"'One of those young men left the college that night with his heart as
buoyant and hopeful as any of his companions. Almost from the first,
however, things seemed to go wrong with him. He was an orphan, father
and mother having died a few years before. Perhaps if either parent had
been at hand to warn him of the dangers into which he was drifting, his
life might have been different. Perhaps, even if some one had warned
him, the warning would have passed unheeded. He tried law for a time and
did not like it; tried business and gave that up; drifted from one thing
to another, always drifting lower, lower, until at last he found himself
an outcast and a wanderer. For some years he lived the life of a
vagrant. If at times a longing to return to better ways, a longing for
all that might have been, stirred faintly within him, the feeling was
quickly drowned by recourse to the one thing to which he remained
faithful, the enemy that had brought about his ruin, drink.
"'During his wanderings he picked up odd jobs here and there, and one
day he is taken on by the boss of the stone-crusher over there in those
quarries of yours. They were badly in need of some one to stoke the
engine, and even a rough looking tramp was welcome. That same day there
comes to the place a certain priest who is searching for one of the
stray sheep from his own fold.
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