"The God I trust is the One that makes flowers like them bloom for sech as me," she began, pointing through the window at a rose; "that lets His rain fall in my garden same as He does in your'n; that never takes His spite out on me for bein' what I was, but jest made it hard for me and waited patient for me. He's the kind of God, sir, that can change a heart like mine from all the evil there is, and make it so I can think good thoughts and be kind, and enjoy His hills and hear the birds sing again, same as I used to pay attention to 'em when I was a little gal."
She lowered her voice as if speaking of a mortal sorrow. "There were years and years, sir, when them little creatures were singin' all around me every day, but I couldn't hear 'em—my deeds were so evil. I don't reckon you know it—livin' the little you have—but sin affects you that way—takes away your hearin' for sweet sounds, your sight for what is lovely. But God, He jest kept on lettin' His birds sing for me, and the sun riz jest as fine above the hills behind my house. He didn't pick at me, nor put a sign on me same as folks did of my shame, as He could have done with a cloud or something over my house. You see, He'd fixed things from the foundations of the world so as they'd work out good and not evil for us every one, beca'se He knowed we'd all git tired and come home some time, the same as I've come. I don't know whether you ever found it out or not, sir, but sinners git awful tired of sinnin'. God knows that. He knows they just can't keep it up forever!"
The next winter Sal Prout died of smallpox, after nursing a community of sawmill hands farther up in the mountains who had been stricken with the disease, and many of whom must have died but for her care.
William never recovered from that attack of rheumatism. His legs got well, but he did not. He was different afterward, as if he had fallen into a trance. He seemed always to look and speak across a space of which he was not conscious. He filled his appointments after a fashion during the remainder of the year at the Bowtown district, but he grew increasingly forgetful of people and all earthly considerations. Sometimes he fell to dreaming in the middle of his sermon, looking over the heads of his congregation as if he was expecting Noah's dove to bring him a token or Michael to blow his trumpet. Then again he would make his prayer longer than his sermon. The people did not like it, and the Presiding Elder called for his superannuation at the conference that fall, on the grounds that Brother Thompson showed signs of "failing powers."
Maybe he did, but it was only his mortal faculties that were failing. To the last he retained a clear and definite knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven that many a man in possession of all his powers never attains. The great change was that he took on a melancholy attitude to reality.
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE LITTLE GRAVEYARD BEHIND REDWINE CHURCH
William was too dazed by the misfortune of his superannuation to think or plan for the future. For him there was no future. He sat in the chimney corner, following me about the house with his vacant eyes, but really grieving for one of the choice, hard circuits, with its dried-fruit salary, such as he had received for years, or remembering the good pastoral times he had upon one in this or that year.
I have sometimes wondered what would be the moral effect upon a church community if an old and helpless preacher like William should be sent to it with the understanding that the church should minister to him instead of his ministering to the church; that every saint and sinner should be invited to contribute to his peace and comfort, even as for years he had labored for them. There would be less preaching, of course, but more development in real Christian service. An old preacher treated in this manner would become very dictatorial, a perfect autocrat about ordering charities for the poor and prayers for the penitents, but would it be so bad for the church?