Them’s orders!”

He slapped Alan on the back with a brotherly grin, and he could make no further protest.

Alan went out the back door of the store and walked slowly across the back lots and through the meadow till he came to the Washburns’s back fence, which he vaulted. Sherrill was out in the garden, picking red raspberries, and he joined her and began to help.

“Sherry, I’ve just had such a marvelous answer to prayer that it’s knocked me silly!” he said, as he stooped to pull off the coral globules and drop them into the china bowl she had given him.

Sherrill turned shining eyes upon him and began to laugh.

“Is that all the faith you had, Alan?” she asked. “It’s knocked you silly? Then why did you pray if you didn’t have any faith?”

“I don’t know!” said Alan sheepishly. “I was desperate. I’d reached the limit.”

“I read a little book the other day that said God has sometimes to bring us to the limit before He can get us to come to Him at all.”

“Well, I guess that’s right,” said the boy humbly. “I was just proud of the way I was going to handle my father’s business all alone. And then, when there came along something I couldn’t manage and didn’t know a thing to do, I was all up a tree. I didn’t think of praying till I got in a hole. I thought I could manage everything myself. I had no end of schemes for it, till they all failed flat. Then, when I prayed, the telephone rang the answer right in my ear. So I jumped, and several minor answers walked right into the store afterward. I mean it, Sherry! I’m astonished! I didn’t know answers to prayer ever came off the bat like that.”

“I think,” said Sherrill wisely, shaking her bowl to get more berries into it, “that God would probably give us answers like that every day if we lived close enough to Him so He could. Why, most of the time, I imagine we wouldn’t even hear the answers if He gave them; we keep so far away and so full of ourselves. But Alan”—her voice was soft, almost shy—”I have a feeling that God is opening up big things for you. I think you are growing a lot. I think He is leading you, getting you ready for some great work for Him, some place of power and influence for the kingdom.”

“Looks like it,” said Alan almost glumly, remembering suddenly, “leaving me here in this little hole of a town in a hardware store! Fat chance I’ve got to go get ready for anything. I’ve got to stick here and work. I’ve got to keep my dad’s business from going to pieces while he is laid by.”

“But beyond that already. It’s doing a lot in this town right now. What you’ve done for Bob Lincoln has made a lot of people see what Christ can do in a human life to change the natural man’s hates and enmities. The boys all feel that. I’ve heard some of them talking. And then, Alan, your influence is going to reach away, out to the desert in Egypt. It’s traveling there now, just as fast as the ship can take it. I shouldn’t wonder if you would find it would be even stronger for the kingdom than if you had gone yourself. I saw a look in Bob’s eyes, when he told me how you prayed with him, that made me sure he’s going to live up to what he promised.”

“Sherry!” said Alan. “You make me feel ashamed. Here I’ve been pitying myself because I couldn’t do a thing, and you talk like that. Say, Sherry, I wish you’d pray for me.