As if the minister had been a cut-throat, Job obeyed again. “Now pray,” commanded Bayard. “I don’t know--how to,” stammered Job. “Pray! Pray!” repeated Bayard. “I’ve forgot the way you do it, sir!” “No matter how other people do it! This is your affair. Pray your own way. Pray anyhow. But _pray_!” “I haven’t done such a thing since I was--since I used to say: ‘Eenty Deenty Donty,’--no, that ain’t it, neither. ‘Now I lay me?’ That’s more like it. But that don’t seem appropriate to the circumstances, sir.” “Try again, Job.” “’Tain’t no use, Mr. Bayard. I’m a goner. If I couldn’t keep sober for you, I ain’t ergointer for no Creetur I never see nor spoke to,--nor no man ever see nor spoke to,--a thousand fathoms up overhead.” Job lifted his trembling arms high and higher towards the dark sky. “Pray!” reiterated Bayard. “I can’t do it, sir!” “_Pray!_” commanded Bayard. “Oh,--God!” gasped Job. Bayard took off his hat. Job’s arms fell; his face dropped into them; he shook from head to foot. “There!” he cried, “I done it.... I’ll do it again. God! God! _God!_” Bayard bowed his head. Moments passed before he said, solemnly,-- “Job Slip, I saved your life, didn’t I?” “You committed that mistake, sir.” “It belongs to me, then. _You_ belong to me. I take you. I give you to God.” He dropped upon his knees beside the drunkard in the rain. “Lord,” he said, in a tone of infinite sweetness, “here is a poor perishing man. Save him! He has given himself to Thee.” “The parson did that, Lord,” sobbed Job. “Don’t give me no credit for it!” “Save him!” continued Bayard, who seemed hardly to have heard the drunkard’s interruption. “Save me this one man! I have tried, and failed, and I am discouraged to the bottom of my heart. But I cannot give him up. I will never give him up till he is dead, or I am. If I cannot do any other thing in Windover, for Christ’s sake, save me this one drunken man!” Bayard lifted his face in a noble agony. Job hid his own before that Gethsemane. “Does the parson care so much--as _that_?” thought the fisherman. The rain dashed on Bayard’s white face. He rose from his knees. “Job Slip,” he said, “you have signed a contract which you can never break. Your vow lies between God and you. I am the witness. I have bound you over to a clean life. Go and sin no more.--I’ll risk you now,” added Bayard, quietly. “I shall not even walk home with you. You have fifteen rum-shops to meet before you get back to your wife and child. Pass them! They all stand with open doors, and the men you know are around these doors. You will not enter one of them. You will go straight home; and to-morrow you will send me written testimony from Mari, your wife,--I want her to write it, Job,--that you did as I bade you, and came home sober. Now go, and God go with you.”