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!" She run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."'" The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water. One or two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again with zest. "I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.) "Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man he was, you see, humble and content. "He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer they came to having L3, the more real those little grandchildren of theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't
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