e
would hardly acknowledge, but the minister's message bore in upon him
heavily. "Where is Abel, thy brother?" he kept saying to himself. Then
he took up the bottle and, holding it up to the light, he said with
great deliberation:

"There will be no more of you whatever!"

From that time forth McFarquhar labored with Ould Michael with a
patience and a tact that amazed me. He did not try to instill theology
into the old man's mind, but he read to him constantly the gospel
stories and followed his reading with prayer--always in Gaelic, however,
for with this Ould Michael found no fault as to him it was no new thing
to hear prayers in a foreign tongue. But one day McFarquhar ventured a
step in advance.

"Michael," he said timidly, "you will need to be prayin' for yourself."

"Shure an' don't I inthrate the Blessed Virgin to be doin' that same for
me?"

McFarquhar had learned to be very patient with his "Romish errors," so
he only replied:

"Ay, but you must take words upon your own lips," he said, earnestly.

"An' how can I, then, for niver a word do I know?"

Then McFarquhar fell into great distress and looked at me imploringly. I
rose and went into the next room, closing the door behind me. Then,
though I tried to make a noise with the chairs, there rose the sound of
McFarquhar's voice; but not with the cadence of the Gaelic prayer. He
had no gift in the English language, he said; but evidently Ould Michael
thought otherwise, for he cared no more for Gaelic prayers.

By degrees McFarquhar began to hope that Ould Michael would come to the
light, but there was a terrible lack in the old soldier of "conviction
of sin." One day, however, in his reading he came to the words, "the
Captain of our Salvation."

"Captain, did ye say?" said Ould Michael.

"Ay, Captain!" said McFarquhar, surprised at the old man's eager face.

"And what's his rigimint?"

Then McFarquhar, who had grown quick in following Ould Michael's
thoughts, read one by one all the words that picture the Christian life
as a warfare, ending up with that grand outburst of that noblest of
Christian soldiers, "I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith."
The splendid loyalty of it appealed to Ould Michael.

"McFarquhar," he said with quivering voice, "I don't understand much
that ye've been sayin' to me, but if the war is still goin' on, an' if
he's afther recruits any more bedad it's mesilf wud like to join."

McFarquhar was now at home; vivid