“Long ago,” said Father Charles, “I knew a young man and a young woman who were to be married.  The man went West to win a fortune.  Thus fate separated them, and in the lapse of a year such terrible misfortune came to the girl’s parents that she was forced into a marriage with wealth—­a barter of her white body for an old man’s gold.  When the young man returned from the West he found his sweetheart married, and hell upon earth was their lot.  But hope lingers in your hearts.  He waited four years; and then, discouraged, he married another woman.  Gentlemen, three days after the wedding his old sweetheart’s husband died, and she was released from bondage.  Was not that the hand of the Supreme Arbiter?  If he had waited but three days more, the old happiness might have lived.

“But wait!  One month after that day the young man was arrested, taken to a Western State, tried for murder, and hanged.  Do you see the point?  In three days more the girl who had sold herself into slavery for the salvation of those she loved would have been released from her bondage only to marry a murderer!”

There was silence, in which all five listened to that wild moaning of the storm.  There seemed to be something in it now—­something more than the inarticulate sound of wind and trees.  Forsythe scratched a match and relighted his cigar.

“I never thought of such things in just that light,” he said.

“Listen to the wind,” said the little priest.  “Hear the pine-trees shriek out there!  It recalls to me a night of years and years ago—­a night like this, when the storm moaned and twisted about my little cabin, and when the Supreme Arbiter sent me my first penitent.  Gentlemen, it is something which will bring you nearer to an understanding of the voice and the hand of God.  It is a sermon on the mighty significance of little things, this story of my first penitent.  If you wish, I will tell it to you.”

“Go on,” said Forsythe.

The traveling men drew nearer.

“It was a night like this,” repeated Father Charles, “and it was in a great wilderness like this, only miles and miles away.  I had been sent to establish a mission; and in my cabin, that wild night, alone and with the storm shrieking about me, I was busy at work sketching out my plans.  After a time I grew nervous.  I did not smoke then, and so I had nothing to comfort me but my thoughts; and, in spite of my efforts to make them otherwise, they were cheerless enough.  The forest grew to my door.  In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the pine-trees over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning trees would reach down and sweep across my cabin roof with a sound that made me shudder and fear.  This wilderness fear is an oppressive and terrible thing when you are alone at night, and the world is twisting and tearing itself outside.  I have heard the pine-trees shriek like dying women, I have heard them wailing like lost children, I have heard them sobbing and moaning like human souls writhing in agony—­”