hem, which village custom allowed anyone to pick up. The
cobbler devoutly thanked heaven for the thought, closed the shop, and
hurried away to the new building. The men were still at work, and there
was a great deal of waste lying about.

"May I have some of these leavin's?" asked Sam of the master builder.

The man looked down from the scaffolding on which he stood, recognized
the questioner, turned again to his work, and at last answered, with a
scowl,--

"Yes, I suppose so. It would be all the same, I guess, if I didn't say
so. You'd come after dark and help yourself."

Sam pocketed the insult, though the weight of it was heavy. So was that
of the bits of board he gathered; but he knew that such thin wood
burned rapidly, so he took a load that made him stagger. As he entered
the yard behind his house, he saw, through the dusk which was beginning
to gather, a man rapidly tossing cord-wood from a wagon to a large pile
which already lay on the ground.

"My friend," gasped Sam, dropping his own load and panting from his
exertion, "I guess--you've made a--mistake. I ain't ordered a load of
wood from nobody. Guess you've come to the wrong house."

"Guess not," replied the man, who was the farmer that had freed his
mind at the railway station during the afternoon.

"This is Sam Kimper's," explained the cobbler.

"Just where I was told to come," said the farmer, tossing out the last
sticks and stretching his arms to rest upon them.

"Who was it told you to bring it?" asked the resident.

The farmer stooped and took a large package from the front of the wagon
and threw it on the ground; then he threw another.

"Won't you tell me who sent it?" Sam asked again.

The farmer turned his head and shouted,--

"God Almighty, if you must know; and He told me to bring that bag of
flour and shoulder of bacon, too."

Then the farmer drove off, at a gait quite unusual in farm-teams.

The cobbler burst into tears and fell upon his knees. When he arose he
looked in the direction from which came the rattle of the retreating
wheels, and said to himself,--

"I wonder if that man was converted in the penitentiary?"

The story, when Sam told it in the house, amazed the family, though
little Mary giggled long on hearing the name of the supposed giver. No
sooner was supper ended than the child slipped out of the house and
hurried to the hotel to tell her sister Jane all about it. Within half
an hour the story had passed, throug