ask him concerning their faith.  He was one of the saddest man I ever saw and it made my heart ache to see him.  I knew so well what it was to have “a heart bowed down with grief and woe,” and I saw in this poor creature desolation.  I asked him if he should die, what sin he would have to repent of.  He said:  “I may have sinned in trying to fix up a home for poor priests who come into disfavor with the bishops.”  His words were:  “There is no one so helpless as a catholic priest sent adrift.  A boy ten years old knows as well how to make a living for himself.  I have been from a boy, in a Jesuit College, St. John’s, near New York.  You do not know the sorrows of a catholic priest.  Few know that so many priests are dying from heart disease.  I am trying to get to San Antonio, for a priest there may help me some.”  He stayed at the hotel five days.  One evening he came in the parlor where there was quite a company, and I was astonished to see him so changed.  He was no longer the shrinking, crest-fallen man, but he seemed bright and joined in conversation; sang and played on the piano.  I soon found out he had been drinking.  I wanted to shield him from the scandal and made an excuse to call him from the room, and told him what I did this for.  Next morning he came down as “sad as night”.  I said:  “Are you going to leave?” “Yes,” he replied.  I wrote a note to the conductor, whom I knew well; told him the condition of this poor man; told him to pass him to San Antonio.  I had just three dollars, this I gave to him.  Oh, the gratitude in the face of this poor man.  He raised his hands and asked “Christ, and his mother, the holy martyrs, and the angels to bless me.”

In a few days I heard of a priest from Cleveland, Ohio, who through gambling and drinking, had spent thirty thousand dollars of the church’s money and he was sent adrift.  The name of this priest was John Kelly and on our hotel register the name of this priest was written “John Kelly.”

CHAPTER VI.

Why my name is not on A church book, and why the ministers withdrew
from me.—­Closing the dives of medicine Lodge.—­Cora Bennett,
and why she killed Billy Morris in A dive in Kiowa.—­Her
resurrection.—­Raiding A joint drugstore.

I soon saw that I was not popular with the church at Medicine Lodge.  I testified to having received the “baptism of the Holy Ghost,” and the minister, Mr. Nicholson, took occasion to say that I was not sound in the faith.  This church at this time had a board of deacons and elders, who I knew to be unworthy, some of them addicted to intoxicating drinks and other flagrant sins.  There was one man whose sincerity I never questioned, Mr. Smith, who had a good report from those in and out of the church.