AFTER his conversion, Billy Bray, who had been a willing slave to the devil in his unconverted days, was not left ignorant of his devices, as the following shows. This is Billy’s own account of how he overcame the Enemy:—”Friends, last week I was a-diggin’ up my potatoes. It was a very poor yield, sure ‘nough. There was hardly a sound one in the whole lot. And while I was a-diggin’, the devil came to me, and he says, ‘Billy, do you think your Father do love you?’ ‘I should reckon He do,’ I says. ‘Well, I don’t,’ says the old tempter in a minute. If I’d thought about it I shouldn’t have listened to him, for his opinions ben’t worth the leastest bit of notice. ‘I don’t,’ says he, ‘and I tell thee what for: if your Father loved you, Billy Bray, He’d give you a pretty yield of potatoes; so much as ever you do want, and ever so many of them, and every one of them as big as your fist. For it ben’t no trouble to your Father to do anything; and He could just as easy give you plenty as not, and if He loved you He would, too.’ Of course, I wasn’t going to let he talk of my Father like that, so I turned round upon him. ‘Pray, sir,’ says I, ‘who may you happen to be, comin’ to me and a-talkin’ like this here? If I ben’t mistaken, I know you, sir, and my Father, too. And to think of you comin’ a-sayin’ He don’t love me! Why, I’ve got your written character home in my house; and it do say, sir, that you be a liar from the beginnin’! And I’m sorry to add, that I used to have a personal acquaintance with you some years since, and I served you faithful as any poor wretch could, and all you gave me was nothing but rags to my back, and a wretched home, and an achin’ head, and no potatoes, and the fear of hell-fire to finish up with. And here’s my Father in heaven. I have been a poor servant of His, off and on, for thirty years. And He’s given me a clean heart, and a soul full of joy, and a lovely suit of white as’ll never wear out; and He says He will make a king of me before He has done, and that He’ll take me home to His palace, to reign with Him for ever and ever. And now you come up here a-talkin’ like that.’ Bless thee, my dear friends, he went off in a minute, like as if he’d been shot—I do wish he had—and he never had the manners to say, good mornin’.”