"I didn't look at the people's hats and bonnets that day half as much as I usually did, and part of that sermon stayed by me all my life. He preached about Nebuchadnezzar and the image he saw in his dream with the head of gold and the feet of clay. And he said that every human being was like that image; there was gold and there was clay in every one of us. Part of us was human and part was divine. Part of us was earthly like the clay, and part heavenly like the gold. And he said that in some folks you couldn't see anything but the clay, but that the gold was there, and if you looked long enough you'd find it. And some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had his secret sins and open faults. And he said sin was jest another name for ignorance, and that Christ knew this when he prayed on the cross, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He said everybody would do right, if they knew what was right to do, and that the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall have put on immortality. "Child, that sermon's come home to me many a time when I've caught myself weighin' people in the balance and findin' 'em wantin'. That's what I'd been doin' all them years with pore Harvey. I'd seen things every once in a while that let in a little light on his life and Mary's, but the old cabin made it all plain as day, and it seemed like every piece o' rubbish in it rose up in judgment against me. I never felt like cryin' at Harvey's funeral, but when I stood there peerin' around, the tears burnt my eyes, and I says to myself, 'Clay and gold! Clay and gold!' "The same thought must 'a' struck Mary at the same minute it did me, for she fell on her knees moanin' and wringin' her hands and cryin': "'God forgive me! God forgive me! I see it all now. He couldn't help it, and I've been a hard woman, and God'll judge me as I judged Harvey.' "The look in her eyes and the sound of her voice skeered me, and I saw that the quicker I got her out o' the old cabin the better. I put my hand on her shoulder, and says I, 'Hush, Mary. Get up and come back to the house; but don't let the children hear you takin' on so. You might skeer little Harvey.' "She stopped a minute and stared at me, and then she caught hold o' my hand, and says she: 'No! no! the children mustn't ever know anything about it, and nobody must ever see the inside o' that awful place. Come, quick!' says she; and she got up from her knees and pulled me outside of the door and locked it and dropped the key in her apron pocket.