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tent, as an alternative for the automatic; later the pistol was successfully transformed into a pocket Bible, and was triumphantly used by the Reverend Blackman as an illustration showing the marvellous care of Providence over the lives of men who read one chapter of the Bible each day and three on Sunday, which he said Abner always did. In a fiery evangelical sermon, the Reverend Blackman shouted at the top of his voice that the bullet had penetrated to the exact verse, "Not a hair of his head shall be harmed," and these precious words had stopped the missile.

However, in the midst of this wonder and admiration, Sim Pratt, the drug clerk, insisted on getting Abner instantly out of the crowd and the unsanitary camp. As Pratt was known to be the beau of Beatrice Sandage, Abner's foster-sister, this gave the drug clerk a certain authority over the sick man; so eventually six men started with Abner on a litter for the old Coltrane manor, while the ruined automatic was left in camp for the men to look at and marvel over.

Abner went up the hill on a stretcher made of a blanket and two poles; not because he was so badly wounded, but because he was so dazed he could not walk. The bullet had administered quite a thump and now, as a result, Abner saw the heads of his litter bearers far above him; their arms reached down from enormously high shoulders, and he seemed to be borne through space on some sort of Aladdin's rug. The only mental connections Abner had with such a scene was a memory of pictures of angels bearing away the souls of the dead to Heaven. Abner stared intently at the far-away faces and came to the conclusion that these enormously tall creatures were angels, and since they were clearly lifting him upward, he decided he was on his way to Heaven. And this surprised the teamster as much as his dazed wits could encompass because he had always been morally certain that his final destination in eternity was hell.

When Abner reached the Coltrane manor, his senses were cleared sufficiently for him to recognize the weeping face of