Job struck his own broad breast, and then he struck it again. A shudder passed over his big frame; and then came the storm. He had not wept before, since Mr. Bayard died. The paroxysm wearied and weakened him, and it was the piteous fact that these were the next words which passed the lips of the half-healed drunkard. “God A’mighty, if I only had a drink!” * * * * * Two hours afterwards, Job Slip came up the wharves; he came as he went, alone; he walked with a steady step; he held his head high in the dark. He whispered as he walked:-- “I didn’t--no, I didn’t do it.... Bein’ left so--I’ve alwers had you, sir, before, you know. It makes a sight o’ difference when a man hain’t anybody but God. He’s a kinder stranger. I didn’t know, one spell there--but I was goin’ under.... You won’t desert a fellar, will you--yander? I’ll do you credit, sir, see if I don’t. I won’t disgrace you, ----d if I will!” At that moment Job shied suddenly, like a horse, clear from one side of the wharf to the other. He cried aloud,-- “Why, why, what’s here? What’s got me?” Fingers touched him, but they were of flesh; little fingers, but they were warm, and curled confidingly in Job’s big hand. “Joey? _You?_ Little Joey! Why, father’s sonny boy! You come just in the right time, Joey. I was kinder lonesome. I miss the minister. I ain’t--just feelin’ right.” “Fa--ther,” said Joey pleasantly; “Marm said to find you, for she said she fought you’d need you little boy.” “And so I do, my son, and so I do!” cried Job. With Joey’s little fingers clasped in his, Job walked up Angel Alley, past the doors of the dens that were closed, and the doors that were open still; and if the ghost of the dear, dead minister had swept visibly before Job and Joey, no man could have tempted or disturbed them less. * * * * * In his own chapel, in Angel Alley, Bayard lay in state. It was such state as the kings of the earth might envy, and its warriors and its statesmen and its poets do not know. It was said that his was the happiest dead face that ever rebuked the sadness of the living; and the fairest that they who wept for him had ever seen. Death had not marred his noble beauty; and in death or life there was no comelier man. All the city thronged to show him reverence who had lived among them baffled, doubted, and sick at heart; and it appeared that those who had done the least for him then, would have done most for him now: the people of ease; the imitators; the conformers, and the church members who never questioned their own creeds or methods; the summer strangers playing at life upon the harbor coast, and visitors from a distance where the preacher had his fame.