here has got into trouble. Is
not Macfarren a church warden, or something, in your Church?"

"He is a manager, I think," said Shock. "Pretty much the same thing."

"Well, he is a man to look out for. I can get along without him, but
you cannot, can you? I mean, he can hurt you."

"No," said Shock quietly, "he cannot hurt me. The only man that can
hurt me is myself. No other man can. And besides," he added, pulling a
little Bible out of his pocket, "I have a Keeper, as Ike said."

As Shock opened the little Bible he became conscious of a sense of
mastery. His opportunity had come.

"Listen to this," he said, and he read in a voice of assured conviction:

"The Lord is thy keeper.
The Lord shall keep thee from all evil.
He shall keep thy soul.
The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in.
From this time forth and forevermore."

He closed the book and put it in his pocket.

"No," he said, "no man can hurt me." Then turning to Ike he said
quietly, "I always say my prayers. My mother started me twenty-five
years ago, and I have never seen any reason to quit."

While his tone was gentle and his manner simple, there was almost a
challenge in his eyes. The fair face of young Stanton flushed through
the tan.

"You do your mother honour," he said, with quiet dignity.

"I say," said Ike slowly, "if you kin do it just as convenient, perhaps
you'd say 'em out. Wouldn't do us no harm, eh, Kiddie?"

"No, I should be pleased."

"Thank you," said Shock. Then for a moment he stood looking first at
Ike's grave face, and then at The Kid, out of whose blue eyes all the
gay, reckless defiance had vanished.

"Don't imagine I think myself a bit better than you," said Shock
hastily, voice and lip quivering.

"Oh, git out!" ejaculated Ike quickly. "That aint sense."

"But," continued Shock, "perhaps I have had a little better chance.
Certainly I have had a good mother."

"And I, too," said the boy, in a husky voice.

So the three kneeled together in Ike's shack, each wondering how it had
come about that it should seem so natural and easy for him to be in
that attitude.

In a voice steady and controlled Shock made his prayer. Humility and
gratitude for all that had been done for him in his life, an
overwhelming sense of need for the life demanded in this God-forgetting
country, and a great love and compassion for the two men with whom he
had so strangely been brought into such close relation swelled in h