Then lo! "a horror of great darkness" came
Upon him, as he heard a voice exclaim:

66 Depart from me! you cannot enter here!
I never knew you, for indeed, howe'er

You may have wrought on earth, the sad, sad fact
Remains, that life's sublimest, worthiest act-
The deacon woke to find it all a dream

Just as the minister announced his theme:

My text," said he, "doth comfort only such

As practise charity; for inasmuch

As ye have done it to the least of these

My little ones,' saith he who holds the keys
Of heaven, 'ye have done it unto me,'
And I will give you immortality."

Straightway the deacon left his cushioned pew,
And from the church in sudden haste withdrew,

And up the highway ran, on love's swift feet,
To overtake the child of woe, and greet
Him as the worthy representative

Of Christ the Lord and to him freely give
All needful good, that thus he might atone
For the neglect which he before had shown.
Thus journeying God directed all his way,
O'er hill and dale, to where the outcast lay
Beside the road bemoaning his sad fate.
And then the deacon said, "My child, 'tis late;
Make haste and journey with me to my home;
To guide you thither, I myself have come;
And you shall have the food you asked in vain,
For God himself hath made my duty plain;
If he demand it, all I have is thine;

Shrink not, but trust me; place thy hand in mine."
And as they journeyed toward the deacon's home,
The child related how he came to roam,
Until the listening deacon understood
The touching story of his orphanhood.
Then, finding in the little waif a gem
Worthy to deck the Saviour's diadem,
He drew him to his loving breast, and said,
"My child, you shall by me be clothed and fed;
Nor shall you go from hence again to roam
While God in love provides for us a home."
And as the weeks and months roll on apace,
The deacon held the lad in love's embrace ;

And being childless did on him confer
The boon of sonship.

Thus the almoner

Of God's great bounty to the destitute
The deacon came to be; and as the fruit
Of having learned to keep the golden rule
His charity became all-bountiful;

And from thenceforth he lived to benefit
Mankind; and when in life's great book were writ
Their names who heeded charity's request,

Lo! Deacon Roland's "name led all the rest."

HOW THE CHURCH WAS BUILT AT KEHOE'S BAR.*-JOHN BENNETT.

There were eight hundred men at Kehoe's Bar-and such men-witk cold, unrecking eyes; brown, tough, creased and year-singed faces, hard as stone through their matted beards, and harder still without those tangled screens, in many cases grown to shield from eyes that never came, but which dare not be met.

There were two hundred women at Kehoe's Bar--and such women!-of them the least said, soonest forgiven.

In usual communities the better half looks askance at the worse, fears, shudders and condemns. But things were different at Kehoe's. The rough, bluff and tough little. Sodom never had a better half, but brawled and cursed within itself, and grubbed and fought the gritty sands without, year after year, in all the pristine wickedness of its bachelorhood of vice.

There was no church at Kehoe's Bar. There was no meeting-house but "Pursell's Chapel"-mining-town sarcasm, that--Pursell's, where none but heathen gods might claim their devotees,-drunken Bacchus, tinseled Venus, and a blear-eyed God of war,--to end the drunken orgies of the waning night and add one more sunken spot to the straggling row on the hill beyond the bar. No, there was no church at Kehoe's.

*From "The Home Magazine," by permission of the Publishers.

A tall, spare man, with deeply earnest eyes and a long black coat had once sternly denounced the sins of the Kehoites, right under their sharp or ruby noses, as the case might be, and in their wolfish faces had warned the yelling citizens of the wrath to come, and to flee while yet there was time.

curses.

Punishment condign had no fears for them. They flouted him and scouted him. They laughed the grayhaired man to scorn, and drove him from the town with The "Vigilance Committee" cut off the tails of his long black coat, daubed him with mud, and warned him with worse. Bewildered and bruised, he went away. Bacchus, Venus and Mars resumed their mutual sway, and Kehoe's was its straggling, wolfish self once more.

Yet here again "the diggins" were in an uproar and dumfounded with sheer amaze. Another "gospel sharp" had dared show himself at Kehoe's!

And, what was more and "tarnally wuss," between the pines, by Pursell's, flapped and tautened a broad, white sheet announcing in bold capitals a religious service there that evening.

They all came down to see the fun,-tall, stumpy, fat and hungry; grim in their likeness to the wilderness from which they tore their livelihood; fearless and contemptuous alike of God, or man, or devil; a swearing, roaring mob, stained with clay, tobacco, rum, and sin, the last thicker and more palpable than all the rest.

Across the stumps was nailed a plank, and upon this whip-sawed platform before them, stood the "gospel sharp," young, slender, steady-eyed, his yellow hair thrown carelessly back; a short blue coat and a flannel shirt, a belt and faded trousers. A disapproving growl showed how unwillingly the crowd were balked of their expected ridicule of dingy sacerdotal sable and long cloth tails.

There was a moment or so of anticipatory calm. The frank blue eyes of the young missionary gauged the homogeneously motley crowd, turned upon the hanging sign and read, in silent emphasis of its declaration,

then turned calmly to the elbowing crowd. A pair of hands rested carelessly upon flexible hips. The silence was complete. He spoke, low but firmly:

Out of it all

"I have come to build a church at Kehoe's Bar!" No minstrel premier ever more convulsed an appreciative audience with a comic yarn. Such screams of laughter and hoarse whoops of mirth. Of all ridiculous things they had dreamed, this was the richest. A church at Kehoe's! Kehoe's children roared amain. arose a clear tenor voice. With unflinching gaze and earnest smile, the young minister was singing, singing until the wild, derisive howl died down through exhaustion and they listened again. This was a novelty. Sweet and strong rang out the young, clear voice. The ursine crowd almost forgot they came to revile, in the unexpected.

"Sweet By-and-by" was a new song to them, and a good voice a precious rarity in their bacchanals; bu "sweet" and "beautiful" were too effeminate words for the crude vocabulary of Kehoe's Bar. They struck no sympathetic chord. The "by-and-by" had no sweets for those warped natures--their sieved, cradled, greed-washed blood-splashed shores were all but "beautiful," and the murmur of adverse intent bubbled up anew. The singer paused a moment, irresolute, his eyes wandering above the passion-tossed human waves before and around him, with their ironical murmurs, aggressive front and nervous movement. He had thought to speak, but words failed him, now, at his need. Stretching out his hands almost appealingly, the silence became as that before a storm. He gazed out over the muddy stream, the last radiance of the dying day lighting his pleading face and golden hair, and sung with a thrill of yearning that wondrous prayer-song:

"Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly,

While the nearer waters roll,

While the tempest still is nigh."

There was a sharp agonized cry in the crowd-a struggle-a fight? No. An herculean gold-washer, wild and

unkempt, wrenched his way through the swaying mob, and, leaping to the plank, almost savagely clutched the singer by the shoulders.

"Them's the words-sing them there agin-'while them nearer waters rolls'-sing 'em agin!"

With a startled fervor and a deeper tremor of feeling that rung of victory, out quivered the pleading words:

"Jesus lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly,

While the nearer waters roll-"

"Them's it! Stop right where ye is, parson-'while them nearer waters rolls!'-I've got suthin' ter say. Boys, ye all knowed Dick Norcott?" A strange new light was in this miner's wolfish eyes. A stir breathed assent from the crowd,-breathless, voiceless, to hear what all this meant. For well they knew Dick Norcott—or had known-young, quiet and strange when he came among them, his life-hope killed by a mistake that was not a crime. Abused, brow-beaten, bullied, cursed and threatened daily, uncomplainingly and ever unflinchingly he had worked steadily at his claim, day in, day out, while the year ran, under the bitter stigma of cowardice, for with one horrible memory ground into his soul, he refused for all to fight and became the butt of the brawling camp. But when-there was more than one sudden gulp among those bronzed men-and "big Tom" Rickett spoke again:

"Parson, we don't want no cantin', hippercritical whang-doodle in ourn. We don't want no cryin' an' groanin' over our oneryness. We don't want no brimstun an' sulphire shuck onter us. We aint the kind of ducks that kin be skeered inter heaven. When the days comes up, it's us an' the rocks, an' the san', an' work, work, work. When the nights comes down acrost the divide, it's us an' the dark, to be tough, an' kill time, an' sleep, ontil the days comes up agin, an' then back to the rocks, an' the san', an' work, work, work. We kin do all that. We has done it, year 'n year. That's us!