med after the Sunday evening
service! As on every other day, he asked himself the question, "What
shall I do?" Only when he had prayed could he answer the question. Then
the light came. Who says prayer is merely a form? It is going to God
for wisdom and getting it. It is crying out for light, and lo! the
darkness flees. It is spreading out our troubles and our joys and our
perplexities and our needs, and finding God Himself the best possible
answer to them all. Robert Hardy had been learning this of late, and it
was the one thing that made possible to him the calmness of the last two
days allotted him.

The day was spent in much the same way that the other days had been
spent. He went down to his office about ten o'clock, and after coming
home to lunch went down again, with the intention of getting through all
the business and returning home to spend the rest of the time with the
family. Along towards three o'clock, when the routine work of the shops
was disposed of, the manager felt an irresistible desire to speak to the
men in his employ. Those in his department numbered about eight hundred,
and he knew how impossible it would be for him to speak to them
individually. He thought a minute and then called Burns in and gave an
order that made the foreman stare in the most undisguised wonder.

"Shut down the works for a little while and ask the men to get together
in the big machine shop, I want to speak to them."

Burns had been astonished so often this week that, although he opened his
mouth to say something, he was able to repress his wonder. After staring
blankly at his employer for a minute, he turned and went out to execute
the order.

The great engine was stopped. The men from the casting rooms and the
carpenters' shops, and the store-rooms, and the repairing departments,
came trooping into the big machine shop, and sat or leaned on the great,
grim pieces of machinery. As the shop filled, the place began to take on
a strange aspect never seen there before.

Mr. Hardy crossed the yard from the office, followed by the clerks and
minor officers of the road, all curious to hear what was coming. Mr.
Hardy mounted one of the planers and looked about him. The air was still
full of gas, smoke, and that mixture of fine iron filings and oil, which
is characteristic of such places. The men were quiet and respectful.
Many of them had heard the manager's speech of Thursday night at the town
hall. Most of