FOR some days after Grace's camera arrived there were many customers and commercial travellers who had to wait for hours to see the one person with whom they preferred to transact business in the store, for a camera is procrastination's most formidable rival in the character of a thief of time. Grace made "snap-shots" at almost everything, and John Henry Bustpodder, the most enterprising of Philip's competitors, took great satisfaction in disseminating the statement that he reckoned the new store-keeper's wife was running to seed, for she'd been seen chasing a whirlwind and trying to shoot it with a black box.

But the Somerton customers regarded the general subject from a different standpoint, for Grace surprised some of them with pictures taken, without their knowledge, of themselves in their wagons, or in front of their houses, or on the way to church. They were not of high quality; but as the best the natives had previously seen were some dreadful tintypes perpetrated annually by a man who frequented county fairs, they were doubly satisfactory, for she would not accept pay for them. She surprised herself, also, sometimes beyond expression, by some of her failures, which were quite as dreadful as anything she had dreamed after almost stepping on snakes—people without heads, or with hands larger than their bodies, or with other faces superimposed upon their own. She also made the full quantity and variety of other blunders peculiar to amateurs, and she stained her finger-tips so deeply that Philip pretended to suspect her of the cigarette habit; but she persisted until she succeeded in getting some pictures which she was not ashamed to send to her aunt and to some of her acquaintances in the city.

Caleb, who endeavored to master everything mechanical and technical that came within his view, took so great interest in the camera, even begging permission to see the developing process, that Philip one day said to him:—

"Caleb, if your interest in that plaything continues, I shan't be surprised if some day I hear you advance the theory that even photography is a means of grace," and Caleb cheerily replied:—

"Like enough, for anythin's a means o' grace, if you know how to use it right."

"Even snakes?" Grace asked, with a smile that was checked by a shudder.

"Of course. The principal use o' snakes, so far as I can see, is to scare lots o' people almost to death, once in a while, an' a good scare is the only way o' makin' some people see the error o' their ways."

"H'm!" said Philip. "That's rather rough on my wife, eh?"

"Oh, no," said Caleb. "Some folks—mentionin' no names, an' hopin' no offence'll be took, as I once read somewhere—some folks are so all-fired nice, an' good, an' lucky, an' pretty much everythin' else that's right, that I do believe they need to be scared 'most to death once in a while, just to remind 'em how much they've got to be thankful for, an' how sweet it is to live."

Grace blushed, and said:—

"Thank you, Caleb; but if you're right, I'm afraid I'm doomed to see snakes frequently for the remainder of my natural life."

"Speakin' o' snakes as a means o' grace," said Caleb, "p'r'aps 'twould int'rest you to know that some awful drunkards in this county was converted by snakes. Yes'm; snakes in their boots scared them drunkards into the kingdom."

"In—their—boots?" murmured Grace, with a wild stare. "How utterly dreadful! I didn't suppose that the crawling things—"

"Your education in idioms hasn't been completed, my dear," said Philip. "'Snakes in their boots' is Westernese for delirium tremens."

"Oh, Caleb! How could you? But do tell me how photography is to be a means of grace."

"I'll do it—as soon as I can find out. I'm askin' the question myself, just now, an' I reckon I'll find the answer before I stop tryin'. There don't seem to be anythin' about your camera that'll spile, an' I've read that book o' instructions through an' through, till I've got it 'most by heart. Would you mind lettin' me try to make a pictur' or two some day?"

"Not in the least. You're welcome to the camera and outfit at almost any time."

Meanwhile Grace continued to "have lots of fun" with the camera. She resolved to have a portrait collection of all the babies in the town; and as she promised prints to the mothers of the subjects, she had no difficulty in obtaining "sittings." To the great delight of the mothers, the pictures were usually far prettier than the babies, for Grace smiled and gesticulated and chirruped at the infants until she cajoled some expression into little faces usually blank. Incidentally she got some mother pictures that impressed her deeply and made her serious and thoughtful for hours at a time.

Her greatest success, however, according to the verdict of the people, was a print with which she dashed into the store one day, exclaiming to her husband and Caleb:—

"Do look at this! I exposed the plate one Sunday morning, weeks ago, and then mislaid the holder, so that I didn't find it until to-day."

It was a picture of the front of the church, taken a few moments before service began—the moments, dear to country congregations, in which the people, too decorous to whisper in church, yet longing to chat with acquaintances whom they had not met in days or weeks, gathered in little groups outside the building. The light had been exactly right; also the distance and the focus, and the people so well distributed that the picture was almost as effective as if its material had been arranged and "composed" by an artist.

"Je—ru—salem!" exclaimed Caleb. "Why, the people ain't much bigger than tacks, an' yet I can pick out ev'ry one of 'em by name. Well, well!"

He took the print to the door and studied it more closely. When he returned with it, he continued:—

"That's a great pictur'. It ought to have a name."

"H'm!" said Philip, winking at his wife, "how would this do: 'Not exactly a means of grace, but within fifteen minutes of it'—eh?"

"It's a mighty sight nigher than that," said Caleb, solemnly, "besides bein' the best 'throw-in' that's come to light yet. Give copies of that away to customers that don't ever go to church, an' they'll begin to go, hopin' they'll stand a chance o' bein' took in the next; an' if they get under the droppin's of the sanctuary, why, Brother Grateway an' the rest of us'll try to do the rest. Grateway needs some encouragement o' that kind, for he's sort o' down in the mouth about nothin' comin' of his efforts with certain folks in this town. He's dropped warnin's and exhortations on 'em, in season an' out o' season, for quite a spell, but he was tellin' me only yesterday that it seemed like the seed in the parable, that was sowed on stony ground. An' say—Je—ru—salem!—when did you say you took that?"

"Two or three weeks ago," Grace replied.

"An' you didn't develop it till to-day?"

"Not until to-day."

"An' the pictur' has been on the plate all that time?"

"In one way, yes. That is, the plate had been exposed at the subjects, and they had been impressed upon it by the light, although it still looked plain and blank, until the developing fluid was poured upon it."

"How long would it stay so, an' yet be fit to be developed?"

"Oh, years, I suppose. Travellers in Africa and elsewhere have carried such plates, and exposed them, and not developed them until they returned to civilization, perhaps a year or two later."

"I want to know! Got any other plate as old as the one this pictur' was made from?"

"Yes, one; it was in the other side of the same holder."

"Would you mind developin' it to-night, in your kitchen, before company? Nobody that's fussy—only Brother Grateway."

"You know I'll do anything to oblige you and him, Caleb."

"Hooray! Excuse me, please, while I go off an' make sure o' his comin'."

"What do you suppose is on Caleb's mind now?" Grace asked, as Caleb and the picture disappeared.

"I give it up," Philip replied, "though I shan't be surprised if 'tis something relative to a camera being a means of grace."

"I can't imagine how."

"Perhaps not, but let's await—literally speaking—developments."

"He'll be here," said Caleb, a few moments later; he looked gleeful as he said it, and shuffled his feet in a manner so suggestive of dancing that Grace pretended to be shocked, at which Caleb reddened. During the remainder of the afternoon he looked as happy as if he had collected a long-deferred bill, or given the dreaded "malary" a new repulse. He hurried Philip and Grace home to supper, so that the kitchen might sooner be free for photographic purposes, and dusk had scarcely lost itself in darkness when he closed the store and appeared at the house with Pastor Grateway, who expressed himself exuberantly concerning the picture of his church and congregation; but Caleb cut him short by saying:—

"Ev'rythin' ready, Mis' Somerton? Good! Come along, Brother Grateway—you, too, Philip."

While the trays and chemicals were being arranged, Caleb explained to the pastor that photographs were first taken on glass plates, chemically treated, and that the picture proper was made by light passing through a plate to the surface of sensitized paper. When the red lamp was lighted, Caleb continued:—

"Now, when Mis' Somerton lays a plate in that tray, you'll see it's as blank as a sheet o' paper, or as the faces o' some o' the ungodly that you've been preachin' at an' laborin' with, year in and year out. You can't see nothin' on it, no matter if you use a hundred-power magnifyin' glass. But the pictur' 's there all the same; it was took weeks ago; might ha' been months or years, but it's there, an' yet the thing goes on lookin' blank till the developer is poured on it—just like Mis' Somerton's doin' now. Now keep your eye on it. It don't seem to mind, at first—goes on lookin' as blank as the faces o' case-hardened sinners at a revival meetin'. But bimeby—pretty soon—"

"See those spots!" exclaimed the minister. "Eh? Why, to be sure. Well, a photograph plate is a good deal like measles an' religion—it first breaks out in spots. But keep on lookin'—see it come!"

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" exclaimed the minister.

"Seemed miraculous to me, first time I see it," said Caleb. "I'd have been skeered if Mis' Somerton hadn't said 'twas all right, for no magic stories I ever read held a candle to it. But keep on lookin'. See one thing comin' after another, an' all of 'em comin' plainer an' stronger ev'ry minute? Could you 'a' b'lieved it, if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes? An' even now you've seen it, don't it 'pear 'bout as mysterious as the ways o' Providence? I've read all Mis' Somerton's book tells about it, an' a lot more in the cyclopeedy, but it ain't no less wonderful than it was."

"Absolutely marvellous!" replied the minister.

"That's what it is. Now, Brother Grateway, that plate was just like the people you was tellin' me 'bout yesterday, that you was clean discouraged over. You've been pilin' warnin's an' exhortations on 'em, an' they didn't seem to mind 'em worth a cent—'peared just as blank as they ever were. But the pictur' was there, an' there 'twas boun' to stay, as long as the plate lasted—locked up in them chemicals, to be sure, but there it was all the same, an' out it came when the developer was poured on an' soaked in. An' so, John Grateway, all that you've ever put into them people is there, somewhere—heaven only knows where an' how, for human natur' 's a mighty sight queerer than a photograph plate, an' to bring out what's in it takes about as many kinds o' developer as there are people. Mebbe you haven't got the right developer, but it's somewhere, waitin' for its time—mebbe it'll be a big scare, or a dyin' wife, or a mother's trouble. Religious talk rolled off o' me for years, like water from a duck's back, till one day I fell between two saw-logs in the crick, an' thought 'twas all up with me—that was the developer I needed. So when you say your prayers to-night, don't forget to give thanks for havin' seen a photograph plate developed, an' after this you go right on takin' pictur's, so to speak, with all your might, an' when you find you can't finish them, hearten yourself up by rememberin' that there's Somebody that knows millions of times as much about the developin' business as you do, an' gives His entire time an' attention to it."

"Photography is a means of grace, Caleb," said Philip, and Grace joined in the confession.