His voice grew more tender, and low: "Toward the last of the year I seed her makin' little things slyly an' hidin' 'em away in the bureau drawer, an' one night she put away a tiny half-finished little dress with the needle stickin' in the hem--just as she left it--just as her beautiful hands made the last stitch they ever made on earth....
"O Bud, Bud, out of this blow come the sweetest thought I ever had, an' I know from that day that this life ain't all, that we'll live agin as sho' as God lives an' is just--an' no man can doubt that. No--no--Bud, this life ain't all, because it's God's unvarying law to finish things. That tree there is finished, an' them birds, they are finished, an' that flower by the roadside an' the mountain yonder an' the world an' the stars an' the sun. An' we're mo' than they be, Bud--even the tinies' soul, like Kathleen's little one that jes' opened its eyes an' smiled an' died, when its mammy died. It had something that the trees an' birds an' mountains didn't have--a soul--an' don't you kno' He'll finish all such lives up yonder? He'll pay it back a thousandfold for what he cuts off here."
Bud wept because the tears were running down the old man's cheeks. He wanted to say something, but he could not speak. That queer feeling that came over him at times and made him silent had come again.
Then the old man remembered that he was making Bud suffer with his own sorrow, and when Bud looked at him again the Bishop had wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and was smiling.
Ben Butler, unknown to either, had come to a standstill.
"My, how far off the subject I got! I started out to tell you all about Ben Butler, and--and--how he come in answer to prayer," said the Bishop solemnly.
Bud grinned: "It muster been, '_Now I lay me down to sleep_.'"
The Bishop laughed: "Well I'll swun if he ain't sound asleep sho' 'nuff." He laughed again: "Bud, you're gittin' too bright for anything. I jes' don't see how the old man's gwinter talk to you much longer 'thout he goes to school agin."
"No--Ben Butler is a answer to prayer," he went on.
"The trouble with the world is it don't pray enough. Prayer puts God into us, Bud--we're all a little part of God, even the worst of us, an' we can make it big or let it die out accordin' as we pray. If we stop prayin' God jes' dies out in us. Of course God don't answer any fool prayer, for while we're here we are nothin' but a bundle of laws, an' the same unknown law that moves the world around makes yo' heart beat. But God is behind the law, an' if you get in harmony with God's laws an' pray, He'll answer them. Christ knowed this, an' there was some things that even He wouldn't ask for. When the Devil tempted Him to jump off the top of the mountain. He drawed the line right there, for He knowed if God saved Him by stoppin' the law of gravitation it meant the wreck of the world."