pretty good boy, hain't ye? And don't ye s'pose ye can go
out here a little ways behind a tree and pray? I'll hold on to the dog;
an' it seems to me, if I was the Lord, I sh'd pay 'tention to what a
little feller like you was sayin'. There ain't nobody here but you to do
it now, ye know. I can nuss your pa and fix his vittles, and set up with
'im nights, but I can't pray. I wasn't brung up to it. Now, if ye'll do
this, I won't ax ye to do nothin' else."

The boy was serious. He looked off with his great black eyes into the
woods. He had said his prayers many times when he did not know that he
wanted anything. Here was a great emergency, the most terrible that he
had ever encountered. He, a child, was the only one who could pray for
the life of his father; and the thought of the responsibility, though it
was only dimly entertained, or imperfectly grasped, overwhelmed him. His
eyes, that had been strained so long, filled with tears, and, bursting
into a fit of uncontrollable weeping, he threw his arms around Jim's
neck, where he sobbed away his sudden and almost hysterical passion.
Then he gently disengaged himself and went away.

Jim took off his cap, and holding fast his uneasy and inquiring dog,
bowed his head as if he were in a church. Soon, among the songs of birds
that were turning the morning into music, and the flash of waves that
ran shoreward before the breeze, and the whisper of the wind among the
evergreens, there came to his ear the voice of a child, pleading for his
father's life. The tears dropped from his eyes and rolled down upon his
beard. There was an element of romantic superstition in the man, of
which his request was the offspring, and to which the sound of the
child's voice appealed with irresistible power.

When the lad reappeared and approached him, Jim said to himself: "Now,
if that won't do it, ther' won't nothin'." Reaching out his arms to
Harry, as he came up, he embraced him, and said:

"My boy, ye've did the right thing. It's better nor all the nussin', an'
ye must do that every mornin'--every mornin'; an' don't ye take no for
an answer. Now jest go in with me an' see your pa."

Jim would not have been greatly surprised to see the rude little room
thronged with angels, but he was astonished, almost to fainting, to see
Benedict open his eyes, look about him, then turn his questioning gaze
upon him, and recognize him by a faint smile, so like the look of other
days--so full of intelligence