"Why this about the youngster, and his fishes and bread, and such lots of folks eating 'em, and more left when they got done than there was when they begun. Likely story, ain't it?" Dora's eyes were large and grave. "Why, Tode, it's in the Bible," she said, reverently. Tode knew nothing about reverence, and next to nothing about the Bible. "What of that?" he said, defiantly. "It's queer stuff all the same; and what did that old man mean about his friend, and taking care of folks, everybody, good or bad, and feeding 'em, and all that?" "It's about Jesus, Tode. Don't you know; he died, you see, for us, and if we love him he'll take care of us, and take us to heaven. Sometimes do you think that you'll belong to him, Tode? I do once in a while." "I don't know anything what you're talking about," was Tode's answer, more truthful than grammatical. "Why, give your heart to him, you know, and love him, and pray, and all that. But, Tode, won't you run around to Martyn's and order the carriage for us? John was to wait there until we came, and I guess he'll think we are never coming." Mrs. Hastings repeated the direction, and Tode vanished, brushing by in his exit the very man who had prayed at his dying mother's bedside years before, and who had intended to keep an eye on him. As he slid along the icy pavements the boy ruminated on what he had heard, and especially on that last explanation, "Why, give your heart to him, you know, and love him, and pray, and all that." To whom, and how, and where, and when? What a perfectly bewildering confusion it all was to Tode. "I'll be hanged if I can make head or tail to any of it," he said aloud. Then he whistled, but after a moment his whistle broke off into a great heavy sigh. Someway there was in Tode's heart a dull ache, a longing aroused that night, and which nothing but the All-seeing, All-pitying Love could ever soothe. "There were fourteen people in prayer-meeting," the Rev. John informed his wife. "The two deacons of whom I spoke, and several other good men. I couldn't make use of my lecture at all, for there were none present but professing Christians, save and except Mrs. Pliny Hastings, who apologized for _intruding_!" And then the husband and wife laughed, a half-amused, half-sorrowful laugh. After a moment Mr. Birge added: "There _was_ a rather rough-looking boy there; strayed in from the storm, I presume. I meant to speak with him, but Mrs. Hastings annoyed me so much that it escaped my mind until he brushed past me and vanished." CHAPTER IX. "TAKE IT AWAY!" Tode rang the bell at Mr. Hastings', and waited in some anxiety as to whether he should get a glimpse of Miss Dora. He had some momentous questions to ask her. Fortune, or, in other words, Providence, favored him. While he waited for orders, Dora danced down the hall with a message. "Tode, papa says you are to come in the dining-room and wait; he wants to send a note by you."