Lester Knapp smiled again, his slow, whimsical smile which Harvey Bronson especially detested and feared. Then he stopped thinking about his old associate at the office. The lines which had come into his mind brought with them all the world to which they belonged, the strong-hearted, simple, passionate world of the old cobbler-pilgrim. Where were those lines? Towards the end of the book, wasn’t it, just below that quaint marginal note of _Men thrive in the Valley of Humiliation_. It was where the pilgrims were going--yes, now he remembered the very words with that exactitude of memory which had been such a golden thing in his life, “They were going along talking and espied a boy feeding his father’s sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a fresh, well-favored countenance; and as he sat by himself he sang. ‘Hark!’ said Mr. Greatheart, ‘to what the shepherd’s boy saith.’ So they harkened.” Lester Knapp, peeling his potatoes, harkened with them as he said aloud again, “He that is down need fear no fall, He that is low no pride. He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have Little be it or much....” He perceived that Stephen had stopped playing and was looking at him steadily as he said the words aloud. With a flourish of his paring knife he went on, smiling at the little boy, “Then said the guide, ‘Do you hear him? I will dare to say that this boy lives a merrier life and wears more of that herb called heart’s ease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet!’ “Silk and velvet!” he said with a humorous scorn, lifting a fold of his gingham apron. “Is it a ’tory?” asked Stephen, coming up beside his father’s chair. “You bet your life it is a story, a crackajack of a story.” “Tell it to me,” said Stephen. He leaned both elbows on the arm of the chair, put his round chin in his hands, tipped his head to one side and turned his shining dark eyes up towards his father’s face. A phrase came to Lester’s mind, the description of the day when Bunyan had first seen the great invisible world henceforth to be his heart’s home, and how it had begun by his seeing in one of the streets of Bedford, “three or four poor people sitting at a door in the sun talking of the things of God.” He and Stephen were poor people too, sitting in the sun--such golden sunshine as came through the window into the quiet room and fell on the head of his little boy. “Well, Stephen, once upon a time there was a man,” he began, deciding that the rolling off of the burden and the fight with Apollyon were most in Stephen’s line. He wondered if he could find in the old story stuff to interest a modern little boy, and in a moment was carried away by it. What a tale it was! How full of pith and meat and savor!