One of the "workers" attached to the place--a bland, prosperous man, with a pleasant smile--approached Mary and shook her hand as if he were an old acquaintance. He had fat red cheeks, firm teeth, and kindly eyes. "I'm glad to see you, sister," he said. "Are you saved?" Mary's childhood had heard some of the phraseology of evangelicalism. She understood, but she had come to receive worldly, not spiritual, warmth. "No," she said, "I ain't." The "worker," however, was accustomed to that reply. He patted her shoulder. "Don't you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?" he asked. "Well," said Mary, "I never thought much about Him." She looked at the floor. She was cold and hungry and afraid. "Then," responded the man, with genuine earnestness, "you ought to begin to think. No man knoweth the hour of His comin'. He is ready with the Free Gift. Don't you want to come to Him?" Mary's life had been one in which there had been small time for the cultivation of religious emotion, and no time at all for the cultivation of religious thought. At her home she had learned as much by rote as she had had to learn, but what she got she held only as so many tasks performed. The words were lessons to be mastered; if they had any relation to facts, those facts were things not to be faced until an age of discretion, and, pending the arrival of that age, the lessons had been stored away with a bland, childish practicality. What followed later had driven out all that preceded it. The shock of her capture; the wild, new order of existence; the endeavor to escape; the battle of service among new conditions; and, at last, the dulling of all the finer sensibilities and the final fight for a mere chance to continue alive--these were circumstances neither propitious to theology nor favorable to faith. She glanced at the mission-worker, and then glanced away. "I dunno," she said. "I guess I ain't the kind of woman religion can do much for." "Don't say that," protested the man. His eyes shone with zeal and his voice was tender. "His grace is free for all who come. His mercy is from everlastin' to everlastin'. I've been a sinner myself"--the speaker's voice swelled with a real pride--"a terrible sinner, an' I know what I say, praise the Lord. The meaner an' viler we are, the more Jesus needs us. Just open your heart. Just accept Him, an' you'll never know no more trouble in this world nor the next." "Would I get a job?" asked Mary. The man shook his head, sadly. "That ain't no way to think about salvation," he declared. "What's freely given ought to be freely received. Now is the appointed time." "But I gotta make a livin'." "I know it, I know it. We've all got to do that, but ain't it better to make one an' be saved than to make one an' be sent to hell-fire?" She assented. "Only," she added, "I don't want to starve, even if I am saved." It was his old difficulty.