On the evening of the day when Tom Edwards—for the first and last time in his life—went into a church, there was a light shower, the only one that fell upon John Bottsford’s threshing crew during the last three months the Welsh boy was with them and the shower in no way interfered with their work. The shower came up suddenly and a few minutes was gone. As it was Sunday and as there was no work the men had all gathered in the barn and were looking out through the open barn doors. Two or three men from the farm house came and sat with them on boxes and barrels on the barn floor and, as is customary with country people, very little was said. The men took knives out of their pockets and finding little sticks among the rubbish on the barn floor began to whittle, while the old thresherman went restlessly about with his hands in his trouser pockets. Tom who sat near the door, where an occasional drop of rain was blown against his cheek, alternately looked from his employer to the open country where the rain played over the fields. One of the farmers remarked that a rainy time had come on and that there would be no good threshing weather for several days and, while the thresherman did not answer, Tom saw his lips move and his grey beard bob up and down. He thought the thresherman was protesting but did not want to protest in words. As they had gone about the country many rains had passed to the north, south and east of the threshing crew and on some days the clouds hung over them all day, but no rain fell and when they had got to a new place they were told it had rained there three days before. Sometimes when they left a farm Tom stood up on the seat of his water wagon and looked back. He looked across fields to where they had been at work and then looked up into the sky. “The rain may come now. The threshing is done and the wheat is all in the barn. The rain can now do no harm to our labor,” he thought. On the Sunday evening when he sat with the men on the floor of the barn Tom was sure that the shower that had now come would be but a passing affair. He thought his employer must be very close to Jesus, who controlled the affairs of the heavens, and that a long rain would not come because the thresherman did not want it. He fell into a deep reverie and John Bottsford came and stood close beside him. The thresherman put his hand against the door jamb and looked out and Tom could still see the grey beard moving. The man was praying and was so close to himself that his trouser leg touched Tom’s hand. Into the boy’s mind came the remembrance of how John Bottsford had prayed at night on the barn floor. On that very morning he had prayed. It was just as daylight came and the boy was awakened because, as he crept across the hay to descend the ladder, the old man’s foot had touched his hand.