The man seemed too bewildered to answer.  Philip leaned over and put one arm about him to help him rise.  He struggled to his feet, and almost instantly sat down on the curb at the side of the road, holding his head between his hands.  For a moment Philip hesitated.  Then he sat down beside him, and after finding out that he was not seriously hurt, succeeded in drawing him into a conversation which grew more and more remarkable as it went on.  As he thought back upon it afterward, Philip was unable to account exactly for the way in which the confidence between him and his assailant had been brought about.  The incident and all that flowed out of it had such a bearing on the crucifixion that it belongs to the whole story.

“Then you say,” went on Philip after they had been talking brief in question and answer for a few minutes, “you say that you meant to rob me, taking me for another man?”

“Yes, I thought you was the mill-man—­what is his name?—­Winter.”

“Why did you want to rob him?”

The man looked up and said hoarsely, almost savagely, “Because he has money and I was hungry.”

“How long have you been hungry?”

“I have not had anything to eat for almost three days.”

“There is food to be had at the Poor Commissioners.  Did you know that fact?”

The man did not answer, and Philip asked him again.  The reply came in a tone of bitter emphasis that made the minister start: 

“Yes, I knew it!  I would strave[sic] before I would go to the Poor Commissioners for food.”

“Or steal?” asked Philip, gently.

“Yes, or steal.  Wouldn’t you?”

Philip stared out into the darkness of the court and answered honestly:  “I don’t know.”

There was a short pause.  Then he asked: 

“Can’t you get work?”

It was a hopeless question to put to a man in a town of over two thousand idle men.  The answer was what he knew it would be: 

“Work!  Can I pick up a bushel of gold in the street out there?  Can a man get work where there ain’t any?”

“What have you been doing?”

“I was fireman in the Lake Mills.  Good job.  Lost it when they closed down last winter.”

“What have you been doing since?”

“Anything I could get.”

“Are you a married man?”

The question affected the other strangely.  He trembled all over, put his head between his knees, and out of his heart’s anguish flowed the words, “I had a wife.  She’s dead—­of consumption.  I had a little girl.  She’s dead, too.  Thank God!” exclaimed the man, with a change from a sob to a curse.  “Thank God!—­and curses on all rich men who had it in their power to prevent the hell on earth for other people, and which they will feel for themselves in the other world!”

Philip did not say anything for some time.  What could any man say to another at once under such circumstances?  Finally he said: