Little Sate dried her eyes and slipped away very soon after she discovered that Susie could move, and speak, and was therefore not dead. She had wandered in search of entertainment to the yard just around the corner, where had come but a few days before, a small boy on a visit.

This boy, Bobby by name, finding Sunday a hard day, had finally, after getting into all sorts of mischief within doors, been established by an indulgent auntie in the back yard, with her apron tied around his chubby neck, to protect his new suit, with a few pieces of charcoal, and permission to draw some nice Sunday pictures on the white boards of the house.

This business interested Sate, and in spite of her shyness, drew her the other side of the high board fence which separated the neighbor's back yard from Mr. Decker's side one.

Just as that gentleman took his seat on the doorstep, he heard the voices of the two children; first, Bobby's confident one, the words he used conveying all assurance of unlimited power at his command—

"Now, what shall I make?"

"Make," said Sate, her sweet face thrown upward in earnest thought, "make the angel who would have come for Susie if she had died just now."

"How do you know any angel would have come for her?" asked sturdy Bobby.

"Why, 'cause I know there would. Miss Sherrill said so to-day; she told us about that little baby that died last night; she said an angel came after it and took it right straight up to heaven."

"Maybe she don't know," said skeptical Bobby.

Then did Sate's eyes flash.

"I guess she does know, Bobby Burns, and you will be real mean, and bad if you say so any more. She knows all about heaven, and angels, and everything."

"Does angels come after all folks that dies?"

"I dunno; I guess so; no, I guess not. Only good folks."

"Is Susie good?"

"Sometimes she is," said truthful Sate, in slow, thoughtful tones, a touch of mournfulness in them that might have gone to Susie's heart had she heard and understood; "she gave me the biggest half of a cookie the other night. It was a good deal the biggest; and she takes care of me most always; one day she took off her shoes and put them on me, because the stones and the rough ground hurt my feet. They hurt her feet too; they bleeded, oh! just awful, but she wouldn't let me be hurt."

"Why didn't you wear your own shoes?"

"I didn't have any; mine all went to holes; just great big holes that wouldn't stay on; it was before my papa got good, and he didn't buy me any shoes at all."

"Has your papa got good?"

"Yes," said Sate confidently, "I guess he has. My sister Nettie thinks so; and Susie does too. He don't drink bad stuff any more. It was some kind of stuff he drank that made him cross; mamma said so; and the stuff made him feel so bad that he couldn't buy shoes, nor nothing; why, sometimes, before Nettie came home, we didn't have any bread! He isn't cross to-day, and he wasn't last night; and he bought me some new shoes—real pretty ones, and he kissed me. I love my papa when he is good. Do you love your papa when he is good?"

"My papa is always good," said Bobby, with that air of immense superiority.

"Is he?" asked Sate, wonder and admiration in her tone. Happy Bobby, to possess a father who was always good! "Doesn't he ever drink any of that bad stuff?"

"I guess he doesn't!" said indignant Bobby. "You wouldn't catch him taking a drop of it for anything. If he was sick and was going to die if he didn't, he says he wouldn't take it. I know all about that; the name of it is whiskey, and things; it has lots of names, but that is one of them. My father is a temperance."

"What is that?"

"It is a man who promises that he won't ever taste it nor touch it, nor nothing, forever and ever. And he won't."

"Oh my!" said Sate. "Then of course you love him all the time. I mean to love my papa, all the time too. I'm most sure I can. What makes you make such a big angel? Susie isn't big; a little angel could carry her."

"This angel isn't the one who was coming for Susie; it is the one who is going to come for my papa when he dies."

"Oh! then will you make the one who will come for my papa? Make him very big and strong, for my papa is a strong man, and I don't want the angel to drop him."

Mr. Decker arose suddenly and went round to the back part of the house, and cleared his throat, and coughed, two or three times, and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. Had he peeped through the fence and caught a glimpse of the angel whom Bobby made, he might not have been so strangely touched; but the words of his little girl seemed to choke him, and his eyes, just then, were too dim to see angels.

He was very still all the rest of the afternoon. At the tea table he scarcely spoke, and afterwards, while Mrs. Decker and Nettie were mourning over Norm's escape, he too put on his coat, and went away down the street.

Mrs. Decker came to the door when she discovered it, and looked after him. He was still in sight, but she did not dare to call. As she looked, she gathered up a corner of her apron and wiped her eyes. Presently she sat down on the step where he had been sitting so short a time before, leaned her elbows on her knees, and her cheeks on her hands, and thought sad thoughts.

She felt very much discouraged. On this first Sunday, after the new room had been made, and new hopes excited, they had slipped away, both Norm and her husband, to lounge in the saloon as usual, and to come home, late at night, the worse for liquor. She knew all about it! Hadn't she been through it many times?

The little gleam of hope which had started again, under Nettie and Jerry's encouraging words and ways, died quite out. Sitting there, Mrs. Decker made up her mind once more, that there was no kind of use in working, and struggling, and trying to be somebody. She was the wife of a drunkard; and the mother of a drunkard; Norm would be that, before long. And her little girls would grow up beggars. It was almost a pity that Susie had not been killed when she fell. Why should she want to live to be a drunkard's daughter, and a drunkard's sister? If the Heaven she used to hear about when she was a little girl, was all so, why should she not long for Susie and Sate to go there? Then if she could go away herself and leave all this misery!

She had hurried with her dishes, she had hoped that when she was ready to sit down in the neat room with the new lamp burning brightly, he would sit with her as he used to do on Sunday evenings long ago. But here she was alone, as usual. More than once that big apron which she had not cared to take off after she found herself deserted, was made to do duty as a handkerchief and wipe away bitter tears.

Meantime, Nettie sat in the pretty church and looked at the lovely flowers, and listened to the wonderful singing. Miss Sherrill sang the solo of something more beautiful than Nettie had ever even imagined. "Consider the lilies how they grow." What wonderful words were these to be sung while looking down at a great bank of lilies! It is possible that the singing may have been more beautiful to Nettie because her own fingers had arranged the lilies, but it was in itself enough for any reasonable mortal's ear, and as it rolled through the church, there was more than one listener who thought of the angels, and wondered if their voices could be sweeter. Nettie's small handkerchief went to her eyes several times during the anthem; she could not have told why she cried, but the music moved her strangely. Before the anthem was fairly concluded there was something else to take her attention. Mrs. Job Smith in whose seat she sat, gave her arm a vigorous poke with a sharp elbow, and whispered in a voice which seemed to Nettie must have been heard all over the church, "For the land's sake, if there ain't your pa sitting down there under the gallery!"

As soon as she dared do so, Nettie turned her head for one swift look. Mrs. Smith must be mistaken, but she would take one glance to assure herself. Certainly that was her father, sitting in almost the last seat, leaning his head against one of the pillars, the shabbiness of his coat showing plainly in the bright gaslight. But Nettie did not think of his coat. Her cheeks grew red, and her eyes filled again with tears. It was not the music, now; it was a strange thrill of satisfaction, and of hope. How pleasant she had thought it would be to go to church with her father. It was one of the things she had planned at Auntie Marshall's; how she would perhaps take her father's arm, being tall for her years, and Auntie Marshall said he was not a tall man, and walk to church by his side, and find the hymns for him, and receive his fatherly smile, and when she handed him his hat after service, perhaps he would say, "Thank you, my daughter," as she had heard Doctor Porter say to his little girl in the seat just ahead of theirs. Nettie's hungry little heart had wanted to hear that word applied to herself. Now all these sweet dreams of hers seemed to have been ages ago; actually it felt like years since she had hoped for such a thing, or dreamed of seeing her father in church, so swiftly had the reality crowded out her pretty dreams. Yet there he sat, listening to the reading.

What Nettie would have done or thought had she known that Norm and two friends were at that moment seated in the gallery just over her father's head, I cannot say. On the whole, I am glad she did not know it until church was out. Especially I am glad she did not know that Norm giggled a good deal, and whispered more or less, and in various ways so annoyed the minister that he found it difficult to keep from speaking to the young men in the gallery. The fact is, he would have done so, had he not recognized in one of them his helper of the evening before, and resolved to bear his troubles patiently, in the hope that something good would grow out of this unusual appearance at church.

It would perhaps be hard work to explain what had brought Norm to church. A fancy perhaps for seeing how the flowers looked by this time. A queer feeling that he was slightly connected with the church service for once in his life; a lingering desire to know whether in the hanging of that tallest wreath, he or the minister had been right; they had differed as to the distance from one arch to the other; from the gallery he was sure he could tell which had possessed the truer eye. All these motives pressed him a little. Then they were singing when he reached the door, and Rick had said, "Hallo! that voice sounds as though it lived up in the sky. Who is that, do you s'pose?"

Then Norm proud of his knowledge in the matter, explained that she was the minister's sister, and they said she could mimic a bird so you couldn't tell which was which.

"Poh!" Alf had said; he didn't believe a word of that; he should like to see a woman who could fool him into thinking that she was a bird! but he had added, "Let's go in and hear her." And as this was what Norm had been half intending to do ever since he started from the house, he agreed to do it at once. In they slipped and half-hid themselves behind the posts in the gallery, and behaved disreputably all the evening, more because they felt shamefaced about being there at all, and wanted to keep each other in countenance, than because they really desired to disturb the service. However, they heard a great deal.

What do you think was the minister's text on that evening? "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven." I shall have to tell you that when he caught sight of Mr. Decker half-hidden behind his post and recognized him as the man who was so fast growing into a drunkard, and as the man who had never been inside the church since he had been the pastor, he was sorry that his text and subject were what they were that evening. He told himself that it was very unfortunate. That if he had dreamed of such a thing as having that man for a listener, he would have told him the story of Jesus as simply and as earnestly as he could; and not have preached a sermon that would seem to the man as a fling at himself. However, there was no help for it now; he did not recognize Mr. Decker until he had announced his text, and fairly commenced his sermon.

It was a sermon for young people; it was intended to warn them against the first beginnings of this great sin which shut heaven away from the sinner. He need not have been troubled about not telling the story of Jesus; there was a great deal about Jesus in the sermon, as well as a great deal about the heaven prepared for those who were willing to go. I do not know that anywhere in the church you could have found a more attentive listener than Mr. Decker. At least one who seemed to listen more earnestly; from the moment that the text was repeated until the great Bible was closed, he did not take his eyes from the minister's face. Yet some of his words he did not hear. Some of the time Mr. Decker was hearing a little voice, very sweet, saying: "Make a very big strong angel to come for my papa when he dies; my papa is a strong man and I don't want the angel to drop him." Poor papa! as he thought of it, he had to look straight before him and wink hard and fast to keep the tears from dropping; he had no handkerchief to wipe them away. Think of an angel coming for him! "I love my papa when he is good!" the sweet voice had said. Was he ever good? Then he listened awhile to the sermon; heard the vivid description of some of the possible glories and joys of Heaven. Would he be likely ever to go there? Little Sate thought so; she had planned for it that very afternoon. Dear little Sate who did not want the angel to drop him.

Now it is possible that if the sermon had been about drunkards, Mr. Decker would have been vexed and would not have listened. He did not call himself a drunkard; it is a sad and at the same time a curious fact that he did not realize how nearly he had reached the point where the name would apply to him. That he drank beer, much, and often, and that he was growing more and more fond of it, and that it kept him miserably poor, was certainly true, and there were times when he realized it; but that he was ever going to be a common drunkard and roll in the gutter, and kick his wife, and seize his children by the hair, he did not for a moment believe. But the sermon was by no means addressed to people who were even so far on this road as he. It was addressed to boys, who were just beginning to like the taste of hard cider, and spruce beer, and hop bitters, and all those harmless (?) drinks which so many boys were using. It was a plain story of the rapid, certain, downward journey of those who began in these simple ways. It was illustrated by certain facts which Mr. Sherrill had personally known. And Mr. Decker, as he listened, owned to himself that he knew facts which would have proved the same truth.

Then he gave a little start and shrank farther into the shadow of the pillar. The moment he admitted that, he also admitted that he was himself in danger. What nonsense that was! Couldn't he stop drinking the stuff whenever he liked? "There is a time," said the minister, "when this matter is in your own hands. You have no very great taste for the dangerous liquors, you are only using them because those with whom you associate do so. You could give them up without much effort; but I tell you, my friends, the time comes, and to many it comes very early in life, when they are like slaves bound hand and foot in a habit that they cannot break, and cannot control." Mr. Decker heard this, and something, what was it? pressed the thought home to him just then, that, if he did not belong to this last-mentioned class, neither did he to the former. He knew it would take a good deal of effort for him to give up his beer; of course it would; else he should not be such a fool as to keep himself and his family in poverty for the sake of indulging it. What if he were already a slave, bound hand and foot! What if the "stuff" which Sate said made him "cross" had already made him a drunkard! Perhaps the boys on the street called him so; though they rarely saw him stagger; his staggering was nearly always done under cover of the night. Still, now that he was dealing honestly with himself, he must own that it was less easy to go without his beer than it used to be. Since Nettie had come home he had drank less of it than usual, and by that very means he had discovered how much it meant to him. "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven!" The minister's earnest voice repeated his text just then. Was he a drunkard? Then what about the strong angel? Little Sate was to be disappointed, after all!

Oh! I am not going to try to tell you all the thoughts which passed through Joe Decker's mind that evening. I don't think he could tell you himself, though he remembers the evening vividly. He stood up, during the closing hymn, and waited until the benediction was pronounced, and then he slipped away, swiftly; Nettie tried to get to him, but she did not succeed, and she sorrowed over it. He stumbled along in the darkness, moving almost as unsteadily as though he had been drinking. The sky was thick with clouds, and he jostled against a lady and gentleman as he crossed the street; the lady shrank away. "Who is that?" he heard her ask; and the answer came to him distinctly: "Oh! it is old Joe Decker; he is drunk, I suppose. He generally is at this time of night."

Yes, there it was! he was already counted on the streets as a drunkard. "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven." It was not the minister's voice this time; yet it seemed to the poor man's excited brain that some one repeated those words in his ears. Then he heard again the sweet soft voice: "Make him very big and strong, for I don't want the angel to drop him."