"Yes," he briefly replied, and looked sadly down into her upturned face: Then suddenly, as if reading there something he longed to see, he added:
"But you at least do not regard him as guilty, neither does Mr. Bacon; and we shall go down to see him directly after dinner."
"Would it be out of place for me to take father with me and visit him also?" she asked.
"No; to my mind it would be a Christ-like thing to do," he gladly replied. "I was in prison, and ye visited me," he added, softly. She nodded, too overcome to reply in words, and then hastened home to prepare for her visit.
It had been a long morning to Ray. There was no window in his cell, and the feeble light that reached him came struggling in through a window at the farther end of the corridor. He could not see well enough to read his Bible, but he heard the church bells, when they rang for service; and as he thought of the sermon he could not hear, and the school he could not attend, he determined to have a service of his own. He first sang, in a low tone, the hymn, "Nearer, my God, to thee"; then he repeated all the promises he could recall from God's word. After that he repeated every verse of Scripture that he knew with either the word "faith," or "grace," or "peace" in it. He was glad now that he had made a daily habit of learning at least one verse from the sacred word, and he was surprised at the number of verses he could recall. Finally, he knelt by his iron bedstead and offered up his prayer unto God. This service greatly cheered and comforted him; for Christ himself drew near and spoke, in the words he had recalled, directly to his heart.
While eating his scanty dinner, he wondered if Mr. Carleton or Miss Squire had heard of his arrest, and if they would visit him in his prison cell. He was confident they and some others of the First Church people would believe he was innocent of the crime with which he was charged; but he was not prepared for the throng of visitors who soon began to pour in upon him.
His first caller was Mr. Jacob Woodhull. He had come up to the preaching service and Sunday-school as usual, but was well back on his way home before he learned from an acquaintance, who overtook him, of Ray's imprisonment. He immediately turned around and retraced his steps to the village, and before the boy was through eating was shown to the door of the cell.
He listened attentively to Ray's account of the sad affair, and then questioned him closely as to the loss of his coat and his sleeping on board the sloop. The old gentleman, though odd, was, nevertheless, keen and shrewd, and he soon said:
"There are but two points to clear up, and your innocence is established beyond question. I have an idea this will not be so hard as it now seems. Anyway, we will do all we can. I will be on hand to-morrow morning when you are examined; and just trust God, Ray! just trust him!"
He left the station house and went directly to the telegraph office, and was fortunate enough to find the operator still in. "It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day," he said to himself, and then sent two messages to a neighboring city—one was directed to a lawyer of well-known legal reputation, the other to the most expert detective on the city's police force—and both read the same: "Come here on first train to-morrow." His interest in Ray was again manifesting itself in a most practical form.