“Not as I did--and you know it. I've been responsible for many a boy's taking it up, though I didn't realize it. Because I was athletic and in for sports with them, they thought I was the whole thing. They laughed when I got mad and ripped out a lot of language: they copied it. But I never heard myself as others hear me till that night I let go at the mother who'd ignorantly murdered her boy by disobeying orders. On the way home that night I woke up--came to myself--I don't know how. The stars were unusually bright, and I looked up at them and thought of that child's soul going back to its Maker.... and then thought of my curses following it and coming to His ear.” A silence fell. When Burns broke it, it was in a voice deep with feeling. “The next words I sent up to that ear were in a different shape. I think it was the first real prayer I'd ever said since the little parrot prayers my mother taught me. That was the first: it hasn't been the last. I don't suppose I say much that would sound like the preacher's language, but Ches, what I do believe is that--I get what I ask for. That's--help to fight my temptations. And profanity isn't the only one nor the toughest one to down.” Chester looked up. For a moment he forgot himself and his wretchedness. “It's hard to believe it's you, Red--talking like this.” “I know it must be hard, but it ought to be the more convincing on that account. I belong to a profession of materialists, and all at once it's grown to seem to me the strangest thing in life that a man who studies the anatomy of this body of ours should be a materialist. To watch its workings and then doubt the God who made it is sheet wilful blindness. But, Ches--I've got my eyes open at last. The God who made me is up there, and He knows and cares how I go on with the job. As for answering my appeals for help when I get hard pressed--the biggest sign I have of that is a human one. Since Bobby Burns came to sleep in that little bed next mine, it's been a whole lot easier to get on.” A deep sigh was Chester's reply to this. He had a small boy and girl of his own. For their sakes and Winifred's he knew he must fight this fight out and win. But as for getting tangible help from the Creator of a body handicapped by nerves like his! He began to say this, but Burns broke in upon him with the answer he would least have expected at a moment like this--a great, ringing laugh, the sound of which brought the slow blood to Chester's white face. “If you consider wrecked nerves like mine a laughing matter--” he broke out.