y
have the helps they need for just the sort of pupils that are in their
classes."

"That's so," said J.W., Sr. "I don't suppose even old Brother Barnacle,
'sot' as he is, would vote to go back to the times when the
superintendent reviewed the lesson the same way the teachers taught it,
from a printed list of questions. Seems as if I can hear Henry J. Locke
yet--his farm joins ours down by the creek--when he conducted the
reviewing at Deep Creek. He would hold his quarterly at arm's length to
favor his eyes, and then look up from it to the school and shoot the
question at everybody, 'And what did Peter do _then_, HEY?' He sure did
come out strong on Peter; but I'll say this for him, that he never
skipped a question from start to finish."

All three laughed a little over Henry J. Locke, and then the pastor said
he mustn't stay much longer. But he did want to back up J.W.'s belief
that what Phil Khamis had said was true of everybody--we are all
debtors.

"Look at this young J.W. here, will you," he said to the father and
mother, for once letting himself go, "with a name he's proud of, and a
home life that many a Fifth Avenue and Lake Shore Drive family would be
glad to pay a million for, if such goods were on sale in the stores. I'm
going to tell him something he already knows. Young man," and there was
a gleam in the pastor's eye that was not all to the credit of the work
he was praising, "you owe a big debt to the Sunday school. I'm not
jealous for the church, or for any other part of it, but by your own
admission the Sunday school has had a lot to do with your education.
Very well; remember it is a part of what Phil said, and what you are
because of the Sunday school you have become by the goodness of
Christian people. I don't think you'll forget it, seeing that you have
two of that sort of people in your own home all the time."

And then, with a fine naturalness the little group knelt by the chairs,
and two of the four, he who was pastor of the whole flock and he who
with simple dignity was priest in his own household, gave thanks to God
for the manifold goodness of Christian people, of which they were all
partakers every day.

As he went home, Walter Drury thought of the long days that stretched
out ahead before he could see the outcomes of the great Experiment, but
this night had seen a good night's work done in the laboratory, and he
was content.

One tale of the past had been much in J.W.'s thought that ni