Then, after viewing the dead woman and making additional comments, he was off, as placid as though nothing had occurred.

I happened to hear of this some time after, and one day, while sitting with him on his front porch, said, “Mr. White, do you really believe that the Lord directly answered your prayer in that instance?”

“Answered!” he almost shouted defiantly and yet with a kind of human tenderness that one could never mistake.  “Of course He answered!  Why wouldn’t He—­a faithful old servant like that?  To be sure, He answered.”

“Might it not have been merely the change of atmosphere which your voice and strength introduced?  The quality of your own thoughts goes for something in such matters.  Mind acts on mind.”

“Certainly,” he said, in a manner as agreeable as if it had always been a doctrine with him.  “I know that.  But, after all, what is that—­my mind, your mind, the sound of voices?  It’s all the Lord anyhow, whatever you think.”

How could one gainsay such a religionist as that?

The poor, the blind, the insane, and sufferers of all sorts, as I have said before, were always objects of his keenest sympathies.  Evidence of it flashed out at the most unexpected moments—­loud, rough exclamations, which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to defy translation.  Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into the blue.  It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so save the county the expense of caring for him.  The old man broke a sentence short in order to point and shake his head emotionally.

“Look at that,” he said to me, with a pathetic sweep of the arm, “now just look at that!  There’s a poor, demented soul, with no one to look after him.  His brother is a hard-working saddler.  His sister is dead.  No money to speak of, any of them.”  He paused a moment, and then added, “I don’t know what we’re to do in such cases.  The state and the county don’t always do their duty.  Most people here are too poor to help, there are so many to be taken care of.  It seems almost at times as if you can’t do anything but leave them to the mercy of God, and yet you can’t do that either, quite,” and he once more shook his head sadly.

I was for denouncing the county, but he explained very charitably that it was already very heavily taxed by such cases.  He did not seem to know exactly what should be done at the time, but he was very sorry, very, and for the time being the warm argument in which he had been indulging was completely forgotten.  Now he lapsed into silence and all communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair and thought.