rom Langhurst about a month. A
desperate effort was made to get Johnson back to join his old companions
at the "George," and when this utterly failed, every spiteful thing that
malice could suggest and ingenuity effect was practised on the
unfortunate collier, and in a measure upon Betty also. But, like the
wind in the fable, this storm only made Johnson wrap himself round more
firmly in the folds of his own strong resolution, rendered doubly strong
by prayer. Such a thought as yielding never crossed his mind. His only
anxiety was how best to bear the cross laid on him. There were, of
course, other abstainers in Langhurst besides the Brierleys, and these
backed him up, so that by degrees his tormentors began to let him alone,
and gave him a space for breathing, but they never ceased to have an eye
towards him for mischief.

The month of October had now come, when one evening, as Johnson and
Betty were sitting at tea after their day's work, there was a knock at
the door, and immediately afterwards a respectable-looking man entered,
and asked,--

"Does not Thomas Johnson live here?"

"Yes; he does," was Johnson's reply.

"And I suppose, then, you're Thomas Johnson yourself?" said the
stranger.

"I reckon you're not so far wrong," was the answer.

"Ah, well; so it is for sure," broke out Betty. "Why, you're the
teetottal chap as came a-lecturing when me and our poor Sammul signed
the pledge."

"Sit ye down, sit ye down," cried her father; "you're welcome to our
house, though it is but a sorrowful one."

"I think, my friend," said the stranger, "that you are one of us now."

"You may well say _now_," replied the other, "for when you was here
afore, you'd a gone out of the door a deal quicker nor you came in; but,
I bless the Lord, things are changed now."

"Yes, indeed," said the other, "it is the Lord's doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes; though, indeed, he does work such wonderful
things that we've daily cause to bless and praise him. Well, my
friend--for we are friends, I see, in the best of bonds now--I have not
long to stay now, but I just want to ask you one thing. I should like
to have a total abstinence meeting next month in Langhurst. Will you
say a word for us? We want some working man who has been rescued,
through God's mercy, from the chains of the drink, to stand up and tell,
in a simple, straightforward way, what he once was, and what God has
done for him as a pledged abstainer; and