“If ever I do get hold of him,” he muttered, and then paused, as half-forgotten memories of that faithful teacher came flocking to the front.
“The deacon ’d be down on that idea,” he reflected. “Wonder how he’d work his pet hobby o’ forgiveness here. He couldn’t judge of everything,” his thought still ran on. “The deacon he never got so near Hell as Arizona. If he had he’d have found it a place his God of Mercy hadn’t got on His map.”
He put Jinny aside and set to work fashioning himself a new cup. He had broken his only one the night before.
“I guess I was wrong about that last notion.” His brain took up the question again as he shaped the red clay. “I guess He must have this place on the map. Looks like His mercy’d been trailing me here, so to speak.”
He paused to contemplate the proportions of his new cup, staring, half startled, at its rounded surface. Phrases from the old psalm that mothers love to teach were beating upon his brain.
“Goodness and mercy,” he murmured, feeling his stumbling way among the words, “goodness and mercy shall follow me.”
The familiar glade grew new and strange to his sight, as though he saw it for the first time.
“Why!” he cried, a sudden light dawning, “Is that what it means?”
Almost mechanically he went on patting and pressing the clay.
“I guess it does mean that,” whispered he at last, pinching up a handle for his cup. “I didn’t think I’d be alive till now when I came up here. I’ve wanted to die, many a time; but I’m glad, now, I didn’t. I may get out of here some day, too. I may live to get Westcott yet!”