"'You be quiet,' says Jerry. 'I'm a jail-bird myself, but the Lord Jesus has forgiven me an' made me happy; an' He'll do the same by you.'
"They kept me there a week, an' you'd think I was their own, the way they treated me. But I stuck it out: 'When I see a man that's always been respectable come to me an' give me work, an' say he's not afraid or ashamed to, then maybe I'll believe in your Lord Jesus Christ you talk about; but how am I goin' to without?'
"An' that very night it came. You know him well—the gentleman that looks as if the wind had never blown rough on him, an' yet with an eye that can't be fooled.
"'You don't need to tell me a word,' he says: 'I believe you are honest, an' you can begin to-morrow if you're strong enough. It's light work, an' it shall be made easier at first.'
"I looked at him, an' it seemed to me something that had frozen me all up inside melted that minute. I burst out cryin', an' couldn't stop. An' then, first thing I knew, he was down on his knees prayin' for me. 'Dear Lord,' he said, 'he is Thy child, he has always been Thy child. Make him know it to-night: make him know that Thy love has followed him and will hold him up, so that his feet will never slip again.'
"These words stayed by me. I couldn't speak, an' he went away. He knew what he'd done.
"That's all. Some of the men shake their heads: they say it wasn't regular conversion. All I know is, the sense of God come into me then, an' it's never left me. It keeps me on the watch for every soul in trouble. I'm down on the docks o' nights. I know the signs, an' now an' then I can help one that's far gone. I'm goin' myself, you see. There ain't much left of me but a cough an' some bones, but I shall be up to the last. God is that good to me that I'll go quick when I do go; but, quick or slow, I bless Him every hour of the day for the old mission an' my chance."
Helen Campbell.