It was a haggard, red-eyed young fellow who crept down the stairs after dusk, stole out to the stable, and saddled Bess. All night he rode up and down the mountain roads. He hated the ground Miss Bright had walked over, hated the house she had lived in, hated the school, vowed he'd never enter it again, hated himself. She was gone, Jane was gone--long since he had let Dan have her to himself--his church was gone, all his peace of soul, all his religion, was gone. He would ride up on Lookout Point and plunge over into the Gulch to death and eternity, he and Bess together. Who cared? They were all alike--all were heartless. Poor boy! he was learning a lesson that many a one has learned--a bitter lesson--and all the forces of evil seemed to fight for his soul that dark night as he climbed Lookout Point on Bess. He had reached the top when the moon came up over El Capitan and drove away the gloom, lighting up the white-topped peaks and the dark, black ravine. Somehow, he thought of his mother. There had been one good woman in the world, after all. He hesitated, then turned slowly down the hill and toward home. CHAPTER XIV. YANKEE SAM. It was a wild March night when Job Malden found his way back to God. No one could ever forget that night. The storm tore over the mountains till the great forests fairly creaked and groaned beneath the mad sweep of the wind. At dusk that afternoon a rap startled Job as he sat by the fire watching the logs crackle and thinking of by-gone days, while the rain poured without. He opened the door, and saw Mike Hennessy, dripping wet and with cap in hand. "Shure, Mr. Job, the top of the evenin' to yez. But Mr. Schwarzwalder, the hotel keeper at the town, wants ye, he says, to bring the Holy Book;" at which Mike reverently crossed himself. "A man is dyin' and wants yez;" and the good-natured Irishman was gone in an instant, leaving Job in blank amazement. Ride that awful night to Gold City--take the Bible--man dying. What could it mean? But the lad's better nature conquered, and, the Bible snug in his pocket, he and Bess were soon daring the storm, bound for Gold City. It was a wild night. Wet to the skin, Job rode up to the Palace Hotel, late, very late, where he found a group of solemn-faced men waiting for him. "Change your clothes, Job," said the hotel-keeper; "here's a dry suit. Hurry now! Yankee Sam is dying upstairs, and he won't have no one but you; says you're his preacher, and he wants to hear you read out of some book." [Illustration: "Listen, Job; I want to tell you."] Job grew white. Yankee Sam dying, and he to hear his last confession, he the priest to shrive him, he the preacher to console him! The boy lifted up his first true prayer for months, and followed the man upstairs to a low garret room, where the door closed behind him and left him alone with a weak old man lying on a low bed, his eyes shining in the dim candle-light with an unnatural glare.