“Come up and see me, bub,” he invited Nathan, meeting the young man when that distressing afternoon was a thing of the past and Milly had gone home to her mother’s. “Now and then I hanker for the old days when you an’ me used to read poetry.” Nathan went. No place other than Caleb’s room in the hotel could have been more appropriate or consoling for him at the moment. Gridley loosened his vest and clothes, a process he designated as “easin’ up for comfort”, and the queer pair sat down together, it being several moments before either broke the silence. Finally the old man, with his massive chin thrust deep in his shirt, one big leg thrown over the other and a slipper sole swinging, cleared his throat. With his eyes averted, he declared huskily: “Bub, you an’ me always liked poetry and read a heap o’ the stuff, ain’t we? And some of it was mighty good, specially Tennyson. But do you know, I made a discovery t’other day. I come across a copy o’ the Bible down to Bosting where the Psalms was all laid out, poetry-fashion. I never seen ’em that way before and it struck me they was the best sort o’ poetry I’d ever stumbled over. Specially the Twenty-third Psalm. Ever read the Twenty-third Psalm like verses o’ poetry, bub?” “I don’t know that I have, Mr. Gridley.” “Wonder if they gotta Bible here? I’ll show ye!” There was a Gideon Bible in one of the dresser drawers. And the tanner resumed his seat. Then whether by design or no—but I rather suspect it was by design—old “God-Damning” Gridley, as some folk called him, tried to heal the wound in the boy’s spirit by the beautiful cadences of that masterpiece of all poems: “The Lord is my shepherd,” he began, “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me, ... Thy rod and Thy staff—they comfort me.” Nathan said afterward it would be impossible to repeat the infinite pathos and tenderness in the hard-boiled old business man’s voice as he intoned the lines, his dangling slipper swinging time with the rhythm. “Bub,” said the old man finally, “I lost a boy when I was ’bout your age. Nobody in Paris ever knew about it. It was them lines helped me most of all. Great stuff—poetry!” II Through Caleb’s maneuvering it was, some time later, that Nathan was called one afternoon into Ted Thorne’s offices at the knitting mill.