"I'm sure I don't know," replied Harry, drearily. "I haven't been caring much about the world lately. I ain't in much of a hurry to care either. There'll be time enough when I get out in it again."
"Time enough! Time enough! Yes, that's the cry," said the young man. "That's what has caused more misery in the world than anything else; it's a rope that has lost many a soul forever."
Harry turned away impatiently. He did not want to hear.
"Of course you don't want to hear me talk that way," said the lame man bluntly, divining his thought. "I didn't suppose you did. But, let me tell you, young fellow, there's enough of that rotten rope left for you to lose your soul with. Will you turn your head away when you feel it snap, and find yourself dying, with nothing to hold on to, I wonder?" Without more ado he grasped his crutches, and painfully hobbled away.
Harry tried to be glad he was gone. He did not succeed as easily, however, in dismissing from his mind the words he had heard. Perhaps it was the odd, abrupt way in which they were spoken, that made them fasten themselves so tenaciously on his memory. Certainly he would have been angry had any one else spoken so plainly and unceremoniously to him. The sight of his body, telling such an eloquent tale of suffering, made it almost impossible for any one to be angry with Joel Piper. Harry presently found himself wondering about him, and wishing he would come back and talk to him again.
He did not come, and one day Harry found courage to ask the nurse, who was busied near him, to tell him the name of the lame young man who talked to him one day.
"Oh, do you mean Joel Piper?" she asked in return.
"I didn't know that was his name," replied Harry, looking amused.
"Yes, it is," replied the nurse. "It's an odd name, I know, but he is just as nice as he can be. He's had a world of trouble and pain; but he's come out pure gold."
"Wasn't he always that?" asked Harry, curiously.