"I come here with good recommendations, brethren; I am a deacon o’ the church; you have faith in my integrity, my honor." An approving murmur went up. "If a dozen thieves were to stop at my house there’d be no suspicion against me." He paused, passed his hand over his face, then looked up again. "Years ago there were two brothers in this State who grew up together happy and contented. The elder one was always a little wild, and would get drunk sometimes, even after he’d married and had a family to look after, but the younger was the steadiest, best boy in the settlement. One night the elder brother, in a fit of drunken recklessness, stole a horse from the camp of a Kentucky drover, an’ nobody found it out but his brother, who undertook to return the horse, an’ was arrested. He took the guilt, he stood the trial, an’ went to the penitentiary. He lost his good name, the girl he loved, his home, everything in the world an honest man values. He served his time, an’ instead o’ comin’ home to be a reproach to his cowardly brother, he, when free, went away into a strange settlement to live. An’ by an’ by his brother moved there too, an’ his conscience hurt him more an’ more as he saw what a sad, lonesome life the convict lived. He was prosperous, he enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-men, while the other was shunned, and regarded with distrust." Emotion checked his utterance for a moment; then he turned and pointed to ’Zeki’l. "Brethren, look at that man; look without prejudice or suspicion, an’ you’ll not see guilt in his face nor on his conscience. There never lived a truer hero than ’Zeki’l Morgan. Nobody should know it better than I, for I am the brother whose crime he suffered for." Then he walked across the floor to ’Zeki’l’s side in the midst of the deepest silence which had ever fallen upon a congregation in Zion Hill church. *WAS IT AN EXCEPTIONAL CASE?*