"I am going to do something like that some day," I said.

He gazed down at me, his eyes shining queerly.

"God grant that you may have the strength, my boy," he said. He bent
and kissed me, and we returned to the house together without saying
another word.

It was the custom of the Fontaine family to hold a meeting every year to
give thanks for the deliverance from persecution of their parents in
France, and I remember being present with my father and mother at one of
these meetings when I was seven or eight years old. One passage of the
sermon he preached on that occasion remained fixed indelibly in my mind.
He took his text from Romans, "That ye may with one mind and one mouth
glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He applied the
duty thus enjoined to the Fontaine family, saying,--

"For many weary months was our father forced to shift among forests and
deserts for his safety, because he had dared to preach the word of God to
the innocent and sincere people among whom he lived, and who desired to
be instructed in their duty and to be confirmed in their faith. The
forest afforded him a shelter and the rocks a resting-place, but his
enemies gave him no quiet, and pursued him even to these fastnesses,
until finally, of his own accord, he delivered himself to them. They
loaded his hands with chains, a dungeon was his abode, and his feet stuck
fast in the mire. Murderers and thieves were his companions, yet even
among them did he pursue his labors, until God, by means of a pious
gentlewoman, who had seen and pitied his sufferings, relieved him."

To my childish imagination, the picture thus painted was a real and