“My friend,” gasped Sam, dropping his own load and panting from his exertion, “I guess—­you’ve made a—­mistake.  I ain’t ordered a load of wood from nobody.  Guess you’ve come to the wrong house.”

“Guess not,” replied the man, who was the farmer that had freed his mind at the railway station during the afternoon.

“This is Sam Kimper’s,” explained the cobbler.

“Just where I was told to come,” said the farmer, tossing out the last sticks and stretching his arms to rest upon them.

“Who was it told you to bring it?” asked the resident.

The farmer stooped and took a large package from the front of the wagon and threw it on the ground; then he threw another.

“Won’t you tell me who sent it?” Sam asked again.

The farmer turned his head and shouted,—­

“God Almighty, if you must know; and He told me to bring that bag of flour and shoulder of bacon, too.”

Then the farmer drove off, at a gait quite unusual in farm-teams.

The cobbler burst into tears and fell upon his knees.  When he arose he looked in the direction from which came the rattle of the retreating wheels, and said to himself,—­

“I wonder if that man was converted in the penitentiary?”

The story, when Sam told it in the house, amazed the family, though little Mary giggled long on hearing the name of the supposed giver.  No sooner was supper ended than the child slipped out of the house and hurried to the hotel to tell her sister Jane all about it.  Within half an hour the story had passed, through the usual channels, to all lounging-places that were open, and at one of them—­the post-office—­it was heard by Deacon Quickset.  It troubled the good man a great deal, and he said,—­

“There’s no knowing how much harm’ll be done the fellow by that speech.  If he thinks the Lord is going to take care of him in such unexpected ways, he’ll go to loafing and then get back into his old ways.”

“Didn’t the Lord ever help you in any unexpected way, deacon?” asked Judge Prency, who nearly every evening spent a few moments in the post-office lobby.

“Why, yes,—­of course; but, judge, Sam and I aren’t exactly the same kind of men, I think you’ll allow.”

“Quite right,” said the judge.  “You’re a man of sense and character.  But when Jesus was on earth did He give much attention to men of your general character and standing?  According to my memory of the record,—­and I’ve re-read it several times since Sam Kimper’s return,—­He confined His attentions quite closely to the poor and wretched, apparently to the helpless, worthless class to whom the Kimper family would have belonged had it lived at that time.  ’They that are whole need no physician,’—­you remember?—­’but they that are sick.’”

“According to the way you seem to be thinking, Judge Prency,” said the deacon, coldly, “them that’s most deserving are to be passed by for them that’s most shiftless.”