“Do you not remember Eutychus, the youth who slept while Saint Paul was preaching?” she continued. “He fell from the window where he sat, and would have perished in his sins but for the apostle of the Gentiles. The sin of irreverence is great. Remember you may perish in it.”
He stood silent. The people had all departed and the place was deserted. Only Nannie waited by the horse’s head, impatiently watching her mistress.
“Why did you come here if you had no heart to pray?” inquired Mrs. Walters.
“I was tired, ma’am—cruel done. The door was open and I thought I could sit down quiet-like. I’d no notion there was preaching to be.”
“Where have you come from? Where are you going to?”
“It’s work I’m after. I’ve gone high and low, and up an’ down, and I can’t get none. There’s nothin’ I’d turn from if I could get enough to keep me from starving.” His voice almost shook.
“What can you do?” she asked, being a practical woman.
“I can turn my hand to a power of things about a farm. And I’m a proper fine hedge-and-ditcher,” he added simply.
In every accident of daily life Mrs. Walters was inclined to see a special working of Providence, and it was in her mind that this man, so strangely encountered, might be a brand to be plucked from the burning and reserved for her hand. She began to think deeply, and, as Williams saw it, he fixed his eager eyes on her face. Help from this stern woman seemed to be a futile hope, but he clung to it.
“Do you know how to grow vegetables?” she said at last.