 20 Mysteries in Work There is a good deal of time consumed in this world in planning for events that never occur. Sometimes I cannot help feeling that it would be an immense convenience to say the least if we could only know the end from the beginning. A knowledge of what was to come would have saved Miss Parkhurst from a weary day of arranging and rearranging for that interview with Mr. Tracy. No, on second thought it would but have added to her trouble and anxiety and given her sleepless nights and tearful hours. On the whole things are doubtless better as they are than as I would have made them. Mr. Tracy did not call on the evening in question in time for the opera. In fact he did not call at all. Into the dignity and aristocratic rush of business that obtains in a flourishing bank came one of those little papers that slipped so quietly through this world of ours with their electric voices and it said in six words what revealed a lifetime of pain. Mother, very low, come at once. Now it so happened that there was one person on earth whom Mr. Tracy loved almost better than he did himself and that one person was his mother. He looked at his watch and then at the traveller's guide in the morning paper, then he went with it to the inner office to consult with his superior. All the time there was such a stricken look on his face that you would have pitied him, however vexed you may be with him. There was need of haste, for the paper told of a three o'clock express and it was already two. So it came to pass that at eight o'clock, instead of sitting by Miss Parkhurst's side in the opera house as he had planned, he was curled in a dismal heap in the corner seat of a railroad car whirling toward Boston and only wishing that he could fly so slowly did they seem to move. He had been mindful of Miss Parkhurst, he had written underneath the telegram these words, this just arrived I must get the three o'clock train. Then twisting it had hailed the first boy who passed and sent it to her, but the boy loitered as some boys will and the consequence was the three o'clock train had been gone for an hour when she received the word. You are not to suppose Miss Parkhurst a hard-hearted girl when I tell you that she gave a little sigh of relief as she read this note. It was not that she did not sympathize with him, it was not that she would not have saved him from this trouble if she could have done so, but since she could not it was surely no harm to remember that it gave her more time to strengthen her heart and determine just what right was and do nothing rashly. The week which followed was a peculiarly hard one for Mr. Tracy. The scenes through which he had to pass ran directly a thwart his unspoken rule of life to have a free and easy life without thought for the morrow and its vexations. The vexations were upon him, nay the downright anxiety and trouble, and they would not be shaken off by a walk in the fresh air and a few puffs of cigar smoke. His mother was dying. He said, nonsense, to his sister, when she asserted with a burst of tears that there was no hope, spoke roughly to his father, told his mother that she must not think of giving up, that they were all frightened at their shadows, called the doctor a confounded niny and advised the sending for three others, all of different medical schools. But in his very heart he believed that they were right, and there was no hope for his mother. A good, tender mother she had been all his life, with a capacity for devising and carrying out loving, sacrificing plans for her children that was nothing short of the marvellous. A Christian mother she had been in the truest sense of that word, and her son, as he saw her follow him with wistful gaze, knew perfectly that her heaviest pain in this hour of trial was the thought of him. He knew that she felt the young and timid sister and the boy brother to be infinitely safer and more easily left than he. He knew he had it in his power to make her very happy for the last time in life by whispering in her dulling ear that he had taken her saviour for his friend and helper, and yet he did not do it. Verily human love is a weak and mysterious thing, and yet possibly I wrong him, I do not think he realized that he had it in his power to make her closing hours blessed. He looked upon conversion as a strange and mysterious something that must come to him from without, and with which his will had nothing to do. So at times he was half vexed with her for desiring him to have an experience outside of himself. They are all an inconsistent set. He muttered as he paced the dining-room alone, having just come from the wistful, clasping hand of his mother. They talk about conversion as an experience that comes only from God, and then blame people for not having it. Why on earth doesn't the Lord convert me if he wants me to be converted? Of course I do not mean to hint that Mr. Tracy believed this nonsense, for he really was gifted with common sense, and he knew perfectly well that God had not chosen to make a machine of him, subject to strings and wheels and bands, without an original motion of his own. No mortal could have resented such a change of plans more quickly than Mr. Tracy, and yet he took refuge behind this poor subterfuge or pretended to. Still I admit there was mystery about it to his mind, and there always would be so long as he spent his time in trying to understand that with which he had nothing to do, and passing over in contemptuous indifference the part that was plain to him. The simple truth was he had not the slightest desire to be a Christian. While his tastes and inclinations ran in another channel. He was decidedly of the earth, earthy, but he would have liked to please his mother, and it irritated him that he was unable to do so. It seemed necessary to lay the blame somewhere, and as he was not accustomed to blaming himself there was no resource but to blame his Creator. So he went on, sitting much with his mother, taking his share of the watching during the long dreary nights, feeling in spite of himself the solemnity of the shadow of death creeping over him, yet trying with all the force of his nature to shake it off, and keeping himself in a state bordering on anger with everybody and everything. Very little chance had that mother to say anything now. It must have been a happy thought to her that she had not left her work until this hour of weakness, but that of late every loving motherly letter that went from her room to her distant son had pulsed with the eager longing of her heart to see her son safe in the fold. Now her voice was almost gone, and the most that she could give was a low whispered hope that she would have her first born with her again in heaven. His wistful appeals he invariably answered by soft kisses pressed on the hot cheeks and lips, tender, clinging kisses, but only kisses not promises. Yet the memory of the disappointed look in her eyes sometimes drove him half-wild when he went to the silence of his own room to get rest and sleep. The end came suddenly. How strange it is that however much one may be watching for and dreading the coming of the angel of death, still his coming is a bitter surprise. We had not thought it would be this morning or to-night. He sat alone beside his mother, she was sleeping, and more quietly than it was her won't to do. A distant clock had just wrung out twelve solemn strokes, and Mr. Tracy, who had risen to shade the lamp more carefully, as he tiptoed back to his seat beside her, looked at his mother's face, and stopped, and it seemed to him that his heart stopped beating. He had never looked upon the face of one dying, yet, as by swift instinct, he knew that death was there. Mother, he said, and even then he noticed the strange sound there was in his own voice. Mother, don't look so. What is it? Can't I get you something, or somebody? What is it? It is heaven, she said, and her voice was clear and ringing, not at all as it had been during the last week. No, George, I want nothing, only this, see to it that you come home in time. And then, though he roused out of the spell which seemed to hold him, and rang the nurse's bell and sent for his father, and rang the servant's bell, and ordered the doctor to be summoned with all speed, and brought ammonia and camphor and the most pungent restoratives, and worked with a fierceness and a determination that made the frightened lookers on shudder, his mother spoke no more, breathed no more, but lay there still and smiling, just as she had looked when she said, it is heaven, and yet, with the solemnity that she had looked when she said that other sentence that would ring for so many long nights and weary days through his brain, see to it that you come home in time. So the end was reached. Mr. Tracey's mood changed after there was no more chance to see his mother's smile, changed to that of sullen vindictiveness. He felt wronged, almost insulted. Why should his mother have died? Other mothers lived to old age. He had planned that his mother was to visit him when he had a home of his own. In short, this rude stranger had broken in on a whole array of plans, and ruthlessly held sway until he made it impossible ever in that direction to plan again. A most unhappy son and brother did Mr. Tracey prove the few remaining days that he spent at the homestead, so hopelessly solemn, not to say sullen, that the grief-stricken father, who was trying hard to keep from sinking, was feigned to avoid him, and I am obliged to confess that it was with an actual sigh of relief that father and sister turned away from the departing train that bore him homeward. Meantime he had not forgotten Miss Parkhurst. Almost every evening a line had been sent to her, full of gloomy forebodings and dismal repinings over the threatened shadow. She on her part was very tender and sympathetic, and the cloud that had risen between them seemed to have lost itself in this real trouble. Curiously enough, the strongest feeling that Miss Parkhurst had, when she thought of Mr. Hammond and her conversation with him, was a sense of thankfulness that he had kept her from revealing more than she had of their estrangement. She had felt so touched by his sympathy, she was so free-hearted naturally, that she had been on the very verge of telling him the whole story. It was so pleasant now to think he had kindly checked her, and that no one but George and herself knew ought about it. She told Mr. Hammond the story of her friend's impending trouble, and heard his earnestly expressed sympathy, and then they too had engaged to pray that the cloud might have a very silvery lining, that indeed it might be the means of leading him to a better sense of life and a higher reaching after comfort and happiness. It chanced that the letter containing the news of his actual bereavement did not reach her so early as it should, and he was but a few hours ride away when she sat with the sympathetic tears dropping on her cheek, reading the bitter story. Mr. Hammond was again the first one to extend his sympathy. He called with a business message for the mother, and met her as she came downstairs. Oh, Mr. Hammond! She said, coming forward as one who had learned to expect sympathy from him. Mrs. Tracy is dead, and George is nearly heartbroken. He loved his mother as I think few young men do. It is a heavy loss, said this young man with tender, tremulous voice, and eyes that were humid. It was nine years since he had buried his mother, and the name was so dear to him that he could not speak it now without a trembling of lips. It was the evening for prayer meeting, and they walked down to the church together, talking all the way about this matter. Miss Parkhurst, some way, had a feeling that Mr. Hammond was an elder brother who was immensely interested in George and herself. The Lord has many ways of calling his own. He said, as they neared the church, this may be his chosen method of enticing your friend within the fold. This was his answer to her expressed fear that the trial would have a tendency to harden the young man more against religion. It was not ten minutes after they left the house that Mr. Tracy rang the bell violently, and received with frowning face the intelligence that Cora had gone to prayer meeting. I had forgotten that miserable meeting, he said discontentedly. I should have thought Cora would have waited for me. I told her I was coming. Then your letter couldn't have reached her, the mother said, ready as a mother always is to find excuse for her daughter. In fact I am sure it didn't, for she told me not an hour ago about getting the news of your mother's. I know, he said, interrupting her hastily. Mr. Tracy was one of those strange human beings who, a trouble once having actually fallen upon them, want as little as possible said about it. Then he betook himself in all haste and speed to the Harvard Place prayer meeting. Cora he must see as soon as possible, and he was in no mood to loiter the time away until the close of meeting. He took a seat near the door, and waited with what patience he could for that to pass in which he conceived that he had no earthly interest. It was just two weeks since he had sat there before, a great deal can transpire in two weeks, and the later events that had come to him had been of such a nature as to make the earlier ones retire into the background. He hardly remembered that his last meeting with Cora had ended in a quarrel. He simply knew that his heart was sick and sore, and that he needed soothing and petting. She knew just how to give him this to his satisfaction. This was not such a meeting as you have formerly attended in Harvard Place Church. During these two weeks the spirit of God had come very near to the Harvard people. I doubt if they will ever again have just such meetings as they used to have. Something happened that recalled Mr. Tracy sharply to the present. It was the sound of the voice that he pleased to think belonged solely to him. I have found Christ very precious to me this week. This simple sentence was all she said, and yet what a whirl it raised in the brain of one listener! In an instant that annoying past rose before him, and it had lost none of its importance by reason for being for a time forgotten. It was simply forgotten because he looked upon it as a thing of the past that was not to occur again. He had supposed that his wish was law in this matter, and however annoyed, or even actually angry, Miss Parkhurst might be about it, the idea that she would composedly do again the thing that he had expressly declared must not be done had not for a moment presented itself to him. I shall not attempt to describe the fever of indignation into which he worked himself. The manner in which he had chosen to accept the teachings of the last two weeks had not tended to help him in this experience. He heard not a single other word that was spoken during the half hour that followed. He gave himself up to the arrangement of the next scene. He should wait for her as usual, and meet her as quietly as though she had not angered him beyond endurance. They would have no more outside exhibitions. But in the course of their walk home he would say to her, with the utmost quietness and plainness, that this thing had gone on quite as far as it was at all necessary, that she must decide then and there whether she really did intend to move in exact opposition to his expressed wish not to say command. If she did it would be better for their lives to part there before further trouble grew out of it. Thus coolly he planned, seeming to have an idea that the day when wives were simply dutiful subjects of a stronger will had returned again. Let me tell you a strange thing about this young man. Can you understand that this excitement of feeling had its outgrowth in jealousy? He was practically jealous of her Christian life, of this presence that he did not understand, and that she said in a tone of such quiet assurance that she felt. He wanted her to feel no presence that he did not understand and sympathize with. He wanted her to be content with him. So long as religion had only been to her a name and a certain sense of propriety and respectability, he was content to let it alone. But the moment it became a living, pervading idea he hated it. But this was the man who had heard only so recently that solemn sentence, Be sure that you come home in time. Verily he was travelling very far away from home now, and at that very moment two hearts were praying that the journey home might be already begun. The benediction spoken Mr. Tracey rushed out and stepped a little in the shadow. He knew he was not expected there, and he was in no mood to meet any one. Ten minutes before, little Timmy Hughes had sauntered that way, and into the very shadow that Mr. Tracey assayed to step, he had thrown the peel from his last quarter of orange. A strange thing it was, in this chapter of tragedy, if any one could have traced it, that the giver of the orange was Miss Cora Parkhurst. On that very bit of orange, no larger than a penny, Mr. Tracey stepped. In an instant his foot slipped, and his forehead struck against the sharp projecting corner of the stone window seat. That excited brain, with its dark, angry whirl of thoughts, how utterly unprepared it was to endure a blow. The one who caught him as he fell, and who supported him while a carriage could be called, and who went to his boarding-house with him and spent the night, that anxious troubled night at his unconscious bedside, was Mr. Hammond. CHAPTER XXI Work done by the master Now all the plans and fears and hopes were changed. What a wonderful and terrible thing a little bit of orange peel can become! Oh, the days and nights that followed! The old story of pain and fear and agony of apprehension to be lived over! So many people know all about it. Miss Parkhurst was taking her first lessons. Her life had been one long stretch of sunlight. She felt that the night had dropped down on her suddenly without any twilight warning. Mr. Tracey's sickness was very sad in some respects. He was very friendless for a young man who had such a host of friends. There was no mother to come to him, and he had never been sick before without feeling the touch of her tender hand all about him. The young sister could not come, for the father had sickened almost immediately after his son's departure, and needed all the strength and wisdom she had. But he missed none of them except in a wild, delirious way. There was little doubt that his thoughts were busy with the past in some of its forms. Those about him did not understand what his fancies were, and puzzled in vain over the probable meaning of the constantly and earnestly repeated sentence, See to it that you come home in time! Mother said so, I must do it! He said to Mr. Hammond on one of these occasions, fixing anxious, troubled eyes on his face, and thereupon Mr. Hammond concluded that he understood it, and that the sick brain was busy with the scenes of childhood, and anxious over some command of his mother's, perhaps a command that was disobeyed and had come back from childhood memories to haunt him. He tried, on the strength of this interpretation, to soothe the troubled sufferer, assuring him that he should certainly go. They would help him to start in ample time to get home. If he had known what home was meant, and felt the solemnity of his promised help, it would have made him tremble. There would have seemed to him need of haste, for there was scarcely a hope that the threat of life would not snap. The manner in which Mr. Hammond devoted himself to the sick man, who had not by any means been his friend, was a matter of wonderment to many a looker on. Every moment that could be spared from business was devoted to him, and far into the night, nearly every night, he was the alert, careful watcher. Even Miss Parkhurst, in the midst of her tearful thanksgivings over this marked care, was filled with surprise as to its cause. Its causes, I should have said. They were fourfold. First, the sick man's helpless and friendless condition appealed to his heart. So many friends to spend evenings with him, at the opera, at parties and sleigh rides, and entertainments of all sorts, so few who had the ability or the inclination to give him intelligent, self-sacrificing care. Then, too, he had just buried his mother. Since Mr. Hammond was sick with a fever, and it was a year after his mother's grave had closed over, but he remembered even after the lapse of so many years the sick longing that he felt to have one touch of that mother's hand. Even that experience was being visited in blessing on Mr. Tracey's head. Then, too, he had a great pity in his heart for Miss Parkhurst. The sunny life had been so full of trials lately, and she seemed so like a grieved and astonished child. He had an unselfish desire to help and comfort her. Finally, there was a sad, sore feeling at his heart that this life was slipping away, and there was a whole long array of neglected opportunities staring him in the face. Times when, if he had but endured what was distasteful and cultivated a kindly interest in this young man, instead of holding him aloof, he might have helped him. Who could be sure that he might not have saved him? So he waited with patient prayerful watching in the hope and longing that the quiet interval would come when reason would resume her sway long enough for him to say, Forgive me, and let me speak a word for my master. Meantime, almost of necessity, he became the communicating link between the sick room and the anxious watcher at her home. She had neither the physical endurance nor the wisdom sufficient to make her a helpful nurse, and her anxious mother eagerly decided that it was best for her to keep entirely aloof. Glad in her heart that the peculiar nature of the young man's sickness made him oblivious to all sights and sounds. For who could tell what might not develop from a sick room? His parkhurst's horror of infection was such that she imagined even a brain fever might suddenly change into smallpox or some other horrid disease so she willingly and thankfully stayed away. And Mr. Hammond, knowing how much he was depended upon, how utterly his word was trusted, and feeling an unutterable pity for the sad-hearted girl, accepted the situation and acted the part of friend and brother to the utmost. It is very strange indeed, she said, with a heavy sigh, as, after having come with a message from Mr. Tracey's room, he waited while Mrs. Parkhurst made up a basket of sick room comforts. This woman had her place in life. If she dreaded and shunned sickness, there was still a basket ready to fill and a shelf in her storeroom where it belonged, and she seemed to know by a sort of instinct what ought to go into it for the sick and suffering. Since her basket did what her presence could never have done, gave help and comfort, may she not be forgiven for withholding the latter? It is very strange indeed, I cannot understand it, I have puzzled over it until my head whirls. Here I have wasted my life, made it full of little foolish nothings, and all this time there was nothing to hinder me from work. Now that I am eager and anxious to do all that I can, and at this time when there is so much to do, and my girls so need the help that I can give them, I am so troubled and sad that I seem unable to think of anything. It seems so strange that I should be led in this way at just this time. Now I think that Miss Parkhurst fully expected an encouraging answer from the gentle man. She was depressed and troubled. She could not rise to the heights of restful faith. She had been too long a stranger to trustfulness to rest easily, but she knew the way of such natures as Mr. Hammons. She could fancy the assuring words that he would speak, the calm, cheerful reminder that the Lord would take care of his own work. She could not use such language herself because she had not learned to feel it, but knowing that the man before her had long lived a very different life from hers, and knowing that he meant such words in his very soul, it helped and rested her to hear them. But Mr. Hammond had been working very hard, and sitting up of nights, taking heavy responsibilities. He sympathized with Miss Parkhurst's depressed feelings more than he liked to admit even to himself. The ways of Providence seemed very strange to him. He had been praying and working for his boys for many weary months. Now he was just beginning to hope for them. The strongest and most hopeless one had deserted the enemy's ranks, and the hearts of the others seemed more impressable. It had seemed just the time for extra effort and attention. He had planned so much that he had intended to do for them. He had been so full of work and courage. To give up all these plans and sit quietly down most of the time with folded hands in a sick room required a stretch of faith beyond which his blind eyes could not take him, and he answered with a sigh. The bell tolled for evening meeting. Shall you try to go? He asked Miss Parkhurst, and she answered quickly. I can't. I tried that last week, and I am so weak and nervous, so anxious, that it is impossible for me to sit still. I have lost all control of myself, I think, and I know my girls are watching me, and that makes the matter worse. No, I shall not try to go. It seems very sad that I cannot work now that my heart is in it. Despite his effort to feel differently, it seemed so to Mr. Hammond. He had meant to interest Larry Bates in this meeting, at least he had hoped to get him to be present, and he knew that Lester was at work for Will Gordon, and looked to him for help. How strange it was that he should have, instead, to spend the evening with a man who had not even been a friend, held there by a cord that was very strong to a nature like his. The consciousness that there was responsibility to assume, and that he knew both what to do and how to do it, which was more than could be said of the few who were at hand to help. His sigh was more long drawn than before, as he said, It is certainly a very strange providence. And then he rallied just enough to say, but we must try to trust, saying it with a very one smile, as if he meant, however dark the day, and however discouraging the prospect, they would hope that it would come right somehow, even though it did require a heavy strain on one's faith. And it was just such meager, low-born feelings as these, that the master is obliged to accept from us as faith. Well, good night! Mr. Hammond said, at last, as the basket was pronounced ready, Try to keep up as good courage as you can. You shall hear at once if there is any difference between this and morning. No, I do not expect to leave him. I have engaged to watch to-night. Then he hurried away, leaving Miss Parker's thankful indeed for his help and his faithfulness. But oh, so heavy-hearted! There were two letters written that evening, and you shall have a copy of each of them. The first was Miss Parker's, addressed to Mr. Hammond. It was written an hour after prayer meeting. It ran thus. Mr. Hammond, my dear friend, I feel very much ashamed. I must have appeared a very weak and worthless Christian in your eyes this evening. I do not say in the eyes of my Saviour, for he who knows just how weak and foolish I am, knows also that I love him, though I may not appear to do so. But to think that I should have the folly to suppose that he could not take care of my girls without me, when he has had to do it without my help all these years. I have just heard from the meeting. I wonder if you have. Your Lester St. John took a decided stand. And, don't you think, May and Fanny Horton both said they wanted to be Christians. Sarah came to me afterward, and she says Fanny thought there must be something in the religion that could sustain me at this time. That makes me very humble, for I feel that I have not let it sustain me as it would have done. But isn't it blessed in all this trouble to think that the girls are coming, my girls whom I have misled so long? Celia, too, the last one for whom I had hope, sends me word that she is thinking. And oh, one thing was so kind and precious that I must tell you of it. Fanny and May sent me word that they are learning to pray, and that they would pray for me and for my dear friend tonight. God bless them for that. I feel stronger. I think God will save George's life. Do you know that next to him I shall know that I am to thank you? I wish I could tell you how very grateful I feel to you. It does not seem as strange to me as it did. Miss Providence, I mean, I have a faint, glimmering feeling of great things that may be brought to pass out of it. I suppose there is a place higher than that which is to know that God will bring to pass great things for those who trust him out of all pain. But he is very patient with my blunderings. The letter closed abruptly for the reason that there came a messenger from Mr. Hammond bringing a note to her, and she waited only to see that there was no worse news than she had had during the day. Then she sent her letter back by the same messenger, and sat down to read what Mr. Hammond had to tell her. This was his letter. Dear friend, you came to a broken reed for comfort this evening. I can only hope that you were driven to the strong arm and are resting there. What a foolish thing this is that we dignify by the name of faith. It seems we can only trust just as far as we can see the shadow of the footsteps. I have had a wonderful evening. It began in gloom. The silent companion on the bed was more quiet and restful than usual. In my ignorance I feared it to be a bad sign. Let me tell you right here that it is the most hopeful one we have had for many a day. And my heart was very heavy. I was motioned to the door to meet Will Gordon. His father had sent him to inquire and to offer help. That being done, he tarried for a moment. Then turning took my hand and said, Mr. Hammond, I wanted you to know that the question is settled. I have gone over to the king's side. Just that and he rushed away. Can you imagine what that was to me? My boy Will, for whom I have so longed and prayed, coming to me at the moment when my heart was filled with questioning thoughts as to why I should not be permitted to get him to go to the meeting with me this evening as I had planned. Will was scarcely gone when the boy brought a drop letter from Larry. It was characteristic, only two lines. It is done at last, and when I decide anything, you know it is decided. I knew what he meant. Two boys, think of it! And I in my weakness had spent this day in lamentation. Oh, Miss Parkhurst, you and I are not the right sort of teachers yet. We must remember that we are only underteachers, assistants, and because we are trampled is no sign that the principal cannot do his work well. Now my friend, you will think we had victory enough for one evening, but in the course of the next half hour came Wells Horton to see Mr. Tracy. He shivered a little as he stood looking at him. Then to my surprise he quoted solemnly, There is but a step betwixt me and death. You did not know that I was familiar with a Bible verse, did you? He asked, noticing my surprised look. But I tell you I have thought of but little else since this accident. I have passed through a strange conflict since that time, but I wish the dear fellow knew that I had learned to pray and that I am praying God to give him back to us. Dear Miss Parkhurst, I tell you this in detail because I think it will answer some of your sad questions tonight. God is calling these young men to himself, and strangely enough the means that he is using, in this instance at least, is this accident that has seemed to us so utterly dreadful. What may he not be going to bring to pass through it? My faith has taken a higher reach. It would be strange if it could not with all these helps to lift one. I believe that God will give your friend to us in a renewed life, not physically only, but spiritually. Take heart of grace. There are new voices praying tonight that have never prayed before, and they are asking for him. The Lord forgive us for trembling and doubting, and feeling that our ways of working were the only ways. There are depths of mercy that we cannot understand, but let us learn to trust. There was a little note that followed this. Before Miss Parkhurst had finished reading it, a hurriedly written sentence on the back of an envelope. These words. Midnight, the doctor is here. He says there has been a change. The breathing is becoming natural, the pulse is better, and he is almost certain that all will be well. The Lord reigns and is all-powerful and wonderful in his loving-kindness. It was after reading that sentence that Miss Parkhurst fell on her knees, and the prayer that she prayed for Mr. Tracy was such as God hears. End of Chapter 21 End of Cunning Workmen by Pansy Recording by Tricia G. Thanks for listening.