This was some years before the rubber-tired automobile had invaded the flint hills of this section and thirty miles meant hours of toilsome travel.  Thus it was necessary that Jake take along a camping outfit and remain all summer.  This he decided to do.  Many and long were the hours that Jake spent in this lonely mountain retreat.  For miles around there was little sign of human activity.  No sound of woodman’s ax was heard.  The stillness of the long summer afternoons was broken only by the tinkling of the bells on the hillsides.  A lone log cabin lifted its mud-chinked walls from the brow of a hill from under which flowed a babbling stream of clear water.  In the attic of this lone cabin Jake Benton was regularly lulled to sleep by the evening lullabies of the katydids as they sang in the tops of the postoak trees with which the cabin was surrounded.

One August afternoon when Jake returned from his regular roundup of the cattle, he found, seated on a log near the spring, two men.  At the sight of the men Jake’s heart leaped into his mouth.  For two months he had not laid his eyes on a human form.  He had heard no human voice save his own.  Needless to say, he was as much pleased as surprised to find companions in his lonely abode.  Jake neared the log where the men sat.  One of them arose and advanced toward him.  “I trust,” he remarked, “that you will not think we are trespassing on your premises.  We have been traveling all day; our horses were tired and we were thirsty, and the spring invited us to be refreshed.”  For a moment Jake stood speechless, and then in almost forgotten terms he made his unexpected visitors feel welcome.

The three men conversed for some time, and in the course of the conversation Jake explained to them the reason for his lonely life and the circumstances that caused him to be thus engaged.  The strangers explained that they were driving across the State, and that, in order to make their journey fifty miles shorter, they had been instructed to take this untraveled road through this expanse of wooded hills.

“I should think,” remarked one of the men, “that this would be a splendid place to meditate on the goodness of God.  Loneliness often begets meditation, and God loves to be the companion of the companionless.  Then, too, there is all this nature with which you are surrounded.  These flowers and trees and birds all speak of the goodness of God.  I was remarking to my fellow traveler of how these beautiful scenes remind us of God’s goodness.  Pardon a frank question, but may I ask, Are you saved?”

This was all new language to Jake and he scarcely knew how to answer this rather blunt question.  “Wu-wu-well, ye-yes,” he answered.  “I try to be a Christian.  I belong to the church and have belonged for twenty-seven years and accordin’ to the preachin’ we have I think I’ll get to heaven.  I s’pose you fellers must be preachers.”