The doctor departed as rapidly as he had entered, and the cobbler stole a moment or two from his work to think. How his thoughts ran he could scarcely have told afterwards, for again the door opened, and the room darkened slightly, for the person who was entering was Father Black, the Catholic priest, a man whose frame was as big as his heart, he being reputed to be one of the largest-hearted men in all Bruceton. Everybody respected him. The best proof of it was that no one in any of the other churches ever attempted to do any proselyting in Father Black's flock. "My son," said the priest, seating himself in the chair and spreading a friendly smile over his large, expressive features, "I have heard a great deal of you since you came back from your unfortunate absence, and I merely dropped in to say to you that if it's any comfort to you to know that every day you have whatever assistance there can be in the prayers of an old man who has been in this world long enough to love most those who need most, you may be sure that you have them." "God bless you, sir! God bless you!" said the cobbler, quickly. "Have you connected yourself with any church here as yet?" asked the priest. "No, sir," sighed the cobbler: "one an' another has been pullin' an' haulin' at me one way an' another, tellin' me that it was my duty to go into a church. But how can I do it, sir, when I'm expected to say that I believe this an' that, that I don't know nothin' about? Some of 'em has been very good tryin' to teach me what they seem to understand very well, but I don't know much more than when they begun, an' sometimes it seems to me that I know a good deal less, for, with what one tells me in one way, an' another tells me in another way, my mind--and there's not very much of it, sir--my mind gets so mixed up that I don't know nothin' at all." "Ah, my son," said the good old priest, "if you could only understand, as a good many millions of your fellow-men do, that it's the business of some men to understand and of others to faithfully follow them, you would not have such trouble." "Well, sir," said the cobbler, "that's just what Larry's been sayin' to me here in the shop once in a while in the mornin', before he started out to get full; an' there's a good deal of sense in what he says, I've no doubt. But what I ask him is this,--an' he can't tell me, an' perhaps you can, sir. It's only this: while my heart's so full that it seems as if it couldn't hold the little that I already believe an' am tryin' to live up to, where's the sense of my tryin' to believe some more?" Father Black was so unprepared to answer the question put thus abruptly, accompanied as it was with a look of the deepest earnestness, that there ensued an embarrassing silence in the shop for a moment or two. "My son," said the priest, at last, "do you fully believe all that you have read in the good book that I am told you were taught to read while you were in prison?"