He rushed past me into the hut, got to the table and exclaimed:  “Gee whiz! der ain’t a ——­ scrap left!”

“Look here, Franz,” I said, “I want to know what you’ve been up to?”

“Ye do, hey?  Ye look skeered, too, don’t yer—­hey?”

“Never mind how I look; tell me at once what you’ve been up to!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed, “d’ye tink I kilt some ol’ sucker for ’is money—­hey?  Ha, ha!  Well, I hain’t, see?  I’ve bin skinnin’ a dead hoss an brot ye d’ skin for a birfday present, see?”

The skin was lying in a bloody heap outside the back door.  I arranged
“Franz” for dinner and the party was complete.

I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o’clock they went home.  The moment the front door was opened, about forty children—­each with a lighted candle in hand—­sang a verse of my favourite hymn:  “Lead, Kindly Light.”  They knew but one verse, but that they sang twice.  It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.

After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing me all sorts of things.  Two nights afterward I had a different kind of a party.  A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about midnight.  Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots in a neighbour’s garden.  I went to the high board fence and saw one of my neighbours—­a German—­emptying a revolver at his wife who was dodging behind a tree.

My first impulse was to jump the fence and save the woman but the man being evidently half-drunk might have turned and poured into me what was intended for his wife; and the first law of nature was sufficiently developed in me to let her have what belonged to her!  I tried to speak but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.  I was positively scared.

The old fellow walked up to the tree, letting out as he walked a volley of oaths.  I recovered my equilibrium, sprang over the fence, crept up behind and jumped on him, knocking him down and instantly disarming him.

I went inside with them and sat between them until they seemed to have forgotten what had happened.  Then I put them to bed, put the light out and went home.  I examined the revolver and found it empty.  Next morning I went back and told the old man that I would volunteer to give him some lessons in target practice; and that the reason I knocked him down was because he was such a poor shot.  This old couple became my staunchest supporters.

I interested the students of Tabor College in the people of that out-of-the-way community, and before I built the Chapel of the Carpenter which still stands there I organized a college settlement which was manned by students.