible be; and I've been giving a good bit o' my
mind to it latterly. 'Twas your calm tone of saying I must be ready to
die, if I'd bin through tribbylation, started me off. I couldn't quite
make out about the washing, and so I've a looked it up. And I've found
out from the old Book that I'm as black a sinner as ever lived on this
'ere blessed earth.'

'How dreadful!' Betty said in an awed, shocked tone; 'and you told me
you were so good! I never knew grown-up people were wicked; I thought
it was only children. What made you find it out?'

'Well, 'twas readin' what we ought to live like, first knocked me down.
I got a-lookin' through them there epistlies, and got awful cast down.
And then I thinks to mysel', p'raps arter all Paul and such like were
too severe, so I went to the gospels, for I've always heerd the gospels
tell of love, and not judgment, but I wasn't comforted by them, not a
bit,--not even when I turned up the sheep chapter that I used for to
learn as a little 'un. It says there, "My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me." And I says to myself, "Reuben! you've
never a listened to His voice; you've a gone your own way all your life
through, and you ain't a follered Him one day in all the
sixty-and-eight years you've a bin on this 'ere blessed earth!" Well,
I began to think I'd better say that prayer my dear old missis a told
me, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." And then 'twas last
Toosday night about seven o'clock I got the answer.'

The old man paused, took his pipe out of his mouth, and looked up at
the blackened rafters across his little kitchen with a quivering smile
about his lips; whilst Betty, with knitted brows, tried hard to follow
him in what he was saying.

'I was a-turnin' over the leaves of the old Book,' he continued, 'when
I come to a tex' which stared me full in the face, and round it was
pencilled a thick black line, which was the doin' of my missis. I'll
read it for you, little maid.'

He rose, and took from the shelf a large family Bible. Placing it on
the table, he turned over its leaves with a trembling hand; and then
his voice rang out with a solemn triumph in it, '"Come, now, and let us
reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall
be as wool." My knees began to tremble