"Brother Carleton," said that wise old gentleman, "don't you know that the Lord can go with that boy in all this storm and darkness, and save him, too?" And he did.
"Dr. Gasque, what is it to be a Christian?" Ray asked, as he got into that gentleman's buggy, and they rode off together toward the Black Forge Mills.
Now it happened that Dr. Gasque, though a very skillful physician, and one who prided himself on his strict morality, was not a Christian. He was not even a church-goer. But he knew Ray's history well, and realized that the boy to ask such a question must be thoroughly in earnest. Under the circumstances, then, he probably did what was the very best thing to do, for he answered: "I don't know."
"Well," said the boy, "if there is anything in Christianity at all, ought not a man who is constantly with those who are passing into eternity to know something about it himself, that he might tell others of it?"
The question, startling as it was to the doctor, was characteristic of the lad. For some months he had manifested a similar directness in his questions to his teacher, and to Mr. Carleton. A long silence followed, and the lights at the Forge were in sight before the doctor answered; but he at last said: "I suppose he had."
"How would you settle such a question?" persisted the boy.
There came to the doctor a bright vision of a home among the New Hampshire hills, and a white-haired father and mother praying for their only son, and he answered, huskily: "I should go directly to Christ himself."
"Thank you!" Ray said, as he leaped out of the buggy, and hastened home. Going directly to his room, he closed and locked the door. Then he knelt down by his bedside, repeating over and over again the words: "Lord Jesus, take me. Lord Jesus, take me."
After a while he rose from his knees, lighted the lamp, took his Bible from the old chest in which he kept it, and turned over its pages. He was quite familiar with them now, and soon found what he wanted. "Him that cometh unto me, I will in nowise cast out." "That means Ray Branford, just as much as any one else," he commented. He now turned to the story of the Philippian jailer, and read Paul's direction to him: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "If that was sound advice then, it is sound advice now," he said. "And Miss Squire says faith is just to believe God is both able and willing to do as he promises." He closed the book with a quick snap, and again knelt by the bedside. "Lord Jesus, I come to thee, and I believe thou canst and that thou wilt save me now," he prayed. He said it as plainly and simply as he might have asked a friend for a book; or, as a child might come to its mother for a glass of water. Then he rose from his knees, and prepared for bed with the air of one who had gotten just what he had asked for. It was a very simple affair, after all; but angels had witnessed the scene, a new name had been written down upon the Book of Life, and all heaven was moved with joy. For is it not written, "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth?"