Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when the heart is cheered, and as Patty, after spending Saturday and Sunday with the patient, found time to come in and give him his breakfast every morning before she went to school, he grew more and more cheerful, and the doctor announced in his sudden style that he'd "get along." In all her interviews Patty was not only a woman but a Methodist. She read the Bible and talked to the man about repentance; and she would not have been a Methodist of that day had she neglected to pray with him. She could not penetrate his reserve. She could not guess whether what she said had any influence on him or not. Once she was startled and lost faith in any good result of her labors when she happened, in arranging things about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap and some heavy false-whiskers. She had more than suspected all along that her patient was a highwayman, but upon seeing the very disguises in which his crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable of theft--perhaps of murder--could ever be any better. She found herself, after that, trying to imagine how the wounded man would look in so fierce a mask. But she soon remembered all that she had learned of the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit working in the worst of sinners, and she got her testament and read aloud to the highwayman the story of the crucified thief. It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him take his breakfast--he was sitting propped up in bed--that he startled her most effectually. Lifting his eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare that comes of feebleness, he asked: "Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit rider named Goodwin?" Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret. She turned away to hide her face, and said: "I used to go to school with him when we were children." "I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said the patient, "that made me tremble all over. He's a great preacher. I wish I was as good as he is." Patty made some remark about his having been a good boy. "Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used to hear that he had been a little hard--swore and drank and gambled, to say nothing of dancing and betting on horses. But they said some girl jilted him in that day. I suppose he got into bad habits because she jilted him, or else she jilted him because he was bad. Do you know anything about it?" "Yes." "She's a heartless thing, I suppose?" Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it. She was going to defend herself--he must know that she was the person--but how? Then she remembered that he was only repeating what had been a matter of common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness led her to answer: "She acted badly--turned him off because he became a Methodist." "But there was trouble before that, I thought. When he gambled away his coat and hat one night."