We were all so quiet as mice, not a one of us moving or hardly breathing.... I couldn't hear a word the old man was saying, but he sounded like he needed help.... I remembered how we'd all saved
his life two different times—once when a robber had tied him up and he'd have starved if we hadn't found him, and another time when he'd fallen down his cellar steps in the winter-time and his fire had gone out, and we had started a fire for him with punk, using the thick lenses of his reading glasses for a magnifying glass—which any boy can do if he can get some real dry punk and a magnifying glass.... First you focus the red hot light which shines from the sun through the magnifying glass, right on the punk until it makes a little smoking live coal, then you hold a piece of dry paper against the red glow on the punk, and blow and blow with your breath until all of a sudden there will be an honest to goodness flame of fire....
Say, when I heard Old Man Paddler half talking and half crying up there in his cabin, I got a very queer feeling inside of me....
"Quick!" Circus said, "He's in trouble. Let's go in and help him." Circus gave a shove on the door, turning the latch at the same time, but the door wouldn't budge.
"It's barred," Poetry said, and I remembered the heavy bar on the inside which the old man always dropped into place whenever he was inside.
"Sh! Listen!" Little Jim said, and we shushed and listened.
Say, that little guy had his ear pressed up real close to a crack in the door, and in the light of my flashlight which I didn't shine right straight on his face on account of it might blind him, I could see that his eyes had a very far away look in them, like he was thinking something important and maybe in his mind's eyes was seeing something even more important.
"What is it?" I said to him, and he said, "Don't worry, he's all right. He doesn't need our help—here, listen yourself," which I did, and right away I knew Little Jim was right.... For this is what I heard the old man saying in his quavering, high-pitched voice, "... And please, You're the best friend I ever had, letting me live all these long years, taking care of me, keeping me well and strong and happy most of the time. But I'm getting lonesome now, getting older every day, getting so I can't walk without a cane, and I can't stand the cold weather anymore, and I know it won't be long before I'll have to move out of this crippled-up old house and come to live
with You in a new place.... I'll be awful glad to see Sarah again, and my boys.... And that reminds me,—Please bless the boys who live and play along old Sugar Creek—all of 'em—Big Jim, Little Jim, Circus, Dragonfly, Poetry, Bill Collins...."
I knew what the kind man was doing all right, 'cause I'd seen and heard him do it many a time in our little white church, and also I'd seen him doing it once down on his knees behind the old sycamore tree all by himself.... When I heard him mention my name, I gulped, and some crazy tears got into my eyes and into my voice.... I had to swallow to keep from choking out a word that would have let the gang know I was about to cry.... Like a flash I thought of something and I whirled around and grabbed Little Tom Till and shoved his ear down to the crack in the door and put my own ear just above his so I could hear too, and this is what the old man was saying up there in the cabin, "And also bless the new member of the gang, Tom Till, whose father is an infidel and spends his money on liquor and gambling.... Oh God, how can John Till expect his boys to keep from turning out to be criminals.... Bless his boy, Bob, whose life has been so bent and twisted by his father.... And bless the boys' poor mother, who hasn't had a chance in life.... Lord, you know she'd go to church and be a Christian if John would let her.... And please...."