“Job Slip, I saved your life, didn’t I?”
“You committed that mistake, sir.”
“It belongs to me, then. _You_ belong to me. I take you. I give you
to God.”
He dropped upon his knees beside the drunkard in the rain.
“Lord,” he said, in a tone of infinite sweetness, “here is a poor
perishing man. Save him! He has given himself to Thee.”
“The parson did that, Lord,” sobbed Job. “Don’t give me no credit
for it!”
“Save him!” continued Bayard, who seemed hardly to have heard the
drunkard’s interruption. “Save me this one man! I have tried, and
failed, and I am discouraged to the bottom of my heart. But I
cannot give him up. I will never give him up till he is dead, or I
am. If I cannot do any other thing in Windover, for Christ’s sake,
save me this one drunken man!”
Bayard lifted his face in a noble agony. Job hid his own before
that Gethsemane.
“Does the parson care so much--as _that_?” thought the fisherman.
The rain dashed on Bayard’s white face. He rose from his knees.
“Job Slip,” he said, “you have signed a contract which you can
never break. Your vow lies between God and you. I am the witness.
I have bound you over to a clean life. Go and sin no more.--I’ll
risk you now,” added Bayard, quietly. “I shall not even walk home
with you. You have fifteen rum-shops to meet before you get back
to your wife and child. Pass them! They all stand with open doors,
and the men you know are around these doors. You will not enter one
of them. You will go straight home; and to-morrow you will send me
written testimony from Mari, your wife,--I want her to write it,
Job,--that you did as I bade you, and came home sober. Now go, and
God go with you.”
As Bayard turned to give the drunkard his hand, he stumbled a
little over something on the dark pier. Job had not risen from his
knees, but stooped, and put his lips to the minister’s patched shoe.
* * * * *
“This is to sertify that my Husband come home last nite sober and
haint ben on a Bat sence, god bless you ennyhow.
MARIA SLIP.”
This legend, written in a laborious chirography on a leaf torn
from a grocer’s pass-book, was put into Bayard’s hand at noon of
the next day. Joey brought it; he had counted upon a nap on the
study lounge, and was rather disappointed to find it occupied. Mrs.
Granite said she had sent for Cap’n Hap; she said the minister’s
temperature had gone up to a hundred and twenty, and she should
think it would.