"Now comes the best part, friends--I'm glad to see you've been so quiet and attentive. Lo and behold! One morning the warden sent for me to come to his private sitting-room, and there sat a dignified, kind-faced man. It was the Governor. He wanted to talk to me, he said, about Seventy-two. I don't know how it was, but I give you my word that somehow I didn't have a single thought beyond trying to get Seventy-two pardoned. Once the Governor broke in and said, 'But how about _your own_ case?' And I told him I was guilty and had no hope as far as I was concerned. He put a lot of questions to me about Seventy-two, about his habits and talk to me and other prisoners; and I heard him say to the warden, 'This is an interesting case; I must look further into it.' "Then I was sent back, and Seventy-two was ordered out. He was with the Governor for about an hour, and then he came back to his cell, and I heard him praying and sobbing. Once I heard him say, 'Lord, Lord, Thou hast answered my call. Justice is to be done.' "The next day it went around that Seventy-two was pardoned. He put on his old clothes, packed up his things, and come to shake hands with us. When he come to me he pulled me to one side and clung to my hand and began to cry. 'It was all through you,' he said. 'The Governor wouldn't have believed it in any other way.' Then he told me not to feel bad, that--well"--Leach's voice clogged up here, and he wiped his twitching lips with his slender hand--"well, Seventy-two said that a look had come in my face which showed that peace was mine at last. He said he was going to keep on praying for me, and advised me to try to do good among the prisoners. "He went away, and I _did_ try to follow his advice. I read my Bible every spare chance I got and told the convicts that I believed in a merciful God who was ready and willing to forgive all sins and lighten punishment. I got so I loved to talk to them, and sometimes when the chaplain was sick or away he let me take his place on Sundays, and it was there that I learned to preach. I served my time out. A sharp blow met me on the day of my release. I was thinking of going back home to make a new start when a letter from my father told me that my mother had been dead a month. A young sister of mine was to be married to a fellow high up in society, and father wrote me that he wished me well, but thought that perhaps I ought not to come home branded for life as I was. "Friends, that was a lick that only God's omnipotent hand could soften. I was without home or blood-kin. There was nothing I could do to make a living, for an ex-convict is never encouraged by the world at large. That's how I came to take up this work. It seems to me at times that I was made for it--that all my trouble was laid on me for a divine purpose."