"But why, dear Ditto?" said Maggie, with a mixture of anxiety and curiosity. "I am so sorry for them, Maggie." And watching, she could see that Meredith's downcast eyes were swimming. "Think--_they do not know Jesus_; and what is life worth without that?" "But it isn't everybody's place to go preaching," said Flora after a minute. "Can you prove it? I think it is." "Mine, for instance, and Maggie's?" "What is preaching, in the first place? It is just telling other people the truth you know yourself. But you must know it first. I don't think it is your place to tell what you do not know. But the Bible says, 'Let him that heareth say, Come!' and I think we, who have heard, ought to say it. And I think," added Meredith slowly, "if anybody is as glad of it himself as he ought to be, he cannot help saying it. It will burn in his heart if he don't say it." "But what do you want to do, Ditto?" Maggie asked again. "I don't know, Maggie. Not preach in churches; I am not fit for that. But I want to tell all I can. People seem to me so miserable that do not know Christ. So miserable!" "But, Ditto," said Maggie again, "you can give money to send missionaries." "Pay somebody else to do my work?" "You can tell people here at home." "Well--" said Meredith with a long breath, "let us see what Landolf the Saxon did." CHAPTER III. "'What did this man do in the daring of faith? He first got permission of his superiors; then he went aboard of a little boat, took nothing else with him but his Bible and his Prayer-book, his few tools, a fishing net, and food for several days, and then dropped down the Weser, all alone, intending by that way to get to the Eastphalians. But his chief strength was prayer, in which he lived day and night. When he came to the place where the Aller flows into the Weser, he quitted the Weser and went up the Aller, that he might look at the spot where those 4500 Saxons were cut to pieces by Charlemagne, and on the ground pray for the murdered men. For at that time it was believed that even the dead could be helped by prayer, as is still the erroneous teaching of the Catholics. Leaving that place, he wished to visit the "stone-houses," that he might pray there too, where the captive Franks had been slaughtered by the Saxons; and so he went on up the Aller and from the Aller into the Oerze, all the while living upon the fish which he caught.'" "Had he no bread?" said Maggie. "How should he?--going through wild woods and countries lone in his boat? He would come to no bakers' shops, Maggie." "Just living on fish! Well, go on, Ditto."