"And do you believe He could do it?" The Breton looked very doubtful.
"I'm sure of it!"
"Yes, but you don't know how bad I am."
"Yes, I know," said Paula; "everybody in town knows you're a bad man, but you're no worse than the bandit who was crucified with the Lord Jesus; and yet Christ saved him; didn't He?"
"That's more or less what I am—a bandit, I suppose. I remember that story. When I was a little boy my mother told it to me. I never thought at that time that I'd ever become the thing I am today. What would my poor mother do if she could see what had become of me?"
"Perhaps she'd pray for you," Paula said simply.
"She! Yes, I think she would have prayed for me," he said. "But why talk about my mother! I, who have just come out of prison;—hated, despised, and made a laughingstock by everybody in our neighborhood, even pointed at by the little street-urchins! My children fear me! My poor wife trembles when I appear! Who would ever think of praying for a brute like me?"
"I," said Paula with a voice vibrant with emotion.
"You? Why you scarcely know me!"
"But I do know you, and I've prayed many times for you, Monsieur Breton. Do you think it didn't distress me when they told me you had been put in the prison where people say it's so cold and dark inside, and where many die from the exposure, and what is the greater calamity—die without hope of salvation."