nly mature men ought to be sent out but now I
shall be glad to see a boy in the pulpit to show us the way to
salvation,--a boy it may be with a head full of foolish notions that
old folks say are not practical and some of which won't of course stand
wear; but a boy, with a glad young face, eyes full of faith and dreams
and the sort of insane courage and daring that only the young know.
Such a boy needs considerable education in certain earthly matters, of
course, but he's lovable and teachable and will in time grow into a
real, God-knowing, truth-interpreting man."

Oh, Grandma Wentworth was an authority on ministers--ministers and
babies. And it was a baby that had kept her away from church this
Lilac Sunday; a little, merry, red-headed boy baby that had come in the
early morning to make glad the heart of unbusinesslike Billy Evans and
his neat businesslike wife. For several hours Doc Philipps and Grandma
had despaired of both baby and mother, but when the pink dawn came
smiling over the world's rim Billy's little son was born alive and
unblemished and Billy's wife crept back from the Valley of the Shadow
and smiled a bit into Billy's white, stricken face. And Billy looked
deep down into the brown eyes of the girl and the terrible numbness
went out of his muscles and the icy hardness from around his heart and
he slipped out into the morning world to thank the Great Spirit that
moved it for His mercy and wonderful gift. He just stood on his front
doorstep and, looking about his pretty home and remembering the miracle
within the house, poured a great prayer into the heart of the glad
morning.

Billy's house was one of the most picturesque of the many pretty homes
in Green Valley. It had been a ramshackle, tumbled-down old cabin lost
in a tangle of bushes and hidden from the road by a shabby, unsightly
row of old willows. Billy was going to rent it for temporary barn
purposes but his wife, who had a nimble and a prophetic eye, made him
buy it. Then, under her supervision Billy enlarged and remodeled it
and Billy's wife waved some sort of a fairy wand over it, for it became
over night a lovely, story-book home. When everything was ready she
had the unsightly willows cut, revealing a gently rising stretch of
mossy sward ending in a cluster of old trees from which the cozy house
peeped roguishly, tantalizingly. Two old walnuts guarded the little
footpath to the door and two huge lilac bushes screened the porch from