“Why, certainly, Mrs. Tabor, do come in. I’m all alone. And being Sunday night, the servants are all out—had to answer the door, myself.”
He led me into a gloomy spacious room lit only by one reading lamp and by the flames from the fireplace.
“It’s a pretty bad night for you to be out,” he remarked.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to the Leadville blizzards I face all the time up at the mine. I’m used to a hard life.”
“Well, you have a lot of courage.”
“I need it—and it’s taking a lot of courage to come here—but I’m depending on my cross,”—and I clasped it more tightly in my hand.
“What do you mean?”
Hesitantly I began to unfold my story to him. When I spoke of my loneliness and having only this one trust to live for, he remarked:
“Yes, I’m going through the same thing. You know, don’t you, that Mrs. Mullen died last March? My daughters are all married and now I have nobody who really needs me.”
“Oh, I’m deeply sorry.”