ful-lookin' creatur' you never saw
than she was when she come out to prayer-meetin' the night Sally Ann
give her experience. She set 'way back in the church, and she was as
pale and peaked as if she had been through a siege of typhoid. I
ricollect it all as if it had been yesterday. We sung 'Sweet Hour of
Prayer,' and Parson Page prayed, and then called on the brethren to
say anything they might feel called on to say concernin' their
experience in the past week. Old Uncle Jim Matthews begun to clear his
throat, and I knew, as well as I knew my name, he was fixin' to git up
and tell how precious the Lord had been to his soul, jest like he'd
been doin' every Wednesday night for twenty years. But before he got
started, here come 'Lizabeth walkin' down the side aisle and stopped
right in front o' the pulpit.

"'I've somethin' to say,' she says. 'It's been on my mind till I can't
stand it any longer. I've got to tell it, or I'll go crazy. It was me
that took that cyarpet money. I only meant to borrow it. I thought
sure I'd be able to pay it back before it was wanted. But things went
wrong, and I ain't known a peaceful minute since, and never shall
again, I reckon. I took it to pay my way up to Louisville, the time I
got the news that Mary was dyin'.'

"Mary was her daughter by her first husband, you see. 'I begged Jacob
to give me the money to go on,' says she, 'and he wouldn't do it. I
tried to give up and stay, but I jest couldn't. Mary was all I had in
the world; and maybe you that has children can put yourself in my
place, and know what it would be to hear your only child callin' to
you from her death-bed, and you not able to go to her. I asked Jacob
three times for the money,' she says, 'and when I found he wouldn't
give it to me, I said to myself, "I'm goin' anyhow." I got down on my
knees,' says she, 'and asked the Lord to show me a way, and I felt
sure he would. As soon as Jacob had eat his breakfast and gone out on
the farm, I dressed myself, and as I opened the top bureau drawer to
get out my best collar, I saw the missionary money. It come right
into my head,' says she, 'that maybe this was the answer to my prayer;
maybe I could borrow this money, and pay it back some way or other
before it was called for. I tried to put it out o' my head, but the
thought kept comin' back; and when I went down into the sittin'-room
to get Jacob's cyarpetbag to carry a few things in, I happened to look
up at the mantelpiece and s