“There!” he cried, “I done it.... I’ll do it again. God! God! God!”
Bayard bowed his head. Moments passed before he said, solemnly,—
“Job Slip, I saved your life, didn’t I?”
“You committed that mistake, sir.”
“It belongs to me, then. You belong to me. I take you. I give you to God.”
He dropped upon his knees beside the drunkard in the rain.
“Lord,” he said, in a tone of infinite sweetness, “here is a poor perishing man. Save him! He has given himself to Thee.”
“The parson did that, Lord,” sobbed Job. “Don’t give me no credit for it!”
“Save him!” continued Bayard, who seemed hardly to have heard the drunkard’s interruption. “Save me this one man! I have tried, and failed, and I am discouraged to the bottom of my heart. But I cannot give him up. I will never give him up till he is dead, or I am. If I cannot do any other thing in Windover, for Christ’s sake, save me this one drunken man!”
Bayard lifted his face in a noble agony. Job hid his own before that Gethsemane.