n from God. In the city, when the word came to
him, he walked about at night through the streets
thinking of the matter and when he had come home and
had got the work on the farm well under way, he went
again at night to walk through the forests and over the
low hills and to think of God.

As he walked the importance of his own figure in some
divine plan grew in his mind. He grew avaricious and
was impatient that the farm contained only six hundred
acres. Kneeling in a fence corner at the edge of some
meadow, he sent his voice abroad into the silence and
looking up he saw the stars shining down at him.

One evening, some months after his father's death, and
when his wife Katherine was expecting at any moment to
be laid abed of childbirth, Jesse left his house and
went for a long walk. The Bentley farm was situated in
a tiny valley watered by Wine Creek, and Jesse walked
along the banks of the stream to the end of his own
land and on through the fields of his neighbors. As he
walked the valley broadened and then narrowed again.
Great open stretches of field and wood lay before him.
The moon came out from behind clouds, and, climbing a
low hill, he sat down to think.

Jesse thought that as the true servant of God the
entire stretch of country through which he had walked
should have come into his possession. He thought of his
dead brothers and blamed them that they had not worked
harder and achieved more. Before him in the moonlight
the tiny stream ran down over stones, and he began to
think of the men of old times who like himself had
owned flocks and lands.

A fantastic impulse, half fear, half greediness, took
possession of Jesse Bentley. He remembered how in the
old Bible story the Lord had appeared to that other
Jesse and told him to send his son David to where Saul
and the men of Israel were fighting the Philistines in
the Valley of Elah. Into Jesse's mind came the
conviction that all of the Ohio farmers who owned land
in the valley of Wine Creek were Philistines and
enemies of God. "Suppose," he whispered to himself,
"there should come from among them one who, like
Goliath the Philistine of Gath, could defeat me and
take from me my possessions." In fancy he felt the
sickening dread that he thought must have lain heavy on
the heart of Saul before the coming of David. Jumping
to his feet, he began to run through the night. As he
ran he called to God. His voice carried far over the
low hills. "Jehovah of