"Old Mis' Bates wants that I should take it along and fill it at the Jordan. She's countin' on havin' all the family baptized out of it when I get back."
"Out of one quart bottle!" sniffed Luella, scornfully. "Humph! Just like the Bateses. Much good any one of 'em will get out of such a stingy sprinkling. Why didn't you tell her you couldn't be bothered with it? You always was the kind to be imposed on, Bap Sloan. If I wasn't so afraid of water that horses couldn't pull me on to a ship, I'd go along to look after you. Do take care of yourself!"
And that was the chorus shouted after him as he swung himself up the car-steps, stumbling over his carpet-bag and big cotton umbrella. Fully two thirds of the congregation were down at the station to bid him good-bye. In the midst of the general hand-shaking some one started a hymn, and the last words that Bap Sloan heard, as he hung out of the train window to wave his hat, were:
"By the grace of God we'll meet you
On Jordan's happy shore!"
There was one last look at Luella, wildly waving a limp wet handkerchief. The sight so affected him that he had to draw out his bandana and violently blow his nose; but he smiled as the train went leaping down the track. All the weary waiting was over at last, and his face was set toward his Promised Land.
Several days later, in one of the southbound trains pulling out of New York, the conductor noticed a man sitting with his head bowed in his hands. His soft slouch-hat was pulled over his eyes, and an antiquated carpet-bag and big cotton umbrella were piled on the seat beside him. Except when he showed his ticket, there was no change in his attitude. Mile after mile he rode, never lifting his head, the hopeless droop of his bowed shoulders seeming to suggest that some burden had been laid upon them too great for a mortal to bear.
Night came, and he slept at intervals. Then his head fell back against the cushion of the seat, and one could see how haggard and worn was the face heretofore hidden. In the gray light of the early morning the conductor passed again and turned to give a second glance at the furrowed face with its unshaven chin, unconsciously dropped, and the gray, uncombed hair straggling over the forehead. Even in sleep it wore an expression of abject hopelessness, and looked ten years older than when, only three days before, it smiled good-bye to the singing crowd at Beargrass Valley station. Baptist Sloan was homeward bound, and yet he had not so much as even seen the ship which was to have carried him to his Jordan.
It was only the repetition of an old story—old as the road going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He had fallen among thieves. In the bewilderment and daze which fell upon him when he found himself alone in a great city, he had been easy prey for confidence men. There had been a pretended arrest. He had been taken into custody by a man who showed his badge and assumed to be a private detective. Sure that he could prove his innocence, and smiling grimly as he compared himself once more to a harmless sheep in wolf's clothing, he allowed himself, without an outcry, to be bundled into a carriage that was to take him to the police station. When he came to himself it was morning, and he was on the steps of a cellar, with every pocket empty. He had been robbed of his little fortune, stripped bare of his lifelong hope.
How he was at last started homeward with a ticket in his hand could have been explained by a young newspaper reporter who interviewed him exhaustively at the police station, whither he finally found his way. The reporter made a good story of it, touching up its homely romance with effective sketching; and then because he had come from the same State as Baptist Sloan, because he had once lived on a farm and knew an honest man when he saw one, he loaned him the money that was to take this disabled knight errant home with his mortal wound.