ey all call Mr. Goodloe 'Parson,' and he walks in and around and about
this town night and day shedding a kind of peace and good will even into
the darkest corners. He lends a hand here and there with the work, eats
out of the men's dinner pails when that Jefferson is too lazy to cook
for him, or takes a bite off some stove down in the Settlement out of
some old woman's pork and cabbage pot with just as much grace and
heartiness as he eats at Nell Morgan's or Harriet Henderson's most
elaborate dinners. And outside of his pulpit he never preaches; he just
lives. This is what I heard Jacob say to him just yesterday:

"'Sure, and I wint up to set in one of your pews to see if your action
in your own job was as good as it is in the many you lend a hand to week
about.'

"'Well?' asked Mr. Goodloe, as he picked up, one of those rosy apples
from the box Jacob keeps out on the sidewalk to blind the Last Chance.

"'I knows when to run and not be caught,' Jacob answered, as he put
another apple in the parson's pocket and went back into the grocery
door."

"Do you ever see Martha?" I asked with a kind of impatience. I had been
three times down to the Last Chance and each time Jacob's excuses for
Martha had been positive though courteous, and I had come away baffled,
with the green groceries I had purchased as a blind to my visit. I had
written to her and had had no response. At that I had stopped, with a
self-sufficient feeling of a duty well done, but through it all I also
felt that she was on the other side of a prison wall crying to me.

"Never," answered Mother Spurlock, with real pain in her voice. "She
stays in that back room and cooks for Jacob, and the child stays with
her and has only the small yard back of the bar in which to play. Jacob
only let him come up to sing with Mr. Goodloe and the children a few
times and now he is kept as near in prison as his mother. Jacob's
attitude grows more morose about her and the child every day. I don't
understand it. I never will. Martha was the loveliest girl that ever
bloomed in the Settlement, and now she has been plucked and thrown into
the dust. And the child is too young to share her prison fate. He must
be got out and away."

"He will," I answered, with a calm confidence. I didn't tell Mother
Spurlock, and I didn't know exactly why I didn't, but I was deeply
involved in a clandestine affair with the Stray which was fast becoming
one of the adventures of my life. It had be