“Does the parson care so much—as that?” thought the fisherman.
The rain dashed on Bayard’s white face. He rose from his knees.
“Job Slip,” he said, “you have signed a contract which you can never break. Your vow lies between God and you. I am the witness. I have bound you over to a clean life. Go and sin no more.—I’ll risk you now,” added Bayard, quietly. “I shall not even walk home with you. You have fifteen rum-shops to meet before you get back to your wife and child. Pass them! They all stand with open doors, and the men you know are around these doors. You will not enter one of them. You will go straight home; and to-morrow you will send me written testimony from Mari, your wife,—I want her to write it, Job,—that you did as I bade you, and came home sober. Now go, and God go with you.”
As Bayard turned to give the drunkard his hand, he stumbled a little over something on the dark pier. Job had not risen from his knees, but stooped, and put his lips to the minister’s patched shoe.
“This is to sertify that my Husband come home last nite sober and haint ben on a Bat sence, god bless you ennyhow.
Maria Slip.”
This legend, written in a laborious chirography on a leaf torn from a grocer’s pass-book, was put into Bayard’s hand at noon of the next day. Joey brought it; he had counted upon a nap on the study lounge, and was rather disappointed to find it occupied. Mrs. Granite said she had sent for Cap’n Hap; she said the minister’s temperature had gone up to a hundred and twenty, and she should think it would.