ng but the absorbing tale--the tale of his own life--a man's
struggle with overwhelming sorrow; and yet how different from his own.
For Job had not sinned, nor "charged God foolishly," while he, in his
bitterness, had thrown the blame of his evil case upon his Maker, and
declared that He knew not compassion.

Throughout the early portion of the story Tim listened with eyes and
ears, but when they entered upon the long discourses of Job's friends
he grew restless. There was not enough action here. Thunder and
lightning, sudden deaths, and overwhelming catastrophes were exactly
suited to the orphan's taste, but theological controversy was a
weariness to his soul. He wriggled around impatiently, counted the
purple robins again and again, and gouged holes in the single eye each
possessed. But still the dreary talk went on.

"Say! ain't that coon ever goin' to get done shootin' off?" he broke in
wearily, in the midst of a long speech from Eliphaz the Temanite.

John McIntyre did not hear. He had come to the answer of Job, words
that found an echo in his own bitter heart:

"I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder; He hath also taken me by
my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark. His
archers compass me round about. He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth
not spare."

The anguish in the reader's voice, conveying the strength of the man's
mighty grief, made itself felt in the child's soul, and stilled him.
He gazed up into John McIntyre's haggard face with a strange heaviness
at his heart. Through chapter after chapter he waited, silent and
subdued, but at last his weariness overcame his fears. He rolled over
on the rug and yawned loudly.

"Aw, shucks!" he muttered; "they're as bad at gassin' as Ella Anne
Long!" He waited through another chapter, and then broke in once more.

"Say! couldn't you skip all that blather, an' tell us what happened
next? Didn't the devil get after him again?"

The reader paused, and gazed down at the boy in a dazed fashion. "What
do you want?" he asked vaguely.

"I wish them fellows would hustle up, an' quit chewin'. Did Job get
all right again?"

John McIntyre mechanically turned the leaves. He experienced a grim
satisfaction in the boy's complaints. What did these wordy friends of
Job know of sorrow and despair? As though they were conditions that
could be explained away! He turned almost to the end of the story, and
there he paused. A new actor