The words “obedient unto death” having once been read and explained to him, seemed constantly in his mind, and once, after lying still for a long while, he said,—
“They killed Him—cruel! cruel!—and He never stopped ’em, and now see how nice and easy He lets me lie here and die in my bed!”
It was the evening before Easter Sunday, that lovely festival which is finding its way into all hearts and churches; the last bell was ringing for evening service, and Johnny had just taken his seat, with his mother and Tiny, in the church which they attended, when, to his great surprise, Jim stepped quietly in, and sat down beside him. Jim was very neatly dressed in his Sunday suit, but the flaming necktie which he usually wore was replaced by a small bow of black ribbon. His face had a gentle and subdued expression quite unusual to it, and Johnny felt sure, at once, that Taffy was gone.
As the boys knelt side by side in the closing prayer, their hands met in a warm, close grasp, and a smothered sob from Jim told how deeply his heart was touched.
Taffy had died that evening, very peacefully, in his sleep, a few minutes after Jim came home from his work.
“And I somehow felt as if, maybe, I’d get a little nearer to him, if I was to come to church,” said Jim, in a subdued voice, as he walked part of the way home with Mrs. Leslie, “and I thought, maybe, you wouldn’t mind if I came to your pew, it seemed sort of lonesome everywhere.”
Mrs. Leslie made him very sure that she did not “mind,” and would not, no matter how often he came there.
And he came regularly, after that. At first he sat with his friends; then he chose a sitting among the free seats in the church, and sat there, but he found that, in this way, he was apt to have a different place every Sunday, and this he did not like. It made him feel as if he did not “belong anywhere,” he told Johnny; so, as soon as he could command the money, he rented half a pew for himself, and after that he nearly always brought some one with him. Once or twice it was the old woman who kept the eating-stand where he usually bought his lunch; sometimes it was a wild, rather frightened-looking street Arab, sometimes a fellow bootblack.