“Look at this young J.W. here, will you,” he said to the father and mother, for once letting himself go, “with a name he’s proud of, and a home life that many a Fifth Avenue and Lake Shore Drive family would be glad to pay a million for, if such goods were on sale in the stores.  I’m going to tell him something he already knows.  Young man,” and there was a gleam in the pastor’s eye that was not all to the credit of the work he was praising, “you owe a big debt to the Sunday school.  I’m not jealous for the church, or for any other part of it, but by your own admission the Sunday school has had a lot to do with your education.  Very well; remember it is a part of what Phil said, and what you are because of the Sunday school you have become by the goodness of Christian people.  I don’t think you’ll forget it, seeing that you have two of that sort of people in your own home all the time.”

And then, with a fine naturalness the little group knelt by the chairs, and two of the four, he who was pastor of the whole flock and he who with simple dignity was priest in his own household, gave thanks to God for the manifold goodness of Christian people, of which they were all partakers every day.

As he went home, Walter Drury thought of the long days that stretched out ahead before he could see the outcomes of the great Experiment, but this night had seen a good night’s work done in the laboratory, and he was content.

One tale of the past had been much in J.W.’s thought that night, but nothing on earth could have induced him to talk about it, especially since the happenings at the Institute.  Only one other person knew all of its inwardness, though the preacher guessed most of the secret pretty shrewdly, and everybody was familiar with its outcome.

It was the story of Marty Shenk’s conversion.

These two had been David and Jonathan from their little boy days, no less friends because they were so unlike; Marty, a quiet, brooding, knowledge-hungry youngster, and J.W. matter-of-fact, taking things as they came and asking few questions, but always the leader in games and mischief; each the other’s champion against all comers.

Marty’s father, tenant-farmer on the Farwell farm, was steady enough and dependable, but never one to get ahead much.  Before the Farwells moved to town he had rarely stayed on the same farm more than a year or two, but, as he said, “J.W.  Farwell was different, and anybody who wanted to be decent could get along with him.”  So, for many Saturdays and vacations of boyhood years J.W. and Marty had roamed the countryside, and were letter-perfect in their boy-knowledge of the old farm.

Marty came in to high school from the farm, and often he stayed with J.W. over the weekend.  His school work was uneven—­ahead in mathematics, and the sciences, and something below the average in other studies.  That, however, has no place in this story.

Of course he and J.W. were thick as thieves.  Except when class work made temporary separations necessary, they lived the high-school life together.  That meant also, for these two, the social life of the church, which occasionally paid special attention to the students.