"Can you sing?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then you're doubly welcome. It will be great for us to have a stranger join in our simple service."
As Douglas moved towards the door, his attention was arrested by a picture on the wall of the Good Shepherd rescuing a lamb from a dangerous place. He looked at it for a minute in silence.
"Fine picture, that," Joe remarked, as he rose from his bench and came over to the young man's side. "It means very much to me."
"Yes, I suppose so," Douglas absently replied.
"I was just like that lamb there, once," Joe continued in a voice that was low, yet filled with emotion. "I was the wandering sheep, if ever there was one." Here he paused and gazed intently at the picture. "I like to have it before me as I work. It tells me what I once was, and how much He has done for me. It makes me both thankful and careful, and it gives me a feeling of sympathy for any one who has gone astray."
Douglas walked slowly down the road, wrapped in thought. His conversation with the old shoe-maker had done him a world of good. But Joe's little glimpse of his past life was what affected him most of all. How many other wandering sheep there were in the world, nay, in this very parish, he mused. They were straying, as sheep without a shepherd. Some one must bring them back, and who would that some one be?