"But many will not let Him save them," urged Annie.
"I should be only too glad to have Him save me, but whether He will or not is the point at issue, and my hope is very faint. Everything to-day, but you, seems to confirm my fate. Miss Walton, won't you take that little rustic seat there by the brook? I wish to tell you something that will probably settle this question."
Annie wonderingly complied. This was an experience she had never had before. She was rapidly realizing the difference between being the spiritual guide of the girls in her Bible-class and being the adviser of this strong-minded yet greatly perverted man. But she turned to him a face full of sympathy and encouragement.
For a moment it seemed he did not know how to begin, and he paced restlessly up and down before her. Then he said, "Miss Walton, you remember that worm-infested chestnut through which you gave me such a just lesson?"
"Please do not speak of my foolish words at that time," she replied, eagerly.
"Pardon me, they were not foolish. They, with the illustration of my own choice, revealed me to myself as nothing had ever done before. Had it not been for your graceful tact, I should have made a fool of myself by being angry. If you had known what I deserved then you would not have let me off so easily. But it's true. That lonely, selfish chestnut, with a worm in its kernel, was a good emblem of myself. Evil is throned in my heart supreme and malignant. I suppose it's through my own fault, but be that as it may, it's there, my master. I groan over and curse the fact, but I do evil and think evil continually, and I fear I always shall.
"No, listen to me to the end," he continued, as she was about to speak.
"When on that strange mountain expedition, you made the remark, 'What congenial friends we might be!' Those words have echoed in my heart ever since, like the refrain of a home-song to a captive. I would give more than I can express for your friendship—for the privilege of seeing you and speaking to you frankly on these subjects occasionally, for you and you only have inspired a faint hope that I might become a better man. You are making Christianity seem a reality and not a fashion. Though possessing human weakness, you triumph over it, and you say it is through prayer to God. I find it impossible not to believe everything you say, for whatever your faults are you are truth itself. Through your influence the thought has come that God might also hear and help me, but I have the fear and almost the belief that I have placed myself beyond His mercy. At any rate I have almost lost hope in anything I can do by myself. I was in moral despair when I came here, and might as well have been dead, but you have led me to a willingness to make one more struggle, and a great one, if I can see in it any chance of success. I fear I am deceiving myself, but when with you, though you are immeasurably better than I, hope steals into my heart, that before was paralyzed by despair. When you come to know me as I know myself, I fear that you will shrink in just horror away, and that I shall see reflected in your face the verdict of heaven. But you shall know the worst—the very worst. I can never use deceit with you. If afterward you ever take my stained hand again—"
He did not finish the sentence, but heaved a great sigh, as if of longing and hope that words could not utter.
It was the old truth illustrated, that God must become human to gain humanity. Abstract truth could not save this lost and guilty man, but the wanderer hoped that in this sweet human life he had found the clew back to the divine life.