CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
John Harding seemed a new man. If ever man fought desperately the evil in his nature, he did. It would be foolish to say that he became a saint. Far from it. He was at all times very human.
All the years of his life, his deeper nature had been lying fallow. No one had ever cared enough about him to suspect or discover its richness. Now some one had found him who did care, and who knew instinctively what lay below the forbidding exterior.
He sought Esther Bright with all sorts of questions, many of them questions a child might have asked (for he was but a child as yet in knowledge of many things); and she poured out the richness of her own knowledge, the inspiration of her transcendent faith, until the man roused from a long sleep, and began to grapple with great questions of life. He read, he thought, and he questioned.
Sometimes, when long away from Esther's influence, he yielded to the temptations of the saloon again, and drank heavily. On one of these occasions, he chanced to cross her path as he came staggering from a saloon. He tried to avoid her, but failed.
"Oh, Jack," she said, laying her hand on his arm, "is this what Jesus would have you do? Come home."
"'Taint no use," he answered, in a drunken drawl, "no use. I ain't nobody; never was nobody. Let me be, I say. Nobody cares a blank for me." He threw an arm out impatiently.
"'Sh!" she interrupted. "Jesus cares. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton care. I care. Miss Edith cares. Come home with me, John."