He tinkered for a living, but his vocation became the conversion of men. From these small beginnings in quiet evangelism, he branched out into work of the same kind among the tenements. He mended pots, kettles, and pans, and charged for the job a chapter in the Bible. I came on him suddenly one morning in an alley. Snow was on the ground, and he was reading a chapter with his face close to a broken pane. It appeared he had done some soldering for an Irishwoman, and asked the privilege of reading to her. "Begorra," she said, "the house isn't fit to read the Holy Book in, but if yez w'u'dn't mind reading through the window, I'll take the rags out." So she took the bundle out of the broken pane, and Dowling bent over and read his chapter. When the Rev. John Hopkins Dennison took charge of the old Church of Sea and Land, he established a sort of latter-day monastery in the old square tower, and there Brother Dowling had a cell, where he lived and worked among the poor for many years. In an escapade with two other soldiers in the Sepoy rebellion, Dowling had looted the palace of a raja. In the act of burying several canes filled with diamonds, one of the three was shot dead. Dowling and the other escaped. One day on the Bowery, forty years afterward, a man laid his hand on Dowling's shoulder and asked him what he did with the loot. It was the other man. "What did _you_ do with it?" Dowling asked. Each had lived in the belief that the other had got away with it. The tinker-preacher was very much stirred up over this. He wrote at once to the governor-general of India, told the whole story, and offered to come out and locate the stolen booty. Money was appropriated to pay his passage, but the old man was going on another journey. He wrote a full description of the place and transaction, and then lay down in the tower of the old church and died. _"Doc," our Volunteer Organist_ "Say, Bub," said Gar, the bouncer, to me one day, "what ungodly hour of the mornin' d'ye git up?" "At the godly hour of necessity," I replied. "Wal, I hev a pal I want ter interjooce to ye at six." I met the bouncer and his "pal" at the corner of Broome Street and the Bowery next morning at the appointed hour. "Dat's Doc!" said Gar, as he clapped his hand on his friend's head. His friend bowed low and in faultless English said: "I am more than pleased to meet you." "I can give ye a pointer on Doc," the big fellow continued. "If ye tuk a peaner t' th' top av a mountain an' let her go down the side sorter ez she pleases, 'e cud pick up the remains an' put thim together so's ye w'u'dn't know they'd been apart. Yes, sir; that's no song an' dance, an' 'e c'u'd play any chune iver invented on it." [Illustration: "I NOTICED A PROFILE SILHOUETTED AGAINST THE WINDOW"]