“How am I going to get well and strong with you hounding me to death? I never seen such a man to take up with an idea and stick to it against all reason. It just seems as if you'd set to work to break my spirit,” plaintively. Roger Oakley frowned at him in silence for a moment, then he said: “I thought we'd talked all this over, Jeffy.” “I just wanted to encourage you. I was mighty thankful to have you take hold. I hadn't been reformed for over a year. It about seemed to me that everybody had forgotten I needed to be reformed, and I was willing to give you a chance. No one can't ever say I ain't stood ready to do that much.” “But, my poor Jeffy, you will have to do more than that.” “Blamed if it don't seem to me as if you was expecting me to do it all!” The old convict drew up a chair to the bedside and sat down. “I thought you told me you wanted to be a man and to be respected?” said this philanthropist, with evident displeasure. Jeffy choked down a sob and sat up again. He gestured freely with his arms in expostulation. “I was drunk when I said that. Yes, sir, I was as full as I could stick. Now I'm sober, I know rotten well what I want.” “What do you want, Jeffy?” “Well, I want a lot of things.” “Well, what, for instance?” “Well, sir, it ain't no prayers, and it ain't no Bible talks, and it ain't no lousy work. It's coming warm weather. I want to lay up along the crick-bank in the sun and do nothing--what I always done. I've had a durned hard winter, and I been a-living for the spring.” A look of the keenest disappointment clouded Roger Oakley's face as Jeffy voiced his ignoble ambitions. His resentment gave way to sorrow. He murmured a prayer that he might be granted strength and patience for his task, and as he prayed with half-closed eyes, the outcast plugged his ears with his fingers. He was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer, and he felt he couldn't afford to take any chances. Roger Oakley turned to him with greater gentleness of manner than he had yet shown. “Don't you want the love and confidence of your neighbors, Jeffy?” he asked, pityingly. “I ain't got no neighbors, except the bums who sleep along of me at the gas-house winter nights. I always feel this way when I come off a spree; first it seems as if I'd be willing never to touch another drop of licker as long as I lived. I just lose interest in everything, and I don't care a durn what happens to me. Why, I've joined the Church lots of times when I felt that way, but as soon as I begin to get well it's different. I am getting well now, and what I told you don't count any more. I got my own way of living.” “But what a way!” sadly.