d the weather was so mild
that no fire was needful!_ Not only so, but, as Mr. Muller went into the
cellar with the overseer of the work, to see whether the repairs could
in no way be expedited, he heard him say, in the hearing of the men,
"they will work late this evening, and come very early again to-morrow."
_"We would rather, sir,"_ was the reply, _"work all night."_ And so,
within about thirty hours, the fire was again burning to heat the water
in the boiler; and, until the apparatus was again in order, that
merciful soft south wind had continued to blow. Goodness and mercy were
following the Lord's humble servant, made the more conspicuous by the
crises of special trial and trouble.

Every new exigency provoked new prayer and evoked new faith. When, in
1862, several boys were ready to be apprenticed, and there were no
applications such as were desired, prayer was the one resort, as
advertising would tend to bring applications from masters who sought
apprentices for the sake of the premium. But every one of the eighteen
boys was properly bound over to a Christian master, whose business was
suitable and who would receive the lad into his own family.

About the same time one of the drains was obstructed which runs about
eleven feet underground. When three holes had been dug and as many
places in the drain tapped in vain, prayer was offered that in the
fourth case the workmen might be guided to the very spot where the
stoppage existed--and the request was literally answered.

Three instances of marked deliverance, in answer to prayer, are
specially recorded for the year between May 26, 1864, and the same date
in 1865, which should not be passed by without at least a mention.

First, in the great drought of the summer of 1864, when the fifteen
large cisterns in the three orphan houses were empty, and the nine deep
wells, and even the good spring which had never before failed, were
almost all dry. Two or three thousand gallons of water were daily
required, and daily prayer was made to the God of the rain. See how God
provided, while pleased to withhold the supply from above! A farmer,
near by, supplied, from his larger wells, about half the water needful,
the rest being furnished by the half-exhausted wells on Ashley Down;
and, when he could no longer spare water, without a day's interval,
another farmer offered a supply from a brook which ran through his
fields, and thus there was abundance until the rains replenishe