The White Knight by Gilbert Morris

Author:Gilbert Morris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781441234919
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

End of the Road

By mid-December the cold weather arrived in earnest. The first half of the month was the coldest December people could remember. Those who lived in the South would thereafter refer to the winter of 1940 as the “bad winter,” and all events would be reckoned by it: “That was before the bad winter of ’40,” or “That happened just after the bad winter.”

Luke had endured the cold as stoically as he could, and now he shivered as the biting wind cut through the lightweight fabric of the only jacket he had with him. While he was thinking longingly of the warm jackets he knew were in his closet at home, something cold bit his cheek. He looked up to see by the glow of the streetlights tiny flakes of snow swirling in the hard northeast wind. He wished fervently he were back in Spain with its heavenly warm sunshine. Lexington, Kentucky, however, was no Spain, and the winter was bringing nothing but misery to Luke.

He finally reached the mission where he had been staying for three days, having drunk up all of his earnings. The only job he could hold down was being a dishwasher at a greasy café. He had left his room in the mission to buy some whiskey, and now the pint was hidden in his pocket. Entering the mission, he avoided everyone, for he could not bear the thought of being preached to. He couldn’t understand why people insisted on sharing their faith with him and wanted to shout at them, “I know the truth! I’ve been preached to all my life. Just leave me alone.”

He stumbled up the stairs, entered his small room, and kept his jacket on. Eagerly he took the bottle out, removed the cap, and downed three swallows. He sank down on the bed as the liquor bit at him and the warmth spread throughout his body. He had not eaten since the noon meal, and the alcohol hit him hard. Awkwardly he removed his shoes, still holding the bottle, then lay down on the narrow bed and pulled the blanket up over him, shivering from the cold and the alcohol.

He kept sipping at the bottle, longing for oblivion, but his mind would not shut down. For some reason he began thinking of the sermon he had heard the day before. If you stayed in the mission, you were required to listen to the sermons. Usually Luke managed to ignore them, but this time the preacher’s words kept drilling at his mind. The young man had preached from Psalm 15, beginning with the words “Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?” But that was not the verse that suddenly came back to Luke. He remembered the preacher saying, “This psalm tells us who a righteous man really is, and in verse four it says a righteous man is ‘he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.’ ”

The verse came clearly to Luke, even though his mind

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.