He complained of his wounds
when the rent fell due, and when there was a shortage of food in the
house. Later in his life and after the death of Jane McPherson the old
soldier married the widow of a farmer by whom he had four children and
with whom he went to church twice on Sunday. Kate wrote Sam one of her
infrequent letters about it. "He has met his match," she said, and was
tremendously pleased.
In church on Sunday mornings Sam went regularly to sleep, putting his head
on his mother's arm and sleeping throughout the service. Jane McPherson
loved to have the boy there beside her. It was the one thing in life they
did together and she did not mind his sleeping the time away. Knowing how
late he had been upon the streets at the paper selling on Saturday
evenings, she looked at him with eyes filled with tenderness and sympathy.
Once the minister, a man with brown beard and hard, tightly-closed mouth,
spoke to her. "Can't you keep him awake?" he asked impatiently. "He needs
the sleep," she said and hurried past the minister and out of the church,
looking ahead of her and frowning.
The evening of the evangelist meeting was a summer evening fallen on a
winter month. All day the warm winds had come up from the southwest.
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