arrying it in his
coat-pocket, and it was there when he was cast on the desert island.

Although, of course, much damaged with water, it was not destroyed, for
its clasp happened to be a very tight one, and tended greatly to
preserve it. When father and son finally took up their abode in the
cavern, the former resolved to devote some time night and morning to
reading the Testament. He could spell out the capital letters, and
Billy had, before quitting home, got the length of reading words of one
syllable. Their united knowledge was thus very slight, but it was quite
sufficient to enable them to overcome all difficulties, and in time they
became excellent readers.

The story of Christ's redeeming love wrought its legitimate work on
father and son, and, ere long, the former added prayer to the morning
and evening reading of the Word. Gradually the broken sentences of
prayer for the Holy Spirit, that light might be shed upon what they
read, were followed by earnest confessions of sin, and petitions for
pardon for Christ's sake. Friends, too, were remembered; for it is one
of the peculiar consequences of the renewal of the human heart that the
subjects of this renewal begin to think of the souls of others as well
as of their own. Unbelievers deem this presumptuous and hypocritical,
forgetting that if they were called upon to act in similar
circumstances, they would be necessarily and inevitably quite as
presumptuous, and that the insulting manner in which the efforts of
believers are often received puts hypocrisy out of the question.

Be this as it may, Gaff prayed for his wife and child at first, and,
when his heart began to warm and expand, for his relatives and friends
also. He became more earnest, perhaps, when he prayed that a ship might
be sent to take them from the island, (and in making this and his other
petitions he might have given an instructive lesson to many divines of
the present day, showing how wonderfully eloquent a man may be if he
will only strive after _nothing_ in the way of eloquence, and simply use
the tones and language that God has given him); but all his prayers were
wound up with "Thy will be done," and all were put up in the name of
Jesus Christ.

To return from this digression. The inside of the cavern bore not less
evidence of long-continued occupation than the outside. There was a
block of wood which served father and son for a seat, which had two
distinct and highly-polished mar