alf awake, and, taking his stand on the narrow platform
below the bow-deck, he began uncoiling a rope to steady the boat through
a lock it was approaching. Finally it knotted, and caught in a narrow
cleft on the edge of the deck. He gave it a strong pull, then another,
till it gave way, sending him over the bow into the water. Down he went
in the dark river, and, rising, was bewildered amid the intense
darkness. It seemed as if the boy's brief career was at its close. But
he was saved as by a miracle. Reaching out his hand in the darkness, it
came in contact with the rope. Holding firmly to it as it tightened in
his grasp, he used his strong arms to draw himself up hand over hand.
His deliverance was due to a knot in the rope catching in a crevice,
thus, as it tightened, sustaining him and enabling him to climb on
deck.

It was a narrow escape, and he felt it to be so. He was a thoughtful
boy, and it impressed him. The chances had been strongly against him,
yet he had been saved.

"God did it," thought James reverently, "He has saved my life against
large odds, and He must have saved it for some purpose. He has some work
for me to do."

Few boys at his age would have taken the matter so seriously, yet in the
light of after events shall we not say that James was right, and that
God did have some work for him to perform?

This work, the boy decided, was not likely to be the one he was at
present engaged in. The work of a driver or a bowman on a canal is
doubtless useful in its way, but James doubted whether he would be
providentially set apart for any such business.

It might have been this deliverance that turned his attention to
religious matters. At any rate, hearing that at Bedford there was a
series of protracted meetings conducted by the Disciples, as they were
called, he made a trip there, and became seriously impressed. There,
too, he met a gentleman who was destined to exert an important influence
over his destiny.

This gentleman was Dr. J.P. Robinson, who may be still living. Dr.
Robinson took a great liking to the boy, and sought to be of service to
him. He employed him, though it may have been at a later period, to chop
wood, and take care of his garden, and do chores about the house, and
years afterward, as we shall see, it was he that enabled James to enter
Williams College, and pursue his studies there until he graduated, and
was ready to do the work of an educated man in the world. But we must
not