RAMSEY BENSO
 
 
 7
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 A LORD OF LANDS 
 
 326 pp., izmo. $1.50. 
 
 The unusual and convincing narrative of the ex- 
 periences of a man of good sense, with wages of 
 $50 a month and five children, following his deter- 
 mination to leave the city and farm it in the North- 
 west. 
 
 "A book of real adventure an adventure in living-. 
 Nothing is more wonderful than the way the commonest 
 details contribute to the homely interest." The In- 
 dependent. 
 
 "Will appeal instantly and throughout its entire length 
 to the lover of the outdoor life." Boston Transcript. 
 
 "Unique in literature . . . told with the utmost art." 
 San Francisco Chronicle, 
 
 'We congratulate Mr. Benson upon making a most 
 readable book out of his practical and emotional farmer's 
 life, and the steps that led up to it, and we congratulate 
 the public upon having secured a bit of literature of new 
 and not clearly definable flavor." New York Times Review. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 MELCHISEDEC 
 
 BY 
 
 RAMSEY BENSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A LORD OF LANDS." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1909
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 
 BY 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY. 
 
 Published, August, 1909.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 Sbacft 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. CHAFF WHICH THE WIND DRIVETH AWAY .............. 3 
 
 II. BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON .......................... 23 
 
 III. A PHYSICIAN FOR HEALING ............................ 33 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 2>r. TRobect's SMars 
 DIARY ................................................ 43 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 B Dolce Crying in tbe WU&erness 
 
 I. THE WILDERNESS ...................... , ............. 61 
 
 II. JEAN VAIJEAN IN PETTICOATS _____ .................. 70 
 
 III. MANNA .................. ........................... 80 
 
 IV. A GRINDER WHO is GRIST ............................ 86 
 
 V. NOT WELCOME ........ ............................. 98 
 
 VI. FISHERS OF MEN ..................................... 112 
 
 VII. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS .............................. 125 
 
 VIII. HARVEST OF HATE ................................... 139 
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 Dr. IRobert's 
 
 DIARY ........................................... ..... 149 
 
 iii
 
 iv Contents 
 
 BOOK v 
 flfcr. 
 
 I. DINNER OF HERBS ................................... 173 
 
 II. A STRANGER, AND THEY TOOK HIM IN ............... 182 
 
 III. MR. JAKES'S PARABLE ............................... 191 
 
 IV. THE POINT OF IT .................................... 202 
 
 V. OMNIS AMANS ...................................... 211 
 
 VI. OMNIS AMANS AMENS ......... ...................... 222 
 
 VII. ANOTHER VIKING ........ ....................... 235 
 
 VIU. UNTO THE GENTILES FOOLISHNESS ...... .............. 242 
 
 IX. A BRAND FROM THE BURNING ....................... 252 
 
 X. FBMINA EST VARIUM ............................. 259 
 
 XI. THE MAN OF WRATH .............................. 268 
 
 XII. SALT WITHOUT SAVOR ............................... 283 
 
 XIII. OUT OF THIS BODY OF DEATH ....................... 295
 
 MELCHISEDEC
 
 " Called of God a high priest after the order of Mel- 
 chisedec. 
 
 " Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be 
 uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. 
 
 " For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have 
 need that one teach you again which be the first principles 
 of the oracles of God ; and are become such as have need 
 of milk, and not of strong meat." 
 
 PAUL, TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 " It isn't notions sets people doing the right things it's 
 feelings." 
 
 ADAM BEDE.
 
 BOOK I 
 SHACK
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHAFF WHICH THE WIND DRIVETH AWAY 
 
 SHACK had the right, perhaps doubly the right, to 
 quarter his arms with the blazon of royalty. More- 
 over, it was a right which you hadn't to go groping 
 away back in the dark ages to confirm. If you 
 mounted up only as far as Shack's great-grandfather, 
 you came upon a king. True, this great personage 
 was a red Indian, chief over the mere remnant of a 
 tribe never very important, and by that a lesser figure 
 in history than a Plantagenet; yet royalty is royalty, 
 unaffected in its essence by the ups and downs of 
 fortune. How was it with the seventeenth Louis ? He 
 had no nation but by courtesy, no crown, no throne, 
 nay, not even so much as a fresh shirt for his majesty's 
 back, and still he was concededly royal. Shack's 
 great-grandfather's dominions were only a few acres 
 of wild swamp, his people only a few score of de- 
 jected souls, and his sway entirely subject to the will 
 of the Great Father at Washington so much was un- 
 deniable ; but withal there is many a boast of heraldry 
 no valider than the blazonry aforesaid. 
 
 This king's daughter was Shack's grandmother, and 
 that raises another question. By ordinary usages, 
 she was a princess of the blood, but by Indian usages 
 
 3
 
 4 Shack 
 
 there are no princesses, poets to the contrary notwith- 
 standing. The daughter of a chief is no better than 
 the daughter of anybody else. She inherits her 
 mother's estate, or a lesser, for whereas the mother 
 has the distinction of being a great man's beast of 
 burden, the daughter may become the drudge of the 
 most ordinary buck in the tribe. She is a chattel 
 anyway and gets no more consideration for being the 
 chief's than if she were his pony, probably not so 
 much, since a pony can carry more load than a wo- 
 man. However, the descent is not justly to be im- 
 pugned. Feudal jurisconsults held that a child took 
 no more from its mother than a bird from its nest, but 
 their doctrine was long since exploded; and had 
 Shack chosen to claim his title, the fact that he de- 
 rived through the female line was no serious diffi- 
 culty greater difficulties are being surmounted by 
 heraldry every day. He might never be king, per- 
 haps, but the tinge of the purple was his nevertheless. 
 Who his grandfather was, no history saith. The 
 princess (to speak out of the Indian manner) was 
 never married, it was the occasion of considerable 
 chattering among the women when their quick and 
 watchful eyes caught the shadow which the coming 
 event could not be kept from casting; and when, one 
 bleak autumn day, being then on their way back to 
 the reservation to spend the winter, they had to halt 
 a few hours while another soul was added to their 
 numbers by the travail of the chiefs unwed daughter, 
 some joking was called forth, of the saturnine, Indian 
 sort. But on the whole nobody minded much until 
 the word went round that the new arrival, a girl by 
 the way, was of mixed parentage. This imported an 
 element of novelty, and there was a buzz of gossip.
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 5 
 
 The princess, too, as if her purpose were to stimulate 
 curiosity and draw to her affair more than its right- 
 ful share of attention, was mum as any oyster. 
 There was a good deal of guessing as to Shack's 
 grandfather, first and last. 
 
 They reached the reservation shortly, whereupon 
 the young mother hastened to the Catholic priest who 
 had his rude altar hard by, and gave the child to be 
 baptized in the faith and christened Marie. Of course 
 that meant only one thing, namely, that its father 
 was a Frenchman. At that time Frenchmen were 
 commoner than any other variety of the paleface, 
 their gallantry was proverbial, and there was scarcely 
 a tribe which hadn't its half breeds who could boast 
 themselves of the race of St. Louis. But with all 
 their guessing the women could never quite make out 
 what particular Frenchman this particular Frenchman 
 had been; it was a fruitless quest and therefore tire- 
 some, and before long they gave it up. The princess 
 fostered a certain negative interest in the business by 
 bestowing more care on her baby than was customary, 
 but in less than a year she died of quick consumption, 
 and that closed the incident, as far as the women were 
 concerned. It was only an incident, anyway. 
 
 Marie grew up a member of the king's household. 
 That is to say, it was his lodge which she sneaked 
 into, all uninvited and barely tolerated, at night; and 
 it was food of his providing which she fought for, get- 
 ting much or little as fortune favored her. No es- 
 pecial consideration at the hands of her relatives dis- 
 tinguished her from other little girls; like them and 
 along with them, she grew up as best she might, in the 
 way of some wild thing. Those Indians were not yet 
 weaned from their nomadic habit, nothing could in-
 
 6 Shack 
 
 duce them to stay on the reservation in summer. With 
 the first whiff of spring, sometimes while yet snow 
 lay on the ground and the air was sharp with frost, 
 they would flee to their beloved wilds and the preca- 
 rious freedom there awaiting them, and as likely as not 
 nothing more would be seen of them till the blizzards 
 of the late fall drove them back. Marie went along, 
 to take her chances with the rest, to revel and waste 
 when game was plentiful, to starve when it failed. 
 In her attitude toward the advantages of civilization, 
 she was as much an Indian as any of them. She never 
 set foot in the school, at the reservation, though the 
 teachers tried their best to catch her. They thought 
 her romantically beautiful, and comely she certainly 
 was. The French had softened the color of her hair 
 and put a very fetching kink in it besides, and had 
 made plump her cheeks till the bones thereof were 
 respectably covered; and she retained enough of the 
 Indian to be lithe and graceful. 
 
 The priest of the mission took an interest in her, 
 too, and cultivated her as much as she would let him. 
 On the whole, he made out rather better than the 
 teachers, for Marie discovered some religious feeling, 
 or what might easily pass for such in the sanguine 
 eyes of the father. It was naturally so, most all 
 Indians have a religious feeling, in their vague, 
 heathen fashion, and as for the other part of her, 
 everybody knows how pious French are apt to be, 
 especially their womenkind. But Marie was peculiar 
 about it, very. She gave every evidence of loving the 
 priest and reverencing his holy office. If she met him 
 anywhere, no matter where, be the ground dry or 
 muddy, she would drop on her knees and kiss his hand ; 
 and that, too, though he forbade her, and told her
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 7 
 
 plainly that she was not to kneel in that fashion to any 
 man less than a bishop. But Marie would have her 
 way, notwithstanding entreaty or command to the con- 
 trary. She went to her duties with an eagerness al- 
 most frantic, yet very irregularly, and utterly regard- 
 less of the law. The priest instructed her over and 
 over in the Easter obligation, and solemnly warned her 
 that if she did not receive the body of Christ at least 
 once between Sexagesima and Pentecost, she thereby 
 put herself out of communion with the saints. Marie 
 cried out in terror at the awful suggestion and went 
 to her duties as the fancy took her. Sometimes she 
 would present herself to be shrived three or four times 
 a week. Sometimes she would confess and stay away 
 from the communion. Sometimes she would approach 
 the altar, kneel a moment, and jump up and hurry out 
 without receiving the host. Sometimes she would 
 repair to the chapel all living alone, and the priest 
 would find her there, bowed down and weeping as if 
 her heart were breaking ; but when, on such occasion, 
 he tenderly asked her what troubled her, she answered 
 nothing, and looked up at him in unfeigned wonder. 
 
 The priest and the teachers were beginning to ask, 
 in much anxiety, what was to become of Marie, when 
 she settled the doubt, all without notice, and with 
 characteristic waywardness, by going to live with a 
 rough old cruiser, a Scotchman whose name was 
 none other than Robert Bruce. And just here is where 
 the possibility of a further right to that royal quarter- 
 ing came in, the seed of the illustrious king whom 
 the spider put new heart into has been known to 
 spring up in more unexpected places; but whether or 
 no, Bruce was at all events signally possessed of the 
 unlovable traits of that monarch's race, was a veri-
 
 8 Shack 
 
 table Caledonian bear, in short. He shocked the priest 
 and the teachers immensely, and it was sickening to 
 think of Marie going to him. He was past forty and 
 the girl not yet fifteen, and in every respect there was 
 equal or greater disparity, they were the hawk mat- 
 ing with the dove. Any heart, unless an Indian's, 
 or a Scotchman's, must revolt out of sheer sympathy, 
 at such a tender flower of the forest being plucked by 
 so ruthless a hand. And yet, what else? Marie was 
 a woman and had to go to some man; Bruce was at 
 worst as good as a redskin would be, and between 
 Bruce and some redskin her choice lay. The priest 
 saw the necessity, and would make the best of it; he 
 bravely essayed to get Bruce baptized in order that 
 there might be a marriage sanctified by the rites of 
 the Church. But that enterprise turned about as you 
 might expect, the fellow chose to deem himself in- 
 sulted by the proposal that he become a Papist. In 
 point of fact he was an unbelieving pagan, a thorough 
 atheist, except in controversy; there no Covenanter 
 ever defended the faith of his fathers more hotly. 
 He flouted the priest, mocked at his mummeries, and 
 the next they knew, Marie had been rapt off to his 
 cabin without any ceremony whatever. The most 
 pathetic part of it was her willingness, as if she fore- 
 saw all the tragedy of her fate yet knew it was her 
 fate none the less. All too plainly she had no love 
 for Bruce, not even a tolerable liking. She shud- 
 dered at his approach and beheld him with terror in 
 her eyes, like a fluttering bird which a serpent has 
 charmed. 
 
 Shack was her son, her first-born and only child. 
 The day he was ushered into this vale of tears, Bruce 
 chanced to be in a frolicsome mood, not a common
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 9 
 
 thing, for it was much more like him to be surly and 
 fractious. He had been made aware of Marie's royal 
 lineage, how that her grandfather had been chief of 
 the tribe, and he was minded to have his joke out of 
 it. The Indian law was, when a son was born to the 
 chief, for that eminent individual, the moment he 
 heard the first wail of his offspring, to go forth from 
 the lodge, and the first object he was made conscious 
 of, outside, determined the youngster's name. Sitting 
 Bull was named that way. His father went forth, 
 after the fashion laid down, and beheld a bison sitting 
 on its haunches, a most extraordinary posture for 
 a bison, but then Sitting Bull turned out an extraor- 
 dinary Indian. So likewise Rain-in-the-Face, who 
 slew Custer and drank his blood. This redoubtable 
 warrior was born at dead of night, and when his 
 father went forth he could see nothing; but a misty 
 rain was falling, and he felt it in his face hence the 
 name. Bruce's conceit was to carry out the tradition. 
 He went forth, chuckling hideously to himself, and 
 came back in a moment and named the infant Limping 
 Bluejay. 
 
 Marie had other views. She feared her violent, 
 peppery man, and chose to keep her own counsel; but 
 in the night, while Bruce slept, she rose from her 
 bed, and with her day-old baby in her arms made her 
 way to the reservation. Indian women were used to 
 get up within a few hours after confinement, and 
 never the worse for it; but Marie was less an Indian 
 than she had perhaps imagined. The long walk 
 through the woods, with swamps to wade and fallen 
 trees to climb over, was too much, it finished her, in 
 fact. The priest found her lying at the door of his 
 chapel when he went to say low mass in the morning.
 
 io Shack 
 
 She was conscious still, and knew him, and kissed his 
 hand, as of old. She gave him the child to be bap- 
 tized, and that done, she died. 
 
 They christened him Jacques. But most everybody 
 called him Shack. When the English tongue said 
 Jacques, it sounded like Shack. 
 
 He was born waif and stray. His father took no 
 trouble about him, absolutely none. Bruce was noti- 
 fied of Marie's death, the priest himself went out to 
 the cruiser's cabin and had a stormy interview; but 
 nothing came of it. He was asked what he wished 
 done with the child, and his reply was that he didn't 
 care in the least about the brat. The agent at the 
 reservation proposed recourse to the civil law, but be- 
 fore the first steps could be taken by leaden-heeled 
 justice, the crafty cruiser vanished, and was seen no 
 more in those parts. Shack never had the least benefit 
 of his father, yet his orphanage was not without its 
 compensations. Bruce's evasion of his duties threw 
 the child back on the tribe, and that was to the child's 
 advantage as regards material welfare, anyway. If 
 he was neglected, neglect was the common lot of all 
 the babies, and he could manage as they did. The 
 better part of the business was that he escaped being 
 abused. If he unhappily got in the way he was likely 
 to be kicked out of it, but he wasn't followed up and 
 beaten. If he went cold and hungry often, that was 
 the Indian way, the Indian choice. Neither he nor any 
 other of his race need do without the ordinary creat- 
 ure comforts, they were all wards of the nation and 
 they had a home at the reservation whenever they 
 chose to claim it. What Shack must have suffered 
 had Bruce departed from the fashion of his kind and 
 lived up to his domestic obligations to the extent of
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 1 1 
 
 standing by the family he was responsible for, well, 
 speculation on that head were idle, but it is safe to 
 say that luck was with the boy when he was left father- 
 less. " Good riddance of bad rubbish ! " the agent re- 
 marked, and it was justly put. 
 
 Shack had his especial friends, and they were worth 
 having. The priest would never forget him, or tire 
 of laboring for his soul, and that meant many a little 
 favor even though his laboring went for nothing. 
 The teachers knew about him, too, and set out to 
 inveigle him into the primrose paths of learning, as 
 they or their predecessors had done with his mother 
 before him ; and that meant more little favors. Marie 
 herself had not been more baffling, in much he was 
 like her, though not so handsome, or so vivacious, or 
 so robust. He had her hair, shot with a touch of the 
 Scotch red and none the worse for that ; but his face, 
 where hers had been glowing and plump, was sallow 
 and lean; and his figure, where hers was the picture 
 of alert, vigorous health, was stooped and rickety. 
 Still there was a beauty about him, especially in his 
 truly wonderful eyes, big and brown and full of a 
 smouldering fire. The teachers were convinced that 
 there was a soul behind those eyes, but do what they 
 would they never could reach it. Shack would tolerate 
 them when they came bearing suitable gifts, but he 
 wouldn't listen to their lessons; and it was likewise 
 with the advances of the priest. He was dumb enough 
 at any time, but peculiarly so when the appeal was to 
 his religious nature. 
 
 So he grew up, to the age of sixteen or seventeen, 
 a slender, frail creature, belonging to no race, a being 
 like none other, a soul apart and having no kind. 
 In summer he wandered over the hunting-grounds
 
 1 2 Shack 
 
 with his tribe, though never hunting himself, he was 
 neither buck nor squaw, but spent his time hovering 
 idly about the lodges or on lonely excursions none 
 knew or cared whither. In winter he resorted among 
 the lumberjacks, in the pineries. There was an inde- 
 cision upon him, as if he knew not where he belonged, 
 whether with the savagery whence he was sprung 
 or with the civilization whose outposts were the lum- 
 ber-camps. In the spring, when the waters filled the 
 streams, and the log-drives were getting off, he would 
 watch them, he would even follow them, with a long- 
 ing in his face. Once he was prevailed upon by the 
 good-natured men to accompany them as far as the 
 first settlement, but there their good-nature took form 
 in making him tipsy and he fled in a fright back to the 
 tribe. 
 
 He was known far and wide among the lumber- 
 jacks. He was a famous jumper. There were other 
 jumpers, but Shack was best of all. 
 
 What is a jumper, do you ask? 
 
 Briefly, a person touched with some nervous malady, 
 whereby, if you came up to him stealthily, and laid a 
 hand upon him unawares, he. would very likely jump 
 prodigiously, and turn livid, and yell as in agony. 
 The lumberjacks enjoyed nothing, perhaps, more than 
 making a jumper jump, and they were never tired 
 of putting Shack through his paces. And yet, though 
 he was superlatively good at it, he had his weak point, 
 you couldn't absolutely rely on him. At times he 
 wouldn't jump, nothing could make him jump; no 
 matter what you did to him, he was cool as a cu- 
 cumber. Some thought it depended on the phases of 
 the moon. 
 
 Another singularity about him was his vagrant way
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 1 3 
 
 of drifting about from camp to camp. Now he would 
 spend a whole winter at one camp, and now he would 
 divide the season among a dozen or more, making 
 long journeys through the trackless forest, regardless 
 of wind and weather, at a speed marvelous to think 
 of. That was the Indian of him. There is something 
 almost uncanny, almost suggestive of supernatural 
 connections, in the flitting of an Indian, like a dry leaf 
 before a gale, here to-day and there to-morrow, with 
 incredible distances between. Shack would put in his 
 appearance in the most approved style of unexpected- 
 ness, it might be day or it might be night, often 
 the teamsters, the first men out, would find him curled 
 up with the cattle. They were always glad to see 
 him, and gave him hearty welcome. It gets pretty 
 dull about a lumber-camp, and a new face is a god- 
 send, not to mention the jumping, and the fun to be 
 got out of that. 
 
 You are not to believe lumberjacks uncommonly 
 cruel, if you take them below the bark they are un- 
 commonly otherwise. But their position is peculiar. 
 They are near to a somber nature, for nothing can be 
 somberer than a pine forest in winter. Their hours 
 are long and solitary, with much night and little day, 
 and that little lessened by the towering, gloomy trees. 
 You have no conception of the dullness which gets to 
 brood there, or you will find some apology for the 
 diversion-hunger which possesses the men, even where, 
 as often happens, it becomes quite desperate. If starv- 
 ing castaways will greedily devour offal, is it any 
 wonder that lumberjacks do things for fun which we 
 call horrible? We can hardly call them less, those 
 torments which the lumberjacks put upon Shack, the 
 helpless, frail boy. How could they do it, with the
 
 14 Shack 
 
 very look of him an appeal for pity? Because of the 
 deadly dullness, that's all. Because they were dull, 
 they made him the butt of all manner of rough horse- 
 play, and when they saw it hurt him, they were all 
 the more pleased, thought it all the more fun. Shack 
 was sensitive, no doubting that, more likely a French 
 trait than Scotch. Certainly it wasn't Indian. An 
 Indian is the most finished of stoics. 
 
 He had imagination, and that was how they came to 
 tell him so many distressful stories. He was open to 
 every sort of vague suggestion, they had no need to 
 be explicit, if they so much as hinted at the possibil- 
 ity of some spirit of evil dwelling in a crooked tree, 
 say, or in the airhole where the water bubbled up in 
 the coldest weather, it was enough ; Shack did the rest 
 and saw the fearsome thing with creeping flesh. A 
 certain McGraw, who came up into the woods winter 
 after winter, knew from his old grandmother in Ire- 
 land endless legends of spooks and goblins, he could 
 many a dreadful tale unfold, and it was rare sport, 
 they all considered, to see Shack stand with dropped 
 jaw, and starting eyes, and stiffening hair. Especially 
 the eyes. Nobody ever saw eyes like Shack's, when 
 he was under strong emotion. It was a curious fact 
 that the boy would go from camp to camp till he found 
 McGraw, and there stay, perhaps during the rest of 
 the winter. 
 
 Once upon a time somebody, keener for fun, per- 
 haps, or more ingenious, hit upon the felicitous ex- 
 pedient of fixing up a ghost, to scare Shack. 
 
 It was easily managed. The men worked in the 
 bush, of an afternoon, as long as they could see, and 
 made their way back to camp after nightfall. Shack 
 did not always go into the bush, but sometimes he did,
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 15 
 
 and they selected one of these times, when the moon 
 was about right, as they estimated, and had the ghost 
 meet him at a lonesome bend in the path. Two or 
 three who were in the plot had come along with him, 
 and they professed to be terrified beyond measure, to 
 help out the illusion, while the ghost did his part by 
 groaning dismally and gliding about on unbending 
 legs. 
 
 But the play fell pretty flat, after all. 
 
 Not because Shack was skeptical, though, prob- 
 ably his imagination never worked more favorably 
 than on that occasion. He wasn't scared, that was 
 the long and short of it. Instead of recoiling, as one 
 in terror might, or being rooted to the spot, or any- 
 thing like that, he sprang forward, eagerly, as if a 
 ghost were the very thing he had been wishing most 
 to meet with. 
 
 And then, too, where a man is downright fright- 
 ened, you expect him to be speechless, or at all events 
 to have difficulty with his utterance. Shack wasn't 
 speechless at all, didn't even stammer. 
 
 " Are you a dead man ? " he asked, straightfor- 
 wardly. 
 
 The ghost made answer, in a sufficiently hollow, 
 creepy voice, that he was. 
 
 " You were buried ? " 
 
 " Ah, yes! " this with a telling sob. 
 
 "Did you come out before the ground froze?" 
 
 They weren't looking for such questions. The 
 ghost knew not what to say, and hesitated ; and his 
 hesitation was his undoing. For now Shack came 
 near enough to lay a hand upon the very material 
 white blanket, and the fleshly limbs underneath, and 
 knew he was being deceived. What then? Nothing
 
 1 6 Shack 
 
 out of him but a low, inarticulate cry, as of disap- 
 pointment, and with that he shot away into the woods 
 and the thick night, to be seen no more at that camp. 
 
 He was not an able hand, but he found his uses, 
 apart from the fun he furnished. He more than 
 earned his keep ; what he ate was a trifle anyway, for 
 he was none of your hearty feeders, while as for 
 lodgings he asked not so much as a bunk, only a 
 place on the floor by the fire. If they had a blanket 
 to spare him, well and good, he would take it and 
 wrap himself in it; but if they had none he was con- 
 tent to lie down without cover of any description. 
 He wasn't brought up to be fastidious. 
 
 He had been known to prove himself an extremely 
 handy man in a pinch. He shunned the heavy work, 
 such as swinging the ax, or dragging the great saw, 
 he was much too delicate for such sustained effort; 
 but he could rally a nervous strength against an 
 emergency which was extraordinary. And he was not 
 altogether a tender plant, as they found out the day 
 old Dan Beeman had his feet frozen off. That was 
 an awful day, remembered yet by many an old-timer. 
 Story went that the glass fell to sixty degrees below 
 zero, or ninety degrees below freezing. They had 
 no glass at the camp, but at Cantilever, fifteen miles 
 off, there was record of sixty below. You and I have 
 no notion of such cold as that. 
 
 Their hauling team was four splendid great bay 
 oxen, prize animals all of them, quick on their feet, 
 steady as a clock, and true blue to the bitter end. The 
 regular driver got up and fed them as usual, sniffed 
 the air going and coming, ate his breakfast and made 
 plump announcement that it was too cold for him. 
 He wouldn't stir a foot from the camp, though old
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 17 
 
 Dan, who was boss, cursed and stormed and called 
 him all kinds of a baby. Only for Shack there would 
 have been no logging, he was at hand and offered 
 to drive. He was good at driving, too, when you take 
 into consideration how averse the average ox is to an 
 Indian. 
 
 Cold? Say! 
 
 You know the way the runners of a heavy sled will 
 shriek over a frosty road, the frostier the road, the 
 more the runners shriek. Well, when they started off 
 the first load of logs that morning, the men at the 
 landing, five miles away, heard the runners shrieking. 
 That was partly a testimony to the clearness of the 
 air, but more was it a testimony to the cold. The men 
 took it as such, and debated seriously whether they 
 were quite safe to keep on working. 
 
 The hauling went on prosperously, however, until 
 the gang at the skidways, becoming more and more 
 alarmed for themselves, at length built a roaring fire 
 of the slashings. When Shack came back after his 
 second load, he swung his cattle round within ten feet 
 of the fire. The oxen felt the heat, and came to a 
 halt; it was something too good, under the circum- 
 stances, to pass by. 
 
 " Whup whup ! " Shack sang out to them, and 
 touched them with the goad to bring them round, but 
 for once in their lives they were disobedient, and only 
 huddled up closer to the fire, until you could smell 
 their hair singeing. 
 
 Old Dan was a fractious fellow at best, and things 
 had been going more or less against his grain all day. 
 When the cattle balked, it was the last straw, he flew 
 into a fury and was beside himself. He roared at the 
 men, commanding them to put out the fire, calling
 
 i 8 Shack 
 
 them babies and cursing to curdle your blood, and 
 then, when their only response was to pile on more 
 fuel (you understand that a boss in the woods is boss 
 in a limited sense and has considerably less authority 
 than the Czar of Russia) he snatched up a cart-stake, 
 swung it with all his might (he was a powerful speci- 
 men), and brought it down full force on the head of 
 the off ox in front. The patient, trustful beast, look- 
 ing for nothing but kindness from the men he so 
 loyally served, made no movement to avoid the blow, 
 it caught him on the horn, and the horn was broken 
 off clean at the skull. The shock made him stagger 
 and groan, and in a moment the red blood gushed out 
 and drenched him. 
 
 A sickening spectacle! Half a dozen voices broke 
 out all at once, in horror and protest. Even old Dan 
 himself was sobered, and looked sorry for what he 
 had done. But Shack was made frantic. He jabbered, 
 in Indian, like a madman. He danced and wrung his 
 hands, he rushed up to the ox, and clasped his 
 arms about the creature's neck, and clung there, wail- 
 ing and whimpering, and the blood ran over him till 
 he too was drenched and red with it. That made the 
 spectacle all the more sickening, too sickening even for 
 lumberjacks to stand, one of the men stepped for- 
 ward and laid hand on the boy, to draw him away. 
 At the touch Shack jumped, and screamed, and fled 
 into the woods. But his jumping elicited no laughter, 
 that time, it wasn't a bit funny. The dumb ox sway- 
 ing his mutilated head back and forth in testimony to 
 his pain, that was alone enough to put an end to laugh- 
 ing, and there was moreover the thought of the poorly 
 clothed lad making off so, with the cold what it was. 
 They would have stopped him, but he was away be-
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 19 
 
 fore they realized he was going. They believed he 
 had gone to his certain death, they had seen the last 
 of Shack. Yet it wasn't long till they heard of him 
 at another camp, about twenty miles away, apparently 
 none the worse. So they had a laugh out of it, after 
 all, quoting the old saying to the effect that an Indian 
 is all face and can't be frozen. 
 
 Sixty degrees below is nothing to trifle with. Old 
 Dan was for going on with the logging and turned 
 in to drive the cattle himself, but the men wouldn't 
 stay by him. They were sore and disgruntled over 
 what had happened, but more than that they feared 
 the terrible cold, and so they struck, and went back to 
 the camp, and hovered about the stove. Old Dan's 
 bile was moved afresh by their mutiny, and he raved 
 and railed, but all to no purpose. It suited his mood 
 to stay out, himself, and he went storming down to 
 the landing, and put in the day there, pottering about 
 all by himself. But towards night he came in, with 
 his crest fallen. His feet were frozen hard as two 
 stones, and he never stood on them again. Coal-oil 
 was the common remedy for frostbite, and old Dan 
 sat till morning with his feet plunged in a bucket of 
 it ; but they were not to be saved. He was packed 
 down river to a hospital, and the surgeons took his 
 feet both off, and told him he was lucky to keep his 
 life. 
 
 The last the lumberjacks saw of Shack was at 
 Bradish's camp, in the Deer Lake country. Bradish 
 was a pious man, as pious as a lumber-baron could 
 well be and retain his barony. You know about how 
 that is. He was the owner in fee or leasehold of only 
 two forties thereabouts, and a million of logs was a 
 big yield for a forty. Yet for twelve successive win-
 
 20 Shack 
 
 ters he sent in a hundred men, who never logged less 
 than six millions a season. You see the point. Twelve 
 winters, a hundred men, and only two forties of his 
 own, Bradish wasn't too pious for that; but at the 
 same time, he wouldn't suffer a tap of work to be done 
 on Sunday, and he always had a thought for his men's 
 souls. The men, on their part, understood Bradish, 
 and when there came along one day a tramping evan- 
 gelist, in mackinaw and packs, with a real tussock 
 slung over his back (he had a fancy to be a lumber- 
 jack to lumberjacks, you perceive) and bringing a line 
 from headquarters asking that he be shown every 
 courtesy, they were in no doubt as to what was ex- 
 pected of them. They were to give the sky-pilot the 
 best in the shop, and listen to his harangues till he 
 got tired and moved on. And they were not averse. 
 Once more a new face was a new face, and even a 
 sermon could sound good, in virtue of its freshness, 
 where every man had long since heard all the shady 
 stories the camp could muster. 
 
 They laid themselves out, in fact The evangelist 
 had a wish to hold a meeting in the open air, with no 
 roof but the sky, and no walls but the whispering 
 pines, and they managed the business for him; built 
 a great fire which threw its light far down the aisles 
 of the forest, and stood about and listened to his mes- 
 sage, respectfully, if not responsively. A strange and 
 striking picture they made, with their hundred faces 
 showing in the fitful light, now bright, now dull. The 
 picture, the weird solemnity of it, may well have been 
 what affected Shack, and prompted him to do what he 
 did. It was a new thing for him to manifest an in- 
 terest in religion. But if the fathers at the mission 
 had labored in vain with him, that might have been for
 
 Chaff Which the Wind Driveth Away 21 
 
 the lack of some such touch as was afforded here and 
 now, the brooding presence of the nature which was 
 all the mother he had known. At all events, for what- 
 soever reason or no reason at all, he was interested. 
 The men were always expecting him to do something 
 amusing, and there was a rustling about the fire, and 
 a faint softening of the hundred faces when he was 
 seen to push himself forward and take his stand at 
 length so near that he was fairly looking down the 
 evangelist's throat, in the attitude of rapt attention. 
 But that wasn't all. After a little he broke in on the 
 discourse, with an abrupt question. 
 
 "Who is this God? "he said. 
 
 The evangelist flushed resentfully, it sounded so 
 like some scoffer's interruption; but when he saw the 
 boy, and the earnestness in the upturned face, he was 
 moved to answer indulgently. 
 
 " The Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and of 
 earth," he said, and bowed reverently. 
 
 That wasn't enough for Shack, however. " I don't 
 know what you mean," he said, and there was a 
 strange note of urgency, almost of impatience, in his 
 manner. 
 
 " You know what a father is ? " 
 
 " Father James, at the mission ? " 
 
 " No, no ! Your own father. Have you no 
 father?" 
 
 " I have nothing. I had a dog, but he chased a 
 wolf and the wolf killed him. That is all I have." 
 
 The hundred faces smiled broadly, but the evan- 
 gelist was not offended, he perceived what sort of a 
 person he had to deal with, how very simple and un- 
 schooled. 
 
 " Listen, my boy," he said, kindly. " God is great."
 
 22 Shack 
 
 " Like the tree," said Shack, pointing to the Nor- 
 way which towered above them. 
 
 " Greater. He made the tree." 
 
 " Like the lake." 
 
 " Greater yet. He made the lake, also." 
 
 " Like the sun." 
 
 " He is greater even than the sun, for he made the 
 sun likewise. He is greater and different. God is a 
 spirit, my boy. We cannot see him except by his 
 works, or hear him, or feel him." 
 
 " How do you know about him, then ? " 
 
 " By His Word ! " and the evangelist held up his 
 Bible. 
 
 The end of the incident was quite the most sur- 
 prising part of it. The men were less surprised than 
 the evangelist, but even they were not looking for any- 
 thing like that which happened. For now, all at once, 
 with the quickness of a wildcat, Shack snatched the 
 book out of the sky-pilot's uplifted hand and bounded 
 into the bush, out of sight. 
 
 It was a little while before anybody moved or spoke, 
 so taken aback were they all. Then the men snickered, 
 and the evangelist found his voice to request, not with- 
 out asperity, that somebody recover his property for 
 him, it was the Bible he had carried with him for 
 years and by its associations it was very dear; he 
 would gladly give another and a better in its place, 
 but he must have that particular Bible back. The 
 men shook their heads, however; none of them could 
 hope to overtake the fleet child of the forest. In vain 
 the evangelist argued that Shack was lurking some- 
 where near, that such a mere boy would never dare go 
 far into the forest alone at night ; the men knew better.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 
 
 A LITTLE country school, and the class in the Third 
 Reader up. Perhaps you know about the class in the 
 Third Reader, in a very little country school, in a very 
 little hut of a house, taught by a very little young 
 woman who is not so sure of her call but she will stop 
 now and then to scan the horizon for a cloud the size 
 of a man's hand ? 
 
 A shocky boy begins the reading, slowly and 
 heavily. He sticks often, and as often as he sticks, he 
 will back up, like a snowplow in a drift, to gather 
 headway, and have at it again with fresh energy. 
 
 Thus: 
 
 " Littlebylit tlethebird thebirdbuildsher nest- 
 littlebylit tlebylittlethe sun sinks to restlittle- 
 bylit tlethewaves in their wavesintheirglee- 
 smoothe the rough rocks roughrocksby 
 theshore of the thesea." 
 
 Follows a girl, with pig-tailed hair, briskly, with the 
 air of showing the boy, and all the world, how : 
 
 " Littlebylittlethebirdbuildshernestlittlebylittlethesun 
 sinkstorestlittleby littlethe wavesin theirgleesmoothethe 
 roughrocksbytheshoreof thesea." 
 
 And so forth and so on, until the waves in their 
 glee have smoothed the rough rocks by the shore of the 
 
 23
 
 24 Shack 
 
 sea a matter of half a dozen times, in as many various 
 tones and manners. 
 
 Scattered about in the rude forms are a number of 
 other boys and girls, the eldest nearly grown, the 
 youngest only fairly begun to grow. Some are poring 
 doggedly, others are dreaming with their eyes open, 
 and one small lad has gone frankly to sleep, with his 
 head lying on his slate. To tell the truth, everybody 
 is mdre or less sleepy. Even the teacher, though it is 
 her bounden duty to be alert, yawns and nods in spite 
 of herself. There is a hot fire in the little stove, and 
 the little room is like an oven. The face of the sleep- 
 ing lad glistens with sweat. 
 
 The teacher sits with her back to the door, but 
 the children face it, and they waken first. There has 
 been no sound, not a footfall, or the creak of a hinge, 
 yet all at once the children are broad awake, staring 
 astonished and breathless. The bird has built her nest 
 once more, little by little, but the sun is left in midair, 
 while the class in the Third Reader give themselves up 
 to their surprise. Surprise lays hold of every heart. 
 The sleeping boy, though nobody touches him, or 
 speaks to him, starts up. The teacher catches the in- 
 fection, and starts up too, and faces about. 
 
 A man, or a big boy, stood in the doorway, and he 
 was Shack. They did not know who he was or they 
 would have been even more amazed, for had he not 
 come all of a hundred and fifty miles, on foot, in the 
 dead of winter, without provision and not much better 
 than half clothed? But they perceived that he was a 
 stranger, and a strange figure, who had come strange- 
 ly in among them, without a footfall or a creak of 
 warning; and by that they were amazed enough. 
 
 He was like a specter, especially as he did not speak,
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 25 
 
 but regarded them dumbly, out of his strange dark 
 eyes. There was something uncanny about the whole 
 affair, and the teacher was frightened. The children 
 could see that she was frightened, and they promptly 
 took fright from her, and huddled back among the 
 benches. Of course it lay upon her to do something, 
 and she rose to the situation, after a fashion. 
 
 " Good-day, sir ! " she said, with a quaver, and 
 forcing a poor smile. 
 
 Shack glowered at her, with his deep, smouldering 
 eyes. "Can I learn to read here?" he demanded, 
 almost fiercely. 
 
 " Oh, yes, to be sure ! " the little teacher answered, 
 a trifle relieved by the swift reflection that cutthroats 
 and robbers didn't usually begin that way. 
 
 " In this book ? " and Shack pulled the sky-pilot's 
 Bible out of his pocket, and showed it to her, jealously, 
 without letting go of it. 
 
 " In any book," she answered. " Have you never 
 been to school ? " 
 
 Never. 
 
 " Do you know your letters ? " 
 
 He didn't even know what letters were. 
 
 " A, B, C, and so on ! " 
 
 And so on ? No, that was all strange to him. 
 
 "Well, won't you please sit down?" The little 
 teacher could think of nothing better to propose. 
 Though he certainly didn't act just like a cutthroat or 
 a robber, she couldn't help trembling a good deal, and 
 turning very white, it was all so unusual and un- 
 expected. 
 
 She set out her own chair for him, but he didn't see 
 it, or else he didn't fancy sitting of that kind, choosing 
 rather to squat down against the wall, on his heels, like
 
 26 Shack 
 
 an Indian. He didn't take off his hat who had ever 
 taught him to uncover, in the house, or in the 
 presence of a lady ? The teacher felt all the time that 
 she had to do something besides huddle back with the 
 children, though that was what she would best like to 
 do, she had to take the situation in hand; so she 
 came with a book a primer and gave it to Shack 
 open, and stood beside him quaking and pointed out 
 the big letters. He on his part fixed his eyes intently 
 on the page, as if he would burn a hole through the 
 paper with his glance, yet your very first guess would 
 be, looking at him, that he saw nothing consciously. 
 That was uncanny, too, it suggested lunacy. What 
 if the strange man were a lunatic ? 
 
 It was a mighty hard position for a little young 
 woman, but it couldn't last. She had taken measures 
 almost at once, had whispered stealthily to her 
 most dependable boy, to go for help; and the boy, his 
 feet winged with terror, had gone. His departure was 
 attended with some little confusion, but Shack didn't 
 look up from his letters. He didn't look up when the 
 boy returned, either, though he brought a brawny, 
 thick-whiskered farmer with him, who stamped in 
 abruptly, making much noise. It seemed an age be- 
 fore deliverance came, with that terrifying figure 
 squat against the wall, motionless, that was about 
 the worst, his sitting there so still, as if he weren't 
 flesh and blood at all ; yet it came at last. The farmer 
 was astonished, but not at all frightened. He went 
 boldly up and laid his hand on Shack's shoulder, in 
 no gentle fashion. 
 
 " Now, then ! " he said, brusquely. 
 
 The wayfarer had journeyed far, over poor roads, 
 with food and shelter uncertainly vouchsafed, that
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 27 
 
 accounted for much. Perhaps the phases of the moon 
 were just right, to account for still more. At all 
 events what followed would have diverted the lumber- 
 jacks hugely, Shack sprang into the air, and yelled 
 and turned livid, and, by way of finishing touch, to fill 
 out the largest measure of entertainment, fell foaming 
 and insensible. That was something quite new. He 
 had never been known to lose consciousness before. 
 
 Of course the teacher screeched, and the children 
 with her. Even the sturdy farmer was startled and dis- 
 turbed, and scarce knew what to do. You can imagine 
 the scene, the strange incident culminating in so super- 
 latively strange a manner, not a person there would 
 forget it to his or her dying day. But in a moment 
 the farmer bethought himself to send boys scurrying 
 for more help, and especially for a wagon; and the 
 little teacher, moved by the compassion which is 
 stronger even than fear in the breast of woman, came 
 forward anxiously and proposed that they go for Dr. 
 Robert (pronounced Rowbear, because the doctor was 
 a Frenchman proud of his race). She had the pres- 
 ence of mind, too, to bathe Shack's face in cold water, 
 and only drew back when he opened his dark eyes and 
 looked up at her rather wildly. However, his opening 
 his eyes made him out to be in no very bad way, 
 only dazed and stupid, as if he had been struck a 
 heavy blow ; and there was really no occasion for 
 bathing his face any more. He made no effort to rise, 
 and when the wagon came, and they loaded him into 
 it, he offered no resistance, but listlessly suffered them 
 to do with him as they would. They were a bit rough, 
 you know how it is with men, even when they mean 
 kindly ; and two or three times, as she stood by, look- 
 ing on, the teacher exclaimed, " Oh, oh ! " and wrung
 
 28 Shack 
 
 her hands a little, and seemed about ready to cry. 
 Shack's Bible had dropped out of his pocket, and they 
 were driving off, when she came running after them, 
 with the book in her hand. Her compassion was very 
 much in evidence, she was very sorry for him, for all 
 the fright he had given her. He took the Bible from 
 her without a word, absently, as if his wits were not 
 fully recovered, or else he didn't care any more. 
 
 They conveyed him to their poor-farm. That was 
 the only place, except the county jail. They might 
 have put him in jail, since he was a vagrant, with 
 the proofs of his vagrancy upon him, but there was 
 more to be considered. An inmate of the jail was a 
 sheer charge on the public funds, whereas an inmate 
 of the poor- farm might be got to work and pay some 
 portion, if not all, of his keep. And possibly there 
 was a touch of kindness in their choice, the poor- 
 farm was more of a home than the jail, even though 
 it should not be a place where a wandering waif 
 might learn to read the word of God, either in print 
 or as it is written on the fleshy tablets of the heart. 
 
 Shack rallied quickly. By the time they arrived at 
 the poor-farm, he could sit up in the wagon, and he 
 got out without assistance. They pointed him to a 
 squalid corner where he might lie down, and he slept 
 there all the rest of the day and through the night; 
 and he awoke restored, to all intents and purposes. 
 
 You will guess, perhaps, that he didn't tarry long 
 in those precincts. He was under no constraint to stay, 
 the authorities were only too glad to be rid of a 
 pauper, and especially of a pauper who, like Shack, 
 was not of the parish but a wanderer from no man 
 knew where. On the contrary there was plenty to 
 prompt him to move on, to say nothing of the
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 29 
 
 repulsive surroundings, there was the mere Indian of 
 him, impatient of orderly living and monotony. Yet 
 tarry he did, not only for days, but weeks, and months, 
 till more than a year had passed. 
 
 That was because of the fancy he took to Sam 
 Jackson. 
 
 Sam was not an attractive personality, either, by 
 any ordinary test. He was easily the most luckless of 
 all that luckless crew of dependents, a hulking 
 giant of a fellow whose back had been broken by a 
 fall. It was a dreadful injury and the doctors had 
 given the man but a few hours to live, yet he was still 
 living. Anyway, there was still breath in him, though 
 not much more. In many respects he would never be 
 deader. Not a muscle could he move below the shoul- 
 ders, either of arm or leg, nor had he any feeling 
 whatever in his body. But he could eat, if he was 
 fed. Friends he had none who would stand by him 
 in such an extremity, and he went to the poor-farm, 
 to take his chances of neglect, for everybody loathed 
 him and shunned him. Why not? He was loath- 
 some enough. 
 
 That is to say, everybody until Shack came. 
 
 Shack took to this clod of unclean mortality from 
 the first. That which sorely disgusted everyone else 
 affected him with some perverse charm, until you 
 could believe he was actually fond of Sam Jackson. 
 No parent could be more indulgent with a child than 
 Shack was with Sam. He gave himself up to waiting 
 on Sam's whims, and though they multiplied as they 
 were humored, he never grew weary. All day he 
 hovered over Sam's bed, eagerly watching for some- 
 thing to do to promote his comfort; and by night he 
 slept at Sam's feet, like a faithful dog. He got poor
 
 ^o Shack 
 
 thanks. His freakish devotion lifted a great burden 
 off the keeper of the farm, and won, by that, a certain 
 reluctant appreciation. The keeper heartily despised 
 Shack for a fool, but looked on him as a godsend, 
 nevertheless, and showed him grudging favors 
 designed to make him stay. That was a species of 
 thanks, but further he got none. Sam Jackson him- 
 self repaid his lavish kindness with the sourest toler- 
 ance, and with curses, when his disabled tongue could 
 utter them. He had less sense of his own interest 
 than the keeper and did absolutely nothing to make 
 Shack stay. 
 
 But to this singular connection, as to all things else, 
 there came an end at length. One fatal day Sam es- 
 sayed to swear and swallow his dinner at the same 
 time and brought on a violent fit of coughing such 
 that he very soon collapsed. Shack raced away to 
 give the alarm, but the keeper was altogether indif- 
 ferent. He would hardly consent to go up and see 
 the man, and when he did it was only to look cal- 
 lously on the agony of death, for such it plainly was* 
 unless help should come soon. Send for a doctor? 
 Not he! Not in a thousand years! Not on your 
 photograph would he send for a doctor to save Sam 
 Jackson, who was better dead than alive, who should 
 have died long ago, and would have done so only that 
 he was the bullheadedest The keeper ran on at con- 
 siderable length, and worked himself into quite a 
 temper over the suggestion that useless bills be run 
 up on account of a fellow w r ho had already cost the 
 county a mighty sight more than he was worth. 
 
 The paupers stood round, listening, but Shack was 
 not among them. Just when he left, none knew, but 
 when they had heard the keeper out and were slinking
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 31 
 
 away, it developed that there was nobody to stay with 
 Sam, Shack had vanished and was nowhere to be 
 found. No great embarrassment resulted, however. 
 Paupers, vaguely designated as some of you fellers, 
 were detailed for the service, but as soon as the 
 keeper's back was turned they deserted their post and 
 left Sam to fight it out alone. Shack was pretty much 
 forgotten when suddenly, some hours later, he put in 
 an appearance, coming in the Indian style like a dry 
 leaf before the wind, with Dr. Robert driving at his 
 heels. Whence and wherefore he had gone stood 
 thus revealed, even to the dull pauper mind, he had 
 gone to summon the doctor, and the doctor's home 
 was a good ten miles off. 
 
 The keeper was furious. He'd a mind, he declared, 
 to cut the bloody heart out of the bloody pauper who 
 knew so little how to attend to his own bloody busi- 
 ness. To this sanguinary talk Shack listened un- 
 troubled, but when the keeper blustered to the doctor, 
 vowing he should have no pay for his visit since no- 
 body in authority had called him, that was different, 
 and Shack was visibly alarmed. But the doctor made 
 answer that he didn't care so much about pay if there 
 was somebody who needed him, whereat Shack was 
 even more visibly rejoiced, and hastened to lead the 
 way up to the attic, where Sam had his bed. 
 
 The man was dead, and cold. He had been dead 
 a long time, the doctor said. " I have doubt," you 
 would know Dr. Robert was a Frenchman at once 
 you heard him speak, " I have doubt could I have 
 save him. His life was hang by the slender thread." 
 
 The keeper growled that he was better dead. The 
 paupers, standing about, were not sorry, awed, in a 
 way, perhaps, but not sorry.
 
 32 Shack 
 
 And why should there be any regrets, after all? 
 It would be hard to say, hard to assign a reason why. 
 Shack stood by the bed, looking down on the face of 
 the dead, and when they saw him dropping tears, and 
 pretty copiously, too, they deemed it wonderfully 
 strange, the keeper, the paupers, the doctor, espe- 
 cially the doctor. He whispered and asked if they two 
 had been relatives, the dead man and the man who 
 wept ; and he was amazed to be informed that they had 
 not so much as known each other, until lately. 
 
 " Bugs ! " said the keeper, and jerked his thumb 
 toward Shack, with a wink. 
 
 The doctor got into his buggy and drove away. It 
 was a covered buggy, with the top turned back, he 
 could not see behind it without standing up, and he 
 was not likely to stand up, the way he drove. His 
 cattle were two lithe, hardy bronchos, and he pushed 
 them along about as fast as they could cover the 
 ground. The roads were deep and heavy with mud 
 all the distance. 
 
 When he drew up at his home, after near two hours 
 of hard riding, and before he had time to alight, a 
 man came out from behind the buggy. He made a 
 startling apparition, daubed as he was from head to 
 foot with wet clay, clay in his hair, clay splotched 
 all over his face. 
 
 It was Shack. He had run behind the buggy from 
 the poor-farm. 
 
 The doctor remembered him. 
 
 " Ah, you are here then ! " he said, looking down in 
 kindly astonishment. 
 
 " You will show me how to read this book," said 
 Shack, and held up the sky-pilot's Bible. 
 
 He spoke confidently, as having no doubt whatever.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A PHYSICIAN FOR HEALING 
 
 IF Shack was an odd stick, Dr. Robert was odd, 
 too, so much, if no more, these two had in common. 
 To belong to an ancient and wealthy family (the 
 Roberts had come in with the missionaries or very 
 soon after, to buy furs at an enormous profit and take 
 up lands for a song which should one day be worth 
 a fabulous fortune) ; to go abroad and study medicine 
 at the best schools of Paris and Vienna; and then, 
 at last, with all the world to choose from, to settle 
 down in the obscurest of crossroads hamlets, staying 
 there year after year though his practice yielded him 
 but the scantiest living, could anything make a man 
 out much odder? < 
 
 Yet that was Dr. Robert, and it was only the begin- 
 ning of his oddity. He was little and black and thin 
 and wiry, but most of all was that trick of singularity, 
 he certainly had it. 
 
 A man may be queer, yet have a constancy whereby 
 after some accquaintance with him, you get to under- 
 stand about how to take him; but it wasn't at all so 
 with Dr. Robert. He had you completely bewildered, 
 no matter how long you had known him. If you set 
 him down for one thing, he straightway showed him- 
 self another. To be sure he was always kind, but even 
 
 33
 
 34 Shack 
 
 at that he was full of surprises. Though a manner of 
 seraphic sweetness should sugar over his kindness to- 
 day, there would be no telling about to-morrow, or an 
 hour hence, as likely as not he would overlay his next 
 favor with such a crustiness as to make you doubt his 
 good intentions. You couldn't count with entire as- 
 surance on his French politeness, even, though that 
 was undeniably a strong habit with him. He assumed 
 to be rather more than a doctor of medicine among 
 his people, some thought he assumed too much, at 
 times. In point there was the case of the certain 
 woman who found herself in the predicament of the 
 venerable female who lived in a shoe, that is to say, 
 she had so many children she didn't know what to do. 
 She was of the clay to be embittered by her burdens, 
 and she made her household very uncomfortable, par- 
 ticularly her husband, who at length consulted Dr. 
 Robert in the view that his wife was perhaps a little 
 insane. 
 
 The doctor went at once, and expostulated with the 
 woman, all in his suavest manner. But she was not 
 pleased at being taken to task, however gently, and 
 flared back at him angrily. 
 
 " Why should I make a beast of burden of my- 
 self?" she demanded. 
 
 " Because, my dear," for all his learning the doctor 
 could neither speak nor write English without a quaint 
 French coloring, and such spoony phrases were a part 
 of it, " because, my dear, it is precisely the duty of 
 you." 
 
 The woman sniffed. What was duty to her? 
 
 " Well, as to that, duty is our bridge to heaven ! " 
 
 Robert was reputed an unbeliever. How did it lie in 
 an unbeliever's mouth to be preaching about heaven?
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 35 
 
 The woman caught at the inconsistency and threw it 
 up at him. 
 
 He was determined to be sweet that day. " Ah, my 
 dear," quoth he, " it is not by any means the heaven of 
 the theologians. Not in the little ! The heaven, under- 
 stand me, of the here and the now. Life he would 
 be one desolate affair without duties to do. You are 
 fortunate for being the woman, and a mother, for that 
 the duty of the mother is without doubt the most per- 
 fect bridge of all. If you were to lose your children, 
 you would perceive what I say." 
 
 Quite a number were of the opinion that Dr. Robert 
 was out of his place giving advice of that sort. What 
 man, and especially what unmarried man, could under- 
 stand whereof he ventured so airily to speak ? 
 
 He lived all alone in a rude cabin builded with his 
 own hands, a home as odd as the man who dwelt in 
 it. It was so open to the weather that public sentiment 
 pronounced it unfit for human habitation; but if you 
 proposed any such misgivings to him, he would laugh 
 at you, and quote a famous Irish physician (Robert 
 insisted that he was famous and a high authority 
 though nobody else had ever heard of him), a Dr. 
 Lyne, who taught that a house, in order to be rightly 
 habitable, should have never a door which a dog 
 mightn't crawl in under, or a window which a bird 
 mightn't fly out at. And one thing was undeniable, 
 Dr. Robert kept wonderfully good health. The story 
 went that he was never sick, never so much as had a 
 cold. During the historic epidemic of black diph- 
 theria, the slightest contact with which meant deadly 
 infection to everybody else, he came off unscathed, 
 though he went as he was called, and was often nurse 
 as well as physician. Two other doctors, within fifty
 
 36 Shack 
 
 miles, died of the plague, and they had sprinkled them- 
 selves endlessly with disinfectants, whereas Robert 
 took no such precautions. 
 
 Both within and without it was an extraordinary 
 cabin. You were struck, on entering, with the bare 
 rafters, unadorned except by plentiful cobwebs heavily 
 hung with dust ; and with the studding, likewise bare, 
 but filled all round with books. Countryfolks were 
 awed by the array of books, and forced to a high re- 
 spect for the learning betokened ; but quite differently 
 affected by the litter on the floor, of ashes, and chips 
 of firewood, and sand brought in by careless feet, the 
 accumulation of years, it was thought. Sometimes, 
 when he was in the mood, and there were women 
 present, the doctor would have a word of apology for 
 the dirt. 
 
 " The man-beast who shall be unblessed by feminine 
 companionship," he would say, bobbing his funny 
 little bow, " he will procure himself to live on the very 
 friendly terms with much dirt. And is dirt so the ter- 
 rible thing, after all? Ha! If you let him be, in the 
 place which he will choose to lie, he will do me no 
 harm, positively not. He is thick upon my floor, but 
 does he incommode me? No! Only as I should stir 
 him up, with my broom, and render him angry and 
 malignant with my poking, would he settle on my 
 books and my papers, to bother me much. Quieta non 
 movere, is it not so ? " 
 
 The Latin was a deft touch, though unconsciously 
 so. Of all the doctor's sophistries this did most to 
 give the women a feeling that his flagrant disregard 
 of the conventions was somehow justified. 
 
 Women had something of a grudge against him, to 
 begin with. How should they not take it as a species
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 37 
 
 of affront to their sex that he had never married and, 
 to all appearances, was bent on not marrying ? A man 
 living alone, year after year, and giving every indica- 
 tion of enjoying himself notwithstanding, he as good 
 as accuses womenkind of being superfluous, and no- 
 body likes to be accused of being superfluous. But 
 with the doctor's youth, as insensibly and not less cer- 
 tainly, that grudge had passed. By degrees the women 
 came to look on Robert as a man dispensed from 
 matrimony ; and they were the more easily appeased as 
 it appeared that the woman who should become the 
 wife of so odd a stick would fall upon anything but a 
 happy lot. The doctor would be kind to his wife, in 
 the uncertain way he was kind to all, but beyond that 
 well, women had long since given up quarreling with 
 Robert's singleness. 
 
 No diploma hung on his walls. Most doctors, es- 
 pecially of late years, were proud to display diplomas, 
 for a testimony; but if Dr. Robert had such a thing 
 he kept it out of sight. There were those who believed 
 he had none, the other doctors almost to a man ; they 
 didn't like him, they accused him of violating the code 
 of professional ethics, and they did not scruple to inti- 
 mate that he would be excluded from practice only 
 that he had been a professing physician for more than 
 fifteen years and was thereby prescriptively exempt 
 from the operation of the law requiring a medical man 
 to show a diploma or stand examination. Possibly 
 there was something in it, certainly he made no 
 great parade of technical knowledge and seemed to 
 discredit, rather than otherwise, much of the advanced 
 theory of healing. He openly confessed his inability 
 to cure every ill flesh is heir to, and declared over and 
 over that temperance in all things was the beginning
 
 38 Shack 
 
 and the end of good health. And particularly was it 
 his custom to warn his patients, no matter what their 
 ailment, that they were digging their graves with their 
 teeth, by which he meant that they lived not wisely but 
 too well, ate too much, in short. 
 
 He was modest in his charges, beyond all example 
 modest. 
 
 Instances without number had gone into tradition. 
 One, called to mind as often as any, perhaps, was that 
 of a man who had something the matter with his eye, 
 something so afflicting that he went to the city for re- 
 lief, and consulted a famous specialist. The specialist 
 held out small hope, wanted $75 for a preliminary oper- 
 ation and no telling how much more, and the man 
 backed out, he was poor and such talk frightened 
 him. As the drowing man clutches at a straw he took 
 his eye to Dr. Robert. Could he do anything for it? 
 Well, he could try, at all events, and try he did. That 
 is, he resorted copiously to warm water, and very little 
 else, and told the man to come back in a week. In a 
 week the eye was about well. How much? Oh, 
 twenty-five cents, quoth Dr. Robert. 
 
 Another instance was that of a half-grown girl, who 
 fell and hurt her leg, and lay in bed with it for months, 
 and though she got up at last, walked but hardly, with 
 crutches. They took her to the specialists, too, and the 
 specialists were for operating, right away. How 
 much? Well, $100, since the people were poor; if 
 they had been rich it would be $1,000, specialists 
 weren't wholly devoid of the bowels of mercy. But 
 the operation would leave the girl a cripple, and her 
 father and mother shrank from that, and came home, 
 and consulted Dr. Robert, clutching at the last straw. 
 What did he think? Why, that the girl only fancied
 
 By the Waters of Babylon 39 
 
 she was lame, was under some sort of hysterical de- 
 lusion, not an uncommon thing at her age. He took 
 her in hand, adroitly, won her confidence, beguiled her 
 into trying to walk, and before very long she was as 
 well as ever. What was his fee? Oh, nothing! he 
 had done nothing, why should he charge a fee? 
 
 Over the doctor's head, as he sat by his rough pine 
 table to minister to his neighbors with much of counsel 
 and little of drugs, there was a sheet of cardboard 
 tacked up, with these words printed on it, in large 
 letters, with an unskilled pen : 
 
 " Hers, was willst du mehrf " 
 
 The countryside never quite settled, in its own mind, 
 the significance of this inscription, or, for that matter, 
 its origin. Some called it Latin, some called it Greek, 
 and a few, who had heard of Hebrew, called it 
 Hebrew. There were no Germans in those parts, as it 
 chanced, and the sentiment remained a mystery through 
 all the years. None thought of asking the doctor 
 about that or any other matter personal to himself, 
 in that quarter curiosity knew itself helpless. 
 
 But two other sheets of cardboard likewise nailed 
 up, were in plain English, such that he might read who 
 ran: 
 
 " Disappointment is the same sort of tonic for the 
 soul that Hardship is for the body." 
 
 And: 
 
 " Blessed is the strong man who knows Disap- 
 pointment, for he shall be made stronger." 
 
 Un thoughtful neighbors were perplexed by these 
 proposals, and found them enigmatical to the last. 
 Still, the likelihood was, seeing what honor was given
 
 40 Shack 
 
 them, that they were distillations of wisdom. Some 
 minute critic or other had discovered internal evidence 
 that they were not of the doctor's own getting up, 
 they didn't sound Frenchy enough ; most likely he had 
 copied them out of some book. 
 
 There was yet more oddity nailed up, a great print 
 portrait, almost life-size, of Pope Leo XIII, in his 
 pontifical robes. That was the occasion of perplexity, 
 too. Had the doctor artfully put up the portrait to 
 flatter the Canadian French, who were numerous there- 
 abouts, and all strong Catholics? Hardly, that 
 wouldn't be like him; he was the last person in the 
 world to curry favor. Was it then simply because he 
 admired the gorgeous colors? The printers had cer- 
 tainly made a fine show, with their colors. For a 
 cheap lithograph, it was remarkable. 
 
 And so, oddly enough, these two odd sticks had 
 come together.
 
 BOOK II 
 DR. ROBERT'S DIARY
 
 DR. ROBERT'S DIARY 
 
 6 of March. 
 
 IT is I, Oliver Robert, who set down these remarks. 
 They concern a strange being, his name Jacques. 
 
 He knows no other name. 
 
 He is French & he is Indian. He is also something 
 else. He tells me nearly nothing, only that he has 
 lived in the pineries. But I know he is Indian, the 
 bones of his face are that. I know he is French, it 
 is in his talk. The more in him, what it may be, I 
 know not. 
 
 I saw him ist on yesterday the day before. 
 
 He came much alarmed. He said : " There is a 
 man choking himself at the Poor Farm ! " 
 
 I said: "Very well!" 
 
 Thereupon I drove thither. I would willing have 
 take the strange being in my buggy, only he was 
 already gone, & when I arrive to the Poor Farm, he is 
 before me. It is ten miles, which he must have walk, 
 or run. The patient he was died, & the strange being 
 wept over him. They were then brothers, or at all 
 events cousins germans? Not so! They were not 
 known to themselves before recently. 
 
 In the next place I arrive home. I alight from my 
 buggy. What shall I now behold but the strange be- 
 ing! He has run behind from the Poor Farm which 
 is still ten miles and the road very bad. He was much 
 mudded. He was, in fact, a sight! 
 
 43
 
 44 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 Myself : " What is your name ? " 
 
 Strange Being: "Jacques!" 
 
 By that I knew he was French. He spoke the name 
 with a perfection. 
 
 He had with him a book. In it he wished me to 
 teach him, how that he should read it. I looked at the 
 the book. It was the Bible. 
 
 Precisely it is the compatriot of Renan which I, 
 Oliver Robert, am. The Christian Church is a dead 
 corpse. A mummy, embalmed with much skill in 
 windings of ceremony & for that alone suffered to re- 
 main above the ground among the living. So have I 
 made up my mind. What is the Bible to me that I 
 shall teach strange beings to read in it? 
 
 At all events I unhitch my horses. I put them in the 
 barn. They are much mudded & they are steam with 
 sweat. I go into the loft to procure them hay. I come 
 back. What do I behold ? Jacques has rub the horses 
 with straw till they are dry & clean. 
 
 Excellent ! 
 
 I declared, with a laugh : " It is the first time ! " 
 
 Beyond the doubt I am shameful with my horses. 
 I feed them well, it is likely. Yet I never rub 
 them. Vita brevls! 
 
 I said : " Come ! " & we proceed into the house. 
 
 I consider the matter of supper. What have we for 
 supper to-night? I asked myself this forthwith. 
 
 I peer into my cupboard. What do I behold? A 
 kettle filled in part with cold mush. Some milk. A 
 small quantity of butter. Tea. For the making wel- 
 come a guest it is not much. However, it must suffice. 
 I go to the stove. A fire is necessary, for the tea. 
 
 I feel a touch. I turn. It is Jacques. He exclaims : 
 "Me!"
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 45 
 
 He taps his breast. I understand him. It is like a 
 Frenchman to speak with his hand, & like another 
 Frenchman to understand him. I say : " Very well ! " 
 I sit down. 
 
 He lights the fire, adroitly. He find an old pan. In 
 this he melt a little of the butter. He cut the cold 
 mush in delicate slices, after which, in the butter, he 
 fry them, till they are crisp & brown. He make the 
 tea in a manner such that my cabin has the sweet savor 
 filling it & my nostrils are rejoiced exceedingly. From 
 the cupboard he bring 2 cups, I plate, 2 knives, which 
 he lay on the table. At length he say : " Supper is 
 ready!" 
 
 I reply: "So am I!" 
 
 It is true I pronounce fried food unwholesome. 
 Yet I find myself devouring the mush. I am ready 
 to conjecture that I have tasted nothing so good in 
 long years. 
 
 I observe, frankly : "HI dig my grave with my 
 teeth, the time is at hand when I should be digging it 
 with something. I shall have use for it, in the pres- 
 ently." 
 
 I am facetious, yet the strange being does not laugh. 
 Such is the Indian. The Indian laughs not with 
 humor and merriment, only with scorn. 
 
 In the pineries very good cookery will be found. 
 By this they keep the men in contentment. In the 
 lonesomeness the men will become downcast & medi- 
 tate leaving their work, only for the good cookery. 
 Cooks are employed who will prepare a tasteful din- 
 ner. It is of these Jacques learned the art, I am 
 assure. 
 
 He is cook for me & yet more. To-day, I being 
 absent, he sweeps the floor. It is like a new house. I
 
 46 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 enter & I am in doubt. Is it my house which I have 
 come home to? The floor is spotless. But the dust? 
 There is no bit of it to see. 
 
 To-night I have talk with him more searchingly. I 
 resolve to begin with teaching him French. It is his 
 proper vehicle. The English it is strong. But where 
 there is a delicacy, shall it be convey in a lumber- 
 wagon ? 
 
 17 of March. 
 
 A soul in fetters! As well it may be a great soul. 
 Who knows? 
 
 I dare question if such position ever was before. 
 
 A bird, imprisoned. Peradventure an eagle. No, 
 I will believe it a gentler soul than that. Some bird 
 rather with sweet songs in its throat silenced by cap- 
 tivity! It strive for freedom that it may utter forth 
 its music. That is the position. 
 
 Especially, this soul up till yet finds no fit tongue, 
 such as it may hold communion by means of, either 
 with itself, or with another. For the lack of a 
 tongue it has never yet spoken. English is good, for 
 the Englishman. For the Frenchman, it is the lumber- 
 wagon. Why then do I employ it? That I may 
 speak with my people. Besides, I have nothing but 
 lumber to convey. With Jacques it is otherwise. 
 
 He has the Indian tongue, but the Indian is nothing. 
 The grunting of beasts, little more. 
 
 But when I speak to Jacques in French for the first 
 time, he holds his breath with listening. He is radi- 
 ant, as if he hear the voice once more of his beloved 
 long lost. I make no doubt it is the ist time he hear 
 the language of Moliere, of Voltaire, of Hugo. Yet 
 almost he understand me.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 47 
 
 I have teach him the French words for objects, & 
 he was overjoy to say them over & over. When 
 he have learn enough to answer me back, his delight 
 was nearly frantic. 
 
 Again! From this moment he speaks English less 
 well. To-day he speak it brokenly, like a new French- 
 man. I have need to take care. He will have use 
 for the English. 
 
 This I remember when it bethinks me to procure 
 him a French Bible. To read the Bible he is anxious, 
 & with French he will get on fast, but there is more. 
 No, we shall keep the Bible in English. So I dec.'de. 
 I read from the Bible to him, turning a word into 
 French now and again. The French for the delicacy, 
 the English for the lumber, if he have the both that 
 will be well. 
 
 3 of April. 
 
 Like a candle guttering! The fat wastes with the 
 flame which flare up. Better for him to burn in a 
 steady fashion. No, that would make of him the 
 ordinary person. 
 
 He is restless. 
 
 In his body he is frail. Yet he ran behind the 
 buggy ten miles. He have already before then run, 
 or walk, twenty miles. He was not exhausted after 
 all. Nervous ! Strength of the nerve, summoned up. 
 
 Bodily much is wrong with him. His heart, how- 
 ever, is worst. 
 
 It is too slow. Again it is too fast. 
 
 When his heart is slow, you will deem him a simple- 
 ton, no more. He is then dull & sluggish. But when 
 his heart is fast, his mood grow high. He is exalted, 
 like no man I ever met with. How his eyes light 
 up!
 
 48 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 Though with nothing or little of the intellect. All 
 is feeling. 
 
 To what end? I have ask myself that. 
 
 He babbles at times till I fear him to become a luna- 
 tic. He makes strife to tell me something, in words. 
 It is something of his feeling. But his words are 
 drivel. However, he affects me. In his high mood 
 there flow from him a feeling, an emotion, such that 
 I am touch by it. In a manner am I carried away. I 
 am aware of a new principle of conviction working 
 within me. He will almost make me believe without 
 reason. Yet what? Not yet does it appear. 
 
 He is restless more and more. The spring, which 
 wakens, calls to him. He will stand in the posture of 
 listening, as if voices were in the air. Do I speak to 
 him then, he answers me not. Hears me not. Nor 
 sees. 
 
 He remains the Indian in much respects. Wood- 
 craft he understands wonderfully. He will snare part- 
 ridges, but that is not all. He has a club. It re- 
 sembles the boomerang of the bushman. With his 
 club he will kill wild chickens as they fly. He have 
 the scent of the dog, for he knows when chickens are 
 near, in the manner of the dog. 
 
 He will fish admirably. The bullheads, as he pre- 
 pares them, are admirable. 
 
 Such dining! Feasts of Lucullus! It is a glutton 
 I am become. I dig my grave with my teeth, but now 
 I shall need it larger, so fat have I grown. Accord- 
 ingly, I have the more digging to do ! 
 
 I explain this joke to Jacques, in French as well as 
 English. Yet he will not laugh. It is too merry. 
 
 However, I have hear him laugh. He will have me 
 read often from the Bible. I, Oliver Robert, from
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 49 
 
 the Bible! One day it is of Moses, of Jehovah in the 
 burning bush, and he will laugh. It is scornful laugh- 
 ter. Sardonical. 
 
 And saying nothing. 
 
 When he is disturbed I know by his eyes, & by his 
 neck. In his neck the great artery swells & throbs till 
 you think it may well burst. 
 
 15 of July. 
 
 We live in a bower. Jacques have made it so. It 
 is my fashion to neglect all. Nux erchetai! The little 
 field was not tilled formerly. I had not the taste for 
 husbandry & those boys whom I employ they took my 
 pay and will give me but small services. During the 
 last summer cows pushed down the fence & devoured 
 the corn whereupon I was resolved to plant no more. 
 
 Jacques mended the fence. He make the old boards 
 suffice though many are broken. He finds posts, I 
 know not where. The expense is nothing. Even the 
 old nails he will save, making each of them straight 
 with much pains. But withal the fence is not hand- 
 some. However, he is not done. He repair to the 
 woods & procure vines of the wild grape to set out 
 along the fence & they spring up to cover it wholly. 
 The house, next! From the woods he bring likewise 
 woodbine to plant near the house and they have climb 
 to the roof. To live rightly in such lodge I should 
 be a poet. 
 
 In the field grow all manner of good vegetables, 
 with no weed to be seen. Here and there, as the odd 
 corner will present itself, he has a flower or a shrub, 
 all from the woods. What may he not find in those 
 woods? 
 
 His babbling embraces much mention of God. His
 
 50 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 nature have of the religious a portion, not surpris- 
 ingly, since he is emotional. 
 
 He seeks God, who eludes him. 
 
 You will say, at times, that the God he yearn to 
 find shall perhaps be none other than great Pan, who 
 dwells in limpid waters & rustling airs, in leaves & 
 in the sward, in the mounting sap which is the life of 
 plants. For he will speak confusedly of God & the 
 Norway (a common species of the pine tree), of 
 God & the lake, of God & the sun. But more than 
 all is his delight in the woods, how happy among his 
 vines & his vegetables. Especial peace broods over 
 him. 
 
 Not for long, however. That which he seeks is 
 not found. 
 
 You observe him. He is in communion, you may 
 say, with great Pan. The especial peace is upon him. 
 But behold it is presently trouble, like the surface of 
 the waters. For the first place a soft breeze of doubt 
 will blow over. There will be a cloud form in his face. 
 He pause. He hesitate. He look about him while the 
 doubt grow stronger. He look about him more & 
 more as one who is lost from his way. At length he 
 turn away. It is back to his books. I come upon 
 him toiling among them. He reads here and there. 
 He brings something to me to be read. 
 
 Mostly it is the Bible. The name of God is much 
 there. Very often he hears it as we go on. He 
 listen intently. But his brow is knit. He does not 
 start up in recognition. 
 
 He is eluded & yet again eluded. 
 
 i of August. 
 
 To-day it was L'Etoile du Nord which he brought 
 me. This is a small newspaper which is printed in
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 51 
 
 Quebec. An old friend who is very Catholic has it 
 sent to me, for the good of my soul, since it is very 
 Catholic likewise. In Quebec all is very Catholic. 
 But I peruse it not a little, inasmuch as it is print in 
 very good French. No patois. 
 
 Jacques he enjoy to read it, too. Because it is very 
 Catholic? Well, possibly! The very Catholic the 
 very emotional it is a connection, not impossible. 
 
 Indeed, he pores over L'Etoile du Nord until he 
 have peruse, I daresay, every word. 
 
 To-day, as I have remark, he bring it to me with the 
 beseechment that I read to him a certain article. This 
 is an article of length, which is no less than the report 
 of a falling out, a rupture, between the Church and the 
 civil power, in France. The Concordat of Napoleon, 
 it would seem, have been violated. But in any case, 
 the revenues of the clergy are greatly diminish, such 
 that the bishop of the diocese have come forth with an 
 appeal to the faithful at large. He will have the faith- 
 ful send him money, that he may support his clergy. 
 
 It is the bishop's appeal which Jacques wishes me 
 to read. He has read it for himself, but he will make 
 sure he has it right. 
 
 Particularly these words : 
 
 " Some of my priests earn their living by mending 
 watches or manufacturing beehives. Others till the 
 soil, knit jerseys, or follow agricultural pursuits. All 
 that is not very noble or worthy of the sacerdotal 
 calling." 
 
 I have never seen Jacques so indignant up till yet. 
 His eyes will flash, his neck throb greatly. 
 
 He cries : " Why is it not noble ? " 
 
 I answer : " It is not fashionable. The fashion 
 rules in all things. The fashion is for the priest to
 
 52 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 keep his hands white for the service of God. He may 
 not soil them, with the hard work of the world, or 
 God will be offended." 
 
 I am bitter ? It may well be. But I regret. Jacques 
 stares at me, he turns away abruptly, he mutters with 
 many gestures. There is confusion within him, I have 
 make it more so. I regret this. 
 
 Should I ruthlessly approach, with my eyes folded 
 blind, a closet stored with precious porcelains? It 
 is not likely. He gropes, but who am I to guide him, 
 with my bitterness ? It is easy to make the youth un- 
 believers, but wherefore? Is it that the unbeliever 
 is so happy in his unbelief? 
 
 He is in the forest. He will work his own way out, 
 however. 
 
 Yet we may sing together without harm. By that 
 he is soothed. I play my viol, not, indeed, as an artist, 
 but with sincerity. I sing. Jacques, he too has the 
 voice, as we presently discover. He joins with me & 
 it is much comfort while no porcelains are broken. 
 
 1 6 of August. 
 
 (Since i week, much has come to pass! 
 
 Before then, he was begun to fall away from the 
 books. Almost I may say he shun these. His coun- 
 tenance wore the look of defeat, of chagrin. It was 
 sullen. He consort more with great Pan, but to what 
 comfort? Very little. If he went often to the woods, 
 it was not to loiter, to drink in the joy of the place. 
 Rather was it to flit, in the manner of the uneasy 
 ghost. 
 
 When he came in he was at times haggard. Once 
 he was wet with sweat.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 53 
 
 It was the hour of desperate searchings, of grop- 
 ings. The barrier was before him. No opening. 
 
 He suffered. What is worse than conscious impo- 
 tence? I had pity, why should I not go to his aid? 
 
 'But no! My part was not that. I might provide 
 him with his vehicle, namely, the French. I might 
 read to him, when he will ask me. I might sing with 
 him, to soothe him. But further, nothing! So I 
 told myself. 
 
 I would not so much as leave certain books in his 
 way. I would not move one of them from its place 
 in order that he might the more or the less encounter 
 with it. No, no ! Let them be as they were. To that 
 effect I made my determination. 
 
 A soul was being born, in short. I was but the mid- 
 wife, not the parent! 
 
 Yet nevertheless, since i week, what happens? 
 
 This! He returns from the woods, it is possibly 
 3 o'clock in the P. M. Since dinner he has been 
 out. He is pallid, breathless, sweaty. He sinks 
 into a chair. He stares dully before him. 
 
 His eyes wander over the books. I observe him 
 and my belief is he sees nothing. Soon, however, he 
 gathers his attention upon a certain corner, though 
 it should be but languidly. Afterwards he rises. He 
 walks over. He takes down from the shelf five 
 volumes. 
 
 They are the five volumes of Les Miserdbles, that 
 chiefest of epics, of human documents the very 
 important. 
 
 It is not in the least of my doing. It was there the 
 volumes were the day he came. I have not put them 
 in his way. 
 
 He opens. The print is small. There has come
 
 54 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 upon him a disgust of reading. Les Miserables is 
 enormous. The five volumes, with the small print, 
 he may well be irresolute, on opening. A crisis! 
 He puts the books down. He turns away. But 
 straightway he turns back. He takes up volume the I, 
 he stands reading. He reads on. He resumes his 
 seat but he reads on. 
 
 That was i week since. 
 
 To-day, should I mistake not, the soul is born. 
 
 I have been all day on a far call. Evening was 
 fallen when I reach home. I found Jacques and 
 never had I beheld him so. That he was much 
 wrought upon, who should deny? Yet calm. He 
 attend the commonplaces of the chore. The horses he 
 put in the stables. He rub them. He feed them. 
 He omit nothing of the ordinary but made the supper, 
 swept the hearth, set all in order. The while, I could 
 ask myself if he was well aware of doing these things. 
 There was an air about him, of absence. 
 
 At length, each thing being done, he laid before me 
 volume the I of Les Miserables. 
 
 He says : " Read ! Read to me, all about Bishop 
 Welcome!" 
 
 Ah, the best of bishops! The bishop too good to 
 dwell anywhere save in a book! How shall I not be 
 glad to read of him? How shall I not put the heart 
 in my reading? If there is that in my voice, in my 
 manner, which is .affecting, I shall not wonder. 
 Jacques hears, without moving. From time to time 
 I will look up. Always I behold him in a silent 
 rapture, in a serene transport. In his eyes the light 
 of tranquil exulting! As for his neck, it has never 
 throbbed so slightly. He is lifted to a contentment, 
 of a lofty description.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 55 
 
 The conjecture sweeps over me that the soul is 
 born. Shall I hear its cry, its first wail of conscious 
 life? 
 
 No! There is not a word from him, not a sound, 
 though I am done reading at length. 
 
 However, he retire to rest. In a little I overhear 
 him. He is weeping. 
 
 I call to him : " Jacques, my boy, can you not 
 sleep?" 
 
 He answers : " I do not wish to sleep ! If I sleep 
 I shall forget ! " 
 
 But now, as I write, he sleeps, after all. Very well 
 for him. In his high moods he may be not far from 
 insanity. 
 
 It is 2 o'clock in the A. M. 
 
 19 of August 
 
 This morning it is very early when he is dressing 
 himself already. Before 5 o'clock, & the sun not 
 risen. Misgiving assails me. Since 2 days now there 
 has been a resolution gathering in his face. Since 2 
 days have I foreboded. 
 
 I spring up. I go to him. 
 
 I say : " My boy, what is this ? " 
 
 He say : " I must be about my father's business ! " 
 
 It makes me astonishment when he repeats the 
 words of Jesus. And the pain ! " I must be about 
 my father's business ! " says he, & my heart sinks. 
 
 This is my thought : He has found that which he 
 was seeking. 
 
 I question: "Whose business?" 
 
 He is silent. But I am bold to go on with him. 
 The pain of foreboding, for that I will know. 
 
 Myself : " Your father's business, what shall it 
 be?"
 
 56 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 Jacques: "To feed his sheep!" 
 
 Myself: "The sheep, they are where?" 
 
 Jacques : " Where many sheep are, who look up 
 and are not fed ! " 
 
 As I have foreboded! He will leave me! 
 
 I am selfish. The pang wrings this from me : " Is 
 not old Robert sheep enough to feed ? " 
 
 However he is silent. He looks beyond me. He 
 moves off, hurriedly. He is going at once? Even 
 so! Yet it is not more abruptly than he came. 
 
 I stifle my selfishness. 
 
 I remark : " You will need money." 
 
 He demands: "Did St. Francis need money?" 
 
 It makes me astonishment that he know of St. 
 Francis. But I expostulate : " These United States 
 are not Italy. Nor is the 19 century the 12 ! " 
 
 He retorts : " The sheep look up and are not fed ! " 
 
 Only my entreaty prevail over him. He take the 
 money. It is but a small sum. He set out. I call 
 to him good-bye. He does not hear me. This is 
 heart-wringing. 
 
 He will return. Or is it only that I hope? 
 
 25 of August. 
 
 So strangely he came, so strangely he went away, 
 I can wonder if he was not the part of a dream ! But 
 no, yonder are the vines. And yonder is the field of 
 corn almost white for the sickle. 
 
 How could he leave all, great Pan, the household, 
 the horses, old Robert ? 
 
 He go better than he came, he have the use of his 
 mind much more. 
 
 Not that reason has been enthroned supreme. Not 
 at all. With him such can never be. His purpose is
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 57 
 
 given to him by his feelings, which are ever in the 
 command of him. But now they have for their ser- 
 vant, as not before, the useful mind. It is as if he 
 should be a ship, bound for yonder port. The feelings 
 are his engines, but they cannot very well sail him. 
 He flounders. He drifts. He is at times near the 
 rocks. Mind is the skilful navigator, until now asleep. 
 He wakes. He takes the wheel. It is the same port, 
 same ship, same engines. Only the pilot have come 
 on board. 
 
 7 of September. 
 
 I am moved to read afresh about the good bishop, 
 but behold, of Les Miserables, the volume I is not to 
 be found. 
 
 Jacques has taken it with him. Otherwise it would 
 not be gone.
 
 BOOK III 
 
 VOICE CRYING IN THE 
 WILDERNESS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WILDERNESS 
 
 IT would not be like an Indian to take thought of the 
 morrow, or provide aught against the time of scarcity. 
 Why should he trouble himself? If game fails, he 
 knows berries and barks which will feed him. If 
 berries and barks fail, he knows how to draw up his 
 belt and stifle his hunger for a long time. And when 
 all else fails, he knows how to die without taking 
 death hard. No, he will not provide, nor yet will he 
 hesitate, in prudent fear of want, to go whithersoever 
 the fancy leads him. But w r hat if fancy, or some 
 sublimer thing, shall lead him into a great city? 
 There he is clean cut off from his good mother, the 
 earth. She is so overlaid with brick and asphalt that 
 he may not even touch her, unless it should be where 
 some sorry little park uncovers her in a niggardly, 
 mocking fashion. Anyway, she is no more his mother, 
 taking care of all his needs, stretching out her bounti- 
 ful hand to him. There is plenty to eat, all about 
 him, mountains of food, more than he ever saw 
 before; but it is to be had only by grace of strange 
 powers, whose graces he has never cultivated. 
 
 Shack had never learned to beg. The occasion for 
 begging was always lacking. In his life hitherto, if 
 there was food at all, it was forthcoming for every- 
 body without the asking; and if there was none, no- 
 
 61
 
 62 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 body's asking would make it forthcome. If food did 
 not offer, he knew no alternative but going without, 
 and to that alternative he was not a stranger. To 
 go hungry was not such a new experience that it 
 would soon turn him to new expedients. 
 
 Had he kept his bit of money, he might presently 
 have mastered, though in a rudimentary way, the art 
 of spending, of making those scraps of metal serve 
 him. Dr. Robert had given him theoretical instruc- 
 tion, and not without effect, though Shack's ears were 
 undoubtedly rendered pretty deaf by his exaltation; 
 and practical lessons would not be withheld. But 
 the money he did not keep. He was robbed the first 
 night he lay in the city, and stripped of his last penny. 
 
 For him it was no great walk, a day and a night 
 (his wish to get on wouldn't let him sleep) and part 
 of another day. Walking, for him, was as easy as 
 breathing, and he wasn't tired. Nor was he hungry, 
 as yet, though it was hours since food had passed his 
 lips. He started out with a goodly stock of bread 
 and meat tied up in a paper, but by the time he had 
 met half a dozen tramps who did not scruple to help 
 themselves, he hadn't a morsel left. That didn't mat- 
 ter, though, his wish to get forward wouldn't let 
 him think much about eating, anyway. There was 
 plenty to remind him, too, especially in the hour of his 
 arrival, which wasn't far from noon, and the houses 
 in the outskirts were sending forth strong smells of 
 cookery. It would be like him to step into a house, 
 any house, and sit down to the table without bidding, 
 but he did nothing of the sort. The houses weren't 
 camps and the people weren't lumberjacks, every- 
 thing, in short, was very, very strange ; and Shack let 
 his hunger wait while he pushed on.
 
 The Wilderness 63 
 
 It was just here that he began to be keenly on the 
 watch for those sheep, looking up. Watching for 
 these, he could forget the inner man, pretty much. 
 
 He met many people, thousands upon thousands by 
 nightfall, but though he scanned them eagerly, there 
 was none who had more than a passing glance for 
 him, so lightly did they regard him that he could 
 wonder if they really saw him at all. Men and women 
 and children, an endless hurrying throng, were these 
 the sheep who were not fed? If so, they were very 
 cool and indifferent about it. 
 
 As evening drew on, the great buildings downtown 
 poured out their workers, and the workers went 
 streaming off in every direction, and the streets were 
 like very rivers of humanity. It was then a blind 
 man with a hand-organ posted himself at a busy corner 
 and ground out tunes; and he held his face so turned 
 that you could fancy, if you were a trustful, eager 
 boy just out of the woods, that you could fancy he 
 was looking up with the eyes of the spirit. Anyway, 
 there was a hungry expectancy about him. But he 
 bad a tin cup into which someone would now and then 
 drop a coin, and as often as that happened you saw 
 the hungry expectancy give way, for a moment, to 
 unmistakable joy. 
 
 Shack dropped in a coin, the very largest he had, 
 a silver dollar. It was almost too big to go into the 
 cup, and it fell with a sort of a crash which made 
 the blind man start and stop grinding. And who ever 
 beheld such joy as his when his fingers clutched the 
 great broad piece of money ? 
 
 That was one sheep fed, at all events. 
 
 Shack wasn't thinking for a moment of a place to 
 sleep. He was for going right on with his search,
 
 64 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 regardless of the season. So long as there remained 
 people abroad, it was for him to be awake; and when 
 there should be no more people, he had only to throw 
 himself down anywhere, no Indian, least of all an 
 Indian with such a mission, would take forethought 
 of a place to sleep. Nevertheless, it somehow made 
 him rather glad and grateful when a young woman 
 accosted and asked him where he was staying that 
 night and, when he showed by his answer that he 
 didn't know, kindly invited him to go with her. Her 
 kindness served to show him, all at once, how lone- 
 some he really was, how hurt he was in his heart by 
 meeting so many strange persons and none of them 
 giving him a nod. 
 
 She was very gracious, very. There was nothing 
 about her to suggest that she was one of the sheep, 
 however, no looking up or anything of that char- 
 acter. She made much prattling talk as they walked 
 along together, whither she led, through dark and 
 wretched streets; but little to the point. He told her 
 about his father's business, and at length felt so well 
 acquainted that he offered to read to her from his 
 books; and she listened courteously if not thirstily, 
 at any rate she was willing to hear. Once they 
 glanced ahead and by the light of a shop window 
 saw a big man in blue and brass, and the girl seized 
 him by the arm and pulled him over to the other 
 side where it was darker, and that seemed altogether 
 queer. Still, everything was queer, for that matter, 
 and there was no denying the kindliness, who else 
 in the city had been so kindly? 
 
 They turned in finally at a species of beehive, only 
 bees would never be up and about so late. But like 
 bees men, and women, were going in and coming
 
 The Wilderness 65 
 
 out, incessantly, by a door which bore considerable 
 resemblance to that of a hive. Beyond it you entered 
 a long, low room, which would put you in mind of a 
 lumber camp, though it wasn't so clean, and there were 
 no bunks. At one corner there were shelves, filled 
 with bottles and glasses, and a tall bench in front of 
 them. The floor was covered with sawdust much 
 mingled with dirt, and there were tables, and some 
 chairs. A man was hammering a clangorous piano, 
 evoking lively airs, much livelier and prettier than 
 any Shack had ever heard. He was greatly pleased 
 with the music, and nothing displeased him except a 
 certain odor which hung heavy in the air and turned 
 him faint. It brought up a disagreeable memory, of 
 the time the playful jacks made him tipsy, and he was 
 so miserably sick and dizzy. He wished to run away 
 from the odor, it was so unpleasant, but the young 
 woman wouldn't let him. 
 
 She was mightily gracious about it, though. She 
 threw her arms tenderly round his neck, when he 
 started for the door, and with the gentlest violence 
 pulled him down into a chair, and besought him, in 
 such melting accents, to remain, that it was difficult 
 not to yield. At the same time a man in an apron 
 came out from among the glassware with two big 
 foaming mugs, which he set down on the table before 
 them. 
 
 There was a mug for each of them. 
 
 " Here's looking at you ! " cried the young woman, 
 and drank from her mug, a singular sentiment, yet 
 clearly kind, for she clapped him on the back. 
 
 Shack sniffed at the stuff; but it had none of the 
 sickening odor, and he drank it. Nothing could be 
 more certain than that the young woman would have
 
 66 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 him drink it. In fact, she frankly told him so, and 
 besought him to be a good fellow, it wasn't costing 
 him anything. It was but a small thing she asked of 
 him, anyway, even though the stuff was bitter, and 
 there was so much of it he thought he should never 
 get to the bottom of the mug. He drank it, every 
 drop. 
 
 " Now," quoth his gentle hostess, taking him pleas- 
 antly by the hand, " let's go upstairs." 
 
 There were a great many stairs, as it turned out, 
 and prodigiously hard to climb. Shack stumbled 
 abominably. His feet were heavy as lead, all of a 
 sudden. This could be accounted for, however, by his 
 having sat down. Anyone who has footed it much 
 knows how that is. You can walk for hours and 
 hours, provided you keep walking, whereas if you sit 
 down by the way, you find, when you go on, that your 
 feet have become very heavy and hard to drag along. 
 Shack had tarried by the table some little time, lis- 
 tening to the music and drinking, and it was no won- 
 der if the stairs gave him trouble. 
 
 They came to the top at last and then the young 
 woman (she had held his hand all the way, in the 
 pleasantest, most helpful fashion in the world) led 
 him off through the darkness to a room. It seemed a 
 room, at least, because he was distinctly aware of her 
 opening a door, and pulling him through, and shutting 
 the door behind them. Undoubtedly it was a room. 
 The young woman struck a match, or, rather, a dozen 
 matches all at once, and lighted a dozen lamps or such 
 a matter, some of them upside down and none of them 
 standing still; and thereupon nothing could be plainer 
 than that they were in the room. The walls were 
 clearly visible, undulating on every side. It was a
 
 The Wilderness 67 
 
 little room, and there was nothing in it to sit down on 
 but a number of beds, and Shack sat down on these 
 and felt very much fagged. That was about all. He 
 had no intention of going to sleep, but the next he 
 knew he was waking up, with a struggle, and there 
 was only one lamp, dingy and unlighted, and the day 
 was pushing in through a very small and very unclean 
 window. He was lying across the bed there was 
 only one bed, now in all his clothes; and he was 
 alone. 
 
 As he struggled more and more awake these cir- 
 cumstances began to strike him as the most extraor- 
 dinary yet. How came he to be there? He recalled 
 the young woman. What had become of her ? Well, 
 likely she had retired to some other room, Shack 
 was not too ignorant of the proprieties to understand 
 why that should be. But whether or no, it was time 
 to be getting up. He rose to his feet, struggling still, 
 there was a weight on his chest, and the moment he 
 lifted his head it swam off his shoulders. That rather 
 alarmed him, and he thought only of getting out, 
 the young woman and all else forgotten. He fell 
 twice before he reached the door, though it didn't 
 seem exactly like falling either, more as if the floor 
 reared on edge and bumped itself against him; and 
 the stairs, though less numerous than they had been 
 last night, were bothersome enough, with his feet like 
 clods and his head floating off all the time. 
 
 Faithful instinct was guiding him to the open air 
 and its restoring touch, and he had tottered uncer- 
 tainly halfway across the bar, when the man in the 
 apron laid hold of him roughly. 
 
 "Here, pay for your lodging!" he growled, and 
 held out his hand. " Room cost you a dollar."
 
 68 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 The demand did not appear unreasonable, Shack 
 was enough instructed in matters fiscal for that. If 
 the young woman's cordial manner had given him 
 some expectation of being entertained without money 
 and without price, it prompted no expostulation now. 
 He was mightily confused, but there was still the sense 
 or impulse to send his hand to the pocket where his 
 money had lain. 
 
 The pocket was empty. The money was gone. 
 
 The man looked on sourly, and understood. There 
 was no getting juice out of a squeezed orange, there 
 was only the consolation of flying into a passion. 
 
 " Get out, you Rube ! " he snarled, with a gush of 
 profanity, and gave Shack a push and a kick which 
 sent him through the door in a hurry. 
 
 He wasn't ruffled by the indignity, not in the least. 
 A youth who had not been pushed and kicked from 
 pillar to post all his life long might feel a hot resent- 
 ment and meditate vengeance, but not Shack. Be- 
 sides, he had something more urgent to think about, 
 namely his head, which, when it wasn't floating off, 
 was bursting; and his feet, which were almost more 
 trouble than he could manage. He was out of doors, 
 and that was a great relief, what should make him 
 wish to go back in? He felt the touch of the air and 
 blessed it in the unconscious, savage way. But if air 
 was much water would be more. Where was there 
 some water? Without a thought of the man or his 
 affront, Shack went searching for water. 
 
 He hadn't far to go. Just round the corner he 
 came upon a huge iron horse-trough, brimming over. 
 He ran up and plunged his head into it again and 
 again, his head and much of his shoulders, for the 
 water was deep, and deliciously cold. It made him
 
 The Wilderness 69 
 
 tingle wherever it touched him, and he would very 
 likely have got in all over only that the driver of a 
 truck rebuked him, asking him if he supposed horses 
 liked bugs in their drink. The truckman had driven 
 his team up, and the beasts were smelling suspiciously 
 at the trough, though they were hot and thirsty, no 
 doubt the rebuke was justified. Shack scrambled out 
 of his bath, and sat down on the curb near by, wet 
 from head to foot, a spectacle such that people looked 
 and wondered, but what of that? He was a great 
 deal better, so much better that he could collect his 
 thoughts; and with these he was too busy to mind 
 being stared at.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 JEAN VALJEAN IN PETTICOATS 
 
 SIN, in its very common aspects, was not a thing 
 unheard of, though it should be unknown, in the Ar- 
 cadian aisles of the pineries, or the rustic solitudes of 
 the reservation. Traders and lumberjacks were not 
 apt to be guarded in their conversation, and Shack 
 had heard tell of much. He knew what robbery was, 
 and he knew that he had been robbed, that the young 
 woman was a thief. Perhaps, in a vague way, as a 
 child might know such a thing, he knew what else she 
 was; but that part didn't concern him. He thought 
 of her as thief, and nothing more. 
 
 And Jean Valjean was a thief, too. 
 
 It was with no sense of personal injury that Shack 
 thought of the young woman. The money was noth- 
 ing much to him, anyway, he scarcely knew how to 
 use it, for aught he knew to the contrary he was 
 about as well off without it ; why should he feel partic- 
 ularly injured? And who was he to bear in mind the 
 injury to society, the larger significance of theft? No- 
 body, of course, society, in any formal aspect, was a 
 thing apart. But somehow there was no escaping the 
 feeling that the young woman had done herself a 
 wrong, it was in that view he considered her thievery, 
 sitting so oddly there, in his wet garments. It was 
 the feeling more than the thought, such a thought 
 
 70
 
 Jean Valjean in Petticoats 71 
 
 would be rather too theological for Shack; he was 
 sorry for her. That was the amount of it, he was 
 supremely sorry for the young woman, so much so 
 that his eyes swam with tears. 
 
 Then came the vision, tears might not shut that 
 out. In a sweetly solemn vision he read the meaning 
 of it all, foresaw that his mission was to bear fruit 
 in the first day of it. What else? Why, if not for 
 that, had they two come together, he the chosen to 
 save, and she who so needed saving, he the shepherd, 
 and she the sheep looking up to be fed? 
 
 The old restlessness came over him. He walked 
 about, and the vision tarried before his eyes. After 
 awhile he found himself down by the river, among 
 the docks. There was a crowd of busy men and 
 horses everywhere; he had walked off his unrest, but 
 there was no place here for an idle fellow to sit and 
 brood, until he came to the very end of the river- 
 front, where an old half-rotten wharf was piled with 
 building-stone, and rough lumber such as nobody 
 would take the trouble to steal, and barrels of lime 
 and salt; and not a soul about nearer than the rusty 
 schooner moored off the far end. In there he found 
 a sunny place in a valley of rocks and barrels, and 
 sat down. It had been a sharp morning, and the 
 warmth struck through his damp clothes very agree- 
 ably. His vision kept him from taking much account 
 of bodily conditions, but the warmth seemed properly 
 a part of it, an element in the joy of the spirit, as if 
 the sun shone through into his very soul. He blessed 
 the warmth as he had blessed the fresh air. 
 
 They were preparing breakfast, on board the 
 schooner, and the odor of meat was wafted in over 
 the dock. Could the vision keep him from taking ac-
 
 72 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 count of his hunger? Not easily, that was sure. A 
 tousled man lounged on deck, staring stupidly, till a 
 tousled woman put her head out of the cabin and called 
 to him, and he went below, leaving Shack all to him- 
 self. The odor lingered, there came on a sort of 
 conflict between it and the vision, the spiritual strug- 
 gling with the fleshly. Pretty soon the tousled man 
 came rolling up on deck again, looking very replete 
 and comfortable, and lit his pipe, and smoked away 
 peacefully. 
 
 It was a battle, but the vision won. The odor grew 
 thin and vanished, the vision was brighter and 
 brighter. 
 
 Shack brooded, ecstatically. 
 
 Jean Valjean, he, too, was a thief. He was given 
 up to sin completely, he was in the worst way. His 
 specific offense, the theft of the spoons and the small 
 silver coin, that was in itself trifling; the desperate 
 blackness of his heart was what made him such a dis- 
 tinguished sinner. A distinguished sinner he knocked 
 at Bishop Welcome's door that night, to go away at 
 length, not at once but at length, a man of good 
 will, reclaimed from sin, with the leaven of righteous- 
 ness in him. 
 
 How came it about? Very simply. 
 
 Jean was hungry, and the bishop gave him to eat. 
 He was thirsty, and the bishop gave him to drink. 
 He was a stranger, a vile outcast whom all others had 
 spat on, and the bishop took him in, giving him his 
 best bed and treating him in all things as an honored 
 guest. 
 
 But that wasn't enough. Darkness lay thick and 
 heavy on the soul of Jean Valjean, it was not easily
 
 Jean Valjean in Petticoats 73 
 
 penetrated by this light of love. He rose in the dead 
 of night and stole the bishop's silver, the few things 
 of worth which he had left, for he had bestowed all 
 the rest in alms. These Jean stole, and made off. 
 
 He was arrested. He was suspect, anyway, through 
 having served in the galleys ; and his having silver in 
 his possession was enough in itself to damn him, and 
 the crest on it told the police whose it was. Jean 
 was arrested and dragged back in irons, to confront 
 the good man whose goodness he had so outrageously 
 repaid. 
 
 " Here are your eminence's spoons," said the police, 
 addressing the bishop in terms of the respect due his 
 exalted office. 
 
 And the bishop made answer : " They are not mine. 
 They were mine, formerly, but I gave them to this 
 man, who lodged with me last night." 
 
 That was what did it. With that act of grace love 
 shot its light into the very midst of Jean's soul, and 
 rived the darkness, and scattered it. From that day 
 he was saved. 
 
 Shack's heart beat high. He exulted. He was 
 carried away. Hungry? Never! It was pork-saus- 
 age they were having for breakfast, on the schooner, 
 seasoned strongly with sage. Does anything in the 
 world smell better, cooking, than pork-sausage 
 seasoned with sage ? No, nothing ! But if the tousled 
 man had asked Shack down to partake, he would have 
 declined, saying he wasn't hungry. 
 
 It was something to make him exult indeed, this 
 thing of his being so favored at the very start, just 
 when he was most in danger of losing courage. Here
 
 74 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 was his opportunity made ready for him, almost the 
 first person he had met in the city turning out to be 
 a thief, who robbed him even as Jean Valjean had 
 robbed the bishop. Very clearly it was for him to hunt 
 the young woman up, and forgive her, in the manner 
 of the bishop. Very clearly! For when he should 
 have done that, the graciousness of his act must send 
 the blessed light of love into her dark soul, to become 
 the salvation of her. 
 
 He hunted. 
 
 You need scarcely be told how it went. The busi- 
 ness was rather worse than the proverbial business of 
 seeking a needle in a haystack, because a needle isn't 
 trying to keep out of the way. But his courage was 
 high, the vision stayed by him. A Scotchman knows 
 how to be steadfast, and a Frenchman, too, and an 
 Indian, he had the sober determination of three de- 
 termined races, and the ecstatic vision besides. It 
 was a brave hunt. 
 
 First of all he went back to the beehive, and entered 
 unhesitatingly in at the door which he had been pushed 
 and kicked out of so lately. The man was there, be- 
 hind the bar with his bottles. He recognized Shack 
 disdainfully. 
 
 " Hello, Rube ! " he bawled out, and some bloated 
 loafers who were lolling about looked up and laughed. 
 
 But once more Shack wasn't ruffled, having better 
 things to think about. " I'm looking for a young 
 woman," he said, and briefly described his precious 
 thief. He had a good picture of her in his memory. 
 How could he forget her, knowing her to have been 
 sent on purpose to be saved by him? 
 
 The man knew whom he meant. " She ain't here," 
 he growled, but right away his temper flew and he
 
 Jean Valjean in Petticoats 75 
 
 stormed out : " You (profanity) fool, do you suppose 
 we keep the like of her round here? " 
 
 Shack didn't mind the profanity, though it was 
 pointed. Plenty of lumberjacks had called him worse 
 kinds of a fool. But he persisted. " She was here last 
 night," he said. 
 
 The man snorted contemptuously and turned his 
 back. 
 
 " Can you tell me where to find her ? " Shack asked. 
 
 " If I can I won't. What you take me for? " 
 
 Shack was not too dense to perceive that he was mis- 
 understood, that he was thought to meditate the young 
 woman harm. Of course that was a monstrous mis- 
 take, and he hastened to say so, but all the response 
 he got was an " Oho ! " brought out in such a way 
 that the loafers laughed in glee. 
 
 Very evidently his thief or any trace of her was 
 not to be found there, and he could think of nothing 
 else, but to watch for her near the place where he had 
 met her first. It was a thronged corner, at the edge of 
 a public market, and pedlers and hucksters of many 
 kinds, together with their countless customers, were 
 there, jostling from morning till night but especially 
 at night. Shack walked up and down, as he had 
 walked before, and scanned the face of every woman 
 he saw. There were women without number. Some 
 of them were housewives of the poorer class, going 
 with their baskets to buy, or coming away. Some 
 were operatives in the nearby factories. Some were 
 of the sort of her whom he was seeking. His under- 
 standing of what that sort was grew clearer, he had a 
 notion of what it was that kept them roaming about 
 the streets, he could identify them with the women of 
 whom he had heard ribald lumberjacks and traders
 
 76 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 speak. Sometimes these women would accost him, 
 and ask him to go home with them; and when, in 
 the face of his refusal, they persisted, he understood 
 them well enough to be rid of them by saying he had 
 no money. 
 
 He lodged that night in an empty shed down by the 
 docks. Many a time he had lodged in a worse place. 
 If his sleep was fitful and at length broken entirely, 
 that wasn't because of the cheerless shed. It was be- 
 cause of his hunger. Before morning he was terribly 
 hungry. He had eaten nothing all day, and even the 
 vision, though he tried his best to occupy himself 
 ings of the wolf at his vitals. The hours before dawn 
 were long and dreary, in the cold darkness it was 
 hard to see the vision, and it all but slipped from him. 
 Of course he remembered the barks and berries which 
 he knew about, and just as soon as it was light enough, 
 he went looking for them. There were two or three 
 pitiful parks not far off, and he prowled through 
 them in the gray dusk, searching minutely. But the 
 trees and shrubs had nothing for him. He recognized 
 but a single plant, a sickly oak, almost dead. For 
 this he conceived a fellow feeling. He, too, with 
 being out of his proper place, was sick almost unto 
 death. 
 
 Still he kept up the hunt for his thief. That is to 
 say, he kept on walking up and down, in the haunts 
 of such persons, meeting women of her kind every 
 little while, and never failing to look them in the 
 face. With every spear of hay gone over, he was a 
 step nearer the needle, some such thought as that 
 was behind his plodding persistence. Though the 
 hunger was fierce, and a definite purpose was hard to
 
 Jean Valjean in Petticoats 77 
 
 hold to, he hunted and hunted, for that purpose rooted 
 deep, like an instinct. 
 
 As the day wore on there came over him a sense 
 of his helplessness, of the futility of his unaided ef- 
 forts. He thought of the police. Why not call on 
 them ? After all the police had their part in the recla- 
 mation of Jean Valjean. If Jean had not been arrested 
 and dragged back, the sublime tragedy were incom- 
 plete, the bishop's love would have failed of its tell- 
 ing demonstration and the sinner would have gone 
 on in his sin. To be sure Shack didn't want his thief 
 arrested, it wasn't necessary to the tragedy now. 
 But that could be explained to the police, they could 
 be made to see that all he needed was to find the 
 young woman. Why shouldn't they help him? He 
 was meeting policemen often, and at last he never met 
 one without asking himself that question, with the 
 sense of futility strengthening. 
 
 But there rose another difficulty, even though his 
 mind was made up to call on the police, he was a long 
 time coming on just the right officer, one who did not 
 by something, either look or word, repel him as he 
 approached. Policemen were so apt to betray a certain 
 coldness, or aloofness, in the manner of looking on the 
 vice and squalor all about them as so much dead filth, 
 to be scorned and done away with, but not worth 
 wasting any sympathy on; Shack did not so finely 
 discuss the matter with himself, but he felt the effect 
 and was repelled. There was the right policeman at 
 length, however, an elderly person with a thick gray 
 beard and a kindly eye, who conversed pleasantly with 
 a wretched woman picking rags and with others as 
 little deserving of consideration, who had, in short, 
 a mighty friendly and promising way with him.
 
 78 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 He shook his head, though, with a disconcerting 
 twinkle in his kindly eye, when Shack came up to say 
 that he was hunting for a young woman whom he had 
 met but once and who had taken him home with her 
 and robbed him of a sum of money. It was not his 
 intention to speak of the money; but when he had told 
 the rest, the policeman asked him, plumply, if she had 
 stolen anything from him, and he had to answer. And 
 very likely that part should be told, too, the police 
 could not be expected to move unless they had reason 
 to believe a crime had been committed. The police in 
 the greater tragedy never would have laid finger on 
 Jean, to complete it, only that they were informed 
 of the theft he was guilty of. 
 
 The officer's good will was not to be doubted, but 
 he had only the coldest of cold comfort to give. 
 " You'll never find her, my friend," he said. " She'll 
 not show herself soon. Besides, if you should get her, 
 you wouldn't get your money. That's all spent before 
 now." 
 
 " I don't want the money," said Shack. He caught 
 the quizzical look in the friendly face, saw that he 
 was being misunderstood once more, and added, with 
 emotion : " I want to forgive her, that's all ! " 
 
 The officer smiled, as the man in the bar had done, 
 though with less of a sneer. It was like him to be con- 
 siderate, but a freak was a freak, and a joke was a 
 joke. 
 
 " Strikes me you might forgive her without finding 
 her, if that's all you're after," he said, giving Shack 
 a playful nudge with his stick. " Anyway, you'll not 
 see her again. She'll take good care about that. She 
 won't be expecting to be forgiven, it's not the usual 
 thing in such cases."
 
 Jean Valjean in Petticoats 79 
 
 " Can't you help me look for her? " 
 
 " Not if you're going to forgive her. That's not in 
 our line. We'd be throwing our time away. We're 
 not paid to forgive people."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MANNA 
 
 THREE days without food were almost enough to 
 finish even an Indian, where he has none of his tonic 
 barks, and no efficient belt to draw up, only the poor 
 waistband of his trousers, its meager measure of relief 
 soon spent. The evening of the third day sent Shack 
 back to his shed worn out with tramping vainly, yet 
 to wrestle all night with the ravening wolf at his vitals 
 and never once to sleep. He was so tired that his legs 
 fairly refused to hold him up longer, but right away 
 he discovered that lying down made the gnawings 
 worse, made them like knife-thrusts to wring a cry of 
 agony from him, stoic though he was. So he com- 
 promised by sitting up with his back against the 
 boards. That was better, but bad enough still. The 
 gnawings tortured him terribly even when he sat up, 
 and when he could endure them no longer he staggered 
 to his feet, for all the weariness he was most com- 
 fortable walking. It was as he walked, indeed, that he 
 came nearest to falling asleep, rather near, consider- 
 ing the circumstances. More than once he lost him- 
 self and went down on his knees and hands with a 
 jolt and a renewal of the gnawings to wake him. He 
 was about the miserablest child of the forest that 
 ever lost his mother. That was the worst of it, to be 
 
 80
 
 Manna 81 
 
 such a thorough child of the forest, yet lost in a great 
 city. No child of the city lost in a great forest could 
 be in a worse pickle. 
 
 There was strength left in him, though, as appeared, 
 all at once, toward morning, when he lifted up his 
 head, and snuffed the air, like a hound which de- 
 tects an interesting scent, and on the instant, like a 
 hound, bolted off at a quick, firm, confident pace. 
 And a scent it was, enormously interesting, since it 
 was the scent of food; he was making for it as any 
 hungry animal might, with instinct in full control of 
 him. He was famished down to the level of the 
 beast, frankly obeying his instinct. 
 
 Have you ever happened near a great bakery just 
 as they were opening the ovens and taking out the new 
 bread? Unless you have you hardly know what a 
 pleasant fragrance is thrown off. It is wonderfully 
 pleasant, even though you are not hungry. Bakery 
 bread is mostly poor stuff, to eat, but the smell of it, 
 hot, is enough to put you in mind of the feasts of the 
 gods. 
 
 And a feast set for the gods it might as well have 
 been, for all the good it was to Shack. Reason would 
 have told him so, in advance, and saved him the dis- 
 appointment; but he was given up to instinct. The 
 sweet savor, drawing him on in his instinctive, ani- 
 mal way, brought him presently to a brick wall, pierced 
 with doors and windows but all shut to him. It was 
 dark yet, only for the faint glimmer of dawn, and 
 lights burned inside, and the windows looked like 
 glaring, baleful eyes, while the bricks between frowned 
 blackly. The hope that had held him up vanished 
 and with it the strength it had gathered. He stag- 
 gered back across the street, and sank, or fell, on
 
 82 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 the curb, and sat there, holding himself up with diffi- 
 culty, staring dazedly at the mocking windows and the 
 frowning bricks. Cruel ! He had known the forest 
 to be cruel, in his day, but never with such cruelty 
 as this. He was fallen to the lowest ebb of his fort- 
 unes nothing could be lower, not even death. 
 
 Only for a little, however, did the cruelty afflict 
 him, for with the vanishing of hope and strength, 
 he grew dumbly indifferent, like a sick ox. There 
 comes a time when the gnawings of hunger cease, 
 though starvation continues, when the nerves refuse 
 to be tortured further and the wolf takes himself off. 
 Shack might sit there until he fell prostrate, and lie 
 prostrate until he died, but he would suffer no more. 
 His mind was pretty much a blank. The thief he 
 sought was clean forgotten. His father's business 
 was forgotten. To all intents and purposes he was 
 already a dead man, only waiting to breathe his last. 
 
 But he was not destined to die, just yet, or even 
 to fall prostrate. The drowsiness increased as the 
 pain lessened, till he could no longer hold his head 
 up; but he had sense enough, or instinct enough, to 
 edge along the curb to a big mail-box and a post be- 
 side it, they two forming a corner where he might 
 lean and doze. And while he dozed, crumpled down 
 in an abject heap, daylight came stealing over the 
 world. Or was it only the daylight of his dreams? 
 Anyway, he seemed to see across the street, quite 
 clearly, and to make out a line of men standing sil- 
 ently at one of the doors of the bakery. It was. a 
 singular thing for men to be standing there, silently 
 waiting, they were like ghosts, or dream-figures. 
 And every little while a new ghost came up and joined 
 the line, till it was too long to hold itself straight, and
 
 Manna 83 
 
 doubled back upon itself, once, twice, thrice. There 
 might be a hundred ghosts in line. 
 
 Then on a sudden a still more singular thing ap- 
 peared to happen. The door was opened, from within, 
 and a man stepped out. He was dressed all in white, 
 with a funny square cap on his head, and he had a 
 big basket piled full of loaves of bread. Owing to 
 the denseness of the line, and the uncertain light, 
 Shack did not at once see all that was taking place, 
 but very visible to him was the stir among the ghosts, 
 the pressing forward; and soon he made out that the 
 man in white was handing each ghost a loaf from the 
 basket. As the ghosts got their loaves they hurried 
 off, two or three came over Shack's way, and slunk 
 past him, eating ravenously, by which they would look 
 to be real, and the bread would look to be real. Hope 
 sprang up afresh, and afresh it found strength, and 
 instinct bade him rise once more. Others, be they 
 ghosts or men, were joining the line, and a fear of 
 being left out urged him. He ran over and took his 
 place. 
 
 Before very long his turn came and he stood at the 
 door. He trembled violently. What if it should turn 
 out to be only a dream, after all? But no, the loaf 
 was already in his hands, a good loaf and weighty. 
 He halted, though there was pushing and jostling be- 
 hind him, his heart swelled with gratitude and he 
 would have spoken. But his voice failed him, he 
 could only move his lips. Then the man in white, the 
 ministering angel in his robes of purity, bade him 
 step lively, and he had to go, without a word. 
 
 Grateful? It was manna in the desert, no less. It 
 fed him doubly, not only his body but his soul; for 
 as he ate, he was a thousand times more convinced of
 
 84 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 heaven's aid. He considered not how dry and old and 
 slight of substance the bread was, it was sweetened 
 to him by the manner of its descent. Next morning 
 he went again to the bakery, and every morning, and 
 there was always a loaf for him. He never wore his 
 welcome out. 
 
 And now that he was hungry no more, he remem- 
 bered his father's business, and his thief. 
 
 Can you fancy the ardor with which he renewed 
 his search, with the thought upon him that heaven 
 gave him his daily bread, and by that directed him 
 to be up and doing? On the ninth day he found her. 
 The policeman had not prophesied truly though with 
 knowledge ; for she showed herself, and he found her, 
 and that, too, very near the spot where he had 
 met her first. He knew her from afar, for the look of 
 her was graved on his memory, her natty little fig- 
 ure, her saucy face with its sparkling eyes, and the 
 curls under a sailor hat set jauntily awry; he would 
 know her among a million. At sight of her his heart 
 leaped in his bosom, and he hurried forward. He was 
 afraid, too, and had a feeling of weakness in his knees. 
 For all the joy, it was a solemn thing which he was 
 about to do, in some sense an awful thing, awful, 
 and great. 
 
 She was speaking with a man. Shack came up in 
 time to hear him say, coarsely : " Not in a thousand 
 years ! " Then he turned on his heel and walked off, 
 and the little woman looked very vexed, and it was in 
 that posture that Shack met her, face to face. 
 
 For the fleetingest moment her countenance fell 
 Then straightway it hardened, brazenly, and she af- 
 fected not to know him. 
 
 But Shack was not to be put off. " My friend,"
 
 Manna 85 
 
 quoth he, huskily, and commanding his voice but 
 hardly, " be not afraid. It is I mean, I forgive 
 you!" 
 
 The girl stared at him with parted lips and dilat- 
 ing eyes, very evidently she was astonished. And 
 that was as it should be. No doubt Jean Valjean had 
 been astonished, astonishment first, and after that 
 the light of love. 
 
 " I forgive you the money that is I forgive " 
 
 Somehow, it was a mighty difficult thing, now that 
 he was trying it, to get himself into the sublime posi- 
 tion of the good bishop. Somehow, his words fell 
 flat, or failed altogether. And the thing he was doing, 
 was it so great and solemn ? 
 
 The girl's astonishment passed. And then the light 
 of love? No, a peal of sardonic laughter. 
 
 " I mustn't be seen talking with a gentleman I 
 was never introduced to," she protested, with a mock- 
 ing shrug of her pretty shoulders. "It isn't con- 
 sidered respectable, don't you know." 
 
 And with that she tripped away, and was swallowed 
 up in the throng.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A GRINDER WHO IS GRIST 
 
 THOUGH the manna in the desert was so doubly a 
 solace to him, Shack did not forever depend on the 
 bakery. He became a grinder, and earned his keep 
 with something besides. Paul had been a tentmaker, 
 while in pursuit of his mission, but Shack was a 
 grinder. There was the hand of heaven in it once 
 more, he couldn't help but see that; he was chosen 
 a grinder, else things would never have taken the 
 course they did. 
 
 When he went back to his shed that night, after 
 finding his thief, a good deal cast down by his failure 
 to save her and rather vainly trying to persuade him- 
 self that the leaven might still work within her and 
 grace bear fruit at length, when he came back, thus, 
 his corner was already occupied by a black little man 
 who lay groaning dismally and proclaiming himself 
 desperately sick. He was calling for help and Shack, 
 hearing that, instantly forgot all else. The man 
 wanted water most, he was burning with thirst and 
 his cup was empty though it was a large cup and he 
 had been careful to fill it before he lay down. So 
 much he made known in snatches of broken English, 
 mingled with groans and outcries, and besought Shack 
 for the love of the Blessed Virgin to fetch him some- 
 thing to drink. Shack did that, and more, fetched 
 
 86
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 87 
 
 water to drink and water to dabble on the throbbing 
 temples and to bathe the heaving breast with, cold 
 water from a deep well though he had to run the 
 better part of a mile to get such. But in spite of all 
 the man grew worse very fast. He raved a little, 
 and then a little more, till he was raving all the time ; 
 but before he quite lost himself he told Shack his 
 name was Beppo and his hour was come, there was 
 a matter with his inside, he declared, and he could 
 not live beyond a few hours. In his delirium he 
 prayed incessantly, in outlandish gibberish, invoking 
 the Virgin and every saint whose name his memory 
 would yield. Shack stood by him faithfully, all night 
 long, doing what he could with the cold water and 
 gentle rubbing. 
 
 The delirium passed after a while. By morning 
 Beppo felt better, left off his praying more and more, 
 and swore some, using about the same names. But 
 he was weak, he had barely strength to raise him- 
 self on his elbow. His legs were quite useless. Sev- 
 eral times, at his earnest solicitation, Shack lifted him 
 and stood him on his feet, but it was to no avail, 
 the legs absolutely refused to hold him up. Beppo 
 was mightily displeased. He swore till he was out of 
 breath and then lay glowering and muttering. He had 
 an ugly face when he scowled. 
 
 " You go Poo Commis ? " he broke out, after a little. 
 
 Shack would do anything, go anywhere. What 
 was the Poo Commis? 
 
 " Here ! " With much fumbling and groaning, 
 Beppo fished a scrap of soiled paper out of his pocket. 
 " Poo Commis here," he pointed to one side of the 
 paper. " Medicine here," he pointed to the other. 
 "Go like hell! I hurt."
 
 88 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 Shack understood sufficiently and went, with all 
 his Indian swiftness. He showed the paper to several 
 whom he met and was sent on his way without once 
 going amiss, to the Poor Commission, or Bureau of 
 Public Charities. It was a woeful place, a veritable 
 slough of despond, where want, driven desperate, 
 came to find relief without a touch of sympathy. 
 There were gathered the hungry and the sick, but more 
 especially the sick, to receive their dole, and a chill 
 lay upon them, Shack felt it the moment he set foot 
 inside the door. 
 
 The clerks looked at his paper and sent him hither 
 and yon, until he had climbed all the stairs in the 
 building, which he didn't mind, and lost much time, 
 which he minded very much, thinking of Beppo suf- 
 fering so. They had cold, distant eyes, those clerks, 
 and the chill grew on him as he passed from one to 
 another. At last a very young man with glasses led 
 the way down into the basement, where there were 
 multitudes of jars and mysterious gear of many kinds. 
 
 " Hello, Bill! Wie geht's? " he called out to a still 
 younger man, who was busy at a table. 
 
 "Ganz gut, Henry!" Bill called back. 
 
 They were a cheerful pair and not content with the 
 exchange of genial greetings they cracked some jokes. 
 It was some minutes before Shack's business got any 
 attention. 
 
 " By the way," remarked Henry, " that dago has 
 sent in his prescription for more dope. Might as 
 well make him up a little, though nothing'll save him. 
 His kidneys are all to the bad. I told him he couldn't 
 live a month, the last time he was here. He said then 
 he was going down to some shrine in Canada, Ste. 
 Anne de Something, and get himself healed. He must
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 89 
 
 have changed his mind or else the old girl couldn't 
 see him." 
 
 That led to some more jokes being cracked, after 
 which Henry strolled back upstairs, while Bill went 
 on with his work, putting up medicines. He was hor- 
 ribly slow. Shack, waiting in an agony of impatience, 
 could hear Beppo groan and see him writhe as the pain 
 came on him, and it was almost more than he could 
 bear. He reflected on what he had heard about 
 Beppo's kidneys, which conveyed no very definite idea 
 to him, and about the poor little man's not living a 
 month, which conveyed an idea all too definite, he 
 might be dying even now, and for the want of the 
 medicine, why couldn't they hurry? Something 
 very like indignation rose in Shack's breast, but he 
 dared not give it voice, it had never been permitted 
 him to be indignant. All he could do was to choke 
 over it, and at last burst into tears, whereupon Bill 
 was amused, asked what the drizzling was all about, 
 and chuckled to himself. After what seemed an in- 
 terminably long while, the chemist completed a pack- 
 age and laid it out, and Shack sprang to take it, think- 
 ing it his. But no, it wasn't, and he was sharply told 
 to wait. Another package was similarly completed 
 and laid out. His? No. Bill scowled at him, and 
 worked slower than ever, if such a thing were pos- 
 sible, worked as if he delighted in torturing the 
 impatient boy who stood quivering and biting his 
 nails. Three, four, five packages! Shack's was the 
 seventh. He got it after waiting an hour, and darted 
 away with it, like the wind. 
 
 But now, when he was back at last, Beppo wouldn't 
 touch the medicine, wouldn't even look at it. He 
 was plainly much worse, and very bad. His face was
 
 90 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 ghastly sunken, the mark of death was already set 
 there. His bodily pain was lost in the numbness of 
 approaching dissolution, but now he was frantic with 
 the agony of the soul. 
 
 " The priest ! " he cried out, the moment Shack ap- 
 peared beside him. " Go ! Like hell ! No, no, Holy 
 Mother, I mean not that ! But go ! " 
 
 Where? No matter! The nearest church! Any 
 priest ! Beppo fairly shrieked in his excitement. 
 
 Shack was off again, bolt from the bow, but uncer- 
 tainly, running at random, with no paper to show and 
 no notion to guide him. What little his experience 
 had taught him about churches was swept away in 
 the tumult of his emotions, but somehow, when there 
 rose before him a stone pile, with a lofty tower, in- 
 stinct or what not told him it was what he sought. 
 He plunged up to the front door, and beat upon it 
 frantically. He might as well beat a rock for all the 
 effect he had. He hurled himself against it, and no 
 rock ever stood firmer. No entering there! But a 
 little at one side there was a lesser door, and when 
 he flew at that, never stopping to knock, it crashed in 
 with him, and he brought up in the very midst of a 
 little study, where a man sat by the table, writing. 
 The man was old, and severe of aspect, and he was 
 startled and offended. 
 
 " This is a private room ! " he snarled. " Why do 
 you come in here in such a fashion ? " 
 
 Shack had time and breath for but one question: 
 Was he a priest? 
 
 " I am not ! " said the man, sourly. 
 
 Shack began to whimper, he was so wrought up. 
 " Beppo is dying and he asks for a priest ! " he cried. 
 
 The man was softened a little. " There's a Romish
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 91 
 
 establishment just below, I believe. I daresay you 
 will find a priest there," he said, more graciously. 
 
 Shack didn't stop to ask which way was below, he 
 tumbled out with as small ceremony as he had tumbled 
 in, and ran, the right way as luck would have it, and 
 in a moment was confronted with another churchly 
 pile of stone. But here, aloft over the tower, there 
 glittered a gilt cross, and that meant something to 
 Shack. There had always been a cross, though far 
 less showy, over the chapel by the reservation, and 
 about that chapel there was always a priest to be 
 found. Sectarian distinctions, the quality which dif- 
 ferentiated a priest from another clergyman, such 
 things would be little thought of at any time and 
 least of all just now, yet Shack, eagerly absorbed in 
 his quest, was cheered to see the cross aloft, it was 
 a sign of hope to him for the moment at least. And 
 then, almost in the same instant, his eye lighted on a 
 figure in cap and gown, precisely the sort Father 
 James used to wear, and Father Xavier. By every 
 token, here was a priest, that was the glad thought 
 which surged up in him. It was a glad thought, in- 
 deed, and in the rush of his gladness he forgot every- 
 thing but his errand, bolted up behind the man of 
 God, caught him rudely by his cassock, and blurted 
 out: 
 
 " Beppo is dying! " 
 
 The priest confronted him with a frown. " Never- 
 theless you should have better manners ! " he grum- 
 bled; and though he did not delay to answer the call, 
 stopping only to change his coat, he was visibly out 
 of temper, the more so as Shack led him a hot pace, 
 and he was stout and wheezy. On the way to the 
 shed he muttered maledictions, or what sounded like
 
 92 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 nothing else, but once there, the presence of death, 
 so near and so evident, recalled him to his office. 
 
 " Well, my friend ? " he said, bending benignly over 
 the sick man. 
 
 Beppo answered with a torrent of gibberish, but 
 the priest seemed to follow him. " Leave us alone," 
 he said, to Shack, and Shack went outside and sat 
 down on a pile of boards, dazed and perplexed. 
 
 He could hear Beppo and the priest, the sound of 
 their voices, though not their words. With his sensi- 
 tive ear, and the sensitive soul behind it, he caught 
 the note of penitence on the one hand, and the note of 
 mild reproof mingled with indulgence, on the other. 
 He did not call these things by name, but he knew 
 very well that Beppo was sorely accusing himself, and 
 the priest was offering him comfort, and bringing it, 
 too, for presently the note in Beppo's voice changed, 
 the terror was gone and in its stead there was con- 
 fidence, and peace. Shack listened in awe to Beppo 
 cooing softly, like a child that falls asleep. 
 
 Then the priest called to him to come back, and he 
 went in. Beppo lay with his eyes fixed on a small 
 cross, babbling like a drowsy baby, contentedly, with- 
 out a trace of anxiety. The sight of that little cross 
 stirred Shack's memory afresh. Father James had 
 just such a cross, and Father Xavier. It was the only 
 really pretty thing they carried with them ; their robes 
 were hideous, but the little cross was very pretty. 
 Anyway, Shack always considered it so. There was 
 the figure of a naked man carved on it, and that struck 
 him especially, he had often speculated, in his vacant, 
 aimless fashion, about that naked man. He was spec- 
 ulating now. He was wool-gathering when the priest
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 93 
 
 bade him kneel down, and did not at once compre- 
 hend, and the command had to be repeated: 
 
 " Kneel ! You are in the presence of God ! " 
 
 Shack's legs gave way under him all at once, and 
 down he went, nearly prostrate. The priest opened a 
 leather case which hung from a ribbon round his neck, 
 and took out a bit of something which he put in 
 Beppo's mouth, after making some curious motions. 
 Curious, but were they unfamiliar? And the words 
 which the priest mumbled, were they unfamiliar, even 
 though meaningless? 
 
 " Corp Dom nostri custodiat animam eter- 
 nam " 
 
 It was Father James's singsong all over again. 
 And that which the priest put in Beppo's mouth, what 
 could it be but some of the dry, hard, sour bread 
 which Shack remembered so well? Had he not suf- 
 fered the missionary to put a piece of it in his own 
 mouth once? Only once, though, because he didn't 
 fancy it in the least. He would have spat it out, so 
 little did he fancy it, only that he had been warned of 
 the fearfulest consequences to ensue if he should. 
 
 Why, then, should Beppo fancy it so hugely? He 
 took it eagerly, with a lighting up of his eyes; and 
 when he had swallowed it, he lay back perfectly at his 
 ease, gently drowsing, cooing softly, like nothing so 
 much as a baby just fed. Nobody could better seem 
 to fancy a thing than Beppo seemed to fancy that 
 bit of hard bread. 
 
 The priest stood up and put on his hat, but Shack 
 remained kneeling, raptly. The spectacle of death 
 robbed of all its terrors, of death the near brother of 
 sleep, so much of the reality he saw; the rest was 
 fallen quite away, the squalid shed and all the
 
 94 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 squalid city round about. With Beppo dying he was 
 back among the pines, in the silence and solitude, 
 absorbed in contemplation. The priest laid a hand 
 on his shoulder, and not lightly, many a time he had 
 jumped for less. But. he did not jump, or raise his 
 head even, or respond in any way. It took consider- 
 able of a shake to make him look up, and when he 
 looked up it was without understanding, he was 
 still far afield. 
 
 The priest wished to leave some directions. 
 
 " I am going to notify the authorities," he said, 
 " and request them to remove this man to a proper 
 place. Do you stay till they come." 
 
 No need to bid Shack to stay, he was all but 
 rooted to the spot. He was still kneeling when Beppo 
 at length turned his head and feebly beckoned him 
 to draw nearer, and kneeling he made his way over, 
 in a hobbling manner. But by that his dream was 
 broken up, the reality came back, every fiber of human 
 pity in him was touched, and he wept, bowing his 
 head to the very ground. 
 
 " You cry ? " exclaimed Beppo, astonished. " Why 
 you cry ? You not my people ! Why you cry ? " 
 
 Not for Shack to fathom his emotions, they were 
 to him as the wind which bloweth where it listeth; 
 he knew the effect thereof, but none so ignorant as 
 he of their origins. Perhaps Beppo was mistaken in 
 deeming those copious tears altogether a sign of sor- 
 row, but what else are tears a sign of commonly? At 
 all events, he was profoundly touched and pleased. 
 He stretched out his failing hand and laid it on 
 Shack's bowed head, and he caressed the brown curls 
 fondly. His countenance beamed with joy and was 
 almost beautiful.
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 95 
 
 " I gif it you ! " he said. " I gif you it ! " 
 
 Shack was deaf, and Beppo had to pull his hair im- 
 patiently before he would give heed. 
 
 " Go bring! " commanded the sick man, and pointed 
 over to a dark corner of the shed. 
 
 The habit of obedience was strong, and Shack went. 
 And that which he was to bring was a grinder's wheel. 
 He found it, where Beppo had concealed it before 
 lying down, to sleep as he supposed, to die as the 
 event proved. It was quite an elaborate contrivance, 
 furnished with a peal of little silvery bells which rang 
 as the wheel moved. They were merry bells, and 
 Beppo's eyes danced at the sound of them. 
 
 " I gif you it! " he repeated, and laughed aloud, out 
 of sheer good feeling. 
 
 Shack's tears flowed afresh, he understood or felt, 
 at least, the solemn pathos of the gift. 
 
 " You will use it yourself," he protested. " You 
 will be well." 
 
 " No, I go," said Beppo, laughing still, and then he 
 lay back and closed his eyes, and prayed, cooingly, 
 drowsily, contentedly. 
 
 And he went, very presently, with the light of per- 
 fect hope in his dark face, like a baby falling asleep. 
 And Shack, sunk down in the litter, poured out his 
 tears in a flood. 
 
 Those authorities were some time coming, and 
 when they came Beppo was dead, and Shack had had 
 his cry out, he was sitting quietly by, like a stoical 
 Indian, or a dog. They brought an ambulance, first, 
 but it was too late for that, and they went away, with 
 considerable grumbling over the unnecessary trouble 
 they had taken, and came again, with a very ordinary 
 wagon and a cheap coflm, into which they tumbled
 
 96 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 Beppo and carried him off. Shack would have fol- 
 lowed, like a dog, because instinct bade him do so, but 
 they didn't ask him to ride, and they whipped up and 
 drove off so fast that he couldn't keep in sight of 
 them, good runner though he was. He did his utmost, 
 however, and gave up with a great, quivering sigh, 
 and went back to the shed, and his wheel, which he 
 had forgotten. 
 
 That was how he became a grinder. 
 
 It was a sufficiently apostolic calling, as good as 
 tent-making, possibly better; it brought him in con- 
 tact with many men of many kinds, whereas tent- 
 making was a secluded business. Paul, making tents, 
 was no doubt cooped up in some loft, but Shack, grind- 
 ing knives and scissors, was very much in and of the 
 world. 
 
 A passably lucrative calling, too. There were days 
 when he would earn as much as fifty cents, those 
 were the red-letter days. It wasn't so much that fifty 
 .cents meant plenty to eat for himself, because ten cents 
 meant that ; the beauty of fifty cents, whereby the day 
 of its earning became signal, lay in the fact that it 
 meant plenty to eat for so many others besides, four 
 or five, at least. 
 
 Whatsoever he earned, be it much or little, he spent 
 that day, and sun of the morrow always found him 
 penniless; and all beyond a meager fraction went for 
 the behoof of the less fortunate. Besides the ten cents 
 which his food cost he reserved nothing to himself 
 except when it was very cold, then he hired a lodging 
 of the cheapest sort, costing another ten cents. Some 
 days, for grinders have their ups and downs, he 
 earned nothing; then he ate nothing, and if it was too
 
 A Grinder Who is Grist 97 
 
 cold to sleep in the shed, he would walk the streets 
 all night. 
 
 His home was in the slums, with the poorest and 
 wretchedest and worst, and there he got to be well 
 known. His familiars always called him " the par- 
 son." That was the name he went by, down there, 
 strangely, since he never spoke of religion or even 
 professed to be religious. 
 
 He was known outside the slums, too. With the 
 respectable people to whom he looked for patronage, 
 he enjoyed some distinction, he was such a grinder 
 of grinders. Certain women, more than a few, would 
 have nobody else sharpen their scissors, if they could 
 get Shack, they would wait for him, putting them- 
 selves to inconvenience. That was partly because he 
 did good work, what with his native deftness and his 
 wish to master the art; but there was more especially 
 his charming manner, so gentle, and genuine, and cal- 
 culated to please women. Then, too, he was un- 
 deniably a handsome grinder. In another business, 
 where handsome men were commoner, his beauty 
 might not strike you so forcibly, but for a grinder he 
 was truly beautiful, with his clustering brown hair, 
 and his pale, refined face, and his lustrous, smoldering 
 eyes. Often women would find themselves not too 
 busy to stand beside him while he ground their scissors, 
 and talk with him, as if they enjoyed his company and 
 conversation, as why should they not?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NOT WELCOME 
 
 IT was to his being a grinder, of so distinguished a 
 sort, that Shack owed his remarkable encounter with 
 the bishop. If he hadn't been a grinder, he would 
 hardly have made the acquaintance of Nora, the 
 bishop's pretty Irish housemaid; and if he had been 
 an ordinary grinder, like Beppo in his day, Nora 
 wouldn't have kept all her scissors for him, and got 
 him in the way of visiting the bishop's house regu- 
 larly. Nor would she have been standing with him 
 by the kitchen door, that day, to tell him who the 
 bishop was. 
 
 Shack didn't know in the least until then. He was 
 grinding away, and Nora was chattering away, when 
 a wonderful grand carriage drew up at the front door, 
 and a personage clad in the most wonderful bright 
 robes got out and went in. Shack were no Indian not 
 to be affected by bright colors, and so struck was he 
 now that he let his wheel stop while he gave himself 
 up to frank admiration. 
 
 Who was the personage? Shack asked Nora that, 
 and Nora replied, why, it was his lordship. 
 
 " His lordship ! " repeated Shack, not much in- 
 formed. 
 
 " The bishop, of course ! " said Nora, laughing at 
 his ignorance. " This is the bishop's palace. Didn't 
 you know that ? " 
 
 98
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 99 
 
 No, he didn't know that. 
 
 Nora had other fish to fry, as the saying is, and fish 
 which interested her more, and she prattled on, viva- 
 ciously; but Shack had lost his ears. He paid no at- 
 tention to her whatever. She pouted, plainly signify- 
 ing that she was on the edge of being displeased, if 
 not already over ; and at length, his neglect being too 
 much to bear, she flounced into the house, and left 
 him alone. In a little while, relenting somewhat, she 
 peeped out, and he was nowhere to be seen. Her 
 scissors, a delicate pair which she used to trim her 
 pretty nails with, lay on the step, only half ground. 
 
 Shack was gone. He had slung his wheel over his 
 shoulder, to keep the peals from ringing, and made 
 off to his shed. There he put the wheel away, and 
 took out his worn and tattered Les Miserables, to read. 
 
 Bishop? 
 
 Well, one thing was very clear, Bishop Welcome 
 rode in no such carriage and dwelt in no such palace. 
 On the contrary, he walked, or rode a very poor 
 donkey, and he dwelt in a hovel. This hovel, by the 
 way, had been the diocesan hospital, when Monsignor 
 Welcome ascended to the episcopacy; but the first 
 thing he did was to order the sick people removed to 
 the fine building which had been the bishop's palace 
 hitherto, and that henceforth was the hospital, while 
 he went to live in the old hospital, which henceforth 
 was the episcopal residence. It was there he enter- 
 tained Jean Valjean, forgave him, shot the light of 
 love into his darkened soul. What had palaces and 
 grand carriages to do with the proper business of a 
 bishop, anyway? 
 
 Shack read until the light of day failed. When it 
 was too dark to make out the words, he went forth 
 into the streets, to walk about, and make up his mind.
 
 ioo Not Welcome 
 
 It was the slums, his home, the haunts where he was 
 no stranger. Many spoke to him, both men and 
 women. There was in particular a woman, of the 
 kind of his thief, anyway, you would naturally set 
 her down to be that, and probably make no mistake. 
 She had the jaunty, reckless bearing, and the brassy 
 face. 
 
 Her name was Sadie. That was what Shack called 
 her, when she accosted him. 
 
 " Seems to me you don't look very well, to-night, 
 Sadie," he said. 
 
 " I'm sick enough to croak, right now," she an- 
 swered, the jauntiness melting into a woeful look 
 under the touch of sympathy. " I guess I'm about 
 all in, parson." 
 
 Why had she come out then ? 
 
 The girl laughed, at the question. " Out ! " she 
 repeated, bitterly. " I'm already out. I can't go in 
 till I make the price ! " 
 
 " If I get you a good room, will you go there and 
 rest ? " he asked. 
 
 Sadie laughed once more. " Try me ! " she said, 
 and her bitter, sullen laughter made out that she wasn't 
 expecting favors. 
 
 They were a curious pair, walking on together, and 
 they didn't escape comment. Nor was the comment 
 considerate or much restrained. Yet it was not ill 
 meant, bums and wantons made broad remarks, but 
 you could see it was mostly chaff, their poor manner 
 of good-humored raillery. Shack took it in good part, 
 but Sadie's dejection grew on her with every sally. 
 The forced professional simper had fled her counte- 
 nance at once, and her mouth drooped more and more 
 dismally, with a quiver about the lips to show that it 
 wouldn't take much to make her cry.
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 101 
 
 " What do you mind me for, parson? " she suddenly 
 broke out. 
 
 " Because you're a friend of mine, of course," 
 Shack replied. " Anybody likes to do his friends a 
 good turn." 
 
 She flared up hotly : " Not by a damnsight ! 
 You're the only one I ever met up with and that's be- 
 cause you're simple. If the likes of me was to fall 
 down on the street for being too sick to stand up, 
 they'd kick me out of the way and that's all. If I was 
 to die right here and now they'd bury me in a sand- 
 bank somewhere, just to get me out of their way! " 
 
 " Oh, you don't mean that, Sadie ! " Shack pro- 
 tested, soothingly. 
 
 " Parson, you're a damn fool ! " the girl snapped, 
 but with that the flood broke, and she wept noisily. 
 " God ! it's a damp night," a hoodlum called out, in 
 derision, but Sadie only gave herself up the more to 
 her emotions. A patrolman passed by, with a nod 
 and a smile. He understood Sadie's lamentations, 
 they called for no interference on his part. 
 
 Shack took her to a lodging-house visibly cleaner 
 and brighter than the most and emptied his pockets to 
 hire the best room for her. She had spent the fury of 
 her grief, by that time, and was snivelling out its last 
 gusty remnants. 
 
 " Good-night, Sadie ! " he said. " Stay in bed 
 twenty-four hours and it'll make a new girl of you." 
 
 " A new girl, back to the old life ! What's the 
 use?" she whimpered, but he didn't stop to parley 
 further. He gave her another cheery good-night and 
 left her. 
 
 He had gone but a short way when he was held up 
 by a hulk of a man, who was bloated with drink and 
 so near the snakes that he shook like one palsied.
 
 102 Not Welcome 
 
 " Hullo, parson ! " this fellow bawled, with maudlin 
 cordiality. " You're the chap I'm looking for. Give 
 me the price of a drink ! " 
 
 " Not a cent left, to-night, Gus," said Shack. 
 
 " You lie ! " shouted the inebriate, angrily. " Be- 
 cause I want it for booze, you won't give it to me ! " 
 But at once his manner changed wholly, and he begged 
 abjectly: " Please, parson! A drink will take me 
 out of hell." 
 
 " If I get a drink for you, will you go home with 
 me, then ? " 
 
 " God, yes ! Anything you say. I'm burning up ! " 
 
 There was a groggery at hand, there was always 
 a groggery at hand, in those regions. They stepped 
 into it. 
 
 " Will you give this man a drink, if I promise to 
 pay you with the first money I earn ? " Shack asked 
 the barkeep. 
 
 That functionary made no reply except to jerk his 
 thumb toward a sign on the wall : " In God we 
 trust. All others cash ! " Gus was instantly on fire 
 with indignation, poured out a torrent of profane pro- 
 test and abuse, and avowed his more than readiness to 
 fight any semblance of a man who should dare ques- 
 tion the parson's word, or intimate a doubt of his en- 
 gagements being scrupulously kept. But the barkeep 
 was unmoved, and Shack pulled his turbulent com- 
 panion out and away. 
 
 "I'll knock the block off anybody that insults you ! " 
 blustered the man, and cried that he had all hell inside 
 of him, for God's sake get him a drop of something! 
 
 They tried three other groggeries, only to fail, but 
 with the fourth they succeeded. The proprietor of the 
 place happened to be behind the bar, and he was will- 
 ing to take Shack's pledge, a sale was a sale, the
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 103 
 
 price was nearly all profit, and he knew the risk was 
 next to nothing. A great slug of what passed for 
 whiskey, a fiery draught, was forthcoming, and Gus 
 put it down with a look of unspeakable relief. He 
 was steadier, too, forthwith; the palsy vanished and 
 his eyes, though puffed and bloodshot, shone with 
 gratefuler visions than green rabbits and such like, 
 he was out of his hell, for the moment. 
 
 He went, more willessly than willingly, when Shack 
 took him by the arm to lead him, and together they 
 threaded the streets down to the shed by the docks. 
 There was need to hurry, too, the vile liquor would 
 not long leave Gus the use of his legs. Its stupefying, 
 numbing effects began almost at once to be visible and 
 by the time they reached their destination the man 
 could hardly raise his feet from the ground and the 
 moment they halted at last he went down in a help- 
 less heap, unconscious and snoring. 
 
 He lay a long time so, until broad day. Shack 
 sat beside him, reading, when he opened his eyes. 
 
 " Hullo, parson, damn you ! " he said, thickly, as 
 soon as his fogged intellect found itself a little. 
 
 " Hullo, Gus," rejoined Shack. " How do you 
 feel?" 
 
 " No matter," was the drunkard's testy retort. 
 " That's my business. What I want to know is why 
 you take so much trouble for me. I'm a hell of a 
 feller!" 
 
 Shack vouchsafed no reply to that sentiment. 
 
 " I wonder if you're damn fool enough to buy me 
 another drink, parson?" 
 
 " Maybe. Still I thought you might want to go to 
 work, this morning. Can't I help you about that, 
 Gus?" 
 
 " Work ! You know a damn sight better. I don't
 
 104 Not Welcome 
 
 want to go to work. Why don't you come right out 
 with it, parson? You want me to go to work and by 
 God, I'm going. I wouldn't do it for another soul but 
 you, so help God I wouldn't ! " 
 
 The man was a sailor, and for such as he there was 
 no lack of employment during the season of naviga- 
 tion. Because, being sailors, they were bound to jump 
 their jobs at every port, one or two or three from 
 every vessel, there was always to be found a captain 
 short of hands. Before noon Gus was aboard, and at 
 work. 
 
 And now Shack turned to affairs more especially his 
 own. He repaired to the bishop's. With the bishop, 
 to-day, he had business. 
 
 He marched up to the front door and rang the bell, 
 and it was Nora who answered. She had not forgot- 
 ten his rudeness of the day before, and the scissors 
 half ground, though she was surprised to see him 
 there, she could bethink her to give him a very 
 haughty look. 
 
 " Nothing to-day," she said, and added, with crush- 
 ing asperity : " You are to come to the back door, 
 always ! " 
 
 Shack looked at her, and saw her not ; there was no 
 Nora in the world, for him, any more. 
 
 " I wish to speak with the bishop," he said. 
 
 Nora flushed, it is a species of insult where a 
 man declines to be affected by the displeasure which 
 a woman is at such pains to advertise; no doubt she 
 could with good heart have shut the door in his face, 
 and would have done so only that she was there to 
 let people in and not to keep them out. Still she had 
 her arrow left, and she let it fly. 
 
 " The chancellor isn't in, but you may wait for 
 him," she said.
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 105 
 
 " The chancellor! " repeated Shack, doubtfully. 
 
 " He looks after matters which are not so import- 
 ant, you know," said Nora, bitingly. 
 
 And even by that Shack was not affected, not as 
 she would have him, at least. He gave no sign what- 
 ever of being hurt in his feelings. However, he shook 
 his head, decidedly. 
 
 " It is the bishop I wish to speak with," quoth he. 
 
 Nora bit her lip. Could anything be more pro- 
 voking? "I don't suppose his lordship will care to 
 see you ! " she snapped, and then, frightened at her- 
 self, she hastened to bid Shack in, she would tell 
 the bishop he was there. 
 
 She led up through a gloomy corridor to a great 
 cold room hung with strange pictures, of men in gor- 
 geous robes and women with glowing rings round 
 their heads. She did not ask him to have a chair, 
 though her volatile anger was gone almost at once 
 and she darted him a bright glance which plainly meant 
 forgiveness and conciliation, he had no such glance 
 to give her back, and so, with a proud curl of her 
 lip, she left him to stand and wait. 
 
 The bishop was a long time coming. Not in- 
 conceivably the offended housemaid, with all she had 
 endured, managed to intimate to his lordship that the 
 person was of no importance; but whether or no, it 
 was near half an hour that Shack was kept standing. 
 He did not once move. On the very square of car- 
 pet where Nora had left him, the bishop found him. 
 
 A lordly figure the bishop was, rustling in his long 
 robes, doubly impressive in his own house, with all 
 the proper settings. They were much brighter robes 
 than he had worn in his coach, with more purple in 
 them, a great deal, in fact ; and nothing could be 
 more effective, in the cold and quiet of the great room,
 
 io6 Not Welcome 
 
 than this purple. Shack drank in the brave sight and 
 his eyes glowed, he was near forgetting himself, 
 so strong was the appeal to the Indian. Not till the 
 bishop spoke, asking, not unpleasantly, what he could 
 do for him, was he reminded of his high purpose. 
 
 Thereupon ensued a colloquy, the like of which 
 probably never was before, between a bishop and a 
 grinder. His lordship was greatly astonished, though 
 he did not know his visitor for a grinder, and you 
 would be even more so, since you are better acquainted 
 with the fellow, at his language, especially, the 
 phrases thereof gropingly derived from Dr. Robert's 
 books and rudely adapted, by laborious conning and 
 without being any too well understood, to the expres- 
 sion of thoughts all out of joint with accepted no- 
 tions. 
 
 Grinder : " You are a bishop ? " 
 Bishop : " In my unworthy way, yes." 
 Grinder : " Then why do you live in this costly 
 palace and ride in that costly coach and wear those 
 costly robes ? " 
 
 Bishop (graciously, after a moment's hesitation) : 
 " It is customary for one in my station, I believe. 
 These things are prescribed by custom." 
 
 Grinder : " Jesus did not live in a palace or ride 
 in a coach ? " 
 
 Bishop : " No, that is true." 
 
 Grinder: "You are commanded to follow him?" 
 Bishop (with a smile and a shrug) : " All men are 
 so commanded. No man does that thing. The spirit 
 is willing but the flesh is weak." 
 
 Grinder : " Would you have all men follow Jesus 
 to do as Jesus did? " 
 
 Bishop: " By all means. Wouldn't you? " 
 Grinder: "No, because if all men were to follow
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 107 
 
 Jesus, the race would perish. If all men were to 
 crucify the carnal self, as he did, the race would 
 perish from the earth, I tell you ! " 
 
 Bishop (casting up his eyes) : " To dwell forever- 
 more in heaven ! " 
 
 Grinder (perplexed and shifting) : " Why don't 
 you marry? " 
 
 Bishop : " I am forbidden to marry." 
 
 Grinder: " Who forbids you? " 
 
 Bishop : " Holy Mother Church." 
 
 Grinder : " Holy Mother Church doesn't forbid all 
 men to marry? " 
 
 Bishop : " On the contrary. Marriage is a blessed 
 relation highly commended to the faithful." 
 
 Grinder : " If it is a blessed relation for others, 
 why not for you ? " 
 
 Bishop : " St. Paul says that he who is unmarried 
 careth for the things of the Lord, how he may please 
 God. But he who is married is solicitous about the 
 things of the world, how he may please his wife, and 
 he is divided." 
 
 Grinder (eagerly) : " Is it not expected of you that 
 you will follow Jesus more nearly than other men ? " 
 
 Bishop (shrugging) : " Ah, doubtless. An expec- 
 tation all too often disappointed. In our poor, hu- 
 man way, we of the clergy try to show men how to 
 live." 
 
 Grinder : " You follow Jesus, with the hope that 
 men will follow you ? " 
 
 Bishop. " As we are worthy, and worthily exemplify 
 the divine pattern." 
 
 Grinder : " When you do not marry you follow 
 Jesus, yet you don't wish men to follow you ? " 
 
 Bishop (with a touch of weariness) : " I have al- 
 ready explained why the clergy do not marry."
 
 io8 Not Welcome 
 
 Grinder (perplexed, fumbling over a book which 
 he has drawn from his pocket) : " You have heard 
 of St. Francis ? " 
 
 Bishop (smiling indulgently) : "OfAssisi? Oh, 
 yes, indeed ! " 
 
 Grinder: " He was a clergyman? " 
 
 Bishop: "He was." 
 
 Grinder : " He had power over men, to bend their 
 wills?" 
 
 Bishop : " That is a fact of history, I believe. He 
 was a very wonderful man." 
 
 Grinder: "In what was he wonderful?" 
 
 Bishop : " In his power, which you mention." 
 
 Grinder: "How did he come by his power?" 
 
 Bishop : " By his spirituality, no doubt." 
 
 Grinder : " What is spirituality ? " 
 
 Bishop : " Briefly, unworldiness. Holy elevation of 
 soul. Disassociation from carnal promptings." 
 
 Grinder (glowing, yet perplexed) : " The proof of 
 this the proof of spirituality is is " 
 
 Bishop : " In a word, sacrifice. The proof and the 
 fruit of spirituality is sacrifice." 
 
 Grinder (after a pause) : " Could you do your ap- 
 pointed work better if you had the power of St. 
 Francis? " 
 
 Bishop : " That goes without saying." 
 
 Grinder (impatiently, almost in the tone of rebuke) : 
 " Then why don't you get it ? Why don't you prove 
 to the world your holy elevation of soul ? " 
 
 Bishop (amused) : " How for instance? " 
 
 Grinder : " Well, you might put away your palace 
 and your coach, as Bishop Welcome did." 
 
 Bishop (surprised): "Welcome? Who is he? I 
 seem never to have heard of that bishop." 
 
 Grinder (fumbles over his book and at length reads
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 109 
 
 from it, in a halting manner) : " ' If any man come to 
 me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, 
 and children, and brother, and sister, yea, and his own 
 life also, he cannot be my disciple.' Who said that? " 
 
 Bishop (bowing his head) : " Our blessed Re- 
 deemer ! " 
 
 Grinder : " He would have His disciples to be very 
 spiritual? " 
 
 Bishop: "Very!" 
 
 Grinder : " He bids His disciples crucify and deny 
 the promptings, the the the things which get the 
 race perpetuated " 
 
 Bishop : " I see your difficulty, my friend. You 
 take the word hate too literally. You should take it 
 with a reservation, in a figurative sense. The law 
 of Christ does not permit us to hate even our enemies, 
 much less our parents or our children. The meaning 
 of the text is that we must be in such a disposition of 
 soul as to be willing to renounce and part with every- 
 thing, how near and dear soever it may be to us, 
 that would keep us from following Christ." 
 
 Grinder (with sudden energy) : "No! I say NO! 
 It is more. It is only you, it is only the clergy who 
 are told to do so. Not common men. No, no ! You 
 are to do what Jesus bids you. If you put away wife 
 and children and father and mother is it not sacrifice, 
 the proof of your holy elevation of soul? Why do you 
 talk yourself out of it? Why do you why do you 
 why do you " 
 
 Bishop (much amused): Well, well! You are a 
 doctor of divinity, then? Tell me, doctor, to what 
 profit should the minister do that which mankind at 
 large are not expected to do?" 
 
 Grinder (greatly excited) : " What did it profit St.
 
 iio Not Welcome 
 
 Francis? It gave him his power over men, to bend 
 their wills. You say it is so, his power is from his 
 spirituality, his spirituality is proved by sacrifice. 
 Listen to me! We shall now speak of Bishop Wel- 
 come. He, too, had the spirituality, the holy elevation 
 of soul. To what end? A vast influence for good 
 flowed out from him, all who came near him were 
 made better by it. Did he preach? Did he scold? 
 No, rather by the spirit did he lay hold of them, and 
 lift them up in spite of themselves. He put love in 
 their hearts, out of his own heart, good will, God's 
 will, I tell you God's will and good will are one. 
 No matter how good will gets in a man's heart, it is 
 God's will. Especially Jean Valjean, who was a fright- 
 ful sinner , yet was saved. I will read of him. " (He 
 draws another volume from his pocket). 
 
 Bishop (shortly) : "What book have you there?" 
 
 Grinder : " It is Les Miserdbles, the greatest book in 
 the world, the word of God from the mouth of his 
 prophet, greater than the Bible, for without it I should 
 never have known what the Bible meant." 
 
 Bishop (shocked) : " It is by the wicked Frenchman, 
 Hugo?" 
 
 Grinder : " Hugo is his name." 
 
 Bishop : " I cannot hear you read from that book. 
 All the books of that wicked man are proscribed. 
 The faithful are forbidden to read them, or hear 
 them read. They are impious and subversive of 
 morals, and Holy Mother Church has put them on the 
 Index." 
 
 Grinder: "The Index?" 
 
 Bishop (severely) : " I have given you too much of 
 my time, a great deal more than I should have given
 
 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 1 1 1 
 
 had I known what you came for." (rises) "I bid 
 you good-day." (leads the way to the door) 
 
 Grinder (following reluctantly): "My father's 
 business " 
 
 Bishop : " No more ! I must decline to let you 
 waste another moment of the time which belongs to 
 those who need my services." 
 
 That was the colloquy. 
 
 Nora was peeping out from the back door, when 
 Shack took his departure. Her resentment was wholly 
 evaporated and what was more, she was about dying 
 of curiosity. She smiled at him, and even beckoned 
 with her hand, and he was looking directly at her; 
 but he did not heed her. For a moment he stood, 
 with bared head, undecided, staring up at the cold, 
 still windows; and then he turned abruptly and hur- 
 ried off, with his hat in one hand and his tattered 
 books in the other.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FISHERS OF MEN 
 
 IF sheep looked up and were not fed, it was from 
 no lack of those who called themselves shepherds. 
 There were shepherds and shepherds, until they fairly 
 jostled one another, though the pastures were broad. 
 
 For some of these Shack came to have a fellow 
 feeling. 
 
 He began with driving his wheel seven days in the 
 week, knowing no reason why he should not. But 
 very soon he discovered that he was eyed askance 
 when he tinkled his bells of a Sunday and that patron- 
 age was very scantly forthcoming on that day. And 
 at length he was warned by the police that it was 
 against the law to carry on a gainful pursuit on the 
 Sabbath. So he labored six days and did all his 
 work, resting on the seventh, if mere emptiness of 
 occupation could be called rest. 
 
 Once, strolling aimlessly about, he happened near 
 a church when the people were going in. They were 
 a throng, it was easy to drift along with them, and 
 almost before he knew it he was going in, too. The 
 experience proved pleasant enough. There was an 
 abundance of color in the place, what with all the 
 bright gowns of the women, not so bright as the 
 bishop's, but very engaging still, to the savage taste, 
 and the walls and windows painted and gilded. The 
 
 112
 
 Fishers of Men 113 
 
 music, also, floated down from a high loft in an en- 
 trancing manner, and there was no escaping the thrill 
 when the deep notes of the organ shook the air like 
 thunder. The sermon, well, Shack slept during much 
 of it, and even when he wasn't sleeping, he dreamed ; 
 the sermon was likewise a joy, in its own way. The 
 pastor came down to the door after the service, and 
 shook hands with everybody, not by any means over- 
 looking the stranger. Shack was considerably at- 
 tracted and went back to that church several times. 
 
 But the shepherds whom he felt drawn to most were 
 of another kind, Melchisedecs rather than Levites, 
 ministers who ministered in the by-ways and hedges, 
 and had no churches. They were especially to be 
 found down in the dingy district where cheap lodging- 
 houses abounded. There they harangued from the 
 gutter as often as a knot of listeners would gather on 
 the curb, and that was often, for Sunday was a dull 
 day in those regions, so dull, what with the saloons 
 all being shut, that even preaching, and poor preach- 
 ing at that, was a consolation. If Shack didn't care 
 much for the haranguing, there v/as still their devo- 
 tion to make him like them. Certainly they were de- 
 voted. They worked all the week at some secular 
 employment, usually of a toilsome character and not 
 very remunerative, yet gave their day of rest freely 
 and without price to the Master's service, as they were 
 pleased to term it, and a laborious service they made 
 of it, too. 
 
 Among them was a certain carpenter with whom 
 Shack struck up a friendship, was not Jesus himself 
 a carpenter? Neither of them knew the other's name, 
 never thought to ask it, though they were often to- 
 gether; and yet they were very good friends, of a 
 kind. Their acquaintance began with the carpenter
 
 114 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 trying to save Shack's soul. He saw the boy in his 
 little congregation of listeners, one Sunday evening, 
 and when he had finished his discourse, he went to 
 him, and laid his arm lovingly about his shoulders. 
 
 " Friend," said he, " something in your face tells 
 me you wish to be born again." 
 
 No, that was a mistake. Shack had no notion of 
 being born again, once was amply enough for him. 
 
 " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God," insisted the carpenter. " Except 
 a man be born of the water, and of the spirit, he can- 
 not enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 But his seed fell on stony places, he was going 
 on to enlarge upon his doctrine of regeneration when 
 Shack broke in, impatiently. 
 
 " What makes you talk so much ? " he asked. 
 
 " I preach the gospel," replied the carpenter. " I 
 am commanded to go forth and preach." 
 
 " Who commands you ? " 
 
 " The Master, my Lord and my Redeemer, Jesus 
 the Christ!" 
 
 " No, he commands whoever would be his disciple 
 to take up his cross daily." 
 
 " I try to do that, too, but it is not enough. 
 The " 
 
 " It is enough, if you do enough of it. Bishop 
 Welcome " 
 
 But now it was Shack's seed which fell on stony 
 places, he was going on, in a great glow, when the 
 carpenter took his turn at breaking in. 
 
 " While ye have light, believe in the light ! " he ex- 
 claimed. " He that entereth not by the door into the 
 sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same 
 is a thief and a robber." 
 
 And no nearer together could they come, though
 
 Fishers of Men 115 
 
 the carpenter was forever trying to show Shack, and 
 Shack was forever trying to show the carpenter. Of- 
 ten they would afford the bystanders considerable 
 amusement, by their zeal, with neither in the least 
 heeding the other. 
 
 Not much like the gentle carpenter was an evange- 
 list who boasted himself a reformed tough, a coarse, 
 heavy fellow, who in much still acted his old part, 
 however his heart might have changed. He had thick 
 black brows, and a mustache which fell over his chin, 
 and a fierce eye and a scar across his cheek to testify 
 to a stab he had got in a drunken row, sometime. In 
 one way or another he had provided himself with a 
 handsome wagon, carrying an organ and a choir of 
 singers, so that wherever he set up to preach he had 
 the churchly essentials. He was vulgar and boister- 
 ous. To draw himself a crowd he would resort to 
 showman's tricks, among them that of pounding on 
 an enormous gong till people ran up to see what was 
 the matter. Having got his crowd, by hook or by 
 crook, he would tell stories, not over nice but with 
 some sort of a moral, and display coarse crayon pict- 
 ures, such as he had a knack for drawing, there was 
 a moral to them, also. But whatever the failings of 
 the evangelist, his singers were very delightful indeed. 
 There were four voices, and they blended like currents 
 of sweet water. It was when a certain two of them 
 sang that the music was loveliest, however. Noth- 
 ing could be lovelier, to Shack's notion, than when 
 they sang a song which began with the words, " Pass 
 me not, O gentle Saviour ! " 
 
 There was an appeal in that. The first time he 
 heard them sing it he chanced to be standing very near 
 the wagon, within arm's reach, in fact. He was trans- 
 ported, and when he came to a consciousness of him-
 
 1 1 6 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 self, he was clinging to the wheel with both hands, 
 something as the sinner in the allegory clings to the 
 Rock of Ages, with his face upturned and wet. The 
 evangelist saw him, and reached down to take hold 
 of him, but Shack shrank away and fled into the 
 crowd. 
 
 Different again was the Salvation Army. Shack 
 liked them about the best of all, perhaps by reason of 
 their singing, which he was free and welcome to join 
 in. They had their semblance of a band, made up of 
 nondescript instruments, not omitting the hideous 
 drum pounded on by a soldier ignorant of time and 
 tune. But there was a soldier playing the big horn 
 who knew how, he poured a rich sustaining bass 
 into the chorus, and when there were many voices the 
 effect was altogether fine. It was great fun, singing 
 with the Salvation Army, and Shack would stay by 
 them night after night, till they marched back to their 
 barracks. Of course they discovered him. The ad- 
 jutant in command, alert for converts, spied his 
 flushed and radiant face in the circle and went to him 
 and besought him to come forward and testify. But 
 Shack had nothing to testify to. Another time the 
 adjutant requested all to raise their hands who be- 
 lieved themselves washed clean in the blood of Jesus. 
 
 " Up with your hand, friend ! " he called out, to 
 Shack. " Don't be ashamed of your colors." 
 
 Shack would not, however. " Nobody was ever 
 washed clean in blood ! " he made answer, and shud- 
 dered, and there was no more radiance in his face for 
 a while. 
 
 And finally there were the revivals. These revivals 
 were just then making a great stir; they were held in 
 a vast barnlike rink, where as many as five thousand 
 persons might sit and stand, and the place was al-
 
 Fishers of Men 1 1 7 
 
 most always filled. No doubt some went out of curi- 
 osity, and some for the comfort of their bodies, the 
 weather being cold, the times hard, and fuel costly; 
 but the majority, after all, seemed to be concerned for 
 the good of their souls, more or less seriously. There 
 were two revivalists, a preacher and a singer. The 
 singer possessed a real gift for music and his songs 
 \vere beautiful. They had a chorus of trained voices 
 besides, and usually the congregation was asked to 
 join. It was hard to keep so many thousands together, 
 however, and the congregational singing was not a 
 great success, except now and then, when, as by some 
 mysterious inspiration, the crowd found itself and 
 raised up its voices in harmony truly sublime. Once 
 they sang, " What a Friend We Have in Jesus ! " in 
 such perfect unison, and with such a volume of sound, 
 that Shack wished they might never stop. 
 
 The preaching, on the other hand, was very dis- 
 agreeable. The preacher was bitter and vindictive. 
 He troubled Shack much, and more and more. 
 
 " God says there's a hell for every Christless soul," 
 this was a sentiment which the man never tired of 
 repeating, with a hateful, gnashing utterance. " If 
 He didn't mean what He said, why didn't He say 
 what He meant ? " 
 
 Shack winced as if a lash had been laid over his 
 back. And he felt a resentment. 
 
 Once the preacher spoke in this wise : " A few years 
 before Robert G. Ingersoll went to hell What 
 makes you look that way? That's where he went, 
 according to God's word." 
 
 Shack had never heard of Robert G. Ingersoll, but 
 now his heart went out to him. He was strongly 
 minded to stand up for him. And his resentment 
 rose.
 
 1 1 8 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 The revivalist was full of accusations, here is 
 another : " One of the grandest pictures on earth is a 
 whole family on the way to heaven, the most horrible 
 picture on earth is a whole family on the way to hell." 
 
 This word hell troubled Shack especially. To him 
 it sounded much worse in the mouth of the minister of 
 God's grace than ever it had sounded in the mouth of 
 the profanest lumberjack, there was such a hiss about 
 it, such a suggestion of ugliness. 
 
 But decidedly the most troublesome part was a 
 story which the preacher told concerning a young girl. 
 
 " There was once a young girl," he said, " who went 
 to the theater when she should have gone to church. 
 She belonged to a Christian family, too, she had the 
 light, and sinned against it. She knew she ought to 
 go to church, but she chose to go to the theater. She 
 was warned. Kind friends warned her that her place 
 was at church, and that if she went to the wicked 
 theater instead, she put her soul in peril. She was 
 stiffnecked, and went to the theater. 
 
 " What happened ? 
 
 " Oh, my friends, what happened ? 
 
 " The very next day she fell sick. 
 
 " And the day after that she died. 
 
 " And her soul is in hell. Do you doubt it ? Then 
 you call God a liar ! " 
 
 It was too much, Shack's soul surged to his lips 
 in protest. The sense of wrong rushed on him over- 
 whelmingly, and every fiber of him was for grappling 
 with it there and then. But straightway there came, 
 too, a sick quaking, a feeling of impotence, and the 
 upshot was an impulse to flee the place, a wish to get 
 away from the crowd. His soul halted at his lips 
 and shrank back, he had no words in which to utter 
 its protest. If he were to open his mouth nothing
 
 Fishers of Men 119 
 
 would come out but a snarl, the cry of an offended 
 animal, he was sufficiently conscious of that, and so 
 he fled. 
 
 In his ears was the sound of the exhorter's voice, 
 harsh and pitiless, warning the people to come for- 
 ward and confess before it was everlastingly too late. 
 And the people were flocking up in answer to the call, 
 with terror in all their faces. Shack met them, pushing 
 and jostling, and they nearly swept him off his feet, 
 they were so eager. But he was eager, too. There 
 was a terror driving him, in something very like a 
 panic he fought his way out. 
 
 And though that was gone at once he cleared the 
 crowd, there was still the impulse to get away, to 
 escape the troublesome presence, to go where he could 
 no more hear the pitiless warning voice or see the 
 frightened faces. Instinctively he fell into his swift, 
 easy Indian run, and ran and ran, until the haunts 
 of men were behind him, and he was in the open 
 spaces, with the whole expanse of the glittering sky 
 above and about him, the sky he had always known, 
 his lifelong friend and companion, his unfailing guide 
 and comfort. He slackened his pace when he saw 
 himself among his familiars, the prairie stretches where 
 the snow was trackless, he looked up into the face 
 of the sky; and strength came to him, a new strength 
 of the soul. Why was he fleeing? What fled he 
 from? In his strength he commanded the tumult of 
 his emotions, to sort them out, and find where he 
 stood. 
 
 Forthwith his conscience smote him. He had been 
 a coward. What spirit but cowardice had possessed 
 him, that he should desert those people when they 
 were in such need? Those sheep who looked 
 pathetically up and were fed with husks, nay, worse
 
 I2O A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 than husks, with deadly poison! His call had been 
 to help them, and he had heard it not. His call had 
 been to raise his voice to rescue them from that wicked 
 man, and he had remained silent. 
 
 Because he had been afraid! 
 
 He would go back, then. Possibly it was not too 
 late even yet. At all events he would go back. 
 
 He went, quickly, his Indian run had never 
 carried him faster. At the door of the rink he met 
 the people coming out. There sat upon them a painful 
 awe, and that reproached him. A good many of them 
 had been crying some were crying yet and that 
 reproached him still more. 
 
 There was nothing to be done that night, but another 
 night was coming and he highly resolved it should be 
 a night of reckoning. Anger flamed hot and high in 
 him. Once more he sought the open spaces, and 
 looked into the face of the sky, and grew stronger and 
 stronger until he was a giant, with courage equal 
 to anything. Nothing should daunt him, any more. 
 He would face the man of evil and destroy him He 
 would grapple with the wrong and put it under his 
 feet. He would strike the shackles off the multitude, 
 he would send them away, not weeping and trem- 
 bling miserably, but laughing for joy in their freedom. 
 
 And so he wrapped himself in his panoply of high 
 resolution, all that night he was about it, and all 
 the next day, until evening. At evening he repaired 
 to the rink. 
 
 But though there was an immense congregation, 
 immensely wrought upon, the preacher did not speak, 
 not so much as a word from first to last He was 
 present, but only to sit stiffly by, while numbers of 
 other men, in white ties and long clerical coats, rose 
 up one after another and praised him for a Paul come 
 to bring the unrighteous to repentance. They were
 
 Fishers of Men 1 21 
 
 clergymen, evidently, no doubt the ministers of the 
 churches under whose auspices the revivals were held. 
 Anyway they vied with one another to make strong 
 their eulogy, but no eulogy proved too strong for the 
 fancy of the congregation. Burst upon burst of 
 applause swept over the great assemblage. The air 
 was stormy with cheers. Hundreds kept shouting that 
 they were saved. Many wept. It would be hard to 
 imagine a crowd more deeply moved. 
 
 After a good deal of this, a man rose up who was 
 not a clergyman, by his manner, rather a plain man 
 of business ; and presented a statement of what it had 
 cost to conduct the meetings. There was something 
 for the hire of the hall, something for heating, for 
 lights, for printing, for a long list of sundries. Alto- 
 gether the expense had been quite heavy. 
 
 " That part," the man went on to say, " has been 
 taken care of by private subscription, the bills have 
 been paid and need give us no further thought. But 
 there is another matter, called by some a delicate 
 matter, I fail to see why, but at all events a matter 
 not to be dodged. I have reference to the compensa- 
 tion due this wonderful man for his wonderful work. 
 Let me tell you that he has asked no pay whatever. 
 We expressly requested him, when we opened 
 negotiations, to set a price, he would not. We 
 offered him a guaranty, he wouldn't have it. He 
 wouldn't let us pay .his board even. ' But,' said he, 
 ' when I am done, if the people are sufficiently pleased 
 with my work to make me a free-will offering, I shall 
 not reject it. I leave it for them to fix the value of my 
 services. Under God, they are the best judge.' 
 That's the man, my friends. Can we afford to be 
 small with him?" (a torrent of dissent from all 
 sides) " I agree with you, perfectly. Now, we are
 
 122 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 going to take up a collection, and it will be your free- 
 will offering. We sha'n't count it, whatever we get 
 will be poured directly into his lap from the boxes. It 
 is not my place to make any suggestion as to what 
 the amount should be, but I will nevertheless venture 
 a word. This man has brought upwards of a thou- 
 sand vagrant souls to Jesus, and if the service isn't 
 worth a dollar a soul, it's worth nothing. We are told 
 that it costs several hundred dollars to save the 
 average heathen soul, and the harvest is worth it, 
 every penny. But the souls of our nearer brethren are 
 quite as precious, and in even greater peril, if only 
 because we who have the light and are primarily 
 responsible for its dissemination, are all too apt to over- 
 look the darkness which is under our very noses. 
 These meetings have been highly fruitful, not only 
 in the greater part of saving souls, but in the scarcely 
 lesser part of showing us what souls there were to be 
 saved ; and I am sure we are grateful for the reminder, 
 even though it should accuse us of neglect. For my- 
 self, I exult in the opportunity to make some return 
 for the immeasurable benefit I have derived. I have 
 purchased in my time a great deal of comfort and 
 satisfaction with money, but never any to compare, in 
 cheapness and quality, with the happiness I am pur- 
 chasing now, with this." 
 
 He drew out a bill as he finished, and flourished 
 it ostentatiously, dropping it in the box, it was a bill 
 with a yellow back and by that no trifle. The con- 
 gregation caught the spirit of lavishness as the tinder 
 catches fire, and could scarcely wait till the boxes came 
 to receive the offerings. A great clinking of money 
 ensued. Bills were numerous, but coins were much 
 more so, especially silver dollars, big and heavy, clash- 
 ing one against another till the rattle and clatter were
 
 Fishers of Men 123 
 
 something to hear. Meanwhile the man on the plat- 
 form kept up a running fire of comment, informal, 
 even jocose ; and the people laughed more and more. If 
 there was an occasional outbreak of solemn fervor on 
 the part of some overstrained soul, it only served 
 to provoke fresh laughter. The laughing mood was 
 well-nigh universal, it had all but a very few. 
 
 Shack was of these few. 
 
 In order the better to do that which he purposed 
 doing, he had taken up his station well forward, with- 
 in a step or two of the front, an Indian, in fact, 
 might make the platform at a bound. There he 
 waited till the services began; there smothered his 
 disappointment when the preacher did not speak; and 
 there felt a new and greater anguish than any yet. It 
 was not for him to laugh. The man airily reckoned 
 up the value of a soul saved in commercial terms and 
 flourished his bill; the people howled their approval; 
 the clergymen beamed radiantly to show how very 
 pleased they were. No, there was nothing for Shack 
 to laugh at. 
 
 None observed him. He jumped up, but pretty 
 much everybody was jumping up likewise. A woman 
 from behind jostled him violently, set her shoulder 
 against him and shoved him out of her way ; she held 
 a gleaming gold piece over her head and screamed 
 that the Lord was her shepherd and laughed. Others 
 screamed, and there was laughter all the time, and 
 none to observe Shack. 
 
 But now, of a sudden, above the uproar, a voice 
 was lifted up, piercing and shrill. It was a yell, in 
 fact, mingling agony with anger, and it was heard 
 from end to end of the hall. 
 
 The voice was Shack's. Those nearest him dis-
 
 124 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 tinguished these words : " Make not my Father's 
 house a house of merchandise! " 
 
 That was the only utterance his protest found. The 
 next instant he fell to the floor, with a loud crash 
 among the chairs, foaming, and beating wildly with 
 his arms and legs. People were startled, naturally, 
 the incident was so foreign and unexpected ; but not 
 for long. The tide of joyful enthusiasm ran too strong 
 to be easily interrupted and very soon it was in full 
 flood once more. Some men picked Shack up and 
 carried him out through a side door into the alley. 
 He was quiet by that time, limp and senseless.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF JESUS 
 
 AN ambulance clattered into the alley, with a boyish 
 surgeon who summed up his diagnosis in the one 
 word, "Fit!" nothing serious. They bundled the 
 unconscious Shack off to the hospital and put him to 
 bed; for a fit no more was necessary. But when the 
 night passed and he did not recover his senses, they 
 perceived that worse ailed him ; and when, as the day 
 advanced, he grew restless and delirious, they talked 
 of brain fever. 
 
 In point of fact he was very near to finishing his 
 earthly course there and then. It was a long, hard 
 battle which he fought with death, with so much in 
 favor of his grim foe. He was not neglected, after 
 those first few hours, the doctors and nurses did 
 what could be done, and though it was only a narrow 
 bed in the public ward which they gave him, a better 
 would have availed nothing; it wasn't treatment he 
 needed, but vitality, there was so little to build re- 
 covery on. He sank and sank until he was des- 
 perately low. Day and night he was out of his 
 head and raving. It was a curious mixture he talked 
 in his wanderings, nobody had ever heard anything 
 like it, Indian and French and English all at once; 
 and a curious past it revealed, in his dreams he 
 hunted with his tribe, or drove oxen for the loggers, 
 
 125
 
 126 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 or wrangled with an imaginary somebody about his 
 father's business. The hospital people conceived an 
 uncommon interest in the frail boy, not only the 
 doctors and the nurses, but other patients who were 
 near by; and not the less because they had no notion 
 he could by any possibility pull through. One day 
 he was seen to pluck incessantly at the coverlet, and an 
 elderly man in the next bed, convalescent of a fever 
 himself, solemnly declared it a sign of impending death 
 never known to fail. The attendants didn't go by 
 symptoms of that sort, but they agreed that death 
 impended, if the fellow got well it would be the 
 greatest of wonders. But no less a wonder came to 
 pass. Shack fought his way through, and lived. 
 After many days he opened his eyes to look consciously 
 about him. 
 
 And it happened that Father Peter was just at that 
 moment administering supreme unction to a patient 
 across the aisle. Who was Father Peter? A jolly 
 priest who made the hospital, and especially the 
 charity wards thereof, an especial care. The name of 
 father sat upon him rather strangely, he was so young, 
 less than a year ordained, in fact; but no one 
 grudged him any title whatsoever that should smack 
 of respect and esteem, for in the few months of his 
 ministration he had got himself mightily well liked. 
 Catholics who had the misfortune to be brought there 
 saw more than the man in him, but the man in him 
 was amply enough to make him beloved of Protestants, 
 scoffers and heathen. None had ever blessed his 
 goodness more than an Arabian packpeddler who was 
 laid up for weeks and weeks with a broken leg. He 
 prayed assiduously to the Allah whose prophet was 
 Mahomet, but Father Peter sat with him, and told him 
 funny stories in French, with a wealth of gesture and
 
 The Society of Jesus 1 27 
 
 a perfection of mimicry such as should make his mean- 
 ing clear without a word in any tongue; and never 
 once mentioned religion. When the Arabian was well, 
 he brought the priest a beautiful rug from Bokhara, 
 and went away astonished and troubled to learn that 
 no member of the Society of Jesus was permitted to 
 have anything for his own, not even the clothes 
 he wore, coarse and scanty though they were. 
 
 It was Father Peter whom Shack saw first with 
 conscious eyes. He was aware, rather clearly, con- 
 sidering his long sleep, what was going forward over 
 there across the aisle, and he was taken with an impulse 
 to fall on his knees. Was he not in the presence of 
 God? 'Anyway, there were the identical motions. 
 Yes, and the words as well, Corpus Domini, vitam 
 eternam, and the rest, all in the same identical sing- 
 song. But at once he thought of falling on his knees, 
 he made the important discovery that he was already 
 flat on his back. He would rise to the kneeling 
 posture, then? No, he could not. He was too weak 
 to lift his hand, even. He could turn his head a 
 little, and that was all. 
 
 He could speak, though, and when he saw the 
 priest going, he called to him, and made him hear. 
 Father Peter came straightway over, with the sunniest 
 of smiles on his beaming, rosy, Irish face, and in the 
 cheeriest of voices asked him how he found himself. 
 
 " Some of that ! " wheezed Shack, feebly, while 
 his eyes fastened themselves on the leather case which 
 hung from Father Peter's neck. It was something to 
 eat, why shouldn't he ask for it that way? 
 
 The priest spoke in a whisper to the doctor who 
 came along at the moment. The doctor answered 
 aloud that there was no immediate danger, and Father 
 Peter turned back to Shack with a laugh.
 
 128 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 " You're going to get well, old man," he said. 
 
 Shack knew he was being put off, and it wasn't to 
 his taste. He grew peevish, like a child denied some 
 goody his heart is set on, his lips quivered and his 
 eyes filled with tears. But Father Peter had seen 
 sick men before, he knew their whims and fancies ; 
 and he kept up such a flow of good spirits that Shack 
 was carried away by it and forgot his vexation and at 
 length was in tolerably good spirits himself. 
 
 The priest promised to come and see him next day, 
 and the promise was fulfilled; not only that day, but 
 every day during the rest of his stay, did Father Peter 
 bring his gift of cheerfulness, his bit of banter, his 
 story, his laughter best of all. Shack remembered 
 the communion, and asked for it once or twice, but 
 still he was put off, and thereupon, having become 
 stronger and less childish, he understood that the 
 mysterious wafer was not for him. Moreover, as the 
 childish mood passed, the whim went with it, for after 
 all it was only a whim. What was a mere bit of 
 tasteless bread to him, anyway ? 
 
 They became famous friends. Dr. Robert was 
 Shack's dearest friend, of course, but next to Dr. 
 Robert stood Father Peter. They were as different, 
 too, as men could well be, these friends; Dr. Robert 
 silent and sober, Father Peter talkative and gay ; Dr. 
 Robert a Frenchman with rather little of the French 
 levity and effervescence, Father Peter an Irishman 
 with all the Irish charm, very witty though not too 
 witty to be kind. Yet they were alike in one respect, 
 their interest in Shack. Dr. Robert himself could 
 not have taken more interest in the waif, for waif once 
 more he was. 
 
 Of course he had to leave the hospital, just as soon 
 as he could safely be turned out, his narrow bed was
 
 The Society of Jesus 129 
 
 a gift of philanthropy and in brisk demand. What 
 was to become of him hereupon? His wheel was 
 gone. His best recollection, not very good, was that 
 he had left it in his shed while he went to beard the 
 revivalist, but if he was right in that, somebody had 
 found it and appropriated it. Anyway it was lost to 
 him and he was a grinder no longer. In that 
 emergency Father Peter saw that he was provided for. 
 The Jesuits had a large church, the largest in town, 
 where several thousand families worshiped, and in 
 connection with the church a great school ; there was a 
 good deal of work about the two institutions, and some 
 that could be done by a common laborer like Shack, 
 if he was willing to labor, as the fathers themselves 
 did, for a bare living. And Shack was very willing. 
 In fact, he could not have asked for a place more to 
 his liking. 
 
 After that they two became more famous friends 
 than ever. 
 
 The surroundings were like nothing Shack had ever 
 encountered hitherto. He was apart from the world. 
 Every day the world or people who were of the world, 
 came there to worship or to study, but it was not to 
 bring their worldliness with them; even they came 
 under the spell of the spirit which brooded over Sts. 
 Peter and Paul's, for that was the official name of the 
 establishment. It was a religious retreat after a partic- 
 ular form of religion, and a form which made the ut- 
 most of the emotions. Of course Shack was affected, 
 and deeply, the crudest and most elemental appeal 
 would not be lost on him, so long as it was directed 
 to the feelings. If such a thing as conversion were 
 possible with a soul so elusive and uncertain, it would 
 be by just such influences. 
 
 Father Peter never talked with Shack about relig-
 
 130 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 ious matters on his own motion and he had the air 
 of evading the subject if it was otherwise brought 
 up. Perhaps he was waiting for the emotional founda- 
 tion to make itself very broad and firm. If so he 
 waited not in vain. Shack was assailed with no ar- 
 guments, only scantly was his curiosity indulged; but 
 all the while he was gaining a new religious sense, 
 more definite and formal, more Catholic, more Jesuit. 
 
 Mass was celebrated in the chapel every morning, 
 and it was a strict regulation that faculty, students 
 and common help should all attend, unless particularly 
 dispensed. Shack was not dispensed, nor on the other 
 hand was he so much as apprised of the regulation; 
 yet he never once missed mass during all his connec- 
 tion. 
 
 You have observed Catholics entering their 
 churches, how they bend the knee before the altar, 
 as they take their seats? It was only a morning or 
 two till Shack was bending the knee like the others. 
 Nobody told him to do that, either. 
 
 There were always some few from the parish with- 
 out, at this daily mass, faithful souls who delighted 
 in worship, and had the time for it ; and among them, 
 especially, a bowed and shrunken old woman, dressed 
 in the deepest black, who knelt at the altar of the 
 Virgin and counted her beads. She would throw back 
 her veil as she prayed, and her face, with the light 
 of eternity on it, was sweet and peaceful. Shack did 
 not know the prayers of the Rosary, but somehow 
 he became possessed of a string of beads and every 
 day he knelt before the image of Mary to fumble them 
 over. 
 
 Daily communicants were rare. In all that vast 
 parish of ten thousands souls, you could count the 
 daily communicants on the fingers of your two
 
 The Society of Jesus 131 
 
 hands, that is, among the laity. The sweet old 
 woman was one of them, as often as the bell on the 
 altar tinkled to warn the people of the elevation of the 
 host, she would struggle up from her knees and go 
 tottering unsteadily forward to receive the body of her 
 Lord. And whoever officiated in the mass, there was 
 a tenderness in his manner when he came to that 
 figure huddled at the foot of the altar and a softness in 
 his muttered Corpus Domini; and then the old woman 
 would come tottering back, with her shriveled hands 
 clasped together in the attitude of adoration, and her 
 countenance eloquent of the peace that passeth all 
 understanding. Shack saw it all, looked into that 
 face, and soon he, too, was a daily communicant. 
 
 Not without difficulties, however. He would bungle 
 his confession. Father Peter found it a desperately 
 hard thing to make Shack understand about con- 
 fession. He was not unwilling to accuse himself, How- 
 ever, that wasn't the trouble at all; rather was he 
 too willing. The priest taught him the names of the 
 seven deadly sins pride and covetousness, lust and 
 anger, gluttony and envy and sloth, and was amazed, 
 on the occasion of his penitent's first confession, to 
 hear him own up, in the most sweeping fashion to 
 all of them. Nothing was more certain than that he 
 was innocent as a babe under at least four of the 
 heads, and under the others quite inoffensive, as men 
 go; yet he would have himself thought deeply guilty 
 of all. And no wickedest culprit ever showed him- 
 self more relieved upon being absolved; he made his 
 communion, he told his beads before the Virgin, and 
 came away with his head in the clouds. Sin was the 
 prior fact to his elation, why should he not go in for 
 a lot of it ? In some such way, perhaps, he reasoned, 
 if he reasoned at all.
 
 132 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 The church of Sts. Peter and Paul had been re- 
 building during several years, on a scale of great mag- 
 nificence; and now it was finished, and about to be 
 dedicated with all possible pomp and ceremony. There 
 were plenty of priests, between the church and the 
 school, as many deacons and acolytes as could be 
 used. Sts. Peter and Paul was famous for its cere- 
 monies, anyway; nowhere, not even in Rome itself 
 with all its multitude of priests, were the solemn high 
 festivals celebrated in better form. The Tenebrae 
 of Holy Thursday, for instance, were spoken of as 
 one of the shows of the city, every year throngs of 
 Protestants and unbelievers came out for to see; and 
 any Catholic will tell you that if a church does justice 
 to the Tenebrae, the rest is comparatively easy. 
 
 The Society of Jesus having built the edifice, it was 
 fittingly to be dedicated on the feastday of the Holy 
 Name, somewhere about the middle of January. It 
 turned out a bitter cold day, such that the rich came in 
 their furs and the poor with all their rags about them, 
 but everybody came, and the vast temple was filled 
 to overflowing. The pews were all taken half an hour 
 before the services began, and though chairs were set 
 in the aisles, there were still people standing wherever 
 an open space presented itself. It meant something 
 to be in the midst of such a crowd, provided you had 
 feelings like Shack's. When the bell tinkled for the 
 beginning of the canon, and all that immense throng 
 knelt down, with a rustling of garments, Shack 
 reeled in his rapture and would have cast himself 
 prostrate on his face, only that there wasn't room. 
 
 And the altar, what words can make you see it as 
 he saw it? 
 
 There were a thousand candles burning, not 
 strictly candles, you understand, but jets of gas kindled
 
 The Society of Jesus 133 
 
 all at once by an electric spark, it would take the al- 
 tar-boys an endless time to light so many real candles. 
 But even these were not all the light. Overhead, in 
 the ceiling of the sanctuary, there was some sort of a 
 contrivance, similar in its effects to the footlights of 
 a theater, by means of which a very especial radiance 
 was cast down on the noble figure of the Saviour, and 
 the lesser figures round about it. Some might say 
 Jesus looked but strangely, in the midst of all that 
 rich splendor, but Shack wasn't so struck. On the 
 contrary, the splendor thrilled him with new convic- 
 tion, it was the character and stamp of divinity in his 
 eyes. As never yet the Real Presence was indeed 
 real, to him. To make a wafer seem God, that was a 
 mighty hard thing, perhaps not truly achieved, if the 
 exact fact is to be set down; but this glorious image, 
 with the light streaming down upon it, was not it 
 very convincing? Yet there was even more and 
 better, the Holy Name itself. A little forward of 
 the main altar, and directly over the communion rail, 
 it burst forth, in letters of living fire, hung there you 
 knew not how unless by divine interposition, the 
 name at which every knee in heaven and earth shall 
 bow, the sacred name of Jesus. 
 
 Jesus ! 
 
 When Shack looked up and beheld the Holy Name, 
 his heart was near bursting. Its effulgence stunned 
 his eyes and held them fascinated, though he was not 
 without a vague feeling that he ought to bow his head; 
 and there was a warmth, if he was not mistaken, de- 
 scending upon his upturned face. Who could doubt of 
 the Real Presence, now? Not Shack, at all events; 
 Jesus was there looking down with unspeakable sweet- 
 ness and benignity, pouring out his love till you felt 
 the warmth of it on your face. And who should omit
 
 134 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 to adore Him? Not Shack, he humbled himself as 
 low as he possibly could, and longed for more room 
 that he might throw himself prostrate in the dust. 
 
 And the mass, well, certainly, mass had never so 
 taken hold of him and that was saying a good deal, 
 because he was always strongly affected by the cere- 
 mony; even the low mass, of a dark winter morning, 
 with frost in the church and no light but the feeble 
 flicker over the altar, took hold of him, figured for 
 him, if nothing so definite as the tragedy of Calvary, 
 at least something very awful and mysterious. But 
 here was light and warmth till darkness and cold 
 seemed forever banished from the earth. The space 
 within the sanctuary swarmed with vested priests and 
 boys swinging censers, a flood of color to capture 
 the sight, a flood of perfume, no, not a flood either ; 
 the incense floated back too delicately for that. But 
 whether or no, it lifted him up. And more than all 
 was the music, sweeping down from the loft behind 
 him, the organ, with its throbbing bass, the quiver- 
 ing strings, the trumpets and flutes, and the voices of 
 men and women. The melancholy Kyrie swelled into 
 the triumphant Gloria, and Shack was lifted up, and 
 borne away. Heavenward? Everything was bear- 
 ing him heavenward. 
 
 No, not quite everything. 
 
 Among the dignitaries on the altar there was one 
 singled out by the deference paid him. There was 
 a gorgeous throne set out for him, and the priests 
 fetched gorgeous garments and, making servants of 
 themselves vested him in these. Shack saw him but 
 dimly, at first, only the profile of his face; and 
 thought no more about him than that he was some 
 supremely fortunate man chosen to serve the Most 
 High in an especial capacity, until he rose from his
 
 The Society of Jesus 135 
 
 throne and came forward, in all his flaming finery, 
 to preach. Thereupon it appeared that he was none 
 other than the bishop, Nora's bishop. Shack's rap- 
 ture was undeniably affected, undeniably damped; and 
 yet, after all, what did it greatly matter? He could 
 shut his ears to the sermon, since it was for him but 
 a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, and raise his 
 eyes to the Holy Name, and the noble image of the 
 Saviour, and believe, for all the bishop, that Jesus was 
 there indeed. 
 
 Shack was by all tokens a Catholic, but he couldn't 
 stop there; the time was not long coming when he 
 would be, moreover, a Jesuit. He had not forgotten 
 his father's business, the thought of it had come back 
 with his senses; and by it he was only the more 
 assured of his call to be a priest of the Society of Jesus. 
 Did not these Jesuits all about him take up their cross 
 daily, and follow Jesus as He bade them ? At any rate 
 they seemed to Shack so to do, he saw nothing of 
 them which did not make them out devoted, given up 
 to sacrifice, their garb, their fare, their duties, and 
 chiefly their cheerful readiness, what were these but 
 so many proofs of consecration? 
 
 Cheerfully ready they certainly were, no matter 
 what the exaction, that was their character revealed 
 in every relation. One day the president of the school, 
 a man whose tireless activity had made him a familiar 
 figure, was missing, and in his place and about his 
 duties another priest, who was a complete stranger. 
 Ordinarily Shack was little given to curiosity, but he 
 was prompted to ask about the president, what had 
 become of him. 
 
 " He has been called away," Father Peter answered 
 him. For good ? It might be, only the general of the 
 Society knew as to that. And who was this general?
 
 136 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 One who might say to any Jesuit, Go ! and he went. 
 
 Shack was greatly interested. " The president 
 did he say anything say why he was called away ? " 
 
 " He didn't know. His orders came by the hand of 
 the reverend father who was to take his place, that 
 was his first intimation. In less than an hour he was 
 on his way to St. Louis." 
 
 "Did he wish to go?" 
 
 Father Peter smiled. "A Jesuit may have no 
 wish," he said. 
 
 " But the friends the students they loved him so. 
 He is sorry to leave them?" 
 
 " A Jesuit is glad to obey." 
 
 It was there and then that Shack made his avowal. 
 " I will be a Jesuit ! " he exclaimed, quivering with 
 earnestness 
 
 Father Peter was not visibly rejoiced, his out- 
 ward air was rather that of regret, as for an ambition 
 which looked too high and was foredoomed to dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 " The Society of Jesus draws its recruits from the 
 flower of the seminaries," was his quiet rejoinder, 
 and the implication wasn't very flattering. 
 
 " I am ready to go to the seminaries ! " protested 
 Shack, stoutly. 
 
 " Far from it," Father Peter was frank, though 
 gentle, " so far that only years and years of hard 
 labor will make you ready, if indeed you have it in 
 you to be made ready at all." 
 
 Then he went on briefly to describe not only the 
 grind of study by which a candidate became a novice, 
 but the toilsome course which brought the patient 
 novice successively through the degrees of formed 
 temporal coadjutor, approved scholastic, formed spirit- 
 ual coadjutor, the professed of three vows, the pro-
 
 The Society of Jesus 137 
 
 fessed of four vows. It was a formidable outlook, as 
 the priest made it appear. 
 
 Could anything be better calculated to fire Shack's 
 zeal? Probably not. 
 
 " I am ready ! " he repeated, glowing-. If he wasn't 
 ready for the seminary, he would begin with some 
 earlier step, but begin he must. 
 
 Father Peter had still other obstacles to point out, 
 however, still more cold water to throw, by which 
 to make this singular fire of ardor to flame higher. 
 He spoke of the final vows, what hardship they im- 
 posed, what sacrifice they exacted. 
 
 " A Jesuit," quoth he, " effaces himself or he is 
 false to his solemn obligations. He is bound to watch 
 himself every minute of his life, to be on his guard 
 against whatever impulses proceed from the self, in 
 order that he may deny them. Though he becomes 
 at length the president of a great school, respected and 
 beloved not only by the teachers and pupils whom he 
 meets intimately, but by the community at large which 
 looks up to him as a useful citizen, he is not to expect 
 that he will be suffered to gratify a natural wish to 
 remain such. Without a moment's warning, he may 
 be sent to be the pastor of a handful of wretched 
 lepers on some lone island in the Pacific; and unless 
 he goes with entire submission, without regret, cheer- 
 fully accepting the behest of his general, then he is less 
 than true to his vows. Though there is but the merest 
 trace of resentment and rebellion in his inmost soul, 
 and though it lasts but the fleetingest instant, he has 
 violated his obligation. To such a degree must a Jesuit 
 efface himself." 
 
 Shack was delighted. " Of course," he cried. 
 " That's how you get your power over men. I told 
 the bishop so, but he wouldn't believe me."
 
 138 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 The bishop? It was Father Peter's curiosity which 
 was moved, now, and so the story came out. But 
 though the priest listened in kindly wonder, the look 
 in his face spelled anything- but approval. 
 
 " A Jesuit has no opinions of his own touching 
 sacred things," he said, when he had heard all about 
 the salvation of Jean Valjean. " Those matters were 
 decided for us long ago." 
 
 Shack's face fell. He could see the president give 
 up his great place and applaud the sacrifice, but when 
 it came to giving up his father's business as he under- 
 stood it, well, he felt a chill, to say the least. 
 
 Father Peter went on: 
 
 " Pride is the deadliest of all sins, in one who has 
 been called to serve God in the holy ministry; and 
 there is no pride so dangerous, so unweariedly to be 
 guarded against, as the pride of opinion, for it 
 comes to us in the most respectable garb, disguised 
 as the love of truth, than which no sentiment can be 
 more admirable, it possesses us before we are aware 
 of our danger. The Society is especially careful, by 
 its discipline, to save its members from the pride of 
 opinion. A Jesuit is permitted to have no beliefs of 
 his own, no theories, no notions. What a sacrifice 
 that entails only the man of active intellect and he 
 is the type of the Jesuit can know; certainly it is 
 a very great sacrifice indeed. But it is essential to be 
 made." 
 
 Very like a rebuke. And Shack was made ashamed. 
 On the spot he made his choice, no sacrifice was too 
 great for him. He put all his cherished dreams away, 
 and stifled all regret for them. 
 
 " I am ready ! " he said, for the third time. 
 
 But he was not destined to join the Society of 
 Jesus.
 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 
 HARVEST OF HATE 
 
 You remember the A. P. A.? These were the 
 palmy days of that extraordinary league. It was not 
 far from that time that there went abroad the famous 
 rumor to the effect that Catholics were secretly arming 
 themselves, and only awaited a signal to rise and 
 slaughter their Protestant neighbors, in another and 
 more terrible St. Bartholomew. The story ran that 
 the cellars of Catholic churches were stored with 
 arms and ammunition, muskets and cutlasses, powder 
 and ball; and there, too, the faithful were called to- 
 gether by night, to drill, to subscribe sanguinary 
 oaths, to hearken to the murderous exhortations of 
 their priests. Handbills were scattered broadcast 
 which professed to quote, word for word, an address 
 or bull from the Pope himself admonishing his chil- 
 dren to smite and spare not, and offering plenary in- 
 dulgence to all who should exert themselves in the 
 holy cause. It was a curious yarn, and more curious 
 still was the credit given it. Sundry timid souls, 
 though they lived with Catholics for their near neigh- 
 bors, had them for business associates, met them in 
 company daily, saw all their goings-out and comings- 
 in, were nevertheless stricken with a great terror, and 
 thought themselves in danger of their lives. There 
 was a certain woman, not so very exceptional, per- 
 
 139
 
 140 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 haps, who, having taken to board a weak-eyed, thin- 
 chested, bloodless youth, with hardly enough force in 
 him to keep up a conversation, she was made frantic 
 with fear when she discovered that this specimen of a 
 man was a Catholic, and that he often repaired to his 
 church of an evening. She gathered all her children 
 into her own bed, that night, locked and barricaded 
 the door, and only after lying quaking and sleepless 
 till day dawned, summoned courage to scream from 
 her window to the police to come and take her lodger 
 away. Among such the A. P. A. had a great fol- 
 lowing, and there were besides these not a few who 
 thought they discerned in the movement a popular 
 upheaval which it was worth their while to get on the 
 right side of. 
 
 The Catholics, on their part, didn't stop to try the 
 Christian virtue of turning the other cheek. The 
 A. P. A. they cordially detested and their bearing to- 
 ward it was anything but temperate and restrained. 
 The Irish were especially bitter, thinking they had an 
 especial reason, for the A. P. A. was closely related 
 to the Orange Order, which they had been at deadly 
 odds with for upwards of two centuries. Even Irish- 
 men who had quite fallen away from their ancestral 
 church, who had neglected their religious duties these 
 years, would fume and swell and bluster over the 
 A. P. A., and show all kinds of fight, as only Irishmen 
 can. And the clergy, though warier about taking open 
 cognizance of the attack, at length caught the infec- 
 tion, and struck back, as opportunity offered. After 
 all, priests were but human, and bishops set over them 
 were but human, and if the old Adam was unapostoli- 
 cally in evidence, that was a very human condition of 
 things. The Jesuits, wariest of all, were about the
 
 Harvest of Hate 141 
 
 last to give way, but give way they did, and one Sab- 
 bath morning it was announced from the altar of Sts. 
 Peter and Paul where the Real Presence of the 
 Prince of Peace was so convincingly suggested, that a 
 week later, at the evening service, Father Peter would 
 preach, and his subject would be the A. P. A. 
 
 Shack, listening to the announcement, wondered 
 what the A. P. A. was; he had never heard of it, or 
 the trouble it was making, the flood of bitterness had 
 not touched him, in his aloofness He wondered, 
 moreover, why Father Peter was chosen to preach, 
 since he was the youngest of the faculty, and not 
 heard except on small occasions, in the sacristy or at 
 the outer missions? But he was immensely pleased, 
 and eager for the appointed time to come; beyond a 
 doubt Father Peter would say something very grand 
 and good and worth hearing. 
 
 The public at large were better informed. Of 
 course they knew what the A. P. A. was, its name 
 was in all mouths. And they knew, too, why Father 
 Peter was appointed to preach. It was the commonest 
 fling of the A. P. A. that Catholics were foreigners 
 and remained foreigners, no matter how long they 
 lived in America. But Father Peter was undeniably 
 not foreign, few had so good a title to the contrary. 
 His father had fallen in the charge of the Irish Bri- 
 gade at Fredericksburg, and his great grandfather had 
 starved with Washington at Valley Forge; and what 
 was more, everybody knew it. Father Peter was in an 
 especial sense qualified to speak of the A. P. A. 
 
 The occasion brought out a big attendance, and onee 
 more the vast edifice found itself filled to overflowing, 
 Shack's bosom swelled with exultation when he per- 
 ceived what a multitude had assembled, it made his
 
 142 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 friend a great figure. All these thousands should hang 
 upon his lips, should take thereupon refreshment, and 
 Father Peter's light should shine before the faces of 
 men, for their illumination. As for himself he went 
 in two hours before the hour, supperless and with 
 never a thought of supper, he was so anxious to get 
 a place near the pulpit, where no word, no gesture, no 
 least look should escape him The pulpit was a box- 
 like affair, hung against a massive pillar like a bird- 
 cage, with spiral stairs leading up to it; and Shack 
 sat almost directly below. 
 
 There were the usual vespers, and the benediction 
 of the sacrament, hurried through with, for almost no 
 one was there for vespers or benediction; and then 
 Father Peter came down from the altar, in his black 
 robe, girded at the waist with a coarse rope, and 
 mounted the pulpit. 
 
 And yet was it Father Peter? 
 
 Shack, who had known him in many moods, hardly 
 knew him at all, now. Who had ever seen him look 
 like that ? The rosy flush had departed from his cheek 
 and the merry twinkle was gone from his eye. He 
 was very pale, with a sinister pallor suggestive of evil 
 passion, and he glared down from his high place as 
 fiercely as a wild beast. His fine face was distorted 
 with the tenseness of its muscles, his jaws, showing 
 all too coarsely now, were set as if they never meant 
 to open. His very hair bristled, as might an angry 
 dog's, the soft, thick hair which had ever seemed 
 such a fit crown become a tumbled mop to add its 
 touch to the disquieting picture. Shack stared up, 
 wondered first if it was Father Peter, hoped for an in- 
 stant it might not be, turned cold and shivered at 
 length with the certainty that it was none other.
 
 Harvest of Hate 143 
 
 And the sermon, who had ever heard its like? 
 Water to a thirsting soul? That was what Shack 
 was expecting. And water it was, perhaps, but seeth- 
 ing hot, to sear instead of refresh. 
 
 Father Peter did not forget his art, hard learned 
 with the assiduous practice of many years. But 
 though he began quietly, with an assumption of almost 
 conversational ease, no art could suppress the hiss in 
 his voice. And the hiss grew, and brought in other 
 disagreeable things to bear it company, until pres- 
 ently all restraint was thrown away and Loyola's 
 ardent disciple let himself stand forth that spectacle of 
 least appeal, a man with a personal grievance. 
 
 He asked his hearers to think of Ireland, as Ireland 
 was two hundred and fifty years ago, the home of 
 a virtuous, seemly people, who loved their country and 
 were true to the faith of their fathers. Because they 
 were true to their faith and loved their country the 
 miscreant Cromwell was offended and visited them 
 with his displeasure, came with his trained fighting 
 men, and put the peaceful people down, and set his 
 iron heel on their necks. Who had not heard of 
 Drogheda, the village which dared resist the invader, 
 the robber, the murderer, who made good his title and 
 sealed his infamy to the end of time by putting not only 
 the men but the women and children to the sword? 
 It was the act of a savage, the parallel to which you 
 will scarce find in the annals of Indian warfare, but 
 it was by no means the worst he did. He sent hun- 
 dreds of families away into exile, to rot under the 
 pitiless sun of the tropics, but even that wasn't the 
 worst. The worst was the literal curse which he laid 
 upon the land, the curse o' Crummell, as you will 
 hear it spoken of to this day, when he brought over
 
 144 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 those colonists from England to take the land from 
 its rightful owners. The devil that possessed the 
 master possessed likewise these his true servants. The 
 oppression he began they carried on with fiendish 
 zeal, the pattern he set they exceeded in all that made 
 it wicked. 
 
 " And it was by such a heat," cried Father Peter, 
 " that this serpent called the A. P. A. was hatched. 
 From those crimes, the blackest in all human history, 
 springs the evil plant which flowers among us to-day, 
 to offend, with its pestilent stench, the nostrils of de- 
 cent men. Though deprived of its proper atmosphere 
 of cruelty and tyranny and revenge and murder and 
 rapine, it feeds itself on lies and slander, and makes 
 shift to live and trouble the ways of honest people." 
 
 Shack understood nothing, but he felt, these were 
 frightful things, frightfully spoken of; and the cold 
 struck to his marrow. 
 
 This hideous monstrosity (Father Peter proceeded) 
 was not fetched hither directly from Ireland. No, it 
 had been given the benefit of a transplantation, into 
 fit soil, namely, the soil of Canada, where the old 
 feuds could be kept up, because Canada was British, 
 that is to say, of the nation which was not ashamed 
 to account Cromwell one of its most glorious names, 
 not ashamed to deify a red-handed murderer; because 
 Canada was peopled with traitors who, when they 
 could no longer make the colonies Tory, fled to the 
 north and became the enemies of their country. 
 Traitors! Behold their spawn, years later, when the 
 free states were in a life-and-death struggle, behold 
 the spawn of these traitors plotting still against all 
 that was good and true and noble, in behalf of all that 
 was base and wrong. That was Canada, and that was
 
 Harvest of Hate 145 
 
 the soil to which the curse o' Crummell was trans- 
 planted, to gather venom for this last assault on free 
 institutions. 
 
 " And shall these reptiles," here Father Peter raised 
 his voice till the arches rang, " come here and tell me 
 I am not an American because I am a Catholic, be- 
 cause I am a priest, because I am a Jesuit ? " 
 
 For a moment he paused, and a perfect stillness fell 
 on the multitude. When he resumed, it was in another 
 voice, his splendid bass, now, rolling out like the 
 diapason of an organ. 
 
 " Is there," he thundered, tossing his head defiantly, 
 " is there, within the sound of my voice, a member of 
 the A. P. A.?" 
 
 Again he paused, and the stillness was like the 
 stillness of death. 
 
 " If there be," he went on, with a scornful curl of 
 his lip, " let him act the man for once in his life, and 
 come forth, and confront me ! " 
 
 He leaned low over the bar of the pulpit and 
 glared into the startled faces upturned to him. He 
 looked a lion about to spring. It was terrible. Shack's 
 heart stood still. 
 
 " Nobody comes forth ! " roared the priest, tre- 
 mendously. " Let him cower, then, and creep on his 
 belly like the reptile he is, but nevertheless let him hear 
 what I have to say. Let him know, and let his 
 wicked order know, that I hurl down the gage of 
 battle to them all. I imprecate God's choicest damna- 
 tion on them, and so far as in me lies I make myself 
 the instrument of that damnation. Between such as 
 they and me, there can be but one sentiment, and for 
 that sentiment there can be but one name, undying, 
 unrelenting HATE!"
 
 146 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 
 
 Shack heard no more. That black word, spoken in 
 that black way, blotted out everything, everything, 
 the Holy Name flaming aloft, the dear gilt figure on 
 the altar, all vanished. There was nothing but black- 
 ness round about him, and it stifled him. 
 
 The people drifted slowly out through the narrow 
 doors, and he drifted with them, he could do no 
 other, for he was only an atom in the mass. But when 
 he was out at last, and free of the hampering crowd, 
 with the heavens his only roof and his only walls, he 
 broke into his swiftest run.
 
 BOOK IV 
 DR. ROBERT'S DIARY
 
 DR. ROBERT'S DIARY 
 
 17 of May. 
 
 As I hoped, so was it to be. If I was lonely before, 
 how glad am I not become ! My boy have come back 
 to me. 
 
 Yet with a sadness. 
 
 I am like unto the father whose only son has re- 
 turned. But he is no more the son he was. Alas not ! 
 
 He stole upon me without warning. It was this 
 morning. I went to the barn to give the horses break- 
 fast. The door of the barn stood open. I was 
 startled. Had thieves, then, visited me, for the first 
 time in all the years? No, it was far from so. In a 
 moment I heard the voice, the voice of Jacques. 
 
 He was rubbing the horses & speaking to them. Al- 
 ready he had given them breakfast. 
 
 I stood in the doorway. He looked up. 
 
 Jacques: "Good morning!" 
 
 Myself : " Ah, my boy ! You have come back ! " 
 
 I was full of emotion, but he was as he had not been 
 absent, as there had been none of the many, many 
 months. Had he been with me yesterday, it is so he 
 would have speak on seeing me for the first time 
 to-day. To say " Good morning! " this was among the 
 things which I taught him. In the lumber-camp he 
 would be long learning so much of manners. 
 
 The horses which he rubbed while they partook of 
 breakfast, their joy was large. No wonder! Was 
 
 149
 
 150 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 it not he who rubbed them last? For the horse to 
 be rubbed it is equal in joy to the man who bathes 
 after journey so long & hot & dustful My neglect of 
 the beasts is extremely shameful. The litter so much 
 had it accumulated should remind Jacques that he 
 was long away, but no. 
 
 How should I not derive alarm? He cleaned the 
 stables in the manner of his saying the " Good morn- 
 ing ! " That is, no intelligence was in it, only the 
 habit. Habit the instinct in actu was guide him 
 back to the things of familiarity, & the things of 
 familiarity provoke more instinct, more habit. Such 
 my thought, while I observe him. Was he become a 
 wreck of the mind? What a sadness! 
 
 He make the breakfast for me, as of old. However, 
 I could not eat, for the alarm, & the sadness. He re- 
 gard me with an expression. For me not to eat, 
 this should interrupt the familiarity of things, it 
 was the cause of the habit faltering, the instinct to 
 doubt of itself. Yet he say nothing. 
 
 He will set the house in order. There was very 
 much to do, once again the interruption of the 
 familiarity. He gazed at the thick dirt covering the 
 floor, & there was perplexity with him for a moment. 
 
 My heart grow heavier. 
 
 He will prepare dinner & there is more perplexity. 
 He went out in the little field, where nothing is but 
 weeds. He search, was troubled, I hear him mutter 
 with himself. He examined the vines on the fence, 
 on the house, in an anxious manner. Was that for 
 the identifying, for the making sure if he was indeed 
 come home? As a dog might sniff, to make himself 
 sure!
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 151 
 
 Presently he came in. He brings dandelions, mus- 
 tard. These he boil. 
 
 To myself I declare : " I must eat. I am not hungry, 
 but I must not shake the habit, proceeding from the 
 familiarity of things. In the habit all hope lies. I 
 must keep him in the habit, which will perhaps lead 
 him to himself." 
 
 I ate. The dinner was excellent. 
 
 In afternoon I observe him in the field. He was 
 search, troubled. I thereupon drew him away. 
 " Come ! " I say. We went in the woods. I put his 
 club in his hand. A partridge flew up, it was perhaps 
 ten yards off, he let fly and he kill the bird ! He exults. 
 His eye grew bright and he chatter excitedly, in 
 Indian. 
 
 For supper he roasts the partridge. He has 
 appetite. Now he have gone to bed, to sleep at once, 
 to snore loudly. 
 
 He has been in illness, I can detect. Yet in the 
 bodily way he is not less well. Witness the appetite, 
 the sleeping with snores. Because the mind, with its 
 turmoil, troubles him no more, being a blank ? 
 
 If so, too bad ! 
 
 Of what have happen him, he hints no suggestion. 
 If I will ask him, he regards me with blankness. 
 
 25 of May. 
 
 I sing, with the viol, as formerly. But no, he will 
 not join. I show him the books. He will look at 
 them. He will hold the book in his hand, stare at the 
 page. However, he does not read. After a time, 
 he turn away, or it may be fall asleep. 
 
 If he is melancholy, it will be English in which he
 
 152 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 mutters. I have hear him say, below his breath: 
 "The world, very big!" 
 
 [But if he speak up gladly, it is in Indian. 
 
 No doubt he is day by day the Indian more. The 
 simple, the gentle savage. He rejoices to roam the 
 woods, to hunt, to fish. He will search no longer the 
 garden, perplexedly. Once he have omit to rub the 
 horse. Twice he have omit to set the house in order. 
 Since when he look up to me in the door of the stable 
 he have never say : " Good morning ! " 
 
 The habit weakens? Sad! 
 
 For what then? 
 
 Anyway it will be better he became the savage than 
 the idiot. On the savage there is building afresh. 
 
 9 of June. 
 
 To-day I was call away, to a patient. About the 
 hour of noon I return. Jacques not to be seen ! 
 
 Nor is dinner prepared. But for that matter I was 
 not hungry. 
 
 My thought : " He is gone ! He is vanished for- 
 ever!" 
 
 That was the moment at which I beheld smoke 
 rising from the woods. I proceeded to it. Jacques 
 was there. He have built a small fire, to cook an 
 animal. He is eating the same as I come up. He 
 tears it with his teeth. He smears his face with the 
 fat. 
 
 The animal was a muskrat. 
 
 There lives with me the great fear to lose him. 
 He is my boy still, though the Indian. Moreover, 
 if I shall keep him with me, he may become more than 
 the Indian, as he was before. Instinct guides him.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 153 
 
 What day may not his instinct point him to the wilder- 
 ness whence he came? Or what night? 
 
 I fear the night most. He sleeps like a child. I 
 listen while he snores. I dare not to close my eyes 
 for the apprehension he will waken and flit away like 
 a dream. To lose him what pain! Intolerable! 
 Such wish have I to keep him! 
 
 Is it to be selfish ? Yes. I cannot deny. I wish to 
 keep him in order that I shall have the son in my old 
 age. 
 
 Yet there is more. 
 
 The faithful will speak of Providence. Since I am 
 a pagan, I will speak of Fate. It is equal, by any 
 name, the power of the destiny, that which moves 
 men about, working upon them from without and 
 from within. 
 
 Was it by chance my boy came to me first ? Not ! 
 Fate sent him to me, for a purpose. Also Fate took 
 him away, for a purpose. How do I know? 
 Precisely for the reason that I could bow myself 
 to his going, there was regret, but always something 
 told me he should go. That was the voice of Fate. 
 Accordingly, I submit to let him go. But he came 
 back to me, to me, not to his wilderness! Should 
 it be chance ? Not ! Fate have sent him back to me, 
 for a purpose. 
 
 What may be this purpose, who knows? Not I. 
 I only know my part, it shall be what I say. 
 
 The wish to keep him, which fills me so, which 
 makes me lie waking at night, for the apprehension to 
 lose him, it is the proof of my appointment. I am 
 appointed to keep him, anyway for a time. The wish, 
 so strong and so filling, is the voice of Fate, command- 
 ing me to my part.
 
 1 54 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 There is selfishness in me, but there is more. 
 
 My boy has come, in his course, to the brink of a 
 chasm, I should call it the chasm of forgetfulness. 
 I am chosen to convey him safely over. 
 
 Credo! This do I believe. 
 
 17 of June. 
 
 There is yet fire in the flint. It have been struck 
 forth, though the steel should not be of my bringing. 
 
 To the little schoolhouse about i mile from here 
 comes to preach, now and then, in the afternoon of 
 Sunday, an old man. He came yesterday. It may 
 have been about 2 o'clock when a wagon ful of the 
 pious, going to hear him, passed by. They were men 
 & women & children, perhaps 8 or 9 of them. I was 
 sitting within, out of the sight of these persons. 
 Jacques loitered under the tree. To him, lying under 
 the tree, the people called out, with the invitation to 
 go with them. He sprang up, climbed in the wagon, 
 amid laughter and gayety, after which they drove on. 
 
 I felt the jealousy. It was lonely to see him depart, 
 though it shall be only for a season. However, why 
 may I not be glad if the neighbors will help me to 
 keep him? Jealousy, it is the selfish part. 
 
 At 5 o'clock I see him next. I sit within. I am 
 thinking of him, too, when he darts before me. He 
 is in a hurry. He falls upon the tall weeds in the 
 garden, pulling them up, until he have a space cleared. 
 I am considerably amazed. Yet the augury is ex- 
 cellent. Is not the habit becoming restored? 
 
 His face betrays intelligence, shining brightly. 
 
 He leaves the weeds. He is busy with the vines, 
 tying them up in some place where they will fall 
 down.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 155 
 
 After all he hastens to the stable. There he rubs 
 the horse. 
 
 His countenance shines more and more. Will the 
 habit lift him to the level of the conscious? I wait 
 for him to speak. He speaks nothing, however. 
 
 Without a word he retires to bed. 
 
 But in the night he calls out. I hear him say, 
 distinctly ; " They build a tower of Babel ! " 
 
 I run. He is started up. He exclaims : " The 
 bishop!" Afterwards: "Nora!" 
 
 The excitement upon him is not to my like. I wish 
 to fan up the flame, to bring forward the intelligence. 
 But the fever burns in his cheek. I choose instead 
 to soothe him. I sit by him, to hold his hand, to rub 
 his brow lightly, until he falls asleep. 
 
 What shall the morrow bring? It was that I ask 
 myself, while I sit with him. Shall he be himself? 
 Or shall he be the Indian ? 
 
 The morrow have come. He is the Indian ! 
 
 From neighbors I soon discover that the old man of 
 the schoolhouse preached his discourse upon the tower 
 of Babel, I resolve to make trial of the flint, to strike 
 more spark. I resolve to take the steel in my own 
 hand, with the hope to strike in the right manner. 
 
 The trial was to-night. 
 
 From the Scripture I read out this story, of the 
 tower, in a slow way, with much meaning, and thrill in 
 my voice. Jacques listens, in silence, however. 
 
 More will be necessary, then. I venture, at hazard : 
 " The old man of the schoolhouse, he builds a tower 
 of Babel?" 
 
 No word. 
 
 Myself: "The bishop, he builds a tower of 
 Babel!"
 
 156 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 No word. 
 
 Myself, casting about : " Or Nora ! " 
 
 No word. 
 
 The trial fails. The spark springs not forth, for 
 me. Because it is dead, gone out with the one flash ? 
 No, I will not say so. Rather will I say that I bungle 
 with the steel, for that the spark answers not. 
 
 Who may have been Nora ? An affair of the heart ? 
 Incredible! He is not the being for such. Yet he 
 is a man withal. 
 
 6 of July. 
 
 He is greatly as a child. Why not, I ask, treat him 
 as a child? 
 
 When I am far call, whereby I shall be absent during 
 many hours, at times by night, I fear for to leave 
 him, the loneliness, I declare, will be upon him to 
 prompt him to be off. I discover the necessity for 
 to procure with him some interest which shall cause 
 him to wish to accompany with me. 
 
 It is his vanity I will herewith work upon. Vanity 
 is elemental. The child is vain, even the beast. 
 
 But how? Very simply, I assure him that the 
 horses will travel very much the better if he will drive 
 him. I deplore my own lack of skill, how little I 
 grasp the art. If he drive, I praise his manner loudly. 
 
 The stratagem work admirably. It come about very 
 presently that he will not let me drive. He will go 
 with me everywhere. 
 
 To-day, for experiment, I will take up the reins, 
 as we are starting forth. What takes place? He 
 snatches the reins from me, with impatience, he 
 scolds me, after a fashion. I affect much humility, 
 under his frown. In my heart, meanwhile, I am 
 jubilant.
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 157 
 
 He fattens. He becomes another person, bodily. 
 For this I am far from wholly glad. It speaks of the 
 torpor of the mind, perhaps more. His tempera- 
 ment is not for fat, which accordingly speaks of that 
 which is not well. 
 
 i of August. 
 
 He is in small danger to leave me. Not as I feared, 
 at all events. It is another manner of leaving which 
 is to apprehend, worse! He sleeps too much. He 
 grows too fat. He breathes hard, is dull. He for- 
 gets to be the Indian, even, neglects his woods, 
 loiters, drowses. This is not at all the well Indian. 
 
 Always is he with me. Like a dog he follows, my 
 shadow ! 
 
 Lower than savagery he lapses, sadly lower. 
 Imbecility! Yet will that be the worst? I fear, I 
 fear! The fat gathers about his heart. His brain 
 is touched, until he have the confusion of ideas. To 
 him remains clear but the one idea, that I am not fit 
 to drive the horse, it has possessed him much. 
 
 What shall the fat end in? I speak it with cold 
 heart, death ! 
 
 If he will only live ! 
 
 Once I have know the woman who was mother of 
 some fine children & an idiot besides. Which loved 
 she best? Precisely the idiot. He was a helpless 
 thing, a burden for her night & day, loathsome, 
 hideous, yet on him precisely was her love rested. 
 For him would she slight the others, for him she 
 thought first. He survived more than thirty years, 
 to the end he was more irkful than a baby, when he 
 died at last, the woman was torn with grief. She 
 mourned & mourned.
 
 158 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 A trait of the human nature, than which nothing 
 is more strange. But I fathom the woman's senti- 
 ment as never before up till yet. 
 
 If only I can have my boy! If he die, how shall I 
 endure it? 
 
 8 of September. 
 
 He still lives. But a crisis draws on, it may be 
 the crisis of dissolution. 
 
 If such be on the knees of the gods, so be! 
 
 To-day I could not wake him. For 5 hours he 
 would lie insensible. His heart bad. His breath 
 difficult. 
 
 I have brace myself for the end. Fortitude! 
 
 But he open his eye, after all. I was by. He say : 
 '*' Good morning ! " the first time for long. 
 
 Ever since he have been more bright, or am I 
 wrong? Though I shall be right, it may be augury of 
 the worst, notwithstanding. 
 
 15 of September. 
 
 Another spark from the flint! 
 
 It is to-night. 
 
 We are driving in from far. The moon, which is 
 almost full, looks down in a lovely manner. The 
 evening is such as a poet will sing in praise of, so 
 mild, so bright, so friendly. A peace broods. You 
 are impossible not to be touch by the evening. 
 
 Jacques sits by me, with the reins. Since a week 
 he has been more and more bright. Now and then 
 he will speak to the horses. He will say : " Come, 
 boys ! " or, " Steady, boys ! " or possibly other words. 
 
 Suddenly he sings. 
 
 At the moment we are pass through a leafy aisle, 
 where the tall tree rise, and the moon shines densely
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 159 
 
 down upon us. You can swear you feel the beams 
 of this, they are so strong. 
 
 The song he sings is to me strange. Moreover, he 
 sings it only in part, in snatches. I find myself 
 startled, also thrilled with the thought what it may 
 mean. But I remember to listen. To fix, in my mind, 
 the phrase of the melody, this I endeavor, and the 
 words. Though of words he make to be distinguished 
 only these : " Pass me not, O gentle Saviour ! " 
 
 Already it will have flash upon me what I am to do. 
 Accordingly I am very busy to rehearse within myself 
 the phrases of broken melody, that I may not lose 
 them. 
 
 They shall be the key to the riddle given into my 
 hand, it is thus the voice of hope discourses to me. 
 
 What, then, is my purpose? To write, forthwith, 
 to a house which deal in musical merchandise. I shall 
 ask have they a song which comprises the word, " Pass 
 me not, O gentle Saviour ! " together with these bits 
 of melody. For I have noted them down, rudely. 
 
 But for my experiment I shall wait till the moon is 
 once more as she shall be to-night, in short, till the 
 13 of October. 
 
 We shall see. 
 
 14 of October. 
 
 The hour has become 4 o'clock in the morning, 
 I have not sleep. I must write. The necessity is 
 upon me. To the deaf pages of the paper I may at all 
 events tell my joy. 
 
 Joy! 
 
 Last night is the destined time, 13 of October. 
 How was the moon? Precisely as before, the evening 
 lovely, very soft.
 
 160 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 Of late my boy should I say he was sunk back? 
 At any rate, he gave himself to sleeping. When he 
 was eaten, it is his way to stretch himself upon the 
 couch. When he is not by, I have shift the couch, 
 little by little, till it is by the window of the east. Last 
 night it was so. After our supper Jacques lay there. 
 I observe him. He stare into the face of the moon, 
 the moon shine strongly upon him. In such wise he 
 fell to sleep. 
 
 The music was obtain. With it I prepare myself, 
 very privately. It is for two voices. Very well, 
 however. My own shall be one, the viol's shall be 
 the other. By last night all is readiness. 
 
 The moon rise higher. It is now time. 
 
 I draw near to the couch. I touch the viol tenderly. 
 I sing. 
 
 What? First a flutter of his eye. Then his lip 
 will part, while a small moan is uttered. He stir, 
 shiver. 
 
 He wakes! I see him at one glance. He wake al- 
 together, the soul of him, the soul of him ! Through 
 his eye I behold his soul, it is awake, as formerly, 
 no, more than formerly, more than ever. The godlike 
 part, prostrate a little ago, now stand up. It look out 
 to me with the light of reason. 
 
 Tears! There are many tears. Many of these are 
 mine. I do not finish the song. I cannot. Besides, 
 what need? I place the viol in its corner. I gather 
 my boy to my bosom. I kiss him. 
 
 After all, we are both Frenchmen, are we not? 
 
 He will say much, at once, full of memory grown 
 awake. But I restrain him. 
 
 Myself : " Not now. When you have sleep and re- 
 fresh yourself. To-morrow, let us say."
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 161 
 
 Jacques : " To-morrow I perhaps do not remem- 
 ber!" 
 
 It is the look of fear in his face, as one haunted. 
 I consider. Was his waking only the rift in the 
 cloud, which will presently close up darkly? No, no! 
 Of a sureness the sky was cleared. 
 
 Myself : " Be not afraid. You will remember." 
 
 Ah, the danger is not that. Out of the quagmire of 
 idiocy he have emerge. But on his other hand there 
 will yawn the gulf of insanity. It is but a narrow 
 way for him. The reminiscence which are to excite, 
 the painful, it may be, these we will leave for awhile. 
 
 I disclose frankly. I say : " It is perilous. Do 
 not hasten, lest you stumble. There is danger to fall 
 far." 
 
 He is trouble. He say : " I shall not go back into 
 f orgetf ulness ? " 
 
 I say : " No, unless you make yourself too wrought 
 up." 
 
 He was willing to sleep, at length, but his exal- 
 tation was great, not until hours did he grow tran- 
 quil. His thought mounted, to burst out. To keep 
 him from talking, I talked, I chattered. 
 
 I told stories, of Europe. I recall so many I was 
 surprise to myself. Some were ludicrous. Some were 
 concerning adventures. 
 
 He sleeps. Between 4 & 5 of the A. M. 
 
 7 of November. 
 
 No slip in the quagmire. Nor plunge in the gulf 
 on the other hand. So far he walks safely his path. 
 
 He ceases to grow fat. But will he grow too thin ? 
 Already there is a meagerness in his face. 
 
 To-day I have persuade him to walk in the wood
 
 1 62 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 with me. I bade him carry his club to kill us a 
 partridge. There was no partridge, but a rabbit 
 sprang up, only a few feet away. Jacques let throw 
 his club, yet he was not at all near to hitting the beast. 
 I could have thrown better myself. He laugh, he 
 do not pick up the club. I bring it home. If he shall 
 take it never more in his hand, I shall be no surprise. 
 
 The Indian may well have departed out of him. In 
 short, I shall surmise him to have depart. The in- 
 tellect comes into its own. The godlike glows, to 
 scatter the inward fog, until he is more intellectual. 
 The thought runs clear. He will grope for the word, 
 but the thought runs clear like the water brook. Or 
 am I wrong? 
 
 If only the frail body may bear up. I observe him 
 narrowly. I have apprehension of the bones of his 
 jaw, they are too much seen, while the great artery 
 of his neck, it is as should all his blood be drive to his 
 brain at once. 
 
 He remembers to tell me much. I am informed who 
 the bishop was, and who Nora. I am not mistaking. 
 The lady was but the bishop's servant. An affair of 
 the heart, it shall be outside the question. For Jacques, 
 the woman is the man who is not so tall, and more- 
 over wears skirts, not else. 
 
 1 8 of November. 
 
 He will tell me of far time. It is long since the 
 voice began calling him. First it was an uneasiness, 
 no more. The other boys would eat their fill, be con- 
 tent, wish for nothing. He was never content. He 
 wish for something, he know not what, for not 
 knowing he shall be the more uneasy. Once a mis- 
 sionary come to the camp where he was live. The
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 163 
 
 missionary preach. The call was more plain. The 
 missionary hold up his Bible. The voice call to 
 Jacques: "Take it!" He take the Bible. He run 
 away. That is the Bible he bring to me, saying: 
 " You will make me read in this book ! " The voice 
 command him, or he fancy it command him. 
 
 To read! That trouble him very much. He scan 
 the page, it was to his eye the book of seven seals. 
 The voice command, reproach, he is in a frenzy. 
 
 He ask a man he meet, how shall he read? The 
 man will bid him go to school. He ask another man. 
 Again the school. Where is the school? He ask 
 that, he is directed. 
 
 So he enter the school. 
 
 Then the Poor Farm, and the creature. 
 
 How happen he to stay there? For the curious 
 reason, while the creature live, the voice no longer 
 command, no longer reproach him. 
 
 He knows himself greatly more clearly, since last 
 he awaken. He declares : " It is my father's business, 
 to serve. I serve Sam Jackson. The voice was still. 
 Rest in serving." 
 
 So much he have been near to discern before. Es- 
 pecially, the day he visit the bishop. That day he 
 was almost grasp himself, what he mean. But the 
 bishop put him off, so that he go away in confusion. 
 
 Also with the Jesuits. He would become a Jesuit. 
 In the purpose was peace. But presently the night 
 fell on him. 
 
 Singular ! 
 
 Never night so black. He will recall all else, it is 
 still lost to him how that night came. He was in a 
 vast crowd of persons, Father Peter hovered over 
 him, on black wings, like a bat, such the picture in
 
 164 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 his memory. He shivers. He much would wish not 
 to think of it. 
 
 He is full of his meaning. He will explain to me 
 volubly. I lose myself in amazement for his manner. 
 His idea, it reaches me not. 
 
 1 1 of December. 
 
 His idea, do I comprehend this, even yet? If I 
 comprehend the idea of the boy, that which he medi- 
 tates is, in brief, revolution. 
 
 The idea was born an instinct, it was the voice 
 which he heard, vaguely to command him, to reproach 
 him. But now, since he awakens, he will examine 
 his instinct, to construct of it the idea. 
 
 He fancies he will justify, will by the letter of the 
 Scripture discover his idea to be right. 
 
 He argues : " Will you accuse Jesus of teaching 
 two moralities ? " 
 
 Two moralities, then. Consider! Morality No. I, 
 and Morality No. 2, so to speak. 
 
 First, Morality No. i. This is taught in the parable 
 of the Good Samaritan. 
 
 Jacques insists : " In the parable of the Good Samar- 
 itan, Jesus informs the lawyer it is enough if he will 
 love his neighbor as he loves himself. Does he not? " 
 
 I bow. For when I read the parable, it is so. 
 
 Very well! But wait, there is yet the Morality 
 No. 2. This is taught in the passage of St. John 
 (inter alia) where Jesus say: "Follow me!" 
 
 To follow Jesus, what is it ? 
 
 Jacques cries : " It is to love your neighbor better, 
 a great deal better, than you love yourself! Jesus 
 was all for his neighbor. For himself he was noth- 
 ing."
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 165 
 
 What then? Listen, the idea of the boy is here. 
 
 Jacques : " Nevertheless, no ! Jesus taught one mor- 
 ality, no more. If you would be moral, follow the 
 Good Samaritan. But if you would be a disciple, 
 a minister in Jesus, follow Jesus. To follow Jesus, 
 that would make you not more moral, but it would 
 make you a pastor, a shepherd to feed the sheep." 
 
 He will impose upon the minister, then, the especial 
 sacrifice ? Precisely. 
 
 But here I ask him : " To what end, my boy ? Why 
 make the clergy go more far than the laity ? " 
 
 To which he make me answer : " Bishop Welcome 
 followed Jesus. He was more than to love his neigh- 
 bor as himself. He love himself not, his neighbor 
 all. What happen ? A soul is saved, namely, the soul 
 of Jean Valjean. Do you deny?" 
 
 I smile. I say : " It is a romance ! " 
 
 He reply : " Be it so. But fancy yourself to meet 
 Bishop Welcome, to see him, to speak with him, 
 how will you not be affected, how will you not be 
 better? Merely to read about him, is it not to make 
 you more full of goodness, of good will ? " 
 
 True ! I will myself, at times, when bitterness shall 
 be in me, take up the book, to read of the good bishop, 
 and behold! the bitterness have gone before I am 
 aware. 
 
 Jacques : " In such he follow Jesus. He could be 
 moral, yet do less. But he follow Jesus." 
 
 Furthermore : 
 
 " Whoever shall do in a like manner, he also shall 
 make goodness to enter the hearts of men."
 
 1 66 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 25 of December. 
 
 For unto them there was born this day, in the city 
 of David, a King! 
 
 Much have we spoken. Do I grasp what my boy 
 will mean? 
 
 I venture : " The Church teaches Jesus to mean 
 every man to be his disciple, every man to follow 
 him. What better will you have ? " 
 
 But no! He open the gospel of St. Luke, who 
 heard Jesus say: "If any man come to me and hate 
 not his father, and mother, and children, and brother 
 and sister, yea, and his own life, also, he cannot be my 
 disciple." 
 
 He demands : " If every man be so, what will be- 
 come of society, of the progress of the race, of civil- 
 ization? Whoever will be the disciple of Jesus, he is 
 command to be empty of all selfishness, not a part, 
 but all. But with selfishness begin our progress. It 
 is the spring of our civilization. Without it all should 
 be upset. No, no! Only the few shall be empty of 
 this, the few chosen to be ministers." 
 
 Somewhat so he argues. If not his words, it is the 
 sum of what he will propose, I should surmise. 
 
 Perplexing, to me. I inquire : " To what end ? 
 If the selfishness shall be the beginning of progress, 
 the spring of the civilization, why shall it be emptied 
 out of any, even of the chosen ones ? " 
 
 His reply, in effect : " The few are sacrifice for the 
 good of the many, even as Jesus was. As did he, 
 so will they, crucify the self, in order that the self 
 in others shall be subdue." 
 
 Myself : " But since selfishness is so admirable, be- 
 ing the spring of the civilization, wherefore shall you 
 subdue it ? "
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 167 
 
 Jacques : " Like the wild horse which needs to be 
 break, to have the rein. The good minister, who 
 shall follow Jesus, he put in the hand of men the 
 rein, for to check the selfishness." 
 
 I am silent. If I do not grasp, it is perhaps not 
 wonderful. Who shall grasp this boy? 
 
 Now he opens a book. It is the essays of the Eng- 
 lishman, Matthew Arnold. There is something con- 
 cerning St. Francis, his celebrated marriage with 
 poverty. 
 
 Jacques : " He crucified the self, by that. What did 
 he gain? " 
 
 He will read from the book : " When an Umbrian 
 town or village heard of his approach, the whole pop- 
 ulation went out in joyful procession to meet him, 
 with green boughs, flags, music, & the songs of glad- 
 ness." 
 
 Together with a passage which say of St. Francis : 
 
 " He was a figure of the most magical power & 
 charm." 
 
 Jacques declares : " Magical ? Not ! Natural ! Any 
 man who shall do as St. Francis have done, he too 
 shall have precisely the power & the charm. What 
 have -St. Francis done? Briefly, he has follow Jesus, 
 =110 more, no less. He crucify the self." 
 
 Once more, from that book, he will read : " The 
 mass of mankind can be carried along a course full 
 of hardship for the natural man, can be borne over 
 the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only 
 by the tide of a joyful & bounding emotion." 
 
 Jacques, exclaiming : " Emotion, joyful & bound- 
 ing! That it is. To teach his ministers how to give 
 mankind that emotion, Jesus came on earth. For
 
 1 68 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 such the word was made flesh, & the word was ' Fol- 
 low me!'" 
 
 I am silent. Do I grasp him? 
 
 1 6 of January. 
 
 This, at least, is clear, he will break with tradi- 
 tion. Is such the wise part? 
 
 I propose : " You break abruptly with tradition. 
 Tradition shall be against you. Tradition is power. 
 You shall not sweep it away. You shall better com- 
 promise with it." 
 
 He is not for the compromise. So much I see, 
 though he say nothing. 
 
 Myself : " The half loaf is better than none. You 
 will fly in the face of accepted notion. What is re- 
 ligion, to the common mind ? It is precisely worship, 
 the ceremony. You make nothing of worship and of 
 ceremony. What shall the ordinary man say of you, 
 thereupon ? Precisely that you have no religion what- 
 ever. Who shall grasp you, when you call for no 
 faith, no duties, no conscious obedience to a law, 
 when, in brief, you leave all things to be wrought by 
 a love coming into the heart no man know whence 
 or know how ? " 
 
 Jacques : " The ordinary man has no need to know. 
 All is done for him. Only the minister need know, 
 since he does all. I shall teach the minister. Him 
 will I recall to the more excellent way." 
 
 Myself, with impatience : " The bishop in the city, 
 did you teach him?" 
 
 He is silent. 
 
 Myself : " He make answer to you for why he live 
 in a palace & ride in his coach. These things shall 
 be customary. It is so. Custom is everything. It
 
 Dr. Robert's Diary 169 
 
 is so much that he will always believe you a madman. 
 There is no teaching in such manner." 
 
 Jacques : " I was not myself sure. Vision was not 
 yet come to me. I will do better." 
 
 " No, never! " I declare. 
 
 But now, finally, I broach the good Bishop Wel- 
 come : 
 
 " Did he throw tradition to the wind ? Not he. 
 He did the customary, all that which a minister shall 
 be expected to do. He is ready to yield the half of a 
 loaf for getting the remainder. He celebrate the mass 
 each day, though he may well believe it mummery. 
 He preach the sermon, though they shall have sound 
 in his own ear like the brass and the cymbal. He 
 pray, why not? It may do no harm, at all events. 
 He hear confession, he give absolution, all the while 
 in doubt if he have the power to bind and to loose. 
 He make himself a minister in the old way, after 
 that in the more excellent way of which you speak. 
 Not by the mass did he save Jean Valjean, cer- 
 tainly no. Yet why shall he despise the mass, the most 
 ancient of ceremony, the most honored among men? 
 If it shall be empty, useless, what harm? What have 
 he show you? That one may be a bishop, yet deny 
 himself & take up his cross daily, even as Jesus com- 
 manded. Go thou & do in a like fashion." 
 
 What do I mean? Precisely that he shall first 
 of all become a minister in the accepted sense, one 
 known as a minister, one whom the world will call 
 Reverend. By this he will come in a position to ex- 
 emplify his idea. 
 
 He wavers. Whatso Bishop Welcome have done, 
 that is much to him. 
 
 Yet he thinks of going back to the city, as formerly.
 
 170 Dr. Robert's Diary 
 
 He says : " I will seek out Father Peter. Him I shall 
 persuade." 
 
 The oath-bound Jesuit ? Not likely ! 
 
 3 of March. 
 
 A letter from the Esquire Thornhill permits hope. 
 Mr. Thornhill deems it possible. 
 
 The church is Unitarian, once strong, now weak, 
 and no settled pastor is over it. 
 
 The Unitarians make no nice points, any strong, 
 clean, leading man, say the esquire. 
 
 Well, as to that, Jacques is strong, he is clean, he 
 is leading. 
 
 He have consent. The necessity to think of cus- 
 tom, he perceives this. The Unitarian will demand 
 no mass, no confession, it is more easy for him 
 than for Bishop Welcome.
 
 BOOK V 
 MR. JAKES
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DINNER OF HERBS 
 
 INDULGE a pagan fancy, it will help you to a no- 
 tion of Afton. Figure life as a pool, and events as 
 stones tossed thereinto by the Fates. Wherever in the 
 pool a stone drops, there is a heaving up to send waves 
 spreading in every direction. The bigger the stone 
 the more the upheaval, of course, and the stronger the 
 waves go out; but even the biggest of stones will not 
 stir all life. No matter how high the waters are 
 raised in the first instance, they will shortly subside. 
 Only a little way off, and the impulse is already well 
 spent. Only a little further, and the face of the 
 pool is unrippled. 
 
 There are places in the pool where no stone to 
 speak of has ever fallen, and where there have come 
 from abroad but the faintest shocks and thrills. 
 
 Afton was one of these, very much so. 
 
 Languid infirmity of purpose, that was the prevail- 
 ing note, you caught it even in the attitude of the 
 two roads which conjointly gave Afton locality, for 
 they seemed to have been about to cross only to aban- 
 don the enterprise at the last moment in favor of an 
 easier alternative. Anyway, one of them came to an 
 end on the spot, as if it were positively too shiftless 
 to go on. This was the Tellerville road, too, and by 
 
 '73
 
 174 Mr. Jakes 
 
 that important. Tellerville, six miles away, was the 
 nearest railway station and the way thence was Al- 
 ton's outlook on the world. And still there was a 
 dignity about its manner of giving up separate exis- 
 tence, like a great river disemboguing, in two branches, 
 with a delta between, to form the civic center about 
 which the village gathered in a loose and informal 
 manner. Nobody called it the civic center, locally 
 it was but a patch of nettles so stalwart that the birds 
 of the air built nests in them ; but it amounted to that, 
 it would be a civic center wherever sociology and 
 its terms were understood. The corporate limits com- 
 prehended a square mile, more or less, and in a negli- 
 gent, sprawling fashion the inhabitants occupied so 
 much territory. There was plenty of room, each 
 house had its garden and there were detached fields 
 besides, not to mention stretches of commons where 
 everybody staked out his cow. 
 
 A hot, dry spring it has been, the like of it never 
 known. And to-day is a hot dry day ; already, though 
 the hour is early, the sun is fierce and Afton sim- 
 mers. In the postoffice fronting the delta Byron the 
 postmaster and Daniel the pensioner are a-discussin' 
 and a-contendin'. They are alone, the population 
 at large is still detained at home. 
 
 You should know more about Daniel, partly for his 
 own sake, but especially for the further notion of 
 Afton you will obtain. On that consideration it is 
 noteworthy that Daniel had lost his right arm in the 
 service of his country; that the republic, flatly contra- 
 dicting the proverbial nature of its kind, was so grate- 
 ful as to remember him with a check for $150 every 
 quarter; and, finally, that such an income settled and 
 secure in virtue of Uncle Sam's good word, consti-
 
 Dinner of Herbs 175 
 
 tuted Daniel, in a financial sense, the great man of 
 the vicinity. Nobody else had so large an income. 
 Squire Thornhill would no doubt wish the world to 
 believe him in the enjoyment of a larger, but the world 
 was not to be beguiled by mere hints to that effect. 
 Who ever saw Squire Thornhill with as much as 
 $150, cash money, in his hand? Who, furthermore, 
 did not know, or as good as know, that Squire Thorn- 
 hill was land poor, that his taxes were eating him up, 
 that there was a mortgage on his very home? Let 
 those who chose believe a mortgage the sign of fiscal 
 tact, Afton, at all events, would swallow no such 
 heresy ; the village recognized its magnate, and he was 
 Daniel. Respected? Daniel's arm had been shattered 
 by a ball which caught him at the point of the elbow, 
 and you and I, being strangers, might wonder, for a 
 moment, how a man facing the enemy could get a shot 
 at the point of his elbow; but Afton found no diffi- 
 culty. Not a man or a boy was there who couldn't 
 tell us the way of it, how that Daniel, charging gal- 
 lantly at Antietam, felt something wrong with his 
 collar behind, reached back over his head to fix the 
 thing, and in that posture was shot. If you saw a 
 man or a boy, in Afton, earnestly conversing with 
 some stranger, the while he reached over his head 
 for his collar behind, the chances were that he had 
 undertaken to show just how Daniel came by his 
 wound. It was worth while, the patriot's credit was 
 a public concern, a matter vital to the commonwealth ; 
 nobody should go away doubting that the pension 
 which made Afton opulent was well and truly earned. 
 For some minutes, now, this considerable man had 
 sat silent in the doorway, with his eyes fixed on the 
 delta opposite. The sun poured itself brilliantly over
 
 176 Mr. Jakes 
 
 the white sand of the street, and Daniel screwed up 
 his face prodigiously against the glare. 
 
 At length he spoke. " Notice how that there patch 
 o' nettles hain't a-startin' up so pert this spring? 
 
 Byron hadn't noticed, no, that is, not special. 
 
 Daniel went on, weightily, after a suggestive pause. 
 " If that there patch o' nettles hain't smaller'n 'twas 
 this time a year ago, then I'm a goat." 
 
 Delicately put, to be sure. Before he made choice 
 between these alternatives, a man who was not only 
 postmaster with various political elements to please, 
 but general storekeeper, as well, with a trade to think 
 of, such a man need have a care. Byron screwed up 
 his face and looked long and critically. " Shouldn't 
 wonder if maybe you ain't right," he remarked. 
 
 " What does it mean ? " demanded Daniel. 
 
 Byron coughed. " Dry weather, eh ? " 
 
 " Dry weather your foot ! " snorted Daniel, con- 
 temptuously. " Dry weather might make the nettles 
 smaller, 'twouldn't never make the patch smaller. 
 Do you want to know what it means? It means the 
 road's widenin' out with the traffic. There's more 
 teams comin' in, an* they're comin' oftener. That's 
 what it means. 'Nother year," the spirit of prophecy 
 seized the oracle, " an' I shouldn't be noways sur- 
 prised if there wa'n't a nettle left over yonder. Now 
 what if Afton was to hev a boom, a reg'ler, down- 
 right, ripsnortin' boom ! Hey ? " 
 
 Byron took time to think and his reply was guarded. 
 " Don't know's I'd want to see a reg'ler, downright, 
 ripsnortin' boom in Afton. Chicago always claimed 
 they was wuss off for the boom they had." 
 
 " Chicago hain't Afton," declared Daniel, and with 
 that the subject was exhausted.
 
 Dinner of Herbs 177 
 
 There ensued a silence broken only by the hum 
 of some early flies. It was a sleepy stillness, and the 
 warmth was sleepy, and shortly the pensioner dozed 
 off, and swayed unsteadily in his seat, with his head 
 sunk on his breast. Byron, meanwhile, busied him- 
 self behind the counter till a new vein of conversa- 
 tion occurred to him. 
 
 " Hear 'bout Link Peffer a-gittin' him a telegram? " 
 he called out, from the inner regions. 
 
 Daniel opened his eyes with a jerk. " Link Peffer? " 
 he repeated incredulously. 
 
 "Link Peffer! 
 
 "You mean Abe Peffer!" 
 
 " No, Link, Abe's youngest boy." 
 
 " Link? Why, Link he hain't scurcely a voter yet." 
 
 " Well, he got the telegram, whether or no. I see it 
 myself. Tronson fetched it over from Tellerville with 
 the mail, a Wednesday, jest as Link happened up with 
 his new Clyde stallion, in a sulky. ' Link,' says 
 Tronson, ' here's a telegram for ye.' ' That so ? ' says 
 Link, not a mite flustered, an' he took it an' opened it 
 an' read it, an drove off cool's you please, sayin' never 
 a word to nobody, though there was consid'ble many 
 stan'in' round, wonderin'." 
 
 Daniel listened attentively. " Want to know ! " he 
 exclaimed, when Byron had told all. " Beats all how 
 the young fellers is comin' to the front. Link was 
 always a smart boy, though. I reckon he's one of the 
 virtuousest young men in these parts." 
 
 " Talk of him runnin' for sheriff, come fall." 
 
 " No ! He'd make a good sheriff, too. Still, I 
 dunno what Eph Holiday'd do if they was to 'lect 
 somebody else sheriff. How long's Eph been sheriff 
 anyhow? Must be twenty years."
 
 178 Mr. Jakes 
 
 " S' long's that ? Guess maybe so, come to think. 
 Time does git away. Blame me if it don't." 
 
 There was no blaming Byron on that showing, and 
 so another subject was exhausted. The drowsy si- 
 lence came on once more, and once more the pensioner 
 was nodding off to sleep, when the entrance of a third 
 person created a fresh diversion. Rather an unusual 
 figure, this person was, a youngish man, with flat 
 chest and broad shoulders, a hatchet face, and (these 
 the especially unusual about him) lustrous dark eyes 
 and a profusion of curling brown hair. His garb 
 was that of a workingman rather hard pressed to make 
 both ends meet, nothing to single him out in Afton 
 where distinction in dress was almost entirely left to 
 the women; and his manner had in it that accent of 
 conscious apology which denotes a lack of social ad- 
 vantages it seemed to cost him an effort so much as 
 to give Daniel and Byron good morning. 
 
 " Letter for you, I'm thinkin'," said the postmaster, 
 adjusting his glasses to study an address critically. 
 " The Reverend James J-a-c-q-u-e-s, Jakes, that the 
 way you pronounce it ? " 
 
 The man hesitated a little, smiled faintly and nodded. 
 " That's my name. Thank you," and he took the 
 letter and turned to go. 
 
 Daniel was staring up in frank curiosity. " Hot," 
 he said. 
 
 " Rather," said the man. 
 
 " An' dry." 
 
 " Pretty dry, I should say." There was an accent in 
 his speech, and a halting, as if the English language 
 came hard to him. 
 
 " Don't 'pear so anything's sufferin', though." 
 
 "Oh, no!"
 
 Dinner of Herbs 179 
 
 "We kin stand a dry spell better in May than in 
 July. That's what I tell 'em." 
 
 The man replied, but he was already out of the 
 door and in full retreat, so that his meaning was lost. 
 Evidently he wasn't wishful to make talk. 
 
 " That," said Byron, when they had watched him 
 out of sight, " is the new Unitarian minister." 
 
 " So I was a-conjecturin'," said Daniel. " Looks 
 like he might be a good, clever feller, too. No airs, 
 anyway. Queer fish, some say. They tell me he 
 don't ask no pay." 
 
 " Fact. My wife's half-brother he goes to church 
 there, an' he admits they don't hev to pay Mr. Jakes 
 nothin'. He won't take no pay, as I understand." 
 
 " Reckon he hain't a-goin' to have no scuffle with 
 'em on that 'count," observed Daniel. " Last min- 
 ister they hed couldn't git his pay nohow." 
 
 " That was Sanborn." 
 
 " Sanborn." 
 
 " Tur'ble homely feller. So homely you couldn't 
 scurcely meet him without wantin' to holler for help." 
 This was pretty severe for Byron and he looked rather 
 frightened. " Course a man hain't noways to blame 
 for his looks," he added, deprecatingly. 
 
 " They've got some right smart womenfolks in their 
 church, I'll say that for 'em." 
 
 " They hev so, for a fact." 
 
 " Nothin' but the womenfolks kep' the buildin' from 
 goin' to rack an' ruin long ago. The women worked 
 hard but the men was too shif'less to pay the parson. 
 Guess they was glad to find somebody to take the 
 place for nothin'." 
 
 " Squire Thornhill speaks high of him."
 
 180 Mr. Jakes 
 
 " That ought to settle it. Squire's the king-pin, 
 'cording to his own reckoning anyway." 
 
 " Squire's a great Unitarian. He kin tell why he's 
 a Unitarian, an' that's more'n some of 'em kin do. 
 My wife's half-brother he calls himself a Unitarian, 
 but he couldn't tell you what Unitarians believe in, 
 not to save his gizzard." Who, even the keeper of 
 a general store, need hesitate to have positive opin- 
 ions of his wife's half-brother? 
 
 " How's this here Reverend Mr. Jakes a-goin* to 
 live? " asked Daniel. " Got prop'ty, has he? " 
 
 " 'Pears not. He's took the Widder Delmore 
 place, an' it's quite a spell now since there was any- 
 body hereabouts that didn't feel above the Widder 
 Delmore place. Never was much, an' now it's all 
 to pieces. Old cabin's 'bout fell down, an' the well's 
 caved in, an' there hain't a rod o' fence stan'in'. 
 Land's all run out, course. He expects to make a 
 livin' outen it, but I don't see how. Squire Thornhill 
 was in to see me yist'day, an' he ast me if I wouldn't 
 trust Mr. Jakes for what little he'd be a-wantin', till 
 he could git suthin' to growin'. I'll own up I wa'n't 
 anxious for the trade, an' still I couldn't somehow 
 come out flatfooted an' refuse a newcomer, so. 'Sides, 
 I was brought up to treat a minister a leetle better'n 
 other folks. Course Mr. Jakes is Unitarian, an' my 
 folks was brimstone orthodox an' hated a liberal 
 wuss'n pizen, but I can't be a-drawin' the line, a 
 minister's a minister. I do feel like doin' Mr. Jakes a 
 good turn, when it comes my way. He'll likely hev 
 trouble 'nough afore he's gone far, 'thout me addin' 
 to it. Blame me if I don't feel kinder sorry for the 
 feller, though it's none o' my funeral either. Seems 
 like a hard place he's dropped into."
 
 Dinner of Herbs 181 
 
 Daniel laughed saturninely. " Jest you wait till 
 the squire gits his wind an' starts in to run things. I 
 dassay the Reverend Mr. Jakes will wonder where 
 he's at, 'thout he's uncommon good at knucklin' down." 
 
 This was treacherous ground and Byron would have 
 none of it. 
 
 " An' all them women ! " said Daniel. " Is he mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 Byron understood not. Leastways there was noth- 
 ing said about any family. 
 
 " The Lord have mercy on his soul ! " exclaimed 
 Daniel. " Poor Jakes!" and he laughed again, more 
 saturninely.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A STRANGER, AND THEY TOOK HIM IN 
 
 HUNGER is a large fact where scarcity prevails, and 
 curiosity, that hunger of the spirit, was a large fact 
 in Afton, not unnaturally the Unitarian church, on 
 the occasion of Mr. Jakes's inaugural, sheltered the 
 greatest congregation in its history. As much as any- 
 body knew about the new minister, everybody knew, 
 as a matter of course; and that was enough to rivet 
 public attention upon him. Those who had set down 
 the man's vagaries to a species of mild madness, 
 though they should politely name it eccentricity, could 
 discover a method in it, when they beheld the crowd 
 which poured into the old church that Sabbath morn- 
 ing, had his whole purpose been to bring wandering 
 sheep gaping to his feet, he could not possibly have 
 gone a better way to work. Squire Thornhill and 
 the lesser pillars who acted with him as ushers were 
 filled with a great joy. They chuckled and rubbed 
 their hands, in sober Sabbath glee, while they showed 
 the thronging multitude to seats. Did they not count 
 twenty-seven farmers' teams hitched near the church ? 
 There was a rail provided for farmers to hitch to, and 
 it had always been sufficient, even in the remote early 
 days of prosperity, yet now it was all taken up and 
 
 182
 
 A Stranger, and they Took Him In 183 
 
 still teams were coming. But it was when chairs had 
 to be fetched from nearby houses and set in the aisles, 
 that the pillars' cup ran over. They foresaw a won- 
 derful revival of religion in Afton. They stood up, 
 themselves, throughout the service, and were mightily 
 glad of the necessity. 
 
 But what of Mr. Jakes meanwhile? Was his cup 
 running over? 
 
 There was a little vestry, or more properly, since 
 Unitarians don't vest, a study, anyway a place where 
 the pastor might lurk and wait until his hour was 
 come ; and thither the new incumbent had betaken him- 
 self long before the earliest of the public put in an 
 appearance. But if there was any joy for him, it lay 
 under too heavy a cloud of anxiety to be discernible. 
 He was vastly uneasy, roved up and down the nar- 
 row room, sat down to the table, where his papers and 
 a book or two lay, only to toss and squirm as if the 
 chair were a hot griddle. When the congregation 
 came in, stragglingly at first, but soon in a steady, 
 abundant stream, his distress mounted by leaps and 
 bounds, as his tortured air bore all too ample testi- 
 mony. He opened the door leading into the church 
 until he could see through the crack, and he stood in 
 behind there, to peep furtively, while his knees smote 
 together and the sweat collected on his forehead. The 
 strange faces, staring blankly up at the pulpit where 
 he was presently to take his place, how should he ever 
 summon strength to look into them? Mr. Jakes was 
 very badly scared, that was the simple truth. That 
 consciousness of himself which he had been coming 
 into all these months was discovering its least com- 
 fortable phase, a bashfulness almost too much for 
 will and reason to overbear.
 
 184 Mr. Jakes 
 
 He sank into his seat and clutched up a scrap of 
 paper, on which were written, in Dr. Robert's largest, 
 plainest hand, these words and figures : 
 
 1. Hymn. 
 
 2. Prayer. 
 
 3. Hymn. 
 
 4. Sermon. 
 '5. Hymn. 
 
 6. Benediction. 
 
 It was the simple program of the simplest service 
 which convention would countenance, and yet it baffled 
 Mr. Jakes. He conned it over for the hundredth time, 
 and was no nearer mastering it than before, trifling 
 though it was. And then, for the hundredth time, a 
 rebellion rose in him. Why should he have a 
 program? Why should he be tied down to any sort 
 of form, even the simplest? He had been pointed to 
 Savonarola, who was a great preacher, fit to be 
 imitated. But Savonarola had gone his own way about 
 the business, flouting custom, and ceremony, and pro- 
 grams, delivering his message as best it suited him. 
 Mr. Jakes had a message, too, why should he not go 
 his own way about the delivery of it? Those people 
 yonder, they were nothing to fear, in themselves, 
 met with informally; but there was something very 
 terrifying about them as they sat stiffly awaiting his 
 coming. It was like going up to the rack, wretchedly 
 like. Mr. Jakes threw the scrap of paper back on the 
 table and groaned. 
 
 The study was furnished with a cheap little clock 
 which ticked explosively, Mr. Jakes could swear it 
 was going too fast. He could see the hands move, 
 so ardent was his wish to have them stand still; as
 
 A Stranger, and they Took Him In 185 
 
 they approached the fateful mark of half past ten, they 
 fairly ran forward. He persuaded himself that the 
 little clock was at least fifteen minutes ahead of the 
 correct time, and had just formed the resolution to 
 wait until quarter of eleven when his comfortable illu- 
 sion was miserably scattered by the bell in the Catholic 
 steeple, booming out its solemn call. That meant only 
 one thing, it was already half past ten! The hour 
 had struck, and no more was to be done save that which 
 he had come to do. He staggered to his feet. He 
 snatched up his papers and books. He threw open 
 the door. He entered. 
 
 Curiosity isn't of necessity an unfriendly senti- 
 ment, yet neither is it sweet sympathy ; Af ton, or that 
 considerable fraction of it which had come out for to 
 see, turned its countenance on Mr. Jakes with the first 
 creak of the door which announced him, and it was a 
 countenance little calculated to soothe his troubled 
 heart, already near choking him with a tumult of 
 emotion. To him it seemed that he spent his last 
 strength in tottering up the few steps leading to the 
 pulpit, and he fell into the stuffed chair set out for his 
 use in a state bordering on collapse. He had been 
 earnestly instructed to kneel, for a moment, in silent 
 prayer, as he entered his pulpit; Dr. Robert had once 
 seen a famous divine do that, and it had struck him as 
 a happy touch, theatrical, perhaps, but highly effec- 
 tive, a thing likely to disarm the critical and warm the 
 devout, to affect for the better both those who came 
 to scoff and those who came to pray. Mr. Jakes had 
 no objection, and he had fully intended to kneel, that 
 way, but he forgot all about it until the proper time 
 was passed. Then the thought of his omission brought 
 on a new terror. If he had forgotten that, what might
 
 1 86 Mr. Jakes 
 
 he not forget? Sitting sunk among the cushions, he 
 gave himself up to despair. 
 
 He imagined he was making a sorry spectacle, but 
 in that he was wrong, the people beheld a youth not 
 more embarrassed than a youth may properly be, in the 
 face of a great occasion. He believed he had reeled up 
 the steps like a drunken man, but they found his gait 
 creditably firm. His thought was that his face pro- 
 claimed his weakness, but they detected only a comely 
 heightening of his color, a comely glow in his eyes. 
 Mr. Jakes's eyes were something to remember, so fine 
 and lustrous were they, so filled with a steady fire ; and 
 there was moreover his hair. Afton, for the most 
 part, had not yet seen him with his hat off, and the 
 wanton clustering curls, thick and golden-brown, were 
 something to remember, too. Many called him hand- 
 some. 
 
 His attire, well, for that matter, Afton, to be per- 
 fectly candid, was rather shocked by Mr. Jakes's attire. 
 It was still that garb of a man who worked with his 
 hands. Linen, starch, could there be theology apart 
 from these? The memory of the ministers who had 
 formerly stood in that pulpit had not passed away, and 
 how had they dressed for their part? Even that last 
 unhappy minister, whose salary was only $30 a month 
 and the bulk of that meager sum delinquent, even he 
 wore a long black coat with flaring skirts and spread- 
 ing bosom faced with silk at the lapels, and a linen 
 shirt, and a lawn tie. And here had come a minister in 
 a coarse gray flannel shirt, with a coat which was a 
 blouse, hardly to be distinguished from a jumper, and 
 trousers which looked for all the world like kersey such 
 as Byron sold for $3 and you could get for $2 in the 
 city. And his shoes, would you believe that they were
 
 A Stranger, and they Took Him In 187 
 
 not blacked? Believe it or not, such was the fact. 
 They were very conspicuous by reason of their brown 
 dinginess. Stewing among his cushions, Mr. Jakes 
 mechanically threw one leg over the other, and by that 
 fairly flaunted his shoes in Afton's face. It was a 
 long day before the circles of society ceased to com- 
 ment on those shoes. 
 
 Stewing among his cushions, Mr. Jakes looked 
 down at the people and asked himself whether they 
 would leave him sunk in his chair and go away, or 
 whether they would come and lift him out ; it was im- 
 possible, he was convinced, that he should rise unaided. 
 But once more he was wrong. The choir, a dozen or 
 fifteen boys and girls, were gathered about the organ 
 to the left of the pulpit, and now the leader, a dapper 
 person of the tenor species, came tripping up the steps 
 with his list of hymns. He bowed deferentially, and 
 Mr. Jakes, while he didn't bow back, from a feeling of 
 being frozen stiff, nevertheless received him with what 
 passed for dignity and grace sufficient, and took the slip 
 of paper from his hand. The congregation watched 
 narrowly and came off with the impression that the 
 new minister knew his manners, he lost nothing by 
 not being gushy. And then Mr. Jakes astonished him- 
 self alone of all that assemblage by getting up and 
 going to the desk and giving out the first hymn. He 
 remained standing there during the singing, and even 
 joined in, though the tune was unfamiliar. 
 
 But hereupon there was the prayer to be offered up. 
 That was about the hardest of all. Commanded of 
 convention to pray, he had suffered a prayer to be com- 
 posed for him, and had learned it by heart. He fancied 
 he knew it well enough to say it backwards, yet now, 
 in the very midst of it, his memory played him false.
 
 1 88 Mr. Jakes 
 
 He had got so far as to call down the divine favor on 
 the nation, and all nations, and the rulers thereof, and 
 the next thing was the fruits of the earth, always to be 
 given attention in a farming community, and right 
 there, all at once, he could think of nothing but the 
 flowery sentences with which he was to end. Of 
 course it would never do to end so abruptly. He 
 paused, and repeated himself, a phrase or two. He 
 opened his eyes a little and searched among the papers 
 on the desk before him, the prayer was there, written 
 out against the chance of just such a mishap. What 
 possessed the paper that it should so refuse to be 
 brought to the surface when wanted? He bowed his 
 head very low, to search the better. His voice, re- 
 peating, shook. His knees weakened under him till he 
 wondered to find himself standing. But Afton, glanc- 
 ing discreetly out from under its lowered lids, attrib- 
 uted everything to Mr. Jakes's earnestness having 
 overcome him. Beautiful prayer, people called it ever 
 after ; and the break served only to heighten the effect. 
 For it was merely a break, at worst, the right paper 
 was presently found and the prayer finished according 
 to the letter of it. 
 
 They sang another hymn, hearty and uplifting, and 
 after that came the sermon. 
 
 Mr. Jakes took his text from John 15 113. " Greater 
 love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
 life for his friends." 
 
 Alone in his cabin miles away, Dr. Robert was not 
 unmindful. He too had watched the clock uneasily, 
 with a tumult of anxiety oppressing him when at last 
 it pointed to half past ten. He too paced up and down, 
 or squirmed and tossed in his chair, and hoped, 
 prayed, even, with all the fervor of his fervid soul,
 
 A Stranger, and they Took Him In 189 
 
 that his boy might not forget ; that he might not stand 
 here when he should stand there, or strike his desk 
 with his clenched fist when he should be spreading his 
 palm upward, or shout when he should whisper. Could 
 the doctor have known that Mr. Jakes forgot almost all 
 his instructions, even to the words of his manuscript 
 in many instances, doubt not he would have torn his 
 hair, believing all was lost. Yet nothing was lost. 
 
 Mr. Jakes had by his manner, though unwittingly, 
 much increased the public curiosity as to what he might 
 be about to say; and this would make people atten- 
 tive to begin with. But when curiosity should be 
 spent, what? The leaven of the Pharisees which is 
 hypocrisy has a fashion of flowering in the fine art of 
 seeming to listen, of having ears yet hearing not, and 
 in that art men and women who go much to church 
 become very adept. But the sensitive preacher is not 
 fooled, he will look into the souls of his congregation 
 through their eyes and know if those souls are dozing; 
 and if they are dozing he will be cast down and say 
 his say but hardly. Mr. Jakes, most sensitive of men, 
 most ready to be cast down, was spared. He looked 
 through the windows of Afton's souls and they were 
 awake from first to last. The curiosity helped, but 
 when it had served, there was a better sentiment to take 
 its place. He hadn't gone far with his sermon until it 
 appeared that the people had been laid hold of. 
 
 And their listening attitude laid hold of him. He 
 was lucky to be sensitive, for in virtue of that he was 
 lifted up into a complete forgetfulness of studied 
 posturings. There was a moment of stiff indecision, a 
 little of struggle to recall his cues, and then he threw off 
 the make-believe altogether. The bashfulness van- 
 ished, he not only looked but was at ease. He spoke
 
 190 Mr. Jakes 
 
 like a confident child, anyway as unaffectedly ; and like 
 a child's by its sheer simplicity, his discourse carried. 
 The people, by their interest, made him sincere, and he, 
 by his sincerity, made them interested.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MR. JAKES'S PARABLE 
 
 " ONCE upon a time, and not so long ago," said Mr. 
 Jakes, and his speech, for this occasion, was uncom- 
 monly free from French accent and French inver- 
 sions, " there lived, and died, for it is only as he dies 
 that we get to know him, a certain William Phipps. 
 He was a negro, a lowly member of a lowly race. 
 Many have thought, and some still think that the 
 negro was created to be the slave of the white man, 
 but whether that is so or not, negroes have always been 
 slaves, even to our own time; for though the name of 
 slavery is abolished, its substance remains, the posi- 
 tion of negroes in society is little if any above servi- 
 tude. What we have done to make an end of slavery 
 we seemingly did for the good of the whites whom it 
 corrupted, rather than the good of the blacks whom it 
 oppressed. In some ways the negro is worse off for 
 being emancipated, no emancipation at the hands of 
 the law can relieve him of the yoke of caste. He is still 
 the hewer of wood and drawer of water. He is pro- 
 scribed and excluded from the fields of activity where 
 the human soul develops and grows, and that is the 
 hopelessness of his situation. It is a sorry thing to be 
 born black; a man born black has reason, humanly 
 speaking, to grow up bitter in heart, and sour, and 
 
 191
 
 192 Mr. Jakes 
 
 sullen. He is confronted from the first by a dark out- 
 look. His place in the world is made for him and it is 
 a hard place. He feels the supremest injustice which 
 a man is ever called on to endure, the injustice of be- 
 ing punished for what is no fault of his. And the 
 punishment has none of the appearance of being an 
 act of Providence, inevitable and therefore to be borne 
 in patience; it is too clearly the tyranny of his own 
 kind. If he has any spirit at all, why should he not 
 be an Ishmael, with his hand against every man ? 
 
 " Phipps is less than forty years old, when we come 
 upon him, living and dying. What does that signify ? 
 It signifies that though a negro, he was born legally 
 free, to as much freedom as the mere law can bestow. 
 A boon, we say, at first blush, Phipps was lucky as 
 compared with his parents, who were born chattels, 
 like cattle. But is that altogether so? Consider a 
 little. A negro boy born into slavery was subject to 
 restraint, of a poor sort, to be sure but better than none. 
 Sprung from a healthy race, he was pretty sure to be a 
 healthy boy, stout and hearty, having in him all the 
 appetites of the virile animal. In slavery these 
 appetites were brought under bit and bridle. The boy 
 was early set to work, and kept working. At five 
 years of age he was picking cotton by his mother's side, 
 or helping her to hoe her row. By the time he was 
 come to the age of fourteen or fifteen, the age when the 
 masculine element in a boy begins to stir, he was a 
 laborer in the fields, toiling from the earliest dawn till 
 the fall of darkness, too tired to think of aught but eat- 
 ing and sleeping. His were none of the idle hands 
 which Satan finds work for. And should by any 
 chance his virile appetites nevertheless get the better of 
 him, should he permit his passions, the passions which
 
 Mr. Jakes's Parable 193 
 
 are as natural to the human youth as to any male 
 animal whatsoever, to assert themselves and carry him 
 beyond the limits of prescribed conduct, he was whipped 
 for it, his spirit broken, his passions subdued. That 
 was a wretched condition, to be sure, a woeful de- 
 gradation, yet after all it amounted to a moral control, 
 in slavery the negro had some reason, though no 
 very good one, to behave himself. 
 
 " But how was it after the war ? In the warm 
 Southland, where a living costs almost no effort, these 
 black people, made irresponsible by their centuries of 
 servitude until they were fairly incapable of taking 
 thought of the morrow, brought forth their young like 
 the beasts, and let them grow up like beasts, with 
 hardly more care for their morals than cattle have, or 
 any other species of unmoral beings. In place of the 
 moral restraint, or semblance thereof, degraded and 
 hideous though it was, which slavery had laid upon the 
 negro boy, there was nothing, absolutely nothing. The 
 boy was born and grew up in his own way. He was 
 as much as ever the offspring of a healthy race, physi- 
 cally perfect, like a young bull. As he advanced in 
 years, idle all the time or engaged in dissolute sports, 
 his virile appetites duly asserted themselves and with- 
 out resistance on his part took complete command of 
 him and filled him with purposes which, however 
 natural, society has decreed mischievous and criminal. 
 Such is the genesis of that monster in human form 
 which holds the South in a state of terror to-day, so 
 that women dare not stir abroad unprotected and 
 chivalry itself has brought a generous and high- 
 spirited people down to the level of lynchers. All 
 things considered, the wonder is that the young black 
 isn't an even more terrible fellow than he is ; but he is
 
 194 Mr. Jakes 
 
 amply terrible enough, as the case stands, to have got 
 his race more than ever proscribed, and that is what 
 we need bear especially in mind as we think of Phipps. 
 He was a young black, with the most odious reputa- 
 tion, regardless of how good he might really be. 
 Knowing how he turned out in the end, we like to 
 imagine that he was a very decent chap to begin with. 
 Perhaps he had religious parents, there were always 
 religious parents among the negroes; perhaps, too, he 
 was born with less of the elemental brute in him than 
 goes to make up the average healthy man. But no 
 matter how decent he may have been, no matter how 
 strongly inclined to proper ways, the hue of his face 
 would get him confounded with the worst. The 
 character of the worst was the character of the best. 
 A negro buck was a negro buck, a thing accursed. 
 
 " Put yourself in his place. Experiencing such 
 things, what sort of a feeling would you have for your 
 fellow men ? Would you be less than bitter and sour 
 and sullen ? What did the brotherhood of man mean 
 to Phipps? What influence was that noble principle 
 of conduct likely to have on him, what influence 
 would it have on you in his place? 
 
 " We can guess how the longing to go North took 
 possession of him. It was a common and a natural 
 thing for the negroes to look to the North as to a 
 veritable Canaan. Had not all things conspired to 
 give them the idea that the North was a sort of heaven, 
 where wrong had no place, and all was light, refresh- 
 ment and peace? Its colder airs they would perhaps 
 not forget to consider, or how little they were fit to 
 undergo its ice and snow and arctic blasts; but what 
 were such discomforts to endure in comparison with 
 the pains of their present position ? And so they went
 
 Mr. Jakes's Parable 195 
 
 North, as they could, thousands of them, rejoicing to 
 leave behind them the land of bondage. Phipps went 
 North, too, it is in the North that we find him. He 
 had no money, of course, he had to walk, unless he 
 stole a ride in some cattle-car. He was not too good 
 to steal, not keenly alive to the distinctions of right 
 and wrong, or, where he distinguished, zealous to shun 
 the wrong. If he was not by this time in desperate 
 rebellion against the regulations of society, he was at 
 best indifferent to them, ready to transgress them with- 
 out a qualm. What were the laws of society to him 
 whom society had made an outcast of? 
 
 " More likely than not he made his way first to 
 Washington ; the home of their great and good govern- 
 ment had an especial fascination for those migrating 
 negroes. Washington was a name to conjure with, 
 the place was a kind of Mecca. If they did not pray 
 night and morning with their faces turned toward 
 Washington, their attitude of mind was something like 
 that. To go and live forevermore in Washington, 
 under the shadow of the Capitol, that were felicity in- 
 deed. They did not stop to ask how they should sup- 
 port themselves where there was no soil to till, they 
 knew not how to take thought of such things. Slavery 
 had so schooled them to an instinct of dependence that 
 they were apt to look upon emancipation as something 
 in the nature of a transfer from one owner to another, 
 'a mysterious transaction by which they had passed 
 from the possession of their former masters to the 
 possession of the government. A masterless negro 
 was to them unthinkable, and now their master was the 
 government, whose mansion was in Washington. In 
 such dark, uncertain fashion, we may believe, the 
 negro argued with himself. More than likely our
 
 196 Mr. Jakes 
 
 friend Phipps made his way first to Washington and 
 began there with his disillusionment." 
 
 " For disillusionment, sooner or later, awaited 
 every negro who came North in search of the promised 
 land. Instead of being caught to the bosom of a 
 rich and liberal people, as he fondly expected, he found 
 himself as much as ever an object of aversion whom 
 white men shunned and denied employment. White 
 men, unless the most degraded, were ashamed to 
 work with him ; only the low work which no white man 
 would do was left for him. That was a new bitter- 
 ness for the negro, the South, with all its cruelty, 
 had never treated him so harshly in this respect. If 
 he could not himself remember slavery days, he had 
 heard his people tell about them, the days when 
 women of his color stood in the position of mothers 
 to the most aristocratic children of the South, and 
 masters there were in plenty who would deny them- 
 selves before they would see their dependent blacks 
 denied. Such memories were not likely to make the 
 disillusionment less hard to bear. 
 
 " My friends, how do you picture Phipps in your 
 minds? There is a native kindliness in the African 
 race. Beyond most men they are sweet of temper, 
 patient to endure, quick to love where any spark of 
 love is vouchsafed them, faithful and willing. But 
 how are we to expect these fine traits to remain, under 
 the trials to which negroes have been subjected since 
 their emancipation ? Can we put ourselves in Phipps's 
 place once more, and believe that we should retain a 
 shred of good will toward men? 
 
 " For my own part, I cannot but think of him, when 
 first he comes into our view, at the age of nearly forty, 
 as a pretty unpromising fellow. Unless I mistake him,
 
 Mr. Jakes's Parable 197 
 
 he is addicted to all the vices which a very poor man 
 can have. I surmise that he is no stranger to the 
 dens where the worst of humanity congregate to seek 
 a fleeting image of pleasure, the nearest likeness of 
 pleasure permitted to such as they, in bestial ex- 
 cesses. The greater portion of what he earns goes for 
 vice, for drink most of all. He spends a great deal 
 for drink, in drink there is forgetfulness, even a 
 certain joy, a fierce exaltation. Gallons and gallons of 
 vile liquor he has drunk, and found this destroyer of 
 mind and body his best friend on earth. It follows 
 almost inevitably that he has been in affrays. There is 
 usually a quarrelsome stage in any man's drunkenness, 
 and not the less so where he is drunk on poison; and 
 these low people scruple not to cut and stab. In their 
 orgies they will fall out over nothing, and fight like 
 fiends. The men among them will become the keenest 
 rivals for the favor of some worthless woman, and 
 then there will be a killing, unless they are sooner 
 parted. Phipps has borne his part in many an affray, 
 no doubt of that. He has cut and been cut. Pos- 
 sibly he has been a fugitive from justice, slinking out 
 of sight of the police. When I form the likeness of 
 him in my mind, I see sundry scars on his face, and 
 they make it a frightful face. He is called a bad 
 man, that is, a dangerous man. He is often arrested 
 for petty disorders, and taken into court with the dregs. 
 He is always guilty, he never has money to pay a fine, 
 and so he spends a considerable fraction of his life in 
 the workhouse. He doesn't mind that, except that it 
 cuts him off from his solacing vices. Whether in 
 prison or out, he is equally the outcast, loathed and 
 spat upon. White men, even though they are them-
 
 198 Mr. Jakes 
 
 selves of the dregs, object to riding with him in the 
 prison van. 
 
 " So much for what we may imagine, building upon 
 the probabilities of the case. Now we come to the 
 realities. 
 
 " It is in Cincinnati that we find him. He doesn't 
 push far north, you see. In the face of his disillusion- 
 ment there is nothing to draw him further, he tarries 
 wherever there offers the degraded work which he is 
 allowed to do. He is a fleck of debris on the surface 
 of the water, when employment fails he will drift on. 
 He has drifted so from Washington, to Baltimore, to 
 Pittsburg, to Cincinnati, as his opportunity draws him. 
 It is a poor opportunity. His work is disagreeable, and 
 his pay is small; and while he works he will have to 
 put up with all manner of abuse. If he resents his ill 
 treatment, he will lose his job. In slavery times, he 
 would be flogged, now he will be discharged; either 
 way he is a slave. He cannot rise. Whatever he earns 
 goes to pay for the vices that are his only comfort in 
 life. 
 
 " His job just now, as we get to know him, is in 
 some factory where there are big steam vats. I don't 
 know that I have a right conception of these, but they 
 seem to me like boilers, closed all round when in use, 
 but quite hollow, that is to say, with none of the 
 flue-work which you see in a boiler. It is Phipps's 
 business to go down into the vats and shovel out the 
 refuse which accumulates there. This work is done 
 when the vats are only partly cool, because time is 
 money, the concern can't afford to wait for them to 
 cool entirely. Besides it isn't necessary to wait, be- 
 cause there is degraded help to be hired who will en- 
 dure almost anything for the sake of employment.
 
 Mr. Jakes's Parable 199 
 
 The concern will naturally do no more for the conveni- 
 ence of its workmen than is absolutely necessary, and 
 very little is necessary where the workmen are negroes. 
 The steam will be shut off for a little while and then 
 Phipps must go down with his shovel. The vats, as I 
 understand, are in a battery, so to speak, side by side, 
 and there are pipes connecting them, furnished with 
 valves by means of which any vat may be cut out and 
 emptied of its steam, with the others still in use. We 
 know from what happened that some such arrange- 
 ment there must have been. 
 
 " There is a vat to be cleaned, and Phipps and an- 
 other man are sent in. This other man is one Henry 
 French, and he is white, on consideration of his 
 color Phipps has no very strong reason for thinking 
 highly of him. Yet no doubt they two are chums of 
 a sort, comrades in misery, the white man virtually a 
 negro since he stoops to work with a negro at a negro's 
 work. They have little thought of sentiment, any- 
 way, their work is ready for them and they go at 
 it. The air is stifling hot down in the vat. The men 
 are allowed to come up and breathe now and then. 
 A ladder is let down through the manhole, and from 
 time to time, taking turns, they thrust out their heads 
 for a mouthful of fresh air. Nor do they suffer as you 
 or I would, that is to be borne in mind. An angle- 
 worm may be cut in two and never be the worse, and a 
 negro may be sent into a bath of steam which would 
 cause you or me to faint, and manage somehow. 
 
 " Then comes the tragedy. 
 
 " All of a sudden, as these men knock and scrape 
 and shovel, half-blinded, half-suffocated, there smites 
 their ears the hiss and sputter of rushing steam. 
 What does it signify? They know only too well.
 
 200 Mr. Jakes 
 
 They have thought of the great danger which threatens 
 them, and they are instinctively on the alert to catch 
 the first warnings of its approach. The amount of it 
 is that the valve between their vat and the steam supply 
 has opened. By accident? By inadvertence? More 
 likely the latter, but what of that? We blame, per- 
 haps, the unthinking, careless hand which has done this 
 awful thing, but after all, who are we to measure every 
 species of human action by our narrow standards of 
 good and evil? How much of what we call evil is 
 good half seen through? Judas Iscariot betrayed his 
 Master, and him we execrate, finding no words bad 
 enough to voice our abhorrence of his deed. But I 
 ask you what would be the drama of Calvary had 
 Judas not done that very thing, had he shrunk from his 
 part for fear of the censure of his fellow men? Call 
 his act what you will, the crime of crimes indeed, and 
 still it had to be committed in order that a greater good 
 might come to pass. The hand which let the steam in 
 on those two wretches made possible a sacrifice of 
 transcendent merit, and by that I doubt not it was 
 justified in the final accounting. 
 
 " Phipps and French, I repeat, know what the 
 hissing means, an instant more and they will be 
 cooked alive. Consider, in so far as you may, what 
 it is to be cooked alive. It is quite the most horrible 
 death a man may die. Death at the cannon's mouth, 
 death by sickness the most loathely, any manner of 
 death whatsoever, though no manner of death is grate- 
 ful, were easier to face than the death which threatens 
 Phipps and French. They have thought of that, talked 
 of it, very likely. All in a flash they think of it again, 
 and there is a mighty fear in their hearts. The instinct 
 of self-preservation, the great first principle of nature,
 
 Mr Jakes's Parable 201 
 
 will not be long asserting itself. Simultaneously, and 
 in the very moment when the hiss and sputter 
 strike their ears, they spring to the ladder. 
 
 " It is only a few feet. Phipps may have been a 
 little quicker, or a little nearer. Anyway, he reaches 
 it first. 
 
 " His foot is already on the rung. 
 
 " Then he stops and draws back. 
 
 ' You go up first, Hank/ he says. ' You've got 
 a family and I haven't.' 
 
 " And Hank, scrambling up first, escapes with only 
 a few trifling burns, whereas Phipps, though he follows 
 immediately after, comes out scalded from head to foot, 
 his flesh dropping from his bones, to linger for some 
 hours in the intensest agony, as if to prove how hor- 
 rible it is to be cooked alive, and then die."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE POINT OF IT 
 
 HERE Mr. Jakes paused, and silence reigned in the 
 little church. People breathed, of course, but they 
 were so quiet about it you could imagine they didn't. 
 
 Was there going to be more of the story of William 
 Phipps? Evidently, for though Mr. Jakes had paused, 
 he was looking down at his congregation in a way to 
 suggest that he wasn't done, you would guess at 
 once from his manner that he was only waiting for the 
 parable to sink in a little. And so it was; after a 
 minute or so he quoted his text again " Greater love 
 hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
 his friends," and resumed his discourse: 
 
 " The news of what had happened spread quickly, 
 as horrible news always will, and people employed 
 about the establishment came running in scores and 
 hundreds, until there was a crowd gathered to gaze 
 upon the formless mass of flesh that had been Phipps, 
 and to hear Henry French proclaim, with tongue made 
 eloquent by gratitude, the sacrifice of the man who had 
 chosen to die that his friend might live. 
 
 " These workmen were human beings, even as you 
 and I are, and we can know, by looking into our own 
 hearts, about what their emotions must have been.
 
 The Point of It 203 
 
 First distinguished, among these emotions, was hor- 
 ror, a great, absorbing horror, to see a man cooked 
 alive. And next was pity, likewise great and absorb- 
 ing. But were these all? These the men would 
 equally have had were somebody to be cooked alive 
 under any circumstances. Had they no emotion by 
 reason of the peculiar circumstances here exhibited, 
 particularly the circumstance of Phipps having volun- 
 tarily given up his life for another? Hearkening to 
 French's grateful testimony, had it no effect upon 
 them all its own? Of a certainty it had, or they were 
 not human. 
 
 " And what was that other emotion ? 
 
 " My friends, I refer you to your own hearts for my 
 proof when I say it was love, no other. It was the 
 shadow and counterpart of that love, than which no 
 love is greater, shown by Phipps in his transcendent 
 sacrifice. By that tragedy enacted before their faces 
 there had come to them an access of good will, we 
 know it because we know that were we in their places 
 there must have come to us an access of good will. 
 Not a man but was softened, not a man but was made 
 better disposed toward all the world, not a man but 
 was in that moment less selfish. What man, provided 
 he be human like you and me, but must find it easier, 
 with the spell of that tragedy upon him, to do unto 
 others as he would be done by? Of course the spell 
 could not last forever, emotions are too volatile for 
 that. In a few days at most, very likely in a few hours, 
 it would have passed, leaving these men as they were 
 before; but so long as it lasted it made for that best 
 morality which Jesus defined in the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan. So long as it lasted it helped to get 
 God's will done on earth as it is in heaven.
 
 204 Mr. Jakes 
 
 " The effect is universal, no matter who the man 
 is, so long as he has the common human nature, he 
 does not escape. 
 
 " Take the foreman, for instance. He is a hard, 
 cold man, as he has to be, his superiors are exacting 
 with him and he has to be exacting with those he is 
 superior to. Naturally he is not pleased to see the 
 men dropping their work and lingering about, and he 
 hurries over to rebuke them. There is anger in his 
 heart, and he is disposed to be severe and harsh. But 
 now he discovers what has happened, most of all he 
 hears French's testimony; and can you imagine him 
 holding his wrath ? No, he may still insist on the men 
 going back to their work, but it will be in a gentler way 
 than he had intended. He will not storm and scold, to 
 void the anger in him, for now the anger will be no 
 longer there. There will be no miracle wrought, but 
 it will be apparent that the cold, hard foreman is like- 
 wise softened, even to him there has come such an 
 access of good will as shall bear visible fruit. 
 
 " Then there is the doctor. You know doctors, it 
 is part of their trade not to be unduly affected by 
 horrid sights. We depend on them to be calm, no mat- 
 ter what agony they are called on to witness. They 
 are used to horrid sights, they are schooled in the 
 spectacle of blood and raw flesh ; and so it is easier for 
 them to be calm. This doctor is not especially shocked. 
 If he feels the horror and the pity at all, they will be 
 relatively weak in him. But how about that other 
 emotion? Doubt not he feels that, however schooled 
 he may be in the denial of his feelings. When he 
 hears French's testimony, he sees the dying Phipps in 
 a new light. The doctor is more sensitive than the 
 others, at bottom, more delicately nurtured, and the
 
 The Point of It 205 
 
 impression will be stronger upon him, the spell of the 
 tragedy will abide with him longer. Him you will 
 find telling others about it, and delighting to tell, dwel- 
 ling on the sublimity of it, he will tell his family, 
 his students, other patients, who come to him with their 
 woes. And in his bearing toward people you will 
 find him different, you will find him better disposed. 
 To him also has come the access of good will to bear 
 visible fruit. 
 
 " And the newspaper reporters. They are the 
 evangelists. Reporters have much to make them cal- 
 lous, with all the meanness and sordidness they en- 
 counter. But their part is to nose out all the details, 
 and very soon they come upon that which is unusual in 
 the case of Phipps. And flighty, cynical fellows 
 though they are, they are still human, and they are 
 affected as have been the others. They have experi- 
 enced the access of good will, they are filled with it as 
 they write, though they shall call it by no name or 
 consciously identify it. It is there nevertheless, and 
 it flows out through their fingers and pencils, into the 
 words and sentences which they put down, and these 
 latter carry out the spell in the printed page and cause 
 it to lie upon the thousands who read. Imagine your- 
 self opening your newspaper and reading the deftly 
 written story of William Phipps, and tell me whether 
 or no there would come to you, in consequence, a 
 better disposition, a greater readiness to do as you 
 would be done by. 
 
 " He died, and was buried, and his funeral was a 
 triumph. They hid his coffin in flowers and they 
 followed him to his grave as if he had been one of 
 the world's great. They freely confessed their debt 
 to him. They raised a shaft of stone and wrote on
 
 206 Mr. Jakes 
 
 it the story of what he did, how that he had exempli- 
 fied the love than which there is none greater. It is 
 a story worthy to stand, because whosoever shall pause 
 to read it, though he shall live a thousand years hence, 
 must go his way a better man. 
 
 " Nor are these all, many more, so intimately are 
 men in touch with one another, have been blessed 
 by the ministry of Phipps. In these may I not include 
 you, my friends, who listen now to my poor account? 
 Are you not in this instant conscious of an access of 
 good will? Thinking of Phipps are you not made 
 better disposed ? I believe I know that you are. 
 
 " I call it the ministry of Phipps, and that is the 
 point I am getting at. What I mean is no less than 
 that in his last sublime moments of life, that lowly 
 negro was a minister of Jesus the Christ, in the way 
 of the New Testament. Call it love, or good will, or 
 God's will, that sentiment which he caused to flow into 
 so many hearts was the very sentiment, both in man- 
 ner and matter, which Jesus died to bring into the 
 world. St. John calls it grace; Moses brought the 
 law, says St. John, but grace, the grace to give the 
 law effect, came by Jesus. A minister is a servant, 
 and as an ordinary servant brings you meat Phipps 
 brings you the saving grace, only with the difference 
 that whereas you may decline the meat, grace, brought 
 in that way, you may not decline, it possesses you 
 without asking your leave. Grace, love, good will, 
 God's will, these are but different names for the same 
 thing, and it is the very thing which all religions, from 
 the beginning, have tried to put in the hearts of men, 
 in order to their betterment. The Christian way of 
 bringing this about, the way taught by Jesus, is the 
 way Phipps pursued. Nobody, least of all himself,
 
 The Point of It 207 
 
 thought of the negro's sacrifice as a renewal of the 
 sacrifice of Calvary, but no matter. The effect was the 
 same, notwithstanding. The effect waited on no con- 
 fession of faith, no acknowledgment whatever. 
 
 " Ordained ? No, Phipps was not ordained, in the 
 common sense. He had never seen the inside of a 
 seminary, perhaps. He knew no definitions in theo- 
 logy. No bishop had ever laid hands on him. As 
 likely as not he had never once looked into the Bible, 
 and he knew the name of Jesus only as a word to 
 blaspheme with. He was a minister by his works, 
 and we shall not quarrel with his orders. The 
 supremely unselfish impulse which made him draw back 
 and let his friend go up the ladder first, that was his 
 sufficient ordination." 
 
 Once more Mr Jakes paused, and now you would 
 guess that he had finished. But no, he proceeded to 
 a sort of summing up. It was in a different manner, 
 however, he was more conscious, and he stumbled 
 considerably, especially over certain phrases. 
 
 " Such," he said, " is the dynamic of love. Emo- 
 tional validity I mean maxims of morality are devoid 
 of emotional validity. They served well enough while 
 yet men were children, because it is possible to make 
 children obedient, by coaxing them, or scaring them, 
 or otherwise. But men are no longer children and 
 can't be ruled so. They already know as much about 
 morality as you can teach them, but mere knowing 
 doesn't make them moral. In order to make them 
 moral, you must enliven your law with emotion, give 
 it emotional validity. Phipps might have gone to 
 school and learned all there is in the books about right 
 and wrong, and then gone forth and preached his learn- 
 ing with the tongues of men and of angels, and in the
 
 208 Mr. Jakes 
 
 end have done not a tithe as much to make men better 
 as he did in that one brief moment of sublime sacrifice. 
 Emotional validity I mean the dynamic of love asks 
 for no intellectual assent, no conscious belief, no faith. 
 Whoever takes up his cross and follows Jesus becomes, 
 by that, a dynamo of love, to generate love and drive it 
 into the hearts of other men. He need not give up 
 his life, as Phipps did, though it is by giving up his 
 life that he sets the highest seal on his ministry. In 
 the smaller, even in the smallest concerns of life he 
 may still be devoted to sacrifice, still be a dynamo send- 
 ing out love like a genial current to flow into the 
 hearts of other men." 
 
 The sermon ended so flatly and lamely, indeed, that 
 Dr. Robert, could he have known, must have trembled, 
 even though all else had gone so strangely well. For 
 the doctor had set great store by the ending, expecting 
 much of certain sounding expressions, concerning 
 which, when his boy muttered that their meaning 
 eluded him, he remarked that it was necessary to split 
 the ears of the groundlings. 
 
 There was a hitch over the benediction. The con- 
 gregation, having sung the last hymn, remained 
 standing, as the custom was, expectantly, with heads 
 bowed ; but Mr. Jakes had gone wool-gathering, to be 
 recalled only after an interval, by the uneasy shuffling 
 here and there. Luck was with him still, however, 
 people attributed his hesitancy once more to his deep 
 feeling, and set it down to his credit. When the bene- 
 diction was pronounced at last, people called it good. 
 
 Afton was won, and now that the services were 
 over, pressed forward delightedly to shake hands and 
 get acquainted. Squire Thornhill took his place by the 
 pulpit and did the honors, making the introductions
 
 The Point of It 209 
 
 with a flourish of pompous wit. Mr. Jakes was taken 
 wholly by surprise, even the searching foresight of 
 Dr. Robert had reckoned on no such ordeal, and made 
 very ill at ease ; he knew not in the least how to carry 
 his part, and dared venture scarcely a word in answer 
 to the greetings that came pouring over him like a 
 flood. A very flood it was, no other tongue but his 
 was tied. Mr. Jakes heard himself praised and con- 
 gratulated on every hand, and his sermon declared to 
 be fine, splendid, beautiful, lovely, sound, helpful and 
 what not. 
 
 The squire was as enthusiastic as anybody. 
 
 " Jakes," quoth he, " you must come up to my house 
 to tea Wednesday evening. You've suggested some 
 pretty keen thoughts, and I want to talk with you 
 about them. I want you to meet my family more 
 intimately. It'll do them and me good, and maybe it 
 won't do you any harm." 
 
 Compliments, especially where they fall in so copious 
 a shower, will sometimes affect bash fulness favorably, 
 and Mr. Jakes was feeling rather better until the 
 invitation to tea burst on him and filled him with 
 new alarm. What further unheard-of trial did it 
 portend ? He hadn't the faintest notion and he quickly 
 imagined the worst. No, he would thrust himself 
 into no such peril. He stammered out a declination, 
 frankly confessing, in his desperation, that he had 
 rather not. But Thornhill wouldn't listen. 
 
 " I know you're not a society man," he said, clapping 
 his pastor on the back. " I like you all the better for 
 that. We're not much for society, either. You'll find 
 no formality, none at all. Come up and make your- 
 self at home. No ice to break. You'll be glad you 
 came."
 
 2i o Mr. Jakes 
 
 And after all, that might prove true. Mr. Jakes 
 bethought him how that he had undertaken to do, with- 
 in reason, the things expected of him, and here was a 
 thing clearly expected and not on its face unreason- 
 able.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OMNIS AMANS 
 
 THE Thornhills, by all ordinary tokens, were the 
 highest of Afton's high life. They had a furnace in 
 their cellar and a piano in their front room. And they 
 kept a hired girl the year round. These were distinc- 
 tions. You would hear it more than broadly intimated 
 that certain things were easily to be had where a body 
 didn't take the trouble to pay for them, yet somehow 
 the Thornhills' distinctions remained distinguished. 
 There wasn't another furnace in the village and only 
 two in the whole county. A few families had an 
 organ, but none had a piano, while as for hired girls, 
 they were markedly exceptional. Once more, and 
 without opening your ears much, you might hear that 
 any number of girls had left the squire's roof because 
 they had to earn their wages a second time collecting 
 them; yet nevertheless the household always boasted 
 its hired girl, year in and year out. 
 
 The family were three in number, the squire him- 
 self aggressive and abounding in speech ; Mrs. Thorn- 
 hill, slim and silent and not very much interested in 
 anything; and Cecilia, who was their daughter and 
 only child. 
 
 Cecilia was twelve years old, and enormously accom-
 
 212 Mr. Jakes 
 
 plished for her day and generation. Her performances 
 on the piano were quite the wonder of that particular 
 corner of the world. She could play Silvery Waves 
 entire, even to that part which called for a sustained 
 trill with the third and fourth fingers, while the thumb 
 and remaining fingers were picking out the melody. 
 Have you ever tried to trill, on the piano, with your 
 third and fourth fingers? Do so, and you will begin to 
 understand how accomplished Cecilia was. Even her 
 illustrious namesake who brought the angel down 
 from heaven, would not easily have played Silvery 
 Waves all through without skipping. 
 
 Mr. Jakes thought this little girl very lovely indeed, 
 the first glimpse he caught of her. His bashfumess, 
 very much in evidence while the squire was presenting 
 him to the cold and colorless lady of the house, eased 
 much in the presence of the blooming child; his heart 
 went out to her as it might to a sweet flower suddenly 
 met with in a desert. But when she greeted him, with 
 airs and affectations, and especially when she played 
 Silvery Waves, somehow the bashfulness came back on 
 him worse than ever. It was too much like finding the 
 flower of the desert a paper imitation after all, correct 
 in form but lacking in essence. 
 
 After a very bad quarter of an hour in the company 
 of the whole family, the squire, with courtly unction, 
 asked Mrs. Thornhill if she would excuse them, where- 
 upon Mrs. Thornhill, not to be outdone, would, and 
 Mr. Jakes was led away, by his host, to the library. 
 That was another distinction, only a degree less 
 distinguished than the furnace, the piano, and the 
 perennial hired girl. There was nothing like it in 
 Afton. Most houses had no books in them but the 
 children's readers and arithmetics and geographies.
 
 Omnis Amans 213 
 
 There were possibly as many as four copies of 
 Webster's Unabridged, and Daniel the pensioner owned 
 a set of Appleton's Cyclopedia, which he never in the 
 world looked into, but which he was proud to speak 
 of as containing, like the Koran, all wisdom. What 
 was the use, protested Daniel, of a-clutterin' and a- 
 lumberin' up your house with four or five hundred 
 books, when you could have all the good of them in 
 twenty-five or thirty? But the squire chose to clutter 
 and lumber his house notwithstanding. His library, 
 not a small room, was lined with books. Nor did they 
 remain unread. Their owner spent most of his spare 
 time with them. He was really a bookish man. 
 
 " Light reading for a scholar and theologian," he 
 said, in mock deprecation, as he set out the easy-chair. 
 " I don't get to the bottom of things, as you learned 
 men do. I haven't the time, to say nothing of ability. 
 Here are the German transcendentalists." 
 
 He swept his hand over a shelf. Mr. Jakes, having 
 taken a seat, stared dumbly at the backs of the books. 
 
 " They are persona non gratce to the cloth, I dare- 
 say?" the squire went on, with a jocular nod. 
 
 He was looking at Mr. Jakes and Mr. Jakes, no 
 escape offering, nodded back. 
 
 " I got interested in them through Emerson," 
 Thornhill affably explained, spreading the while. " I 
 wanted to see what transcendentalism was like at its 
 source. But do you know, I never have been able to 
 get beyond Kant, or far with him, for that matter? 
 It seems to me like plunging into a deep sea, along 
 with an expert diver. Kant takes me down till I 
 almost lose myself, and come up dazed, with a ringing 
 in my ears. Fichte takes me still deeper, and I bring 
 back hardly any definite sensation except of discomfort
 
 214 
 
 and a feeling that I'm pretty small potatoes. And 
 Hegel, well, old Hegel takes me down so deep that 
 I rise to the surface bleeding at the nose, so to speak, 
 and I don't know whether I'm afoot or on horseback." 
 
 The squire burst into a loud laugh, and Mr. Jakes 
 smiled a faint, scared smile. Why shouldn't he be 
 scared ? What if he should be cornered into venturing 
 some sort of a rejoinder? But he wasn't, in a 
 moment his host was off again; he was wound up 
 and eager to display himself. 
 
 " By the way, Jakes," he said, " what is your 
 notion of the categorical imperative?" 
 
 The new minister had not come there to seem what 
 he wasn't, he was willing to confess that he had never 
 heard of the categorical imperative; but before he could 
 form the words, the squire was once more cantering 
 ahead. 
 
 " That's a delicate question, I suppose," he said. 
 " When a philosopher like Kant goes out of his way 
 to be kind to religion, it doesn't become a clergyman to 
 be harsh with him. But a mere layman like myself 
 need have no such scruples, and I say plainly, without 
 equivocation, that I regard the categorical imperative 
 as a cowardly evasion." 
 
 He brought this out denunciatorily. To add still 
 further emphasis, he tilted his heels a couple of inches 
 or so off the floor and came down on them in a 
 crunching manner. 
 
 " Emerson, Mr. Jakes," he declared, glowering 
 solemnly, " would have been no such coward. Where- 
 soever the light led, he followed. In that, at least, 
 he was greater than his master, if Kant was indeed in 
 any real sense his master."
 
 Omnis Amans 215 
 
 For a moment neither spoke, Thornhill looking 
 aggressively down and Mr. Jakes weakly up. Once 
 more the new minister was on the point of protesting 
 that he was being led beyond his knowledge, and once 
 more he was prevented. The squire turned abruptly 
 and swept his hand over another shelf with an eloquent 
 gesture. 
 
 " Emerson ! " he exclaimed, in tones which dripped 
 with reverence. " The grandest mind, the bravest 
 heart, the purest soul that God ever put in the human 
 form! Perhaps I ought to say, with one exception. 
 I will say, with one exception. I make that concession 
 to the Christian tradition." 
 
 He took down one of the volumes and turned the 
 leaves. 
 
 " Mr. Jakes," he said, " I'm going to pay you a 
 very high compliment, I don't well know how it could 
 be a higher. Your phrase, 'dynamic of love', reminds 
 me of Emerson. It is distinctly Emersonian, in my 
 opinion, the opinion, of course, of a simple, unlearned 
 layman," and the squire swelled especially under 
 this magnanimous burst of self-depreciation. 
 
 " Really," stammered Mr. Jakes, " I that is " 
 
 He was going to confess outright that the phrase 
 wasn't his at all, that it meant little or nothing to him, 
 the whole truth, in short; but Thornhill wouldn't 
 have it. 
 
 " I know, I know ! " he said. " You're too modest 
 to claim credit. I admire you for that. That's 
 Emersonian, too. Some say Emerson was vain, but 
 he wasn't. You and I, who know him by his books and 
 not by mere personal traits, who, in other words, know 
 him for what he really was, nobody can tell us he 
 was a vain man. He was superlatively a modest man, 
 in the best sense of the term. Of course true modesty
 
 2i 6 Mr. Jakes 
 
 doesn't tell a man to deny knowing what he knows 
 he knows. That's false modesty." 
 
 " And yet, Mr. Thornhill " 
 
 So far Mr. Jakes got with a purpose to disclaim 
 ever having read a word of Emerson's, when he was 
 headed off. 
 
 " Certainly not ! " cried the squire, and thumped the 
 table with his fist. " Certainly " 
 
 But just here it fell his turn to be headed off. Mrs. 
 Thornhill appeared in the doorway, like a thin sort of 
 ghost, announcing in a voice of ghostly calm that tea 
 was ready. Would they be pleased to step out ? 
 
 " Come, Jakes," said the squire, descending from 
 transcendental heights to the commonplace of hospit- 
 ality, and led out, as he had led in, marshaling his 
 guest to the dining-room. The table was square and 
 rather large and they had each of them a long side 
 so that they seemed far apart when they were down. 
 Mr. Jakes sat opposite the lovely Cecilia, and found her 
 scrutiny distinctly hard to bear. To be sure she was 
 too accomplished in the elegancies of the polite world 
 to stare at him directly, but she managed to keep an 
 eye on him pretty constantly, and to make him very 
 conscious. And particularly did the child's attention 
 serve to make him conscious of his clothes, perhaps 
 for the first time in his life he thought of them with 
 shame. He possessed but the one suit for all occasions, 
 the suit which had astonished Afton on the day of the 
 inaugural, a workingman's garb, and old at that. The 
 squire wore linen, fresh from the laundry, and his 
 coat was sleek and new, and Mr. Jakes felt the 
 difference, with Cecilia's eye upon him. 
 
 He was requested to ask the blessing and though the 
 expression was unfamiliar, he rightly guessed what it
 
 Omnis Amans 217 
 
 meant, and was not too embarrassed to bethink him to 
 render his little prayer in English, though Father 
 Peter's Latin grace leaped to his tongue. But just 
 at the end, quite involuntarily, and without knowing 
 what he did until it was done, he made the sign of the 
 cross. Nor did the slip pass unheeded. Cecilia, rais- 
 ing her downcast glance a little sooner than the others, 
 caught the strange gesture, and after that her scrutiny 
 was harder to bear than ever. 
 
 The squire was nowhere near done airing himself. 
 He talked and talked, occupying all the time. He 
 spoke most of Emerson, bringing him in at every pre- 
 text, making pretexts, indeed; but others received 
 his attention. He was loaded and primed to make an 
 impression on his guest, and he wandered far, from 
 the Donation of Constantine and the False Decretals 
 of Isidore, down to the Oxford movement and the new 
 revision. Hardly any field was overlooked, in fact. 
 He discussed literature in the manner of an adept. He 
 liked Thackeray better than Dickens, but considered 
 Dickens, in spots, the greatest creative genius in the 
 language. Shakespeare he deemed much overrated. 
 George Eliot was pretty good, for a woman, and Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward even better. However, he did not 
 wish to be understood as raving over Robert Elsmere. 
 Not by any means. Elsmere was, in fact, a poor char- 
 acter, poorly worked out. 
 
 Wouldn't Mr. Jakes have more tea? 
 
 No more, and these were about the only words the 
 minister was called on to utter. The Squire flowed 
 copiously, joyfully carrying the whole weight of the 
 conversation; and that was fortunate, they would 
 have got on but awkwardly, had any considerable part 
 of that weight fallen on Mr. Jakes. P"or now his
 
 21 8 Mr. Jakes 
 
 tongue was doubly tied. There was Cecilia furtively 
 eyeing him, but that was no longer the worst. Indeed, 
 Cecilia was quite forgotten, another person had en- 
 tered his life, within those few minutes, and blotted 
 out the sense of about all else. In the wink of an eye, 
 so to say, a new thread had been shot through the web 
 of his destiny, in much the most important thread yet. 
 
 The blessing acceptably asked, Mrs. Thornhill 
 tinkled a little bell and the hired girl came in with the 
 tea. Mr. Jakes sat with his back toward the kitchen, 
 and by that she came in behind him, so he did not see 
 her until she passed round the table and was setting her 
 burden down by her mistress' elbow. He caught a 
 glimpse of the moving figure, and looked up, the girl, 
 with all the candor of her species, was staring at him ; 
 and their eyes met. It was all over in an instant. Mr. 
 Jakes looked down straightway, but in the interval he 
 was become a changed man, inhabiting a different 
 country, with its new heaven and its new earth. He 
 was dazed and bewildered, knowing not what had hap- 
 pened to him, only that it was something momentous. 
 He had come there a complete stranger, except as hear- 
 say might inform him, to the mightiest of human pas- 
 sions. No doubt Cecilia had more understanding of 
 such matters than he, the better discernment to identify 
 those ineffable sensations which had come over him. 
 About all he could make of them was an astonishing 
 confusion, the most confounded in all his experience, 
 bitter and sweet all at once, in the midst of which he 
 seemed to be tossed about like a bit of cork in a 
 whirlpool. 
 
 The girl's name was Christine, though her name 
 didn't matter in the least, he knew it not, nor had 
 a thought about it; she was sufficiently identified unto
 
 Omnis Amans 219 
 
 him, for all eternity, by the look she had given him. 
 She was a great full-bosomed Swede, with flaxen hair 
 and pink cheeks, very handsome, in a large, animal 
 way, but neither did these potent charms much mat- 
 ter. Later, perhaps, when he should have brooded 
 over his passion, these peculiarly feminine attributes 
 might get to mean something to Mr. Jakes; for the 
 present it was only the eyes as they shed their radiance 
 over him, as they darted into the very center of his soul 
 he knew not what message, save that it thrilled him, 
 and stunned him, and made him a cork in a whirlpool, 
 not the bodily eyes (Mr. Jakes couldn't have told 
 you what color they were) but eyes become the mighty 
 means whereby deep speaketh unto deep. 
 
 He bolted his toast, and it might have been sole- 
 leather, for aught he knew to the contrary. He gulped 
 down his 'tea and tasted nothing. The squire's voice, 
 grown more and more boisterous with his rising delight 
 in himself, was as the roar of a distant cataract, or the 
 brawl of a noisy brook, meaningless. 'Thornhill was 
 all the time appealing to his guest in support of his 
 views, but always without waiting for a reply. He 
 was gladly ready to construe silence into assent. In no 
 way could Mr. Jakes have responded more satis- 
 factorily than by keeping still, and his absent manner, 
 what should it seem but a scholarly thoughtfulness ? 
 If the young man was more or less dumfounded, what 
 was that to wonder at, with all the wisdom of the ages 
 on parade before him? 
 
 When they were done with tea Mrs. Thornhill once 
 more suffered herself to be prevailed on, by her hus- 
 band's courtly persuasions, to excuse them, and they 
 filed back into the library, the squire quite at the 
 exuberant flood-tide of his discoursing, Mr. Jakes
 
 22O Mr. Jakes 
 
 knowing not in the least whether he walked on solid 
 floor or in the clouds. And still his manner was satis- 
 fying. He lay back in the easy-chair, outwardly calm 
 for all his inward confusion, and gazed up at the 
 squire and the books, and wore the air of being prop- 
 erly overwhelmed by these, though he saw absolutely 
 nothing, anywhere, but a pair of viking eyes, darting 
 messages. 
 
 He stayed till after midnight. He would have 
 stayed all night, so thoroughly did his spell rob him 
 of the power of initiative, had not the squire, who had 
 long since warmed to the point of calling him his dear 
 fellow, reluctantly brought the sitting to an end. 
 
 " My dear fellow," he said, " this is what I enjoy. I 
 could go on this way till morning. But life isn't made 
 up wholly of its joys. We have the morrow and its 
 duties to think of. So we'll say good-night, for this 
 time." 
 
 They parted at the front door, the squire lighting 
 his guest out, and gripping him cordially by the hand 
 by way of final compliment. 
 
 " Come up any time ! " he said. " Use my library 
 just as if it were your own. It's the library of an 
 unlearned layman, but you may find something in it 
 worth your while." 
 
 A singular illusion overtook Mr. Jakes. Of course 
 it was the squire's eyes that beamed on him in the light 
 of the hand-lamp held high ; but they darted Christine's 
 message all over again. And whose hand was it press- 
 ing his, if not Christine's? He trembled violently. 
 He was like one who holds the handles of a battery, 
 he could not let go though the shock shook him from 
 head to foot; Thornhill had to disengage himself at 
 last, by gentle force. It was all very pleasant for
 
 Omnis Amans 221 
 
 Thornhill, who had likewise his illusion. Was it not 
 all testimony to the tremendous impression he had 
 made on this young man ? Cecilia and her mother had 
 gone to bed, and it was better so. Cecilia, especially, 
 had Mr. Jakes held her hand in that clinging, electri- 
 fied fashion, could the accomplished child have failed 
 to draw unfortunate inferences ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 OMNIS AMANS AMENS 
 
 HE went home. Instinct was enough to direct his 
 heedless footsteps thither, conscious volition was 
 wholly in suspension. Do you rightly consider Mr. 
 Jakes's peculiar position ? Your average man come to 
 his age will have been in love a score of times already, 
 but it was this man's first attack. Your average man, 
 having learned by experience the awkwardness of the 
 business, will be on his guard, his heart warily forti- 
 fied against the shaft which may strike him any mo- 
 ment. But this man, not forewarned, foreseeing noth- 
 ing, fearing least of all the thing he had most to fear, 
 had come with his tender heart on his sleeve, and be- 
 hold, it was pierced through and through. 
 
 He had no inclination to go to bed, late as was the 
 hour, he sat him down, in the dark, to meditate. He 
 would force himself to meditate, to take thought of his 
 situation, to look his new trial fairly in the face. No, 
 that wasn't the needful thing, either, what he needed 
 was to put the thought of his situation away from him, 
 to forget all about it, to force himself to meditate 
 on other matters. Very well, then! Before he went 
 up to the squire's he had been wondering what he 
 should preach about next Sunday; that was a very 
 
 222
 
 Omnis Amans Amens 223 
 
 proper matter, he would fix his meditations upon it. 
 
 What should he preach about next Sunday? 
 
 About two wide eyes, darting messages of tremend- 
 ous import! Anyway his thoughts, start them as he 
 would, command them as he would, came to nothing 
 else. 
 
 He lighted his lamp, with a view to writing, some- 
 times a man will more easily control his thoughts if 
 he writes. But hereupon an extraordinary thing 
 happened, he raised his eyes, casually, to a print 
 above his table which had hitherto been a portrait of 
 Beethoven, and it was Christine. It brought him his 
 first conscious impression of her face as a whole; as 
 yet he had been sensible only of the eyes. Memory 
 of its own motion put her heavy roll of flaxen hair in 
 place of the master musician's shocky bristles; filled 
 out his sunken cheeks plumply, and pinkly; made of 
 his sad, sagging mouth a rosebud, on rather a large 
 scale, for even infatuation could not picture Christine 
 as a delicate creature, she had a wholesome mouth, 
 but not too small to take in, without inconvenience, 
 the copious nourishment which her robust person re- 
 quired. Mr. Jakes beheld the lineaments of Christine 
 taking form above him there, and he could not with- 
 draw his eyes. He sat an hour thus, writing never a 
 word, suffering dumbly. 
 
 After about an hour his lamp went out. It waned, 
 little by little stealing his vision away. Just at the last 
 it flared up suddenly, and was gone. The vision van- 
 ished in a burst of light. He sprang to his feet and 
 rushed out into the night. 
 
 Where was he going? Useless to ask him, for he 
 knew not. But the purpose which he had soon re- 
 vealed itself, in a few minutes he was back at the
 
 224 Mr. Jakes 
 
 squire's house, staring up at the windows, as he had 
 stared up at the print, powerless to take his eyes off. 
 They were all dark except one, but that one, was it not 
 a star of hope ? It was an upper window, at the corner 
 of the house, and beyond it a light burned. How 
 should he know, or so much as guess, that it was 
 Cecilia's window, and that the light burned because, 
 with all her accomplishments, she dared not go to sleep 
 in the dark? No, the wish fathered the thought most 
 grateful, it was Christine's room. Christine herself 
 was beyond that thin curtain. She was everywhere, 
 anywhere, wherever he directed his gaze; but in an 
 especial sense she was there, in that room. 
 
 He stood until the dawn straggled up out of the 
 East to put out this vision as the waning lamp had put 
 out the other. Before the dawn the inner light gave 
 way, and the window was like all the rest, cold and 
 gray and unresponsive to the yearnings of his heart. 
 Then people began to stir, throughout the village, for 
 Afton rose early. He heard a wagon clatter in the 
 distance, and a fear of being seen seized him. 
 
 Is there in all the catalogue of afflictions the like of 
 lovesickness ? 
 
 Probably not. Anyway, it is very afflicting, if you 
 have it at all bad. Its symptoms are various, and not 
 more various than distressful. At times your heart 
 will stand still. Again, you suffocate. Yet again, 
 your head bursts into a number of fragments. It is a 
 paralysis, but without the friendly numbness and in- 
 difference, for lovesickness renders you only the more 
 acutely sensitive. You heartily wish you were dead, 
 and you think seriously of pistol, poison, or hemp ; but 
 nothing comes of it, for the nnkindest part of the ail- 
 ment is a certain melancholy delectableness in the last
 
 Omnis Amans Amens 225 
 
 analysis, whereby life becomes doubly precious. 
 There remains only the hope of starving to death, for 
 you abhor food as nothing else. Mr. Jakes ate never 
 a morsel during more than twenty-four hours after 
 leaving the squire's table. 
 
 But for him there was more than lovesickness. 
 Though that should be a greater agony to his emo- 
 tional, trustful, unfortified bosom than ever it was 
 to another, still it wasn't all, or even the worst. The 
 worst was his conscience. 
 
 What was this stupendous wretched thing which had 
 come upon him? Crouched among Squire Thornhill's 
 shrubbery, watching the night out in dumb misery, he 
 began to suspect; and by morning, as he crept away, 
 fearful and ashamed, he more than suspected. He 
 knew, indeed; not as well as a man of larger experi- 
 ence might, but well enough to be put in a torment of 
 self-accusation. 
 
 The littleness of his experience, that worked might- 
 ily against him all through. What acquaintance had 
 he with love in the last phase whereby it justifies it- 
 self according to the purpose of creation? None that 
 was any good to him now, his acquaintance went no 
 further than the sordid perversion of love which is 
 vice. Vice he knew only too well, having dwelt in 
 the very midst of it. Only too well he knew what 
 brought vicious men and women together down there 
 in the slums. Because he had knowledge of no love 
 but that, his conscience pricked him terribly, love 
 utterly selfish, utterly carnal. His accusing thought 
 was that he was drawn to this woman as vicious men 
 were drawn to women, and it made him out guilty of 
 the basest possible treason against his mission. He 
 had vowed always to crucify the carnal self, always to
 
 226 Mr. Jakes 
 
 exhibit in his own person the spectacle of self devoted 
 to sacrifice ; yet here he was helplessly in the clutch of a 
 passion the most selfish, the most carnal. 
 
 Yes, helplessly, no less. Once, in the night, there 
 flashed out of the darkness of his despair a gleam of 
 consolation. 
 
 " It is a trial, sent to strengthen me ! " he exclaimed. 
 " I shall rise above it, and be the fitter for my work ! " 
 He thought of Jesus tempted. " Behind me, Satan ! " 
 he said, and stood up, in body and in spirit. 
 
 But in that instant there was a movement of the 
 curtain at the window he was watching. Perhaps it 
 was the doing of some vagrant breeze, or even no more 
 than the figment of his fancy, none the less it brought 
 him to his knees. His new-found courage fled igno- 
 miniously. His lofty resolution was forgotten. All 
 through him, driving everything before it, surged the 
 thought that Christine's hand had moved the curtain, 
 the hope that she was about to appear to him. She did 
 not appear. The curtain hung motionless. But Mr. 
 Jakes was helpless. When, after a little, he recalled 
 the courage that had come to him, the resolution he 
 had formed, he strove to renew them, it was in vain ; 
 he could not rise, he could only grovel on the ground. 
 
 He knew what it meant, knew that unless a won- 
 der should be wrought in his behalf, he was lost. That 
 was the sum of it, he might as well account himself 
 lost already, for what wonder was to be expected in 
 behalf of one found, on trial, so pitifully wanting? 
 
 The day came on, and Mr. Jakes cowered before its 
 light. He shrank away from it, into his bedroom, 
 the inmost apartment of his house. 'He cast himself 
 down on his couch and lay there like a log, for hours. 
 In time he became thirsty, before long his throat
 
 Omnis Amans Amens 227 
 
 burned with thirst, yet he dared not stir out for 
 water. There was stale water in the pail in the front 
 room, and he would have been glad of that, but the 
 front room had windows opening on the street, and 
 he was afraid. He fancied eyes were waiting out there 
 to look into his soul and discover how bad and aban- 
 doned he was. No, they needn't look into his soul, it 
 must of necessity stand proclaimed in his face what 
 sort of a traitor he was, what sort of a vile impostor, 
 his only safety was in hiding his face. Though his 
 thirst should consume him, it were easier endured than 
 the shame of being found out. 
 
 Twice somebody knocked at the door and, on get- 
 ting no response, went peering in at the windows. He 
 could hear them tramping about the house, hear them 
 discussing his whereabouts, once it was children, and 
 once it was womenfolks. He felt that they were peer- 
 ing in, and he trembled lest they somehow catch sight 
 of him. 
 
 But that wasn't to last always, there came upon 
 him at length a different fear, burst upon him, for it 
 was immensely sudden in its beginning. All at once, 
 out of nowhere, a terrific question was shouted at him : 
 What if he should be prevented from getting Chris- 
 tine? 
 
 A different fear, distinctly. He no longer quaked 
 and cowered, in the passing of a second he was the 
 elemental man perceiving his danger and springing up 
 to ward it off. It was the danger of losing his woman, 
 the woman his elemental manhood bade him get, not 
 stopping to consider means, whether fair or foul. 
 What were means to him, now? Springing up, Mr. 
 Jakes saw himself, for a moment, in the little glass over 
 the wash-basin, saw the savage in him plainly re-
 
 228 Mr. Jakes 
 
 vealed, nay, worse than the savage, the very beast ; and 
 he exulted. Let the world beware ! Let none venture 
 to stand in his way! His conscience had cast off its 
 leash, and he was free to do his elemental worst! 
 
 No, not quite that, either. His conscience wasn't 
 altogether done with him, after all. He stepped out of 
 the house and at the threshold met two little children, a 
 boy and a girl. Something told him it was they who 
 had knocked awhile ago, and then they told him so 
 themselves, or the girl did. She was the older and 
 did the talking, comically puffed up with her import- 
 ance. They had brought him a gift, and found him 
 not at home ; now they were come again. 
 
 " Mother baked pies to-day," lisped the girl, " and 
 so she sent you one. It's mince, but if you'd rather 
 have apple, Mr. Jakes, I'll take this back and bring you 
 another." 
 
 No, his conscience wasn't done with him. 
 
 " Thank you, the mince will do very well," he said, 
 and smiled so unsavagely that the children, looking up 
 into his face, were moved to smile too, and fell into a 
 confusion of bashfulness and scampered off. 
 
 Mr. Jakes went back into the house with the pie in 
 his hand and was more troubled than ever. He bowed 
 his head and wept. After considerable of that, he sat 
 up and wrote some words on a paper : 
 
 " There may be some who will ask why I should kill 
 myself. It is because I suffer so, and can see no end 
 of suffering." 
 
 He laid the paper in a conspicuous place on the table 
 and went out once more. 
 
 The evening was still and damp and close, and from 
 the lush grasses mosquitoes swarmed up in millions 
 to make high revel. Given weather like that, with
 
 Omnis Amans Amens 229 
 
 thick grasses to breed in, and mosquitoes are no joke. 
 You are glad to shun them. You regret the business 
 which takes you abroad, unless it is urgent you stay 
 at home, behind your screens. And so Mr. Jakes met 
 nobody. 
 
 Or almost nobody. It wouldn't do to say nobody, 
 because his wavering, uncertain course (it proceeded, 
 on the whole, toward the squire's house, but deviated 
 a good deal, and even doubled back on itself) hadn't 
 taken him a great way until he met a woman hurrying 
 along with a shawl over her head. The mosquitoes 
 were amply enough to make anybody hurry who wasn't 
 daft. The woman beat them off with one hand, and 
 with the other drew the shawl closely about her face, 
 it were better to smother than be eaten up. 
 
 And this woman was Christine. 
 
 Queer stories are told of the Indian manner of woo- 
 ing, how lacking in reserve it is, or was. Claim is 
 made that in certain tribes the enamored brave was 
 wont, in aboriginal days, to discover his passion by 
 knocking the object of it on the head with a club. 
 That may be only a yarn, yet there is reason to believe 
 that the primal Indian, suddenly emerging from his 
 shell of culture, is apt to go about this important busi- 
 ness in a way all his own. Mr. Jakes had lain for 
 hours under a torturesome vision, pictured out of a 
 heated imagination, and here, all at once, the living 
 reality of it had risen up before him. What was con- 
 science or anything else to stay the storm of passion 
 thereupon let loose? How was he likely to proceed, 
 if not elementally, in the Indian fashion? They had 
 come within two paces of each other when first he 
 recognized her ; on the instant, without ado, he sprang
 
 230 Mr. Jakes 
 
 at her, uttering some incoherent, animal cry, and 
 caught her in his arms. 
 
 The fervid lover, especially in books, is greatly given 
 to crushing his beloved in his arms. Mr. Jakes was 
 fervid enough, and did his part, but Christine wasn't 
 cut out for hers, either bodily or in spirit, she was 
 in both respects too burly. However, she was con- 
 siderably jostled by the onset, so unexpected and so 
 energetic, a little more, indeed, and she must have 
 been quite bowled over; for a moment she sprawled 
 helplessly, while Mr. Jakes lifted and tugged at her 
 frantically, as if he would bear her away. His strength 
 was multiplied by madness, but it was unequal to his 
 purpose, once she had gathered herself together. It 
 was in no weakling grip he held her, but she rose up 
 and shook him off, as some magnificent creature of the 
 forest might shake off an attacking hound. 
 
 She left the greater portion of her waist in his hands, 
 the shawl had fallen off in the very beginning; she 
 confronted him with her superb shoulders and bosom 
 bare, and the sight drove him wilder than ever. He 
 was lower than the Indian, once more, a beast. Like 
 a hungry beast he rushed upon her, with a fierce snarl 
 as if in his desperate desire he would tear her in pieces. 
 
 But he tore her in no pieces further, he did not so 
 much as lay a finger on her. It was tolerably light 
 yet, and when he was come near to her, so near that 
 his hot face was all but touching hers, he caught her 
 eye, and it made him quail. It was the very eye which 
 had enchained him in the first instance, that viking 
 eye, so soft then, but now so hard, so like the steel of 
 a sword. There lay in it a fearlessness, a calm con- 
 fidence, a haughty defiance, but these were not the
 
 Omnis Amans Amens 231 
 
 \vorst; the worst was the look of supreme disdain, of 
 unutterable detestation. Many waters, they say, can- 
 not quench love, but a look of that sort is very dampen- 
 ing. 
 
 His mood changed as swiftly as a thought passes. 
 He was minded no more to woo her by violence. In- 
 stead of that he would coax her, in the manner of the 
 cultivated man. 
 
 He held out his arms to her. " Come ! " he cried, in 
 a melting tone. 
 
 She laughed in his face, witheringly, insultingly. 
 
 " I see myself ! " she sneered, with cool irony. 
 
 Then she left him. Without a trace of embarrass- 
 ment, much less of fear, she went back and picked up 
 her shawl and wrapped it about her shoulders; and 
 when she had done that, she proceeded on her way 
 as if nothing had happened. 
 
 Lovesickness has been known to take its departure 
 as suddenly and mysteriously as ever it comes on. Mr. 
 Jakes stared blankly after Christine till her stalwart 
 figure was quite lost to sight, the mosquitoes settled 
 thickly on his face and hands and drank their fill of 
 his blood, but he heeded them not. The seven devils 
 were passing out of his bosom, as the girl was passing 
 out of his vision, presently they were gone, and he 
 was cured. 
 
 He went home. Night had set in, by now, and he 
 struck a light, to discover that he still held in his hand 
 the remnant of Christine's waist. He laughed and 
 thrust it into the stove, it was cotton, and light and 
 dry, and made excellent kindling a little later. He pre- 
 pared himself a cup of tea and drank it. He brought 
 out a stout loaf of bread, and ate fully half of it, greed- 
 ily, though it was dry. Then his eye discovered the
 
 232 Mr. Jakes 
 
 mince pie which the children had brought and he fell 
 upon it and devoured it every crumb. 
 
 A man is always hungry after a violent fever. 
 
 Very refreshing, to be filled in that way. If any- 
 body knows peace, he is the man who fills his belly 
 after twenty-four hours of fasting. Moreover there 
 was for Mr. Jakes the relief of having a great weight 
 lifted off him. He drew deep breaths and considered 
 how glorious it was to be free. 
 
 Not for long, though, there was plenty of trouble 
 still, when he came, as inevitably he must, to think 
 what he had done, and what the upshot of it might be. 
 That was the rub, what the upshot might be. Would 
 Christine inform against him? Had there been wit- 
 nesses, were there others to inform against him? 
 Such questions were not long in getting themselves 
 asked, and how should they fail to make him very un- 
 comfortable indeed? 
 
 Mr. Jakes was not too innocent to understand that he 
 had done a deed which the laws of men denounced 
 an infamous crime. In his experience he had known 
 a poor fellow sent to prison for life for doing no more, 
 and only by going to prison escaping death at the 
 hands of a furious mob. What kind of an outlook did 
 this leave? Bad enough. More and more distinctly 
 could Mr. Jakes see himself in the place of the wretch 
 who, for no worse a deed, had barely got off with his 
 life by going to spend it all in ignominious cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 His message to the world lay on the table where he 
 had left it. He did not notice it at once, when he 
 did he crumpled up the paper and threw it in the stove. 
 He might kill himself, even yet, but he would leave 
 no mushy message behind.
 
 Omnis A mans Amens 233 
 
 He discussed the probabilities, trying to look the 
 situation fairly in the face. 
 
 Probably Christine would inform against him. 
 Probably she had already done so. Probably she had, 
 or would, tell the squire. The squire was a magistrate 
 and due process would issue forthwith, if it hadn't 
 already issued. In a short time the Reverend Mr. 
 Jakes would be behind the bars, or hanging dead by 
 his neck from some tree. He tried to deny the prob- 
 ability of these things, he could not. With the mem- 
 ory of that look in Christine's eyes, it was impossible 
 to expect a better outcome, Christine would do her 
 worst. 
 
 He thought of flight. That was the first expedient 
 he considered, the most natural and obvious. But 
 whither? Back to Dr. Robert? No, no! he hadn't 
 the heart to meet that good, true man, with his sense of 
 guilt upon him. Not there, rather to the forest, his 
 mother, who never reproached him. Memories of the 
 forest came sweetly to him. He thought of the free 
 wilds and declared, in his trouble, that the haunts of 
 men had nothing so worthy to offer him. So he made 
 up his mind. And there wasn't a moment to lose. 
 Most likely the minions of the law were even now 
 coming after him, they must find their bird flown. 
 
 He snatched up his hat and darted out. 
 
 The highways were empty and the houses dark, if 
 people were not asleep they were at all events very 
 tranquil, and that was comfortably significant. 'Evi- 
 dently they knew not what had happened, or if they 
 knew, were not disposed to violent measures. Mr. 
 Jakes found the silence most reassuring, and he was 
 further reassured when he reached the squire's house, 
 for it was dark too, from cellar to garret. He could
 
 234 Mr- Jakes 
 
 hear Cecilia warbling at the piano, and the sound fell 
 upon his ear agreeably, not for its own sake but for 
 what it indicated. No turmoil there, no hurried writ- 
 ing up of papers, no setting forth of officers in grim 
 haste. 
 
 The tranquillity all about him served to still his fears, 
 and that done, there was another remembrance ready 
 to thrust itself into his mind, a remembrance likewise 
 out of his life in the wicked city. Likewise it had to 
 do with a fellow whom a woman accused, but he 
 stoutly defended himself, denied everything, and final- 
 ly made the woman out a great liar. In that connec- 
 tion Mr. Jakes had heard it laid down as a rule of the 
 law that no man should be adjudged guilty of a crime 
 of that character on the testimony of the woman 
 alone. Was it not a comforting thing to recall? Why 
 should he run away, then ? He had only to deny every- 
 thing, it would be his word against Christine's, and 
 the benefit of the doubt was his. 
 
 He halted and faced about and went back to his 
 house. 
 
 He was willing to lie, have no doubt on that head. 
 He was willing to lie, and bethought himself, deliber- 
 ately and knowing full well what he was about, be- 
 thought himself what manner of lie he should tell, 
 and was exceedingly glad to find that a very simple, 
 easily managed lie would answer. He had only to 
 deny everything, only to set his word squarely against 
 Christine's, there were no devious windings to get 
 lost in.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 ANOTHER VIKING 
 
 POLICE as well as other men, stand ready to testify 
 that the way of a woman is curious. Fallen under the 
 greatest wrong that can be done her, she will often, 
 perhaps oftenest, choose to conceal , her injury and 
 say nothing about it to anyone. Of course it is her 
 misfortune and not at all her fault, and misfortune 
 is nothing to be ashamed of ; still she will be ashamed. 
 She will burn with resentment, yet suffer in silence, 
 lest that which she deems a worse thing befall her, 
 and this worse thing is publicity. And that is why, 
 where she tells anybody, it is last of all the law. The 
 processes of the law are cruelly public, and for that 
 alone, to say nothing of other reasons, will she shun 
 them. If she seeks redress, it is by channels apart from 
 the law, by unlawful channels even. Christine never 
 breathed a word to the squire, or to any soul in Afton ; 
 but the very next day she went home to her brother, 
 Thor Torrelson, a farmer about six miles out, and 
 told him. 
 
 Mr. Jakes, meanwhile, was staying closely at home, 
 hardly venturing into his field, much less the high- 
 ways and market-place. But his timidity grew less 
 when nothing happened, and when another Sabbath 
 came, he mounted his pulpit and preached. The wil- 
 
 235
 
 236 Mr. Jakes 
 
 lingness to lie was in his heart and it gave him a front 
 of brass, more and more as the sense of personal peril 
 wore off, people commented on the marked improve- 
 ment in his manner, while as for the matter of his ser- 
 mon, it left nothing to be desired. He looked out 
 over his congregation and knew that nothing against 
 him had come to their ears, and out of his thankful- 
 ness he was rarely gracious. He smiled and shook 
 hands and chatted like a different man, and sent his 
 flock home much pleased with him. Moreover, he 
 was pleased with himself, possibly he wouldn't be 
 called on to lie, after all. He was willing, if need be, 
 still he would much rather not. 
 
 But though he should be safe with his own people, 
 there was the larger public for Mr. Jakes to fret him- 
 self about. The godless majority, the publicans and 
 sinners of Afton, how stood it with them ? Somehow, 
 as often as he thought of the publicans and sinners, 
 and that was oftener and oftener, he couldn't help but 
 imagine dire things. He knew there must be a letter 
 from Dr. Robert waiting for him in the post-office, 
 .and, though he framed other excuses for himself, 
 the truth was he dared not go after it. He shrank 
 from encountering those cynical, offish, unsym- 
 pathetic men who were not only ready but eager to 
 think ill of any minister, a cardinal article of whose 
 faith was a distrust of all religious profession. To be 
 sure, if the congregation had heard nothing, there was 
 small chance of the public at large having heard aught, 
 but for all that he feared the publicans and sinners, as 
 if they, with their skeptical, eyes, might see through 
 him and discover the spot on his soul. He let the 
 letter lie all the week. Sunday brought its access of 
 new assurance and he resolved to go over on Monday.
 
 Another Viking 237 
 
 When Monday came he wavered and put it off till 
 Tuesday. On Tuesday he wasn't ready, either, and 
 put it off once more, till Wednesday. Wednesday he 
 went. 
 
 He calculated his hour to a nicety. There was one 
 mail a day, due to arrive at 10 o'clock in the morning, 
 that, of course, was the hour of hours least desir- 
 able for his purpose. But as this was the busiest, so, 
 by the law of reaction, the hours immediately follow- 
 ing were the dullest, between n and 12 o'clock the 
 vicinity of the post-office was usually deserted. Mr. 
 Jakes waited till half past 1 1 before setting out, yet 
 when he turned into the main street he beheld a great 
 crowd waiting. 
 
 What did it portend? 
 
 He was quick to suspect the worst. That the mail 
 might be late, that Tronson the carrier, though not 
 often found waiting, was subject to mishap, these 
 the most natural reflections to a calm mind were not 
 for Mr. Jakes. The lingering crowd alarmed him pro- 
 foundly, he construed it to bode mischief. Why were 
 they waiting, unless 
 
 Great God, perhaps they were going to hang him 
 there and then! 
 
 He came on, however, whatever his fate the power 
 was not in him to evade it by flight; and the way 
 people looked at him wasn't calculated to lessen his 
 concern. He would take his oath they had never 
 looked at him so before, a sneering distrust he had 
 seen in their faces, even a certain hostility, but now 
 there was more. Besides, why should his arrival be 
 productive of so undeniable a stir? He distinctly 
 heard several voices cry out, excitedly : " There he 
 comes ! "
 
 238 Mr. Jakes 
 
 He advanced boldly, possibly it was an Indian in- 
 stinct which kept him from showing the white feather 
 no matter how badly scared he was ; and got as far as 
 the door of the post-office. People still wore that un- 
 wonted look, but they fell back to let him pass, and 
 none spoke to him until just as he was entering. 
 There a blockily built man, with a thick blond beard, 
 stood suddenly forth in a threatening manner, there 
 was an angry light in his blue eyes, and an ominous 
 knitting of his bushy brows. 
 
 " Your name is Jakes ? " he said, with a strong 
 Scandinavian accent. 
 
 Yes, it was Jakes, no disputing that. The crowd 
 pressed up, they were publicans and sinners, almost 
 entirely. 
 
 " My name is Torrelson," the man went on. " I'm 
 brother to Christine Torrelson. You know what this 
 is for," and he snatched a horsewhip from under his 
 coat and fetched it across Mr. Jakes's face. 
 
 Here was easily the most extraordinary incident 
 that had ever taken place in Afton. People held their 
 breath. For once the Fates had favored their corner 
 of the pool with a stone whose proportions were al- 
 ready respectable, and not unlikely to become posi- 
 tively vast. For of course the end was not yet. What 
 would Jakes do about it ? that was the question more 
 or less definitely present in every mind. 
 
 What Jakes would do he did quickly, almost too 
 quickly for the spectacular effect. About the next the 
 gaping, breathless crowd knew, Thor Torrelson lay on 
 his back in the sand of the street, unconscious, with 
 blood oozing from his nose and mouth. 
 
 Jakes had felled him like an ox, that was what Jakes 
 had done. Some would have it, discussing the affair
 
 Another Viking 239 
 
 afterwards, that the blow landed on Thor's nose, while 
 others were confident that the point of his jaw caught 
 the impact; but that was only a minor detail, any- 
 way. As to the main fact there could be no quibbling, 
 it went into history clean-cut and untouched of 
 doubt. The sturdy Thor Torrelson, sinewy and sea- 
 soned, had gone down before Jakes's fist, and was 
 helpless to rise. 
 
 Afton was stunned. Men seemed to themselves to be 
 dreaming. They were awakened by a voice calling 
 down loudly from over their heads. It was Squire 
 Thornhill's voice. He had his office up there. 
 
 " Bully for you, Jakes ! " he shouted enthusiastically. 
 " I saw the whole thing. You served him just right. 
 He made a cowardly attack on you. I hope you've 
 knocked his head off ! " 
 
 Then the squire came racing down the stairs and 
 rushed up and clapped his pastor on the back in an 
 exceedingly gratulatory manner, and that couldn't 
 help but affect public sentiment. Thornhill might not 
 be the best liked personage in the village, but all the 
 same he stood as the embodiment of law, in virtue of 
 his magisterial office ; and when he gave in his appro- 
 bation, so unequivocally, on such occasion, it was apt 
 to be decisive. When the squire clapped Mr. Jakes 
 on the back in token of his gratification, publicans and 
 sinners followed suit, figuratively. A fighting parson ? 
 After all, nothing appeals to the heart of the ungodly 
 more powerfully than a fighting parson, the un- 
 godly enjoy seeing the old Adam rising superior to 
 the feeble restraints of clerical consecration, to dis- 
 credit them. Then, too, who isn't fond of any sort of 
 a good fighter, be he parson or not? They carried 
 Torrelson inside, and noted how long it took him to
 
 240 Mr. Jakes 
 
 come out of his trance, and their esteem for Mr. Jakes 
 rose fast and high. Sundry bucks, of sporting ten- 
 dencies, talked of getting the new minister to give 
 them lessons in boxing. 
 
 And the new minister himself, meanwhile? 
 
 Nobody in all that throng was more astonished 
 than he. He stared vacantly at the prostrate figure, 
 if he were actually wondering how the man hap- 
 pened to be lying there, Mr. Jakes wouldn't stare 
 much differently. And at the touch of the squire's 
 hand he jumped, as he had ofttimes jumped at the 
 touch of some lumberjack, though 'not with great 
 violence, his face was only slightly contorted, and 
 instead of yelling he gave a sort of moan. But in the 
 next moment he faced about abruptly, wavered just 
 perceptibly, and then made off at a fast walk which 
 was almost a dog-trot. All eyes followed him, of 
 course. They saw him reach the corner where, if he 
 was going home, he should turn, and, instead of turn- 
 ing, keep on, straight ahead. A little further and 
 they lost him, but not for good. A mile and a half 
 out the road was visible as it mounted over a hill. 
 All eyes watched the hill and saw Mr. Jakes emerge, 
 he was running. 
 
 There were no services in the Unitarian church the 
 following Sunday. Officially it was given out that 
 Mr. Jakes had been called away by important business, 
 but of course you might believe that or not, as you 
 chose. The Unitarians, while asserting themselves 
 guardedly and with manifest reservations, clearly 
 wished it to be understood that Mr. Jakes had come 
 back, after a short run, taken wholly for the sake 
 of the exercise (who didn't know that he went in very 
 largely for exercise?), but later in the day had been
 
 Another Viking 241 
 
 called away. That, too, you might or might not be- 
 lieve. Afton at large was not without its considerable 
 doubts, Mr. Jakes hadn't acted just like a man whose 
 chief thought was of exercise. If he hadn't acted 
 like a man out of his wits, then Afton at large would 
 eat its hat. 
 
 But there was a more momentous question, was he 
 coming back ? Certainly he was, the Unitarians made 
 answer; just as soon as his business was attended to, 
 he would return and resume regular services. His 
 absence might extend over a few weeks, perhaps, but 
 more likely only a few days. And Afton at large hoped 
 the Unitarians might be right, everybody, for one 
 reason or another, wanted Mr. Jakes back. 
 
 'He came. It was the succeeding Tuesday, toward 
 evening, when Afton beheld his face once more. A 
 stranger brought him, driving a team of bronchos, 
 which he lodged at the livery-stable for the night; 
 and the word went out that he was the French doctor 
 from Bear Creek. He spent his time with Mr. Jakes, 
 and at intervals, until a late hour, they two could be 
 heard singing together. The singing wasn't half bad, 
 and some of the neighbors sat up awhile to listen to it. 
 
 Early next morning the stranger drove away, alone.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 UNTO THE GENTILES FOOLISHNESS 
 
 SUCH untoward incidents right at the start were 
 not helpful to Mr. Jakes's mission. Scandal is never 
 busier or swifter than in a little village, even though, 
 in order to find anything to speak of, it has to make 
 much ado about nothing; and his affairs were con- 
 siderably better than nothing. Afton speedily guessed 
 out a complete history of the Torrelson encounter, 
 a number of complete histories, in fact, for wasn't 
 one man's guess as good as another's? People w r ere 
 free to believe what they liked, and they made the 
 fullest use of their freedom. Absurd, contradictory, 
 all else to make them incredible, the reports were, 
 but whatever they might be in other respects, they were 
 always damaging. The mildest version, the version 
 which the pastor's warmest adherents in his own 
 society rested on, even that admitted that Mr. Jakes 
 had got himself into some sort of a woman-scrape, and 
 wasn't a woman-scrape the most damaging thing in the 
 world ? 
 
 Yet living the scandal down wasn't wholly uphill 
 work, after all there were favoring declivities, so to 
 say. It was a poor sort of a help, perhaps, but a help 
 nevertheless, that the very persons who exulted most 
 
 242
 
 Unto the Gentiles Foolishness 243 
 
 in his downfall from grace, who conceived the worst 
 stories about him, were at the same time the persons 
 who could least help respecting the manner in which 
 he had vindicated his manhood. Mr. Jakes took no 
 credit for that, would have gladly confessed to any- 
 body that it was the merest accident, yet credit he got 
 for it, notwithstanding, and it made the living down 
 of the scandal easier. In every rallying-place of the 
 publicans and sinners the parson would be raked fore 
 and aft with a hot fire of calumny, but sooner or later 
 there would be voices raised to commend the fighting- 
 man he had shown himself to be. That he had be- 
 trayed Torrelson's pretty sister, these men couldn't 
 be got to doubt, but after all, what of it ? Apart from 
 the hypocrisy of a minister being the guilty party, this 
 was no very serious crime, some even thought it no 
 crime at all ; and crime or no crime, the lad who could 
 put up his dukes in such a fashion wasn't to be despised 
 utterly. 
 
 Squire Thornhill's attitude was not so very different, 
 and it helped, too. " Are we a lot of Puritans? " the 
 squire would ask, when other Unitarians made demur, 
 and inasmuch as the name of Puritans was a hissing 
 and a byword to this liberal sect, the question had a 
 strongly silencing effect. Not that Thornhill admitted 
 Mr. Jakes's guilt, on the contrary, he had taken the 
 trouble to go himself and ask the Torrelsons what 
 the matter was, and having got nothing out of them 
 that even remotely squinted toward an accusation, 
 was convinced of Mr. Jakes's innocence of all inten- 
 tional wrong; but even granting the other thing (so the 
 squire put the case) why should they mind ? Ministers 
 weren't perfect any more than other men. Granting 
 even that something quite deplorable had taken place,
 
 244 Mr. Jakes 
 
 it remained a fact that Mr. Jakes was doing a great 
 work for pure religion, and might be expected, if 
 suffered to develop, to do yet a greater. 
 
 It was true Mr. Jakes had made a hit. Everybody 
 declared, though some might declare it grudgingly, 
 that his sermons were a power. Persons who had not 
 gone to church in years, some even who had never 
 gone in all their lives, were going now, and going 
 again, until they were regular attendants. It was no 
 rare thing, any more, for the ushers to have to fetch 
 chairs, to seat the people, and proposals for the enlarge- 
 ment of the church began to be put forward. The 
 more thoughtful observed a change in the spiritual life 
 of the community, and a change for the better, Mr. 
 Jakes had got people interested in better things. 
 Naturally, since he was in the balance for weighing, 
 none of his shortcomings were overlooked, and there 
 was especially his lack of social graces. But in that 
 connection the squire, constituting himself his pastor's 
 advocate, had only to remind folks of the last 
 incumbent but one; he had shone socially, his fund 
 of small-talk was such that he could out-prattle any 
 woman in town ; yet he was a sorry ass in comparison 
 with Mr. Jakes, nobody could well deny that. 
 
 And so that particular cloud took itself off at length. 
 
 But there remained still the most serious obstacle he 
 had to encounter, and that was the incurable dryness 
 of the vineyard where he labored. Afton was a 
 meager village, and its people villagers, with all the 
 term implies. Their emotions were stingy, they 
 were not to be moved, as men in thick masses are, 
 through their feelings ; that was the worst, for his mis- 
 sion. Their close watchfulness of one another served to 
 make them stiffly conscious and averse to giving them-
 
 Unto the Gentiles Foolishness 245 
 
 selves up to any display of sensibility ; if sometimes he 
 got them going in that direction, it was only to see 
 them catch themselves and draw coldly back. He 
 sowed copiously, in his own fashion, that one lapse, 
 it was dreadful, but it was all. For the rest he held 
 steadfastly to the purpose he had avowed, and the 
 most he achieved was to get himself talked about. 
 Endlessly talked about. Wherever two or three were 
 gathered together, his name was sure to come up; 
 people were always asking one another what strange 
 thing he had been up to last. 
 
 And still his mission wasn't absolutely barren, 
 there was a harvest, of such fruit as he would 
 have, though scanty. And rather curiously, too, this 
 figurative reaping was the effect, in a sense, of a certain 
 literal sowing. That is to say, it might never have 
 come about only for his planting his two or three acres 
 of poor land to melons. 
 
 Mr. Jakes choosing to plant melons was voted a 
 particularly strange thing, in its day it made talk 
 and yet more talk. Men called him crazy. Melons 
 on such land, light always and now moreover worn 
 out with repeated croppings? Why, a five-year-old 
 boy ought to know better. Melons, of course, had to 
 have the richest ground, and even then the chances 
 were so strongly against their maturing, in the average 
 season, that no prudent man ever gave them much of 
 his room or of his time. Anybody could tell him that 
 and a number did, Mr. Jakes wasn't left in the dark 
 as to the egregious error he was falling into; but he 
 wouldn't be set right. Was ever such obstinacy 
 encountered by evangels of good advice before? He 
 could answer no argument, he could not so much as 
 conceal the very real disquiet into which argument
 
 246 Mr. Jakes 
 
 threw him, yet he persisted in his folly and planted 
 every foot of his land to melons. The result ? Well, 
 the result was staggering, no less. Afton was pretty 
 much inclined to doubt its senses, to question if it were 
 not somehow the victim of an illusion, when those 
 melons sprang up thriftily and flourished. There 
 really was a suggestion of the uncanny about it, about 
 a crop prospering squarely in the face of an enlightened 
 public sentiment. Afton in all confidence looked for 
 sickly, yellow ineffectual vines to mock Mr. Jakes's 
 labors and punish his pigheadedness, and there 
 appeared instead a stout and virile growth which 
 waxed and waxed until the little field lay under a 
 canopy of broad leaves and made itself gay with yellow 
 blossoms. 
 
 Byron, postmaster and merchant, doubtless shared 
 in the general astonishment, but he was not too 
 astonished to think of the practical bearings; melons 
 were melons, whether grown by a miracle or what 
 not, that was substantially the reflection which sug- 
 gested itself to Byron. He was sedulously attentive 
 to his official duties, having rigid notions touching the 
 responsibilities of a federal functionary, and it betrayed 
 something uncommon in the wind when he left his 
 wife and deputy to hand out the mail for a spell, one 
 August day; and the purpose of his leaving was to 
 drop up and call on Mr. Jakes. The minister was 
 hoeing in his field, at the time, and that suited Byron 
 very well, it afforded him the opportunity to size up 
 the melons without seeming to be too interested. 
 That was the instinct of the trader, not to act too eager 
 like. 
 
 " Mornin', elder ! " he called out, cheerily, from 
 quite a distance.
 
 Unto the Gentiles Foolishness 247 
 
 Mr. Jakes gave back the greeting- in kind. He was 
 always glad to see anybody. 
 
 " Melons lookin' fine," Byron observed, in an off- 
 hand manner. 
 
 For that sentiment Mr. Jakes returned his thanks, 
 taking it as a compliment. 
 
 Byron stooped down to handle a particularly strik- 
 ing specimen of the fruit. " Call 'em the gennywine 
 Rocky Ford, eh?" 
 
 Mr. Jakes didn't call them anything but melons, 
 they might be the Rocky Ford for aught he knew. 
 
 " They look some like the pitcher of the Rocky 
 Ford," said Byron, guardedly. " Figgered any on 
 'bout how you're a-goin' to git red of 'em, Mr. Jakes? " 
 
 Well, no, only in a very general way. 
 
 " Maybe you'd kinder like to have somebody take 
 'em off your hands, sort of? " 
 
 Decidedly. Mr. Jakes would like nothing bet- 
 ter. 
 
 " Hum ! 'Bout how much do ye think of gittin' 
 out of 'em?" Byron was vastly guarded, just here, 
 against displaying solicitude. But when Mr. Jakes 
 made answer that he had hoped the melons might 
 fetch enough to pay what he owed, the mask of the 
 trader instantly fell. 
 
 " By gum ! " Byron exclaimed, staring incredu- 
 lously. " Scuse my strong language, elder," he added, 
 in the note of sincere apology, " but you don't want 
 much. I shan't take no advantage of ye, though. 
 All I want's fair pay for my trouble, an' I'll see't you 
 git whatever more there is in it. You let me have the 
 melons, just as they lay in the field, an' I'll mark off 
 whatever you owe me an' give ye credit for a hundred 
 dollars. Most likely I can do better'n that by ye.
 
 248 Mr. Jakes 
 
 Course you understand it depends on how the market 
 holds up. I figger your melons is a-goin' to be ripe 
 all the way from ten days to two weeks ahead of any- 
 thing in these parts, an' my notion is to git plenty of 
 teams an' rush 'em right to the city while the iron's 
 hot. I'll do what I say, anyway, and most likely some 
 better. I won't take no advantage of ye. Is't a 
 bargain, Mr. Jakes?" 
 
 It was a bargain. 
 
 Byron had no time to stop and visit, with his official 
 duties calling him back, he was already making off, 
 with some commonplace remark to soften the abrupt- 
 ness of his going. But at the fence he faced about and 
 shouted : 
 
 " Look out for the pesky boys ! " 
 
 What boys ? Mr. Jakes didn't understand. 
 
 "What boys?" Byron repeated, with a laugh. 
 " Lord only knows what boys. Any boys. All boys. 
 The boy don't live that won't steal melons. Look out 
 for 'em, elder. They'll steal every last melon, if ye 
 don't" 
 
 And Byron went his way. 
 
 A week later he came again and looked the melons 
 over. " A leetle more sun won't hurt 'em," he said. 
 On the following Saturday he notified Mr. Jakes that 
 he would send the teams in on Monday. 
 
 But the harvest was destined for the day between, 
 which was the Sabbath. 
 
 Mr. Jakes chose to preach briefly that morning, so 
 briefly that he sent his congregation away a little after 
 eleven o'clock. And going home, he chose to take a 
 roundabout way. The effect was that he arrived full 
 half an hour sooner than anybody acquainted with his
 
 Unto the Gentiles Foolishness 249 
 
 habits would be expecting him and entered the house 
 by the front without going in sight of the field. 
 
 For his own information he had no need to go in 
 sight of the field, his ears sufficiently told him that 
 the Goths were at his gates. He was quite prepared 
 for the spectacle which met his eyes at once he passed 
 through to the little porch in the rear, the spectacle 
 of a swarm of boys, big and little, some almost men 
 and some in knickerbockers, filling his field and 
 destroying his melons. 
 
 He stood a moment watching them, quite unob- 
 served, so intent were they on their mischief. 
 Then, very quietly, he stepped back and brought out 
 a chair and a book, and sat down to read. 
 
 It was in that posture they discovered him. They 
 were startled, as the word went round, and, for a 
 little, frightened; not inconceivably they would be- 
 think them of the mighty fist which had laid Thor 
 Torrelson low, anyway they took to their heels, the 
 whole party of them, big boys ahead, little boys behind, 
 cursing and screaming. But when they had got to 
 the fence, and still Mr. Jakes sat reading, their panic 
 left them, and they were fired afresh with wanton 
 insolence. Nothing would do them now but they must 
 go back and finish the havoc they had begun. Once 
 more they overran the field, nor desisted till they had 
 broken all the melons, and uprooted all the vines. 
 Not a growing thing but a few weeds remained in the 
 field, as they finally betook themselves off, whooping 
 insultingly. 
 
 That was in a very few minutes, for the boys worked 
 fast ; but for two hours Mr. Jakes sat on his stoop, with 
 the book in his hand. During so long a time he 
 fought his passion, his anger flaming high within him,
 
 250 Mr. Jakes 
 
 never in his life higher. With all his heart he could 
 have gone forth and slaughtered those boys, beat them 
 and broken them as they had beat and broken his 
 melons, strewn the ground with their mangled corpses 
 as they had strewn his harvest, in short, the savage 
 in him swelled and fumed, until he was near bursting. 
 But he put it down. The fight took about all his 
 strength, though. When, at length, he laid aside his 
 book, not a letter of which had he consciously seen, he 
 was fainting weak, and in a bath of sweat. 
 
 The end was not yet, however. 
 
 It was well along in the evening, not far from nine 
 o'clock, and Mr. Jakes was peacefully busied with some 
 pastoral or domestic affair, his anger all gone, when 
 there came footfalls just outside his door, and then 
 after a moment, a timid knock. He opened, and his 
 lamp disclosed a well-grown boy, fifteen or sixteen 
 years old, who in a husky, faltering voice asked if he 
 might come in. Of course he might, and welcome, 
 and he did, and in the better light it appeared that he 
 had been crying. He was a big boy, and Mr. Jakes 
 regarded him with concern, it was no light matter 
 when a boy who was almost a man would give way so. 
 
 Nor was he done crying. No sooner was he in than 
 he walked to the table and laid down a handful of 
 coins ; and with that his tears flowed afresh. 
 
 " It's all I've got," he blubbered, " but I'm going to 
 work to-morrow and earn more. I can get a job with 
 a threshing-crew, and I'll work till I've paid you every 
 cent." 
 
 This was all very singular. " You've made some 
 mistake," said Mr. Jakes. 
 
 " Not now," the boy replied, gulping hard. " I've 
 been making a mistake all my life, but not now."
 
 Unto the Gentiles Foolishness 251 
 
 " You mean this money for me ? " 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " But you owe me nothing. What is it for? " 
 " For the melons. I was here to-day, and helped 
 tear up your vines. I'm going to pay for them all."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 A BRAND FROM THE BURNING 
 
 MR. JAKES had two reasons for being glad, a big 
 one and a little one. The loss of his melons was to 
 be made good, that was the little one ; and it was so 
 very little relatively, that he overlooked it altogether. 
 What was the loss of all the melons in the world, in 
 comparison with the winning of a soul? That was 
 his big reason for being glad, the only reason he 
 thought of, a soul won, a heart made humble and 
 contrite, for there was no doubting the boy's con- 
 trition. 
 
 As the testimony stood he was not a tremendously 
 guilty fellow, he had done no more than rob his 
 neighbor's melon-patch, after the manner of his kind 
 since time out of mind. He was a brand snatched 
 from the burning, perhaps, but the burning was rather 
 a mild and unthreatening affair, withal. Yet even on 
 such a showing, Mr. Jakes was glad, repentance was 
 repentance and the one thing needful. 
 
 " Let's talk about it ! " quoth he, and the boy was 
 mightily willing, for the relief of his burdened con- 
 science. 
 
 And so the whole story came out, for there was 
 further testimony, only the least of it had been told. 
 
 Willie Sanders (the boy's name) was the only child 
 252
 
 A Brand From the Burning 253 
 
 of parents whose one great fault was that they loved 
 him too ardently to love wisely. They put no restraint 
 on him, and as if that weren't bad enough, they 
 supplied him with money to spend as he liked without 
 accounting. This money had been his especial undoing. 
 Because of it dissolute boys much older than himself, 
 and even dissolute men, cultivated his acquaintance, 
 and their condescension so turned his young head that 
 he gave himself up to their leadings. Long ago they 
 had taught him to drink beer and use tobacco in every 
 form. He detested both, at first, especially the beer, 
 and thought he had never tasted anything so vile; 
 but he wished to be addicted to it as a mark of man- 
 liness. He had been very drunk, once, and more 
 than a little drunk several times. Of this his parents 
 knew nothing, the other boys kept him in a hay-mow 
 over night till he sobered up. He woke up miserably 
 sick, after that debauch, but he was prouder than ever 
 before in all his life. Because he had been really and 
 truly drunk, so drunk that he had to be carried, he 
 fancied he had made a long step forward. 
 
 But that wasn't the worst. Along with those older 
 boys and young men, w r ho cherished him for his 
 money, he got in the way of going to tough dances, 
 out in the country. These were held at the house of 
 some farmer not over particular, and plenty of liquor 
 was the invariable accompaniment. At one of these 
 dances Willie fell in love with a girl a year older than 
 himself, and she made him believe she was very much 
 in love with him. She was hardened to all manner of 
 sin, and obtained a strong influence over him. He 
 was even prouder of their wretched relations than he 
 had been of getting drunk. To be in love, to have 
 a woman of his own, that seemed to make him out
 
 254 Mr. Jakes 
 
 a man at once. On one occasion, at an uncommonly 
 tough dance, another fellow tried to get the girl away 
 from him, and they two had a fierce fight. The other 
 fellow got the better of him and was beating him 
 soundly, when Willie pulled a knife and stabbed the 
 boy in the breast, and though he inflicted but a slight 
 wound, he was thoroughly in a killing mood and felt 
 only regret that he hadn't accomplished worse. On 
 such food he fed his vanity, doubting not that he was 
 not only a man, but a bad man, a very dangerous chap. 
 He was for marrying the girl, hereupon, in order to 
 make sure of her, and she avowed herself willing, but 
 her father and mother found out what was in the 
 wind and they were unalterably opposed. There was 
 a sister still younger, who had likewise her lover, and 
 they, too, would fain marry, only to be met with the 
 parental interdict. This other lover and Willie, swell- 
 ing with importance and affronted dignity, went out to 
 the girls' home to overawe the old man, as they called 
 him, and got themselves unceremoniously kicked off 
 the porch. 
 
 By this insult they were made foaming angry. The 
 old man had treated them like children, and nothing 
 could be more injurious to their pride than that. His 
 objection to their suit was frankly grounded on their 
 extreme youth, he wouldn't have his girls wasting 
 their time with a couple of puppies who hadn't a penny 
 except as their folks gave it to them. There was no 
 enduring to let the matter rest there. They forthwith 
 began, Willie proposing and the other boy assenting, 
 to concert measures of vengeance. 
 
 It was no trifling reprisal which they hit upon. 
 
 " Will you believe," said Willie, looking up at Mr. 
 Jakes in pained wonder, as if his story were a revela-
 
 A Brand From the Burning 255 
 
 tion to himself, " that we have planned to go out there 
 to-morrow night, and kill that man and woman ? " 
 
 Not easy to believe, certainly. " You never would 
 do such a thing," said Mr. Jakes aghast. " How could 
 you?" 
 
 Willie groaned. " I wish I could say that, I can't. 
 The gun I was going to do my part with is hid in our 
 barn this minute. It's a Winchester rifle I stole from 
 the blacksmith-shop, and the other boy has a double- 
 barreled shotgun, loaded with buckshot. The girls are 
 in the scheme and will be looking for us as soon as it 
 is dark. They are going to get the family bunched 
 round the lamp in the front room, playing cards. 
 We're to whistle, so the girls can get out of the way, 
 and then we're to let drive with both guns, through 
 the window. That's the plan, and only for what's 
 happened to me to-day " 
 
 'It was too horrible. " Willie, Willie ! " Mr. Jakes 
 broke in. " It's a dream. You've been asleep and 
 dreaming." 
 
 " No, no, it's all true, I was going to do just as I 
 tell you. I never held back a minute, or had any 
 thought to give up. Sometimes I've wondered if the 
 other boy was gritty enough, and I had my mind all 
 made up, if he showed the white feather, I'd kill him 
 too. I'd kill anybody that got in my way, to show 
 them I wasn't to be trifled with." 
 
 " Oh, surely not, Willie. Think how little reason 
 you had. If you wanted that bad girl, you could run 
 away with her. You needn't kill anybody in order to 
 get her." 
 
 " I wanted to kill somebody. I don't believe I cared 
 so much about the girl as I did about doing something
 
 256 Mr. Jakes 
 
 that would make me out a bad man, that everybody 
 would be afraid of." 
 
 None of the bad man about him now, though, that 
 spirit was all gone out. He heaved a big sigh, the 
 hardest part of his confession was done with, and 
 went on to better things: 
 
 " This morning I met some of the fellows, and they 
 told me they were after your melons. They wanted 
 me to go along. It was pretty small business, I 
 thought, for a man like me, but it would help pass 
 away the time, and so I went. When we saw you out 
 there on the porch, the rest wanted to quit, but I was 
 ashamed to run away, and I got them to go back. I 
 wanted to show I wasn't afraid, and so I started pull- 
 ing up the vines, and the others followed me. I 
 wanted you to come out, so I could fight you. I had a 
 dirk-knife in my coat and I wanted a chance to use it 
 on you. I didn't seem to be thinking of a thing but 
 acting bad, to make people afraid of me. But after 
 we'd done the mischief and went away and I was alone, 
 somehow I got to feeling queer. I couldn't tell why 
 it was, but all the time I was thinking of you out there 
 on the stoop and doing nothing to us for smashing 
 your melons, and I was thinking, too, about your being 
 a poor man and needing the money you'd get by sell- 
 ing the melons, and the first I knew I was sort of sorry 
 for you. Then I tried to say I didn't care, bad men 
 never cared. I called you a coward for not doing 
 something to stop us, or something to pay us back, 
 but it wouldn't work, and pretty soon I was wondering 
 if I wasn't a coward myself. I went and locked my- 
 self in the barn with my gun, and looked it over to 
 see if it was all ready, I thought that would keep my 
 mind away from you, but it didn't. All the time I
 
 A Brand From the Burning 257 
 
 could see you sitting there. I don't know how the 
 idea got in my head, but one thing seemed to lead to 
 another and before long the sight of the gun was mak- 
 ing me sort of sick. I wanted to keep my mind on 
 the great thing I was going to do, but somehow it 
 didn't seem a great thing any more, to be shooting 
 people through a window after dark, when they didn't 
 have a chance for themselves. I remembered the girls, 
 how they was willing to help kill their own mother, 
 and I remembered my mother, and that was when I 
 got to crying. I've been crying about ever since. I 
 didn't go in to supper, and mother came calling me, 
 and I couldn't face her for all the world. I answered 
 her, though, and told her I didn't want any supper, 
 and I could see she thought I was sick and she was 
 worried, and somehow I understood better than ever 
 how good a friend a mother is, and here I was getting 
 those girls to help kill their mother. She wasn't a 
 good woman, like my mother, but she was their 
 mother just the same, and I was sicker and sicker, that 
 is, in my mind. I told mother I'd rather walk awhile, 
 and not to worry about me, but I know she did, and 
 she's worrying now, but she'll be glad when she knows 
 what's happened to me. I walked all over, not think- 
 ing where, and cried and cried, feeling awful bad 
 when I thought of what I'd been going to do, and aw- 
 ful good when I remembered I hadn't done it yet, and 
 I had you in mind all the time, and after awhile I 
 turned down here, without really meaning to. Some- 
 how it seemed as if you'd done a great thing for me, 
 and I wanted to tell you and own up, but it wasn't 
 easy to come in, and so I've been going back and forth 
 for an hour, wishing to come in, but not knowing how, 
 and then I came. This money is what I've been sav-
 
 258 Mr. Jakes 
 
 ing up to take me and the girl away. It's not near 
 enough to pay for the melons, but I'm going to work 
 to-morrow and earn more. I'm going to pay you 
 every cent." 
 
 Mr. Jakes was so overjoyed that he shed tears him- 
 self, and embraced the boy, impulsively, like a French- 
 man. 
 
 " You will keep your money," he cried. " My mel- 
 ons are paid for, a hundred times over. But you will 
 go to work in the morning, and I will go to work with 
 you. We two will go out together." 
 
 Tongues wagged when Afton saw the Reverend Mr. 
 Jakes engaged in common labor in the fields. Of 
 course everybody knew about the destruction of his 
 melons, and how he had permitted it, or part of it at 
 least. But astonishing as that conduct was, Afton 
 found it less so than his complete omission of any 
 steps looking to the punishment of the marauders. 
 Squire Thornhill was keen to prosecute, but Mr. 
 Jakes would do nothing, wouldn't undertake to iden- 
 tify a single boy. 
 
 Willie Sanders came in for considerable discussion, 
 too, he was such a different fellow, so industrious, 
 and so attached to Mr. Jakes. Willie's former com- 
 panions gave him their unreserved contempt, saying 
 he had got religion.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FEMINA EST VARIUM 
 
 THERE is often to be found, in the hamlet where 
 everybody knows everybody, a certain woman whose 
 chief part in life seems to be to keep jealous wives in 
 a ferment. Her reputation is anything but good, yet 
 nobody knows just how far she deserves it. On the 
 surface she is dashing, decidedly pretty, has a style 
 about her that is somewhat bold and free according to 
 rustic standards, and that is all. As to what she may 
 be under the rose there is only opinion, though a great 
 diversity of that. Some believe her to be no worse 
 than she appears, a species of hoyden grown up. But 
 more are not so kind, hence the uneasiness of wives 
 who can't trust their husbands. For her own part, she 
 apparently has no objection to being thought wicked, 
 she does any number of things she would never do if 
 she cared to save her name. 
 
 In Afton this woman was Mrs. Troy. 
 
 She came there first to teach school, a mere girl 
 then, black-eyed, saucy-nosed, a perfect little witch 
 who forthwith upset pretty much every masculine crea- 
 ture in the bailiwick, not sparing even the boys in her 
 classes. It was tradition that two young lads (men 
 with families now) had instantly and simultaneously 
 
 259
 
 260 Mr. Jakes 
 
 fallen in love with her, and saw no way out but to 
 fight to determine which should have her. And fight 
 they did, ferociously, so that their elders found out 
 about it, and there was an investigation, the upshot of 
 which was a warning to the new teacher, from the 
 trustees. And what did she do? She laughed gaily, 
 called the two boys up before the whole school, kissed 
 them heartily, and told them she had decided, on the 
 whole, not to marry either of them. Very likely that 
 was the best she could do for them, but Afton thought 
 it an intolerably bold, wanton thing, and the little 
 mistress straightway lost her place. That was the 
 utmost outraged respectability could do against her, 
 however. There was no forcing her to leave the vil- 
 lage though that was the consummation devoutly to 
 be wished for, and when she chose to remain, out of 
 sheer spite, perhaps, help for it there was none. Dur- 
 ing some memorable months she ran riot, or what 
 looked like riot to respectable Afton, anyway there 
 wasn't within the circuit of twenty miles a youth be- 
 twixt the ages of fifty and fifteen but confessed himself 
 her slave, and she took every advantage of their 
 infatuation, brazenly accepting their gifts and scrupling 
 not to live on their bounty. The orgy ended, at least 
 in its most flagrant aspect, with her marrying William 
 Troy. Of all her suitors Troy was best off in a 
 worldly way, a woodsman of the rank of boss, who 
 never worked for less than $5 a day. Besides, he was 
 away from home considerably more than half his 
 time, unfriendly tongues made a good deal of that 
 circumstance, and hinted that it had as much to do as 
 any with determining the fair lady's choice. 
 
 Troy began with deeming himself the most favored 
 of mortals, and he advertised his gratitude in a prodi-
 
 Femina Est Varium 261 
 
 gality fit to give great scandal among a people whose 
 religion was thrift. He wasted his substance buying 
 the costliest presents for his wife, till she blazed with 
 jewels and her gowns were the wonder of the world. 
 She had a sumptuous horse and buggy of her own 
 kept at the livery-stable and brought to her ready as 
 often as she sent word; and she put in a large part of 
 her day driving up and down, flaunting her finery. A 
 very favorite prank of hers was to overtake some 
 prominent man, as he was walking home from his 
 business, and ask him to ride with her. The man 
 was rare who knew how to refuse, or, if he knew, 
 made use of his knowledge ; and so she would take him 
 up, and set him down at his own door with a flourish 
 and a flutter calculated to disturb the domestic peace, 
 if anything could. 
 
 Troy professed to be amused by the woman's 
 goings-on. He treated her as he might a child, whose 
 innocence was sufficient apology for almost any way- 
 wardness. Like any other proud man, he was slow 
 to admit, even to himself, that he was being dishon- 
 ored. But there came a time when Afton, straining 
 its eyes to catch the first intimation of the expected, 
 began to see that the iron was entering his soul, he 
 let it appear that he was displeased with his wife. Es- 
 pecially was he offended by her freedom with her 
 former suitors, his rivals, that was like a man, too. 
 These gentry had retired with their crests fallen, when 
 she made bestowal of her hand, but they were pres- 
 ently given to understand that they needn't take their 
 banishment too seriously. If they chose to call on her 
 at her home, they weren't turned away, though she 
 was alone there, and all Afton knew she was alone. 
 Troy could not forever close his ears to rumor, nor
 
 262 Mr. Jakes 
 
 could pride blind him to what lay right in his path, 
 that was where it lay because the woman took no pains 
 to conceal her doings. The second winter their house 
 was the scene of such revels as the neighbors wouldn't 
 have thought possible in a Christian community, and 
 in the midst of the scandalous hilarity, the injured hus- 
 band came home, in February though his season 
 didn't end till April, and he tarried there, idle and 
 gloomy and uneasy, till June, missing three drives on 
 the river. There was a cloud of blackness on his brow, 
 figuring the cloud of displeasure on his mind, yet noth- 
 ing much happened. Folks asked themselves what had 
 got into William Troy, always looked upon as a 
 dangerous man, that he suffered himself to be so 
 trampled on, it amounted to no less, when the gay 
 company kept on coming just as before, and revel 
 ran high as ever, with feasting and laughter till far 
 into the night. Nobody imagined Troy did much of 
 the laughing, though he was present. 
 
 After two years a baby was born, and it proved to 
 be deaf and dumb. Afton declared it a just judg- 
 ment on the wanton, yet she had none of the air of 
 being chastened. She hired a cheap girl to take care of 
 the child, while she flaunted out in her silks and jewels, 
 or remained at home to entertain her crew of admirers. 
 The baby made her no better, worse if anything, that 
 was the general verdict. 
 
 Mr. Jakes had seen Mrs. Troy, often, but they had 
 never spoken together, their ways were about as 
 diverse as ways could be. But one autumn day there 
 came to him a messenger with a message, a slim young 
 girl, who urgently summoned him to go at once to 
 Mrs. Troy, for that she greatly wished to see him. 
 
 He hesitated, thinking a mistake had been made.
 
 Femina Est Varium 263 
 
 " Her baby is dying," said the girl, with a little sob 
 which might be due to excitement more than grief. 
 
 Mr. Jakes remembered Beppo and the extreme 
 unction. " It's the priest she wants," he said. " Over 
 yonder," and he pointed to the Catholic rectory 
 through the trees. 
 
 " No, it's you," urged the girl. " She told me to 
 fetch Mr. Jakes. She told me to say to you to come, 
 for the love of God." 
 
 He went. 
 
 Mrs. Troy met him at the door, greeted him quietly, 
 and took him by the hand. She was haggard with 
 anxiety and watching, but quite calm. She did not 
 weep, nor did she seem to have been weeping, and her 
 voice was firm and clear. Still holding him by the 
 hand, she led him to an inner room, the chamber of 
 death, for death had already come. The child had 
 breathed his last and lay still and cold. 
 
 Mr. Jakes met the mother's tearless eyes and his 
 own gushed full. " I'm sorry for you," he faltered, 
 brokenly, and indeed he was. 
 
 " Thank you," she said. " Will you hear my con- 
 fession? " 
 
 Once more he thought there was a mistake. " I am 
 not a priest," he said, doubtfully. 
 
 " You are priest enough for me," she answered, and 
 smiled up at him, though her baby lay dead before 
 them. It was a peculiar smile, such as he had never 
 beheld, not out of place. 
 
 " You wonder at my confidence in you," the woman 
 went on, " and I wonder at it, too. When I tell you 
 of the influence you have had over me you will wonder 
 more, as I wonder myself, I can't explain, it's a 
 mystery to me. But there it is. Almost from my first
 
 264 Mr. Jakes 
 
 hearing of you I felt a strange interest in everything 
 you did, and stranger still, it was an uncomfortable in- 
 terest. Because it was uncomfortable I tried to be rid 
 of it, to laugh it away, I tried to despise you, I 
 tried everything. But after all the interest remained, 
 and grew in spite of me, and at last it accused me. Oh, 
 I cannot make you understand what this feeling has 
 been to me, what it has done for me ! You will think 
 me flighty, you will think my trouble has affected my 
 mind, but all the same I must say it, you seem to me 
 to have saved me from myself! I can't put it so truly 
 any other way, you have saved me ! " 
 
 And with that she bent down her head and kissed his 
 hand. 
 
 Mr. Jakes was made dumb and helpless ; even though 
 there had been in him the prudence of the ordinary 
 man, he could not resist, so overcome was he. The 
 woman did not let go his hand until she had brought 
 him to a seat, and then only while she drew up a low 
 stool for herself at his feet, in a moment her ringers 
 had closed tightly over his once more. Was there a 
 quiver of reluctance on his part ? Anyway there came, 
 for an instant, a look of alarm in her face upturned to 
 his, and she pleaded : " May I ? " 
 
 She might, it was not for him to repel her ad- 
 vances. 
 
 " They call me a bad woman, but you don't fear me, 
 do you?" she said, coaxingly. 
 
 Fear her? No, not that. If he had been reluctant, 
 he knew no reason why, in the face of her eager solici- 
 tude. 
 
 " I am a bad woman," she exclaimed, " but not in 
 the way people say. I was a thoughtless girl, and im- 
 pulsive, and selfish, and when I found I had the power
 
 Femina Est Varium 265 
 
 to move the passions of men, it delighted me to use 
 my power, I had no sense of responsibility. Yet I 
 was only what the Lord made me, and if I was sinful, 
 my sin doesn't lie on my conscience. Nor have I 
 sinned against my husband, more than that I haven't 
 been kind to him, or willing to consider his feelings. I 
 daresay I never loved him as I should, very likely I 
 was incapable of loving as a wife should. But if I did 
 wrong in marrying him, I wasn't conscious of wrong- 
 doing, so that doesn't lie on my conscience, either. 
 
 " The sin that weighs on me was against the life 
 which has just gone out. I was resolved not to have 
 any children. I abhorred motherhood, and was ready 
 to do anything to avoid it, to that end I resorted to 
 all the abominable expedients. And when, in spite of 
 all my wretched devices, I found I was about to be- 
 come a mother, I tried to commit murder. I tried to 
 destroy the life which had been given me to bring forth 
 and nourish. And when I failed in that, and was a 
 mother in spite of myself, I hated my baby. I cursed 
 him. I wished nothing so much as that he might be 
 stricken dead." 
 
 Just here her fingers clutched hard, she was strug- 
 gling to control herself, the effort plainly visible in her 
 haggard face. There was a considerable pause until 
 she continued : 
 
 " Nature gave me plenty of food for the child, but 
 I threw it away, and took a bitter satisfaction in doing 
 so. I couldn't bear to touch my baby, I hated him so. 
 I saw he was weakly, and was glad, for the greater 
 hope it gave me that he would die. I dared not kill 
 him, now that he was born, but I was willing. In my 
 heart I murdered him a thousand times. 
 
 " When it turned out that he was deaf and dumb,
 
 266 Mr. Jakes 
 
 I hated him all the more. I thought of the burden of 
 care which this meant, if he lived, and I was furious. I 
 could have struck him as he lay in his cradle, I was 
 so angry. Once I saw my husband take the baby up 
 and cry over him, and I was beside myself. I wanted 
 all the pity for my own, and I said I wished the boy 
 might die, the sooner the better. My husband an- 
 swered that a child born to such a mother were better 
 dead. That day I was nearer to committing a wife's 
 great sin than ever in my life, I only lacked the 
 opportunity, my will was sufficient. 
 
 " You find it hard to believe ? You don't know a 
 woman. You don't know what a fiend she is when 
 once she sets her will against her natural instincts. 
 
 " That was when I first began to hear of you. What 
 was it I heard? I can't say, many things, though 
 nothing remarkable. The men who came to see me 
 made jokes about you, called you a little tin Jesus. 
 I tried to think that very funny, but somehow I 
 couldn't that feeling was coming on me. The 
 more I laughed at your ways, the more I had to com- 
 pare them with my own ways, and it grew and grew 
 on me that I was wrong. The crisis came one night, 
 I woke up to find my face wet with tears, and I was 
 yearning for my baby. I ran to his cradle and took 
 him up and pressed him to my breast so hard that he 
 cried. It was a great misery and still a great joy, for 
 it seemed as if the more I suffered the more I atoned 
 for the wrong I had done, I can't describe the exper- 
 ience, I never heard of anything like it. I went down 
 on my knees and prayed that the boy might live that I 
 might spend all my life in devotion to him, that I 
 might be allowed to make up to him something of 
 what I had deprived him of. I didn't doubt that his
 
 Femina Est Varium 267 
 
 being deaf and dumb was my fault; and I wanted him 
 to live so that I might give my voice and my ears 
 wholly to him. 
 
 " When he fell sick I knew he was going to die, and 
 still I prayed. I hoped against hope, for it was a ter- 
 rible sorrow to face. Who ever had such a sorrow? 
 Think of it! Yet I can thank God now, there's 
 something I can be thankful for, I shall never cease 
 to bless God for not taking my baby while yet I was in 
 that darkness, when I should have been glad to have 
 him die. Is it not something that my boy has lived 
 until his death is a sorrow and not a joy? 
 
 " I owe it to you, I cannot tell you how, but I am 
 sure. I don't know what sent you here to this cor- 
 ner of the world, I don't know what sent me here, 
 God is good, even to the one who denies Him. He has 
 been good to me." 
 
 Again she bent down her head and kissed his hand, 
 and again he did not resist, nay more, he gave her 
 back her kiss. Mr. Jakes forgot that she was a 
 woman and he a man, forgot all that such caresses 
 commonly signify, to him the figure bowed at his 
 feet was a soul in agony, a soul in trial. He tenderly 
 brushed the dark disordered curls away from her brow, 
 and kissed her as she had kissed him.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MAN OF WRATH 
 
 THERE was a perfect whirlwind of talk when Mrs. 
 Troy became a regular attendant at the Unitarian 
 Church. Her very first appearance there was enough 
 to start a breeze. Two or three more appearances in- 
 creased this to a gale, so to say, and when a dozen 
 appearances, on as many consecutive Sundays, put her 
 in the light of a regular attendant, the whirlwind rose, 
 and raged up and down, till Afton was about over- 
 turned. 
 
 Moreover, what were people to think of the change 
 in the woman, in respect of her weekday goings-out 
 and comings-in ? 
 
 She flaunted herself no more. The horse and buggy 
 were sold, and leading men were suffered to go their 
 peaceful ways, no more to be snatched up and carried 
 off in a flutter of bright ribbons and vivacity. Mrs. 
 Troy went very little abroad, these days, and she 
 always walked, demurely, with her eyes cast down. 
 The jewels vanished from the public sight, they 
 were sold, too. And gowns? Not only were her 
 gowns severely plain, henceforth, and of material far 
 from costly, but there was the consolation, as bewild- 
 ering as unlooked-for, of observing that these gar- 
 
 268
 
 The Man of Wrath 269 
 
 ments were not particularly becoming, and that they 
 didn't even fit. The skirts sagged, and the waists 
 bunched up, and it was certain that Mrs. Troy was 
 making her own clothes, the identical Mrs. Troy who 
 had been known to go to a man's tailor in the city 
 and pay him as much as $50 for making up a single 
 suit. 
 
 People perceived very quickly what they were to 
 think, there was only one thing to think, in fact. 
 Wasn't it as plain as the nose on your face that this 
 designing hussy had set her cap for Mr. Jakes ? What 
 could be better calculated to gain her favor in his eyes 
 than just such proceedings as these? 
 
 To be sure there was the logical difficulty as to what 
 any woman should find in him to attract her. Mr. 
 Jakes was pulled to bits, and the bits poked about 
 endlessly, yet there was disclosed not the first element 
 of attractiveness. Handsome ? As far from it as pos- 
 sible, this stooped and shuffling fellow, with his lean 
 face and muddy complexion. If his eyes were remark- 
 able, it was not in a way to make a person fond of him. 
 They were uncanny eyes, in fact. Just about that time 
 there appeared in somebody's newspaper the portrait 
 of a much mentioned actor in the character of 
 Svengali, and it was quite the universal exclamation 
 that the eyes in that were Mr. Jakes's eyes all over 
 again when Mr. Jakes was roused up; and when he 
 wasn't roused up, his eyes were dull. Plenty of 
 women were ready to declare that nothing could in- 
 duce them to live with a man who had such eyes, 
 they'd be deathly afraid of him. 
 
 However, fortunately for the progress and pros- 
 perity of the scandal, it wasn't necessary to discover 
 what Mrs. Troy found in Mr. Jakes, in order to be-
 
 270 Mr. Jakes 
 
 lieve that she was in hot pursuit of him, the diffi- 
 culty, though insoluble, was not fatal. Love is an im- 
 mense mystery and goes where it is sent. Mrs. Troy 
 was in love with the parson, account for it as you 
 would or not at all. This woman, till now the flame 
 for moths to singe their wings in, untouched of the 
 passion she so strongly moved in her victims, who had 
 trifled with all men, showing favor to none unless by 
 courtesy her marrying Troy could be called a favor, 
 here she was openly advertising a preference for 
 Jakes, and packing the others off without ceremony; 
 for now she received no company whatever. Except- 
 ing Jakes? No, not even excepting Jakes. The 
 chosen lover was never seen at her house, and her 
 house was watched so closely that his calling unseen 
 was practically out of the question. That might be 
 deemed a difficulty, too, but Afton disposed of it by 
 saying it was a part of the game. 
 
 On no better food than Mrs. Troy's altered conduct 
 scandal fed and flourished, but there was much 
 stronger meat forthcoming, by the hand of the girl 
 who had been Mrs. Troy's nurse, the messenger who 
 had summoned Mr. Jakes to that extraordinary inter- 
 view. 
 
 This young person went by the name of Tildy. 
 Tildy lost her place when the baby died, for a resolu- 
 tion to do all her own work was a part of Mrs. Troy's 
 new character. It had been a good place, easy work 
 and generous wages promptly paid, and the girl wasn't 
 pleased to give it up. Indeed, she thought herself in 
 some manner aggrieved and conceived a grudge 
 against her former mistress, the more as she had no- 
 where to go but back on the farm, to dig potatoes, and 
 husk corn.
 
 The Man of Wrath 271 
 
 She was not to be forgotten of the world of Afton, 
 however. 
 
 A group of good women, casually met one day and 
 considering Mrs. Troy and Mr. Jakes if haply any- 
 thing new might be brought to light, were penetrated 
 with a happy thought, they remembered Tildy, how 
 that she had been Mrs. Troy's girl and by that in 
 a position to know something, possibly a great deal. 
 And not less happy than the thought was the expedient 
 it led to. None of these women really needed, or 
 could rightly afford, hired help, but they were willing 
 to make a sacrifice for the public good, and the upshot 
 was that they agreed among themselves to give Tildy 
 employment, turn and turn about, until she should have 
 been pumped dry. 
 
 Tildy's sense of grievance made her ready, and no 
 great art was necessary to draw her out, disclosures 
 beyond anybody's fondest dreams followed shortly on 
 her return from the country. Tildy (think of it!) 
 had peeked through the crack of a door and seen Mrs. 
 Troy and Mr. Jakes sitting as close together as ever 
 they could get, and holding hands, and kissing, 
 actually kissing! Mrs. Troy had kissed Mr. Jakes's 
 hand and Mr. Jakes had kissed Mrs. Troy's forehead. 
 What else took place had to be guessed, for the reason 
 that Tildy had become terribly frightened, at that, and 
 ran away; but guessing wasn't hard. 
 
 There had never been a divorce case in Afton, or 
 anywhere nearer then Tellerville, but in this situation 
 how could the supreme felicity be long withheld? If 
 William Troy had left in him a spark of manhood, 
 there would be a divorce case of the tastiest sort, right 
 away, a case as highly spiced as the most fastidious 
 could ask. Papers were likely to be forthcoming any
 
 272 Mr. Jakes 
 
 day, just as soon as Troy should get wind of the 
 business, there must inevitably be papers, and papers 
 meant a delirious publicity. 
 
 Troy wasn't let to be long getting wind. The 
 common interest would see that the wind blew straight- 
 way to him, and that it was abundantly redolent with 
 the scandal. The story came to him from a dozen 
 different sources all at once, but he was bossing a big 
 camp that winter, it wasn't at all convenient for him 
 to leave, he shut his teeth together and paid no 
 attention. Pretty soon, however, he got a letter, and 
 that set him on fire. Nobody had ever seen him in 
 such a flame ; he dropped everything regardless of con- 
 sequences, and set off for home with a look in his face 
 which boded mischief. He arrived, and the look was 
 still there. Afton saw it, and fell into a quiver of ex- 
 pectancy. There was no telling, any more, a divorce 
 case didn't begin to comprehend the possibilities. 
 
 A brew of trouble, certainly, even as it stood 
 revealed, saying nothing of sundry elements which the 
 public wot not of. For such there were, and especially 
 there was that other cap which had been set for Mr. 
 Jakes, the cap of Nannie Jones. 
 
 Nannie was a spinster, thirty odd, of a turn for 
 matrimony and no longer fastidious. How could she 
 well be so ? A village of a few hundred souls, afford- 
 ing its girls just a sufficient taste of urbanity to set 
 them above marrying farmers, and by its barrenness 
 of opportunity sending its eligible boys away to seek 
 their fortune elsewhere, well, to make a long and 
 painful story short, no bachelor was to be despised. 
 Nannie thought so, in effect, the first time she heard 
 that Mr. Jakes was a bachelor. The first time she 
 saw him she decided that he would do very nicely.
 
 The Man of Wrath 273 
 
 That was the day of the inaugural, and he was greeted 
 by no warmer praise than Mistress Nannie's, when she 
 came up with her father and mother and was 
 introduced by the squire. 
 
 She was vexed with but little, if any, of the tender 
 sentiment, at first, only with the wish to have a hus- 
 band, most any kind of a husband. But as time wore 
 on, Nannie fell in love with Mr. Jakes, really and truly 
 in love, till at length she adored him, and would 
 blush softly as often as she thought of him, though 
 that should keep her blushing most always, and won 
 her many a compliment on the healthy color she was 
 getting. In her gentle, thin-blooded way, she was 
 presently suffering all the miseries of lovesickness, 
 sighing and pining and building castles in the air, 
 and seeing Mr. Jakes in everything. Nannie was a 
 thoroughly good girl, scrupulously correct in her be- 
 havior. She helped her mother and was patient with 
 her father. It had once been usual for people to say 
 that she would certainly make some man a good wife, 
 some day, and though that manner of acknowledgment 
 had fallen into disuse, her worth was never aspersed 
 by a lisp. 
 
 Was Nannie wholly to blame for the desperate 
 resolution which made her stoop, for the first time in 
 her life, to deceit? Or had the common human nature 
 which was hers without her asking something to 
 answer for? Whether or no, she stooped to deceit. 
 She heard the stories. She fancied Mrs. Troy was her 
 rival. She burned with jealousy, and in her passion 
 was transformed. 
 
 And even apart from the stories, she found reason to 
 be alarmed. Mr. Jakes's manner toward her argued, 
 to her distracted mind, that his heart was already
 
 274 Mr. Jakes 
 
 engaged. Though she wooed him with every art open 
 to a woman who hasn't thrown modesty completely 
 to the winds, he was unresponsive. She visited him 
 at his house, first with her mother, and then, in an 
 access of boldness which made her tremble, alone. She 
 professed to be anxious about her soul, to wish to talk 
 about its perilous state; and that was her first deceit, 
 for she had in truth come to the pass where she would 
 be a thousand times glad to give her soul for her love, 
 and knew no perdition save disappointment in that 
 love. She was gushing and confidential, but he was 
 uneasy and absent. She laid bare her heart, for any 
 man to see who had half an eye, but he saw nothing. 
 She proposed to him the predicament of a good, pure 
 girl, who had conceived a feeling for a man before he, 
 on his part, had shown any decided preference for her. 
 Was that sinful in her? Would it be a sin if she were 
 to declare her feeling to the man ? Mr Jakes mumbled 
 that he would rather not express an opinion, his ex- 
 perience was too small to warrant him, and all that sort 
 of thing; and Nannie left him bowed down with 
 chagrin. But she was more resolved than ever. She 
 soon plucked up courage and cast about her for new 
 ways of approach, all in the foolish, blind, simple 
 fashion of an innocent old maid. 
 
 She brushed up her botany. Years ago. in her 
 young girlhood, she had dipped into botany with an 
 uncommonly talented teacher in the village school, and 
 progressed so far as to have identified the ordinary 
 Crowsfoot of the spring woods with the Ranunculus 
 Abortivus of the books, no very brilliant achievement, 
 but quite sufficient to exhaust her slender fund of 
 mental force. Now, however, her heart gave strength 
 to her brain, she had a new reason to be studious.
 
 The Man of Wrath 275 
 
 She took it for granted that Mr. Jakes liked botany, 
 or could be got to like it, and on that ground she built 
 her fond belief that botany would be the means of 
 bringing them together. She buried herself in the 
 pages of Gray's Manual, it was hard work, but 
 unspeakably delicious, cheered as it was with rosy 
 visions of Mr. Jakes and herself wandering over grassy 
 fields and bosky dells, forgetful of all else but them- 
 selves, making pretext of their quest while they knit 
 their lives forever together. She made a collection, 
 mounted a number of pressed plants on sheets of paper, 
 as her teacher had shown her how to do, and wrote 
 a neat label for each, with the Latin name. She was 
 by no means sure that she always picked out the right 
 name, but why should that matter? 
 
 Then she had the minister to tea. 
 
 He came stumbling up, awkward and silent, making 
 the occasion funereal in spite of all the anxious little 
 hostess could do. After tea Nannie brought out her 
 specimens, with a fluttering heart, and showed them 
 to him. He stared at them dully and handed them 
 back without a word. She asked him if he was 
 interested in botany, and he replied that he wasn't. 
 
 After that the gentle Nannie fell rapidly into the 
 character of the woman scorned, whose like is not 
 among all the furies. She struggled feebly, though 
 it was her utmost, to give up her love for Mr. Jakes, 
 and when she could not, she hated Mrs. Troy with a 
 bitterness incredible. There was no happiness for 
 Nannie but to possess Mr. Jakes, how else should 
 she regard the creature who stood in her way unless 
 with hatred? The sentiment itself was natural 
 enough, only the intensity of it was incredible. 
 How should such a black passion find harbor in a
 
 276 Mr. Jakes 
 
 bosom so meek and innocent? But harbor it found, 
 and it was black enough to drive Nannie to her worst 
 deceit, a very grave deceit indeed, in view of what 
 it was likely to lead to. She wrote to Troy, up in the 
 the woods, a lying letter. She had her own purpose 
 to serve, and she wrote for that, regardless of truth. 
 Apart from her purpose she thought very little of the 
 probable consequences. All she cared for was to work 
 on the man in such a way that he would come home and 
 take care of his wife. Nannie heard the talk about 
 a divorce but it made no definite impression on her. 
 She never stopped to reflect that her interference was 
 likely to bring about a legal separation which would 
 leave Mrs. Troy free to marry Mr. Jakes ; and equally 
 blind was she to the danger of starting a quarrel 
 which might end in serious harm to her beloved, not 
 impossibly his death at the hands of the injured hus- 
 band whose anger she was striving to stir up. All 
 she could think of was that if Troy were roused, to do 
 his duty, her path would be made clear. 
 
 It was Nannie's letter which brought Troy down 
 from the woods in a towering rage. It did precisely 
 what she wished it to do, it made him feel his 
 dishonor. It was a wonderful letter, in its way, it 
 achieved great things in tearing wide the wretched 
 man's wound and setting him wild with the pain 
 thereof. 
 
 So much for the invisible undercurrent which Afton 
 wot not of. 
 
 Troy came over from Tellerville with Tronson the 
 carrier, and Tronson always declared that he never 
 spoke a word the whole way, only glowered and 
 chewed up unlighted cigars. Tronson wouldn't be 
 surprised if Bill chewed up as many as a dozen cigars,
 
 The Man of Wrath 277 
 
 and all of them ten-centers, if not better. There 
 was the usual crowd waiting for the mail, but Troy 
 greeted nobody, looked neither to the right nor the left, 
 gave no intimation of his intentions, further than that 
 he went straight to his home. Daniel the pensioner, 
 a wag of the species who deem a joke no joke unless 
 it lacerates somebody's feelings, had a mind to rally 
 Troy a bit, and his age and high standing permitted 
 him to make the attempt. He remarked, in an ironical 
 vein, on the early break-up of the logging season, and 
 winked significantly at the bystanders ; but Troy turned 
 away with such a harried, pained expression mingling 
 with the sternness in his face that nobody laughed and 
 Daniel himself was so touched as to admit he was 
 sorry, blame him if he wasn't. He was sorry for Bill 
 Troy, a likely man, as likely a man as could be scared 
 out of the bush. It was too bad, blame Daniel if it 
 wasn't. 
 
 " He's a mighty sight too good a man to be troublin' 
 himself over the doin's of any sech a woman," the 
 pensioner insisted, with a vehement jerk of his head. 
 " She haint wuth so much as the dirt a good man will 
 tread under his feet, a-steppin' once," he went on, 
 with rising feeling. But that wasn't the proper part 
 of so true a philosopher, in a moment he fell back into 
 his habitual vein of calm reflection : " Beats all, what 
 a power of hell one bad woman kin raise with two 
 good men. Bill Troy's a good man an' for aught I 
 know Mr. Jakes is a good man, an' jest look at 'em! 
 We may see 'em a-killin' one another, all over a 
 wuthless, good-for-nothin' hussy." 
 
 This was to make no overstatement of the 
 possibilities, as Afton at large saw them, and you will 
 make no doubt that Troy was watched. Argus him-
 
 278 Mr. Jakes 
 
 self had fewer eyes and less greedy than followed the 
 stalwart woodsman till he disappeared beyond the 
 portals of his own house. The first impression, taking 
 account of the provocation and of Troy's manner in 
 the face of it, was that whatever was done would be 
 done quickly. Seizing upon the probabilities as they 
 presented themselves, Afton had no difficulty in form- 
 ing a definite expectation, the sum of which was that 
 Troy would stay in the house only long enough to 
 have a terrible scene with his wife (the suggestion 
 wasn't lacking that he would most likely kill her, but 
 opinion generally shrank from looking for anything 
 like that), after which he would come out and go after 
 Mr. Jakes. That was where the shudderful part 
 promised to come in. Troy was understood to have 
 furnished himself with a shooting-iron, there was no 
 authority for saying so, but that would never keep 
 it from being understood, under the circumstances. 
 
 Troy arrived about ten o'clock. The sun mounted 
 to its height and began its descent, and beheld nothing 
 more sanguinary than Afton waiting and watching 
 still, for Troy had not come out. It was dinner-time. 
 What about dinner, anyway, in such a posture of 
 affairs? The difficulty was variously met. Some 
 went absolutely dinnerless rather than run the risk 
 of not being on hand to see what there should be to 
 see. Some, the more opulent or ruthless of expense, 
 bought crackers and cheese at the grocery. Some, 
 and they were perhaps the majority, plunged home, 
 snatched a morsel, and plunged back, eagerly asking if 
 anything had happened, in their absence. 
 
 Nothing had happened. As the event proved, every- 
 body might have gone home to dinner, and eaten
 
 The Man of Wrath 279 
 
 leisurely, and taken his time about getting back, yet 
 have missed nothing. 
 
 It was precisely half past one in the afternoon, when 
 word, winging through a multitude grown negligent 
 with weariness and hope deferred, brought on a rapid 
 concentration, a forward movement all along the line, 
 with a quickening of pulses and a holding of breaths, 
 Troy had come out at last. But on the very heels 
 of the first rumor followed another, very dampening, 
 Troy had indeed come out, but only to get an arm- 
 ful of wood and go back. He was in his shirtsleeves 
 and looked rather domestic than otherwise. 
 
 He showed himself no more at all, that day. At 
 night lamps were lighted in the house, and Mrs. Troy 
 was seen to pass from window to window, drawing the 
 curtains, so far as Afton could make out, by such a 
 mere glimpse, she was quite herself. 
 
 Afton went to bed with a distinct sense of having 
 been cheated. 
 
 Next day the watch was resumed, with a certain 
 languor. It had to be confessed that the likelihood 
 of any very sensational outcome was about faded away, 
 while the likelihood of the man and his wife coming 
 to some sort of an understanding, peaceable if not 
 friendly, was fast approximating a certainty. About 
 the most that could be expected, the first day having 
 gone by without visible developments, was a divorce- 
 case, and while that had once been looked forward to as 
 a racy outcome, it was pretty tame in comparison with 
 the gun-play which had since seemed to impend. 
 
 But now the watch did not go unrewarded. Some- 
 where not far from nine o'clock (people had given up 
 making close note of the time in the view that nothing 
 much was going to happen anyway) the door was
 
 280 Mr. Jakes 
 
 opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Troy came out together, 
 and walked away together, toward the post-office. 
 They didn't speak to each other, but on the other hand 
 there was no marked coldness between them, their air 
 was about that of any couple who had been married 
 some time. Troy nodded to now and then an 
 acquaintance as he passed, and if it was not quite as if 
 there were nothing in the wind, he wasn't so very ill at 
 ease, at all events the bodeful look of yesterday was 
 gone. Mrs. Troy, as her wont had become, these days, 
 kept her eyes on the ground. 
 
 Where were they going? To the post-office, 
 perhaps, merely to show themselves in company. No, 
 when they reached the stairway leading to Squire 
 Thornhill's office, they turned in there, and the next 
 moment were lost to sight once more, with Afton 
 staring blankly after them. 
 
 What, in the name of all the gods at once, did it 
 mean? 
 
 The common sense of having been cheated was 
 much intensified. There began to rise dark doubts as 
 to there being even a divorce-case. When it was 
 proposed that the only purpose the Troys could have 
 in repairing to a lawyer's office, that way, was to 
 draw up articles for an amicable separation, hardly 
 a voice was heard in dissent. And you know how 
 chagrin paves the way for resentment. Here was a 
 kind of affront, and Afton, getting its breath, proceeded 
 to avenge itself as it might. It loaded Mrs. Troy 
 with reproaches. It loaded Mr. Jakes with reproaches. 
 But most especially, since it had long since said its 
 worst about these two, it loaded Bill Troy with re- 
 proaches. Bill Troy was no man. Bill Troy had 
 shown himself a coward. Bill Troy ought to be
 
 The Man of Wrath 281 
 
 ashamed to let his face be seen, after swallowing his 
 disgrace so meekly. 
 
 Meanwhile, up in the squire's office, the drama was 
 culminating, if anything so mild could be considered, 
 in view of what had gone before, a culmination. And 
 first of all, Mrs. Troy was making an affidavit, in 
 perfect composure, without a quaver or any hesitation 
 whatever, she declared herself, while the squire took 
 down her words and brought them into legal form. 
 When she was done she held up her hand and took 
 the oath, steadily, though with an unusual color in her 
 cheeks and an unusual sparkle in her fine black eyes. 
 
 " And now," she said, when the declaration was 
 duly signed and sealed, " that I have denied, on my 
 oath, that I am guilty of the wrong I am accused of, 
 I wish to say a word more to my husband, in your 
 presence, Mr. Thornhill. I wish to confess to him, 
 before you, that although I have not committed that 
 particular sin which scandal has led him to suspect me 
 of, I have not been a good wife. I married him, I now 
 fear, without loving him. I wasted his earnings, and 
 I made his heart anxious with my imprudent acts. 
 But, God help me ! that is all past. Henceforth I have 
 no wish in the world but to be faithful to him, to all the 
 obligations of wifehood, in thought and in deed, to do 
 by him as a woman should do by her husband. I can- 
 not hope always to make good my intentions, but I 
 shall try my best, and never weary of trying. It is 
 certain that I am a better woman and a better wife than 
 I ever was before, and I say to you, my husband, and to 
 you, Mr. Thornhill, that this change in me, this miracle 
 of grace, has been wrought by Mr. Jakes. So much 
 there is between him and me. How he has done this 
 thing, I but dimly understand myself, but of the thing
 
 282 Mr. Jakes 
 
 itself there can be no doubt. My husband, instead of 
 blaming him, instead of suspecting" him of doing evil 
 against you, instead of harboring hate toward him, you 
 ought to be thanking him, from the bottom of your 
 heart, for having saved you from the viper in your 
 bosom, for having transformed that viper into a 
 human woman. 
 
 " But I must not stop with telling you what you 
 ought to do. You have theatened Mr. Jakes. You 
 have avowed to me your intention of killing him, at 
 the first opportunity. With all sympathy and sorrow 
 for what you have suffered at my hands, I here and 
 now warn you to visit none of my sinning upon that 
 just man. I warn you not to do him any the least 
 violence. I warn you that if you put so much as a 
 straw in his way, to make him trouble, it will be the 
 worse for you." 
 
 Troy did not open his lips to speak, from first to 
 last, but sat by, listening moodily, and chewing hard 
 at his cigar. There was a hardness in his face, the 
 implied threat went against the grain, and you would 
 guess that the man was by no means giving up his fell 
 designs. But when his wife, having spoken thus 
 plainly, rose and went over to him, and laid her arm 
 about his neck, and kissed him, tears sprang to his 
 eyes, you could see the anger and the hatred melting 
 under that touch. And so they went out, back to their 
 home, through the gaping crowd. 
 
 Afton? 
 
 It was like being played with. The Fates had a 
 string to their stone, just as it was about to splash 
 grandly, they jerked it back. Could anything be more 
 trying to the patience of a people long deprived ? 
 
 Afton was sore, no mistake about that.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 SALT WITHOUT SAVOR 
 
 AFTER two years of ministry, Mr. Jakes lost the 
 favor of Squire Thornhill, and that was the beginning 
 of the end. 
 
 The Troy scandal affected the squire against his 
 pastor no more than the Torrelson scandal before it 
 had done, probably less, in fact, since the credit of 
 the church was doubly involved. Mrs. Troy had be- 
 come a regular attendant at the shrine of pure Chris- 
 tianity, and how was a religious man, a pillar of the 
 faith, to think the worse of her for that? The sug- 
 gestion that a wrongful passion for Mr. Jakes was the 
 woman's real motive Thornhill wouldn't for a moment 
 take seriously, it was too absurd. What had hap- 
 pened to her was only what was likely to happen to 
 any sinner under a proper preaching of the gospel, 
 she had experienced a change of heart, was converted, 
 was genuinely born again in the spirit. Mr. Jakes 
 had been imprudent, none franker than the squire to 
 confess that, and more's the pity, it was any man's 
 place and a clergyman's especially, to shun even the 
 appearance of evil, and kissing and holding hands with 
 a pretty woman carried the appearance of evil if any- 
 thing did. But was it not the admirable kindness of 
 the fellow which prompted the imprudence, and his 
 
 283
 
 284 Mr. Jakes 
 
 admirable simplicity which suffered it? Though Mr. 
 Jakes's friends might wish him a little more endowed 
 with the wisdom of the serpent, they were more than 
 ever convinced that his innocence was the innocence of 
 the dove. No, Mr. Jakes lost no favor with the squire 
 on account of Mrs. Troy his fall from grace in that 
 quarter came about in another way entirely. 
 
 The Thornhill homestead, as already pointed out, 
 had long enjoyed the distinction of being the finest in 
 Afton, if not in all the county, and when the Catho- 
 lics set out, in a fateful day, to build a residence for 
 their pastor which should be far and away finer, it was 
 like casting the squire in the shade, a part which he was 
 not at all fitted to endure in silence and humility. No 
 sooner had the news of what impended got abroad than 
 he was heard inveighing against the wicked and op- 
 pressive tax which an arrogant Romish priesthood 
 was fastening on a parish of free American citizens. 
 There was no denying that the Catholics were for the 
 most part poor people whose ordinary and inevitable 
 burdens were almost too much for them, and once the 
 squire had raised the cry, others saw the point and 
 joined in. But nobody's vehemence quite equalled his, 
 he was loudest in condemnation, outspoken on all 
 occasions and unstintedly severe. 
 
 " Jakes," said he, broaching the matter to his pastor, 
 " why don't you get after that Catholic priest ? He 
 ought to be skinned alive and his hide hung on the 
 fence." 
 
 Mr. Jakes looked so startled that the squire laughed, 
 in spite of the weight of his indignation. 
 
 " Figuratively, of course," he said, with a lofty 
 wave of his hand. " What I mean is that he ought to 
 be showed up and denounced. He's a robber and it's
 
 Salt Without Savor 285 
 
 your business to get after robbers, especially robbers 
 the Jaw can't reach. We need more of the spirit of the 
 church militant. Attack wrong in the concrete, Jakes, 
 in the concrete. Abstract truth is all right as far as 
 it goes, but it don't go far enough. I can be frank 
 with you, can't I ? " 
 
 Certainly, the franker the better. 
 
 " Well, then, we're too dull and prosy. And besides, 
 if we let wrong go unrebuked, we're particeps criminis, 
 if I know the meaning of the term." 
 
 If the squire knew the meaning of the term, Mr. 
 Jakes did not, his blank face testified to that. But 
 his face was troubled, too, he caught the main drift. 
 
 " Maybe you don't know what the chap is up to ? " 
 fumed the squire. 
 
 Probably not, Mr. Jakes admitted that he wasn't 
 well informed. 
 
 " Well, he's building himself a palace, and forcing 
 his poverty-stricken flock to pay for it. They're ig- 
 norant, superstitious foreigners, and they fear him. 
 They believe they've got to do as he tells them, 
 they're shackled by their superstition. Shackled, 
 Jakes ! They imagine he can send them either to hell 
 or to heaven, just as he pleases, and he uses his power 
 over them to feather his own nest. He literally takes 
 the hard-earned bread right out of their mouths, so 
 that he may live in a palace. He ought to be de- 
 nounced. You can't do a fitter thing than pull his 
 monstrous pretensions to pieces, and the pretensions 
 of the Catholic Church in general. Who knows but 
 you may be the means of freeing these unhappy 
 people from their slavery, as Luther was, and John 
 Knox, and Emerson? It's the chance of a lifetime, 
 Jakes. You've got your spurs to win. Don't let
 
 286 Mr. Jakes 
 
 this magnificent opportunity pass unimproved. If you 
 do you'll regret it to the end of your days." 
 
 It was fierily put, but somehow Mr. Jakes did not 
 inflame. His distress plainly grew on him. But there 
 wasn't a thing about him that looked like taking fire. 
 
 " I don't know," he faltered, indecisively. 
 
 Thornhill had another torch to apply. 
 
 " There's a widow-woman down in your end of the 
 town," he went on, hotly. " She's the mother of five 
 helpless children, and she supports them by taking in 
 washing. She's an honest, though misguided woman, 
 and she works like a horse at the hardest kind of work, 
 for the most beggarly wages. I'm told there are 
 times when that family goes to bed hungry because 
 there's no food in the house, and anybody can see 
 they've no more clothes than they need. She's a 
 Catholic, and devout, and what does she get for it? 
 This lordly priest commands her to pay him $10 to- 
 wards his new house. Think of it! Doesn't it make 
 your blood boil ? It does mine, and I don't care who 
 knows it. I'm no advocate of violence, but I confess 
 I'd be almost willing to help take this priest out of his 
 warm bed some night and ride him on a rail out of 
 town, with a jacket of tar and feathers to keep him 
 from taking cold. His practices ought not to be tol- 
 erated in a civilized community." 
 
 If Mr. Jakes's blood boiled, in concert with the 
 squire's, it did so in very quiet, inner fashion. But 
 he pricked up his ears, so to say. at the story of the 
 widow, and said he would go and see her. 
 
 " Half-baked, after all ! Common clay, when it 
 comes to the pinch ! Moral coward ! " So the squire 
 muttered, to himself, after they parted, his attitude 
 was shifting ominously.
 
 Salt Without Savor 287 
 
 Mr. Jakes was as good as his word, he went to 
 see the widow right away. He found the pretext 
 ready to his hand, she had a small parcel of ground 
 planted to garden-truck, but with her many other 
 duties, more urgent, she was forced to neglect it, and 
 the weeds were running riot. That was Mr. Jakes's 
 opportunity, he came over with his hoe in his hand. 
 He found the woman laboring at her tubs, outside, 
 under the shade of a great maple. 
 
 " May I hoe your garden for you, ma'am ? " said 
 he. 
 
 She stopped to stare at him, through her clouds of 
 steam. She had a pleasant face, even though the pre- 
 vailing sentiment in it, at the moment, was distrust. 
 
 " You do be the parson ? " she said. 
 
 Mr. Jakes nodded. "They call me that," he 
 answered. ' 
 
 " And what for should the likes of you be hoeing 
 gardens for the likes of me ? " she demanded, and 
 then, as the mercenary motive presented its familiar 
 aspect to her mind, she added : " I can't pay you 
 anything." 
 
 " There'll be nothing to pay," said Mr. Jakes. " I 
 see your garden needs hoeing, and I know you haven't 
 much time, and I have a lot, and I wish you'd let me 
 help you out." 
 
 The smile that broke over the widow's rosy face 
 lighted it up as the rising sun lights the face of the 
 morning. 
 
 " If I wasn't near old enough to be the mother of 
 ye, I'd sure have my suspicions ! " she cried, and 
 doubled herself up with laughter. And Mr. Jakes 
 laughed, too, the humor of the situation made them 
 good friends forthwith.
 
 288 Mr. Jakes 
 
 The garden was very small indeed. No part of it 
 was far from the tubs under the maple, and while Mr. 
 Jakes hoed and the woman washed they kept up a 
 pretty steady conversation. They spoke of a number 
 of things, first of all the common things that com- 
 mon people talk about. When these common things 
 were exhausted, the woman grew confidential, told 
 about herself and her troubles, and about her hopes, 
 which were built on her children. She introduced the 
 little folks, one by one, as they chanced to put in an 
 appearance. Four of them were girls, but her especial 
 pride was the fifth, a toddling boy. 
 
 " He's to be a priest, God willing," she said, with 
 swelling bosom. 
 
 After that she was silent for a little, while she 
 bobbed vigorously up and down over her washboard. 
 When she straightened up again, there was a shade of 
 anxiety in her clear blue eyes. 
 
 " You're such a fine young man, it's a pity you're a 
 heretic," she said, bluntly. " It's a pity you haven't 
 the true faith. Ah, me! how can people be such 
 unbelievers ? " and she heaved a mighty sigh. 
 
 " Tell me about this true faith of yours," said Mr. 
 Jakes, showing that he was greatly interested. 
 
 She was willing, a thousand times willing. Of 
 course she couldn't tell him all about it, because that 
 would take too long, but she would tell him something. 
 Who knew but it might be for the saving of his soul, 
 please God ? Now there was confession, to begin with 
 that. How could a body possibly live without confes- 
 sion? Oh, the dreadful load of sin piling up and 
 piling up till it was near choking you, and then you 
 go to confession and have it all lifted off " Whe
 
 Salt Without Savor 289 
 
 ew ! " Not otherwise could the widow indicate the 
 relief it was. 
 
 Her countenance was ablaze with joy, confronting 
 him. " It's when you've troubles come on you that 
 you find out what Holy Mother Church is ! " she ex- 
 claimed, eagerly, forgetful of her washing and lean- 
 ing her dripping arms on the rim of the tub. " It's 
 like having your own mother always by you, to run 
 and put your head in her lap when things go wrong. 
 God has laid his hand heavy on me, but he hasn't let 
 me be born a heretic, blessed be He ! " 
 
 Then she bethought herself, and flew at the work 
 again, and there was another silence. It was broken 
 by Mr. Jakes. 
 
 " You have to pay a good deal in support of your 
 church, don't you ? " he said. 
 
 " A good deal is it?" she rejoined, a little nettled, 
 as if a sore spot had be^n touched. " And whose is the 
 money but the dear Lord's, anyway? Every bit of 
 it ! And if He lets me keep enough to feed me and 
 my babies, who am. I to begrudge him the rest ? And 
 besides, it gets me to think of the church more as my 
 own. I gave $5 for the new altars, and when I pray 
 before them I think of that, and I believe God thinks 
 of it, too. I gave $5 for the bell, too, and it is the 
 greater comfort when I hear it calling me. And now 
 I'm just after giving $10 to the new house. Thanks 
 be to God, I had it to give. Father Clancy he spoke 
 to me and he says, ' Mrs. Hugh,' says he, ' we expect 
 $10 of you,' and I says, right back, ' Father Clancy,' 
 says I, ' I've got the money ready for you, glory be to 
 God ! ' that was what I said." 
 
 It took all of two afternoons to hoe the garden, and 
 in that time the widow, though she carried on her
 
 290 Mr. Jakes 
 
 washing fairly well, managed to say much. And more 
 than once she cried out, all radiant with laughter, that 
 if she wasn't near old enough to be the mother of him, 
 why, just naturally she should have her suspicions. 
 And anyway, she wanted to save his soul. The pity 
 was so fine a young man should be a heretic, and a 
 stranger to the consolations of the true faith. 
 
 Some days later, the minister and the squire met 
 again. 
 
 " Hello, Jakes ! " said Thornhill, affecting his usual 
 brisk cordiality. " By the way, when are you going to 
 get after our friend Clancy, the wolf in sheep's 
 clothing? " 
 
 Mr. Jakes shook his head, and the squire concealed 
 his displeasure no longer. 
 
 " Will you neglect to denounce an open and un- 
 blushing wrong? " he demanded. 
 
 Mr. Jakes did not answer and the squire bridled. 
 
 " Perhaps you don't believe me when I tell you he 
 has wrung $10 out of that poor washerwoman?" he 
 blustered. 
 
 " I went to see the woman," Mr. Jakes replied, 
 quietly. 
 
 " Of course she doesn't know she's a gudgeon. All 
 the more reason why you should speak out, for her 
 enlightenment and the enlightenment of others like 
 her." 
 
 Once more Mr. Jakes did not answer, yet his si- 
 lence argued no uncertainty. That was the provoking 
 part of it, the placid indifference with which the man 
 heard this trumpet call to duty. The squire was get- 
 ting red in the face. 
 
 " Certainly you don't wish me to believe that you 
 tolerate this Romish superstition, that you have any-
 
 Salt Without Savor 291 
 
 thing for it but unrelenting hatred?" he snarled, bit- 
 terly to intimate his own attitude. 
 
 Silence, only silence, Mr. Jakes was gazing off into 
 space almost as if he hadn't heard a word. 
 
 The squire rose to that lofty level of moral sub- 
 limity where loud talk has no place. " Do you," he 
 asked, in tones subduedly conversational but freighted 
 with deep meaning, " decline to denounce this man 
 Clancy?" 
 
 " I have no such fruit to show as he has, how 
 should I denounce him ? I only wish the faith I preach 
 were capable of making a soul so good and brave as 
 the faith which Clancy preaches has made that washer- 
 woman." 
 
 So spake Mr. Jakes. The squire was going to say 
 something, but he choked over it, checked himself and 
 ended with turning abruptly on his heel and hurrying 
 away. 
 
 The new rectory went up, the Thornhill mansion 
 was no longer the finest in the village, and a very 
 robust and persistent rumor was accusing Mr. Jakes of 
 wandering after strange gods. What was Mr. Jakes's 
 faith, anyway? The squire took time to cool off and 
 think the matter over, but he wasn't the less offended 
 for that, he was only the more adroit in his manner 
 of striking back. He it was who started the rumor, 
 but in such a way that nobody but himself knew how 
 it began. What he did was to broach, very delicately 
 and in selected quarters, the question as to Mr. Jakes's 
 faith, what did the pastor believe, anyway? He con- 
 fessed, when the rumor had got fairly on its feet, to 
 sundry misgivings, and as time passed and the congre- 
 gation were more and more concerned over the busi- 
 ness, these misgivings grew on him till he was saying,
 
 292 Mr. Jakes 
 
 more in sorrow than in anger, that Mr. Jakes wasn't 
 any sounder, doctrinally, than he should be. Urged to 
 specify, the squire put on his most portentous air and 
 hoarsely whispered that Mr. Jakes was infected with 
 Jesuitism. 
 
 Dreadful ! Nothing, of course, could so pollute the 
 fanes of the true Christianity as an infection of 
 Jesuitism. 
 
 The squire was willing to justify the belief that 
 was in him. In the strictest confidence, that is to say, 
 in such a way that it was all over town before night, 
 he repeated what Mr. Jakes had said about the faith 
 which Father Clancy preached. That was damning 
 enough, to be sure, but it wasn't all. Corroboratively, 
 there was Cecilia and the gesture she had seen Mr. 
 Jakes make that eventful evening when first the new 
 minister broke bread under the squire's roof. Cecilia 
 had testified at once, first to her mother and then to 
 her father, but Thornhill was highly pleased with his 
 pastor just then, and that made a great difference. 
 The squire's feelings were the major premise all 
 through, and now that they were made sore by Mr. 
 Jakes's flagrant contumacy, that which he had waved 
 away as a trifle was recalled and made much of. It was 
 a masterly touch when Thornhill blamed himself for 
 not having taken warning at once. How could he have 
 been so blind? The congregation were profoundly 
 affected. Hints of a Jesuit conspiracy began to be 
 heard, and what could be more terrifying, all things 
 considered, than a Jesuit conspiracy? Of course the 
 squire didn't believe there was any sort of a con- 
 spiracy, but for the purpose he had formed there need 
 be a public sentiment aroused, of a strong character,
 
 Salt Without Savor 293 
 
 and so the story that Rome had designs on Afton got 
 abroad. 
 
 This purpose, briefly, was to bring Mr. Jakes to 
 some sort of trial before the world, with the squire 
 himself in the part of prosecutor. Heresy trials were 
 filling considerable space in the newspapers, in those 
 days, and why shouldn't Afton come in for some of 
 the fame, and, along with Afton, the squire ? " 
 
 There were difficulties, to be sure, even after an 
 adequate public sentiment had been worked up. Im- 
 primis, nobody had ever heard of a heresy trial in a 
 Unitarian church, so far as the available records 
 disclosed, there was no precedent for such a procedure. 
 But the squire's enterprise was not to be dashed. He 
 wouldn't have a heresy trial, in the ordinary sense, 
 it should be, rather, a public scrutiny of the pastor's 
 faith and conduct, instituted (another masterly touch) 
 in order to the vindication of these against certain 
 current aspersions. A series of questions should be 
 propounded to Mr. Jakes, coram populo, by answer- 
 ing which he might clear his skirts. That was the 
 style in which the squire had it worded, in the notice of 
 the public scrutiny, which all the world was bidden to 
 attend ; but all the while his expectation was that there 
 would be no vindication, that Mr. Jakes would be 
 utterly overwhelmed, anything less would smack of 
 defeat for the prosecutor. Indeed, so confident was 
 Thornhill that as the time drew on his chief fear 
 was lest the culprit be frightened and run away, thus 
 to take the wind out of the prosecutor's sails at a 
 stroke. 
 
 Such fear was groundless, however. Mr. Jakes 
 chose to stay and face the music. 
 
 He was given due notice of the public scrutiny and
 
 294 Mr. Jakes 
 
 of the questions which were to be propounded to him 
 on that occasion. He wasn't much affected. He 
 spoke to nobody about the business, not even to Dr. 
 Robert, who knew nothing of it till it was all over. 
 Afterwards, when the circumstances were discussed 
 minutely, it occurred to some that there had been a 
 shade of listlessness about Mr. Jakes, toward the last, 
 as if he were tired and had given up caring much, 
 and still he came and went as usual. He preached his 
 sermon every Sunday, and during the week he busied 
 himself in the old way. He went over and hoed the 
 widow's garden again, for it was June, and the weeds 
 were not to be conquered with once putting down. 
 He worked out with the farmers, as the chance offered, 
 and it offered to him as often as anyone, because he 
 had the name of being faithful and efficient help. And 
 all the while he was characteristically odd, kept 
 people talking right up to the end. A farmer who had 
 ten acres of clover lying in the swath came in a great 
 pickle and offered Mr. Jakes $2 a day and found, yet 
 what did Mr. Jakes do but go instead with another 
 farmer who had lain sick in bed all the spring and 
 could pay him nothing ?
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 OUT OF THIS BODY OF DEATH 
 
 AFTON waited for no second bidding, unlike the 
 king in the parable the squire hadn't to send into the 
 byways and hedges to find those who would attend 
 upon his feast. He had dextrously played with the 
 curiosity of his neighbors, nobody but the inner few 
 knew precisely what the charges were, but every- 
 body was permitted to understand that they might 
 cover a wide latitude. For aught the general public 
 were informed, the Troy affair and the Torrelson 
 affair, to speak of no lesser affairs, were to be brought 
 up and aired, Afton would be on the safe side, any- 
 way, and so there was a great crowd, a feverishly ex- 
 pectant crowd. The church didn't hold the half of all 
 who came. They pressed up about the windows from 
 the outside, they gathered on the roof of the horse- 
 shed until it sagged, though from that point they 
 could see little and hear nothing. 
 
 Down in front, the pulpit and organ had been pushed 
 back into a corner, and a table set out, with a chair 
 at either side of it. Beyond the table, against the wall, 
 were five more chairs, facing the congregation. Afton 
 came early, and sat and stood about, staring at these 
 things, for the better part of an hour. 
 
 Sharp on the stroke of eight (it had clearly ap- 
 peared, from the start, that more people would come if 
 
 295
 
 296 Mr. Jakes 
 
 the scrutiny were held in the evening), the door of the 
 study opened and the squire came out, side by side 
 with Mr. Jakes, and followed by five trustees of the 
 church. They made a stir and there was more to it 
 than the mere breaking up of a suspense long ac- 
 cumulating, the spectacle of prosecutor and prose- 
 cuted walking together was too suggestive of fine 
 Christian sentiment not to go to Afton's heart espe- 
 cially. 
 
 The five trustees mounted to the five chairs and sat 
 down, forming a sort of neutral background to the 
 picture, while the squire took his place at one side of 
 the table and Mr. Jakes at the other. Of all the people 
 there Mr. Jakes seemed least interested in the 
 proceedings, after it was over most everybody could 
 recall having had the impression that the respondent 
 didn't care much whether school kept or not. But 
 the squire was full of importance, no indifference in 
 his bearing as he solemnly busied himself among the 
 books with which the table was loaded. 
 
 After an interval of profound silence, the chairman 
 of the trustees, in the middle place, asked Mr. Jakes 
 to invoke the divine blessing. That was a fine Chris- 
 tian touch, too, or the chairman's part in it was, at 
 least. Mr. Jakes didn't distinguish himself. He 
 hesitated, rose with visible reluctance and mumbled the 
 Lord's prayer. Surely something more was due the 
 occasion and the presence. 
 
 The chairman stood up and spoke a piece, nobody 
 could doubt it was a piece, from the sound of it. 
 
 " We are here," said he, " to perform a duty, deli- 
 cate, perhaps, but a duty none the less. Certain 
 doubts having been expressed as to the faith and con- 
 duct of the pastor of this church " bowing to Mr.
 
 Out of This Body of Death 297 
 
 Jakes " the society have no alternative in justice 
 but to afford him the opportunity of a public vindica- 
 tion. To this end certain inquiries have been framed 
 and these will now be propounded to the respondent. 
 Mr. Thornhill " bowing to the squire " has the 
 floor." 
 
 The prosecutor took plenty of time to adjust his 
 glasses and clear his throat. 
 
 " Mr. Jakes," he said, when he had made due obeis- 
 ance to the chairman and his sanhedrim, " you have 
 been notified of the questions which it is proposed to 
 ask yon. Shall I put them seriatim or en bloc? " 
 
 Not one person in twenty knew what the squire 
 meant, but the feeling was universal that he had 
 scored. Every eye was turned on the respondent. 
 Mr. Jakes moved slightly, in his chair, but made no 
 reply. Some imagined they saw a faint smile hover 
 about his lips, but that might easily have been an illu- 
 sion of the light. 
 
 The prosecutor waited a little and went on, ponder- 
 ously : " Very well. Since you signify no choice, I 
 will ask them seriatim." 
 
 He stopped to open two or three books and lay them 
 out to the right and left of him, nothing could be 
 more fatal to the desired effect than any the least 
 hurry. 
 
 " Firstly," he said, when all was ready to his satis- 
 faction, " what is your belief as to the divinity of 
 Christ?" 
 
 " I have none," replied Mr. Jakes, pretty languidly, 
 and without rising. 
 
 Afton was unschooled in the niceties of theology, 
 but it sufficiently understood that an extraordinary 
 and unexpected rejoinder had been elicited its jaw
 
 298 Mr. Jakes 
 
 dropped. In the midst of a great hush the squire put 
 his secondly: 
 
 " What is your belief as to the inerrancy of the 
 Scriptures? " 
 
 Once more the extraordinary reply, Mr. Jakes 
 had no belief on that head either. 
 
 " Do you hold it literally possible that water was 
 changed into wine and that the dead were raised to 
 life?" asked the squire, with the air of pinning his 
 man down. 
 
 " It's of no consequence one way or the other," 
 answered Mr. Jakes, refusing to be pinned. 
 
 The prosecutor had more business with his books, 
 until a suitable time had elapsed, whereupon he pro- 
 ceeded to his thirdly, raising his voice some, in its 
 honor : 
 
 " Thirdly, sir, what is your belief as to the sub- 
 liminal self, and its effect on human responsibility ? " 
 
 " I never heard of the subliminal self until I read 
 your question. I don't know what you mean by it," 
 quoth Mr. Jakes. 
 
 " I mean," and here the squire sank to an awesome 
 whisper, " the subconscious self." 
 
 " I don't know what that means, either, but I dare- 
 say it is equally something which doesn't matter." 
 
 Still the precise significance of all these replies was 
 lost on the multitude, yet still there was no getting 
 away from the impression that they were very extra- 
 ordinary indeed, and very unexpected. Nor was it 
 possible to doubt that the squire was baffled and dis- 
 turbed. Anybody could see that the respondent was 
 making no issue, that the prosecutor was being put to 
 none of the vast resources which he had so cleverly 
 marshaled. Not a book, for instance, had he found
 
 Out of This Body of Death 299 
 
 occasion to appeal to, and there was only one question 
 left. 
 
 The squire and the sanhedrim had canvassed the 
 possibility of an adjournment being necessary, for lack 
 of time to dispose of all the inquiries in one evening, 
 they were prepared to adjourn if the occasion should 
 demand. At shortest the squire hadn't thought of 
 culminating in his " finally " much before midnight, 
 and here he was about to culminate before half past 
 eight. It was disconcerting, but there was nothing 
 else: 
 
 " Finally, sir, what is your belief as to the atone- 
 ment ? " 
 
 It straightway appeared that Mr. Jakes had a belief 
 on that head, at anyrate he stood up and the squire 
 sat down. Issue was to be joined, after all? People 
 asked themselves that, and looked at Mr. Jakes, and 
 what they beheld caused them to forget all about 
 issues and scrutinies, his aspect was so unfamiliar. 
 There was particularly his fashion of lifting up his 
 eyes, not to confront the world and his accusers, but 
 rather to ignore them, as if there were for him no 
 world and no accusers, and there was more; cer- 
 tainly Mr. Jakes wasn't himself. And his discourse, 
 who ever heard so disjointed and senseless a speech 
 from him? 
 
 A string of jerky phrases, that was all : 
 
 " Jesus for men atonement for all beasts on 
 Jewish altars slain no, not that the death he died 
 death on the cross complete 
 
 " The Good Samaritan 
 
 " To follow the cross 
 
 " Atonement at one the will of God in their 
 hearts good will God's will
 
 300 Mr. Jakes 
 
 " Nobody understands nobody 
 
 " The Jews blood of beasts blood of Jesus 
 
 " Religion the process 
 
 " Nobody" 
 
 His voice was no clarion blast to begin with, and 
 it weakened and was more and more gaspy as he went 
 on. Even within the church not all could hear him. 
 Outside someone had called out, " Louder ! " and 
 another, " Speak up, parson ! " But he was done 
 speaking. He was seen to sway back against his chair, 
 it slipped away from him, but he reached out, grop- 
 ingly, and caught the arm. Steadying himself by that 
 he sank down, quietly, but he missed the seat and went 
 to the floor. For a moment he held a sitting posture 
 there, and then, with a scarcely audible moan, he 
 toppled over, prostrate and perfectly still. 
 
 The squire and the sanhedrim sprang to him, all 
 kindness and solicitude. The congregation, after a 
 brief period of stupor, broke into excited uproar. Sup- 
 pressed screams told of a terror in here and there a 
 timid heart, and back by the door there was a surging 
 to get out, as if there was danger to flee from. The 
 feeling lay on all, no doubt, that a very dread presence 
 had come among them. 
 
 The assemblage was fully half women. Two of 
 these singled themselves out. 
 
 One was Mrs. Troy. She was the first to reach Mr. 
 Jakes. Before anybody else could think of doing any- 
 thing, she was kneeling beside him, chafing his hands 
 and forehead, and fanning him. She was entirely col- 
 lected, however. She directed that he be removed at 
 once to her house, and she sent her husband to fetch a 
 conveyance. 
 
 The other woman was Nannie Jones, and she was
 
 Out of This Body of Death 301 
 
 distracted. She knelt likewise, but only to caress the 
 senseless man and beseech him to look at her. When 
 Mrs. Troy spoke, in her calm, collected way, Nannie 
 flew into a great passion. 
 
 " You dirty drab ! " she shrieked, and would have 
 assailed her rival with blows, only that her father and 
 mother came and took her away. 
 
 They put Mr. Jakes to bed and pretty soon he 
 opened his eyes. He was perfectly clear in his mind, 
 for the moment, and asked that Dr. Robert be brought. 
 
 " For fear I shall not be here to meet him," he said, 
 " I will give you a message for him." 
 
 His message was this: 
 
 " Tell the good Dr. Robert, for me, that though the 
 Christian Church is indeed a dead corpse, she is not 
 more dead than Lazarus was. The touch of her 
 Master will yet restore her to life." 
 
 Those were his last words. Right away he lapsed 
 easily back into unconsciousness and woke no more. 
 His life went out with the night. 
 
 Dr. Robert came and saw him buried, in the tangled 
 little cemetery at Afton. There was a gallant funeral, 
 for now people thought only of the sweetness and 
 goodness of Mr. Jakes. There were flowers, for it 
 was the time of flowers, and genuine tears were not 
 lacking. 
 
 When all was done, the doctor drove home alone, 
 and made his last final entry in the diary. 
 
 It was in these words : 
 
 " Him also have they crucified." 
 
 THE END.
 
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 cheery . . . the unmistakable air of literary grace and refinement," 
 The Outlook. 
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS By Eliza R. Scidmore. 
 
 Journal of a Russian Prisoner's Wife in Japan. 
 
 Illustrated from photographs. 359 pp., izmo. $1.50 net, 
 by mail $1.62. 
 
 " In a class by itself. For sheer graphic force it has a kinship with 
 Kipling's ' Soldiers Three.' A brave love story, bravely told. Epic not 
 only in subject, but in treatment." Philip Tillinghast in The Forum. 
 
 " A remarkable book, and one that places the'author in the very front 
 rank of living writers of fiction." London Academy. 
 
 " First worth3' romance with scenes laid in our Eastern islands. The 
 love story is the real thing." New York Times Review. 
 
 *% If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
 send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
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 34 WEST 33d STREET NEW YORK
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD 
 
 The dramatic story of some modern English people in a 
 ctrange situation. $1.75. 
 
 "A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range 
 of fiction." The Nation. 
 
 "Dear familiar friends, companions, playmates of his are these men and 
 women and children, and he tells you about them so vividly and tenderly 
 that they must be your friends and familiars, too for their mere charm 
 and their humanness' sake in their jests and idle pastimes, not less than 
 in their tragedies and joys. ... If you love your Thackeray, you may 
 ehance it safely enough and have your reward." New York Times 
 Review. 
 
 "Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to their 
 laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. A higher 
 quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of any other novelist 
 now living and active in either England or America. Absolutely masterly. 
 The plot is extremely ingenious and complicated." The Dial. 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT 
 
 The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and 
 family. Seventh printing. $1 .75. 
 
 "Really worth reading and praising . . . will be hailed as a masterpiece. 
 If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter 
 century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan." Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 " It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, over- 
 crowded books. . . . Page by page the new book is as rich, piquant, and 
 interesting as its predecessor. . . . Everywhere are wit, learning, and 
 scholarship . . . the true creative imagination. . . . Will be remembered 
 as Dickens' s novels are remembered." Springfield Republican. 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE 
 
 A novel of life near London in the 50's. Eighth printing. 
 $1.75. 
 
 "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Mere- 
 dith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English novel 
 that has appeared in the twentieth century." LEWIS MELVILLE in Nev 
 York Times Saturday Review. 
 
 "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield' and 'Peter Ibbetson,' h 
 can find the two books in this one." The Independent. 
 
 * If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, 
 from time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 THE LADY OF THE DYNAMOS 
 
 By ADELE MARIE SHAW and CARMELITA BECKWITH 
 
 310 pp. tamo. $1.50. 
 
 A very appealing love story dominates this tale of the heroic 
 struggle of a young American electrical engineer and an English 
 girl, against treachery, superstition and open opposition, to harness 
 a great water power and reclaim a wilderness in Ceylon. There is 
 plenty of humor as well as of peril and suspense, and it works up to 
 a climax, the most exciting chapter being the last. The characters, 
 principally American and English, are so well denned that the effect 
 is almost that of a play acted before the reader's eyes. 
 
 "Striking and fascinating . . a charming young woman . . the 
 devil dances and the outbreaks of the natives are described with vivid 
 detail . . . stands out as a bit of real life." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " A good story ... a fine likeable American man and a 
 charming English girl . . . personages standing out clearly 
 . . . the stirring action and picturesque setting will help many 
 a pleased reader to compass a verdict of praise." Chicago Record 
 Herald. 
 
 "A vivid romance, combining marked virility with the most 
 delicate play of fancy and of sentiment . . . holds the interest 
 from beginning to end. The surprise of the narrative is the con- 
 summate ease with which two women writers handle the details of 
 the great electrical power plant and mammoth business enterprise." 
 San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 THE PILGRIM'S MARCH 
 
 By H. H. BASHFORD 
 
 320 pp. I2mo. Third Printing, $1.50. 
 
 A happily written English story with a theme of wide appeal. A 
 likable youth with artistic tendencies is converted, for a time at least, 
 to the ways, and works, and daughter of a puritan family. The sit- 
 uation is worked out with humor and in an atmosphere of good 
 breeding. 
 
 "Extremely clever and charming." Prof. Wm.Lyon Phetys of Yale. 
 
 "A sureness of touch, a sympathetic understanding that deserve 
 high piaise." The Bookman. 
 
 " Really charming. They're all very real, these good people 
 altogether too nice and wholesomely lovable to shut away with the 
 memory of their story's single reading." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " Those critics who have asserted that all possible plots have been 
 used will be compelled to retreat. A remarkable first novel." The 
 Living Age, Boston. 
 
 ***If the reader will send his name and address, the publisher will send, from 
 time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 By Alice Duer Miller, author of " Calderon's Prisoner " and 
 "A Modern Obstacle.'' $1.25. 
 
 Amusing and clever. A clean-cut young man, just back from 
 South America, is welcomed as a prodigal son, into an exclusive 
 New York family of entire strangers and where a lovely girl really 
 believes she is "a sister to him." 
 
 HOMESPUN 
 
 A Story of Some New England Folk. By Lottie Blair 
 Parker, author of the plays, " 'Way Down East" and "Un- 
 der Southern Skies." $1.50. 
 
 A humorous story of New England village life, revealing the same 
 marked skill in character delineation and plot development that 
 made the author's plays appeal so strongly to the sympathies of 
 audiences the country over. 
 
 One of the most distinguished critics in America who saw the Ms. 
 wrote : 
 
 "As a study of New England village life, it seems to me quite ex- 
 ceptional much good realism and plenty of humor. I should say 
 that as a story ... it seems to me to have broad human appeal." 
 
 MELCHISEDEC 
 
 By Ramsey Benson, author of "A Lord of Lands." $1.50. 
 
 This novel is in quite a different vein than the author's first ; it is 
 a tale of the Northwest with a strong appeal to those interested in 
 present religious tendencies, but with the human interest dominating 
 it. 
 
 It is the story of a quarter-blood Indian waif, who has much the 
 quality of a mystic. An instinct prompts him to leave the northern 
 wilds where he was born, and leads him to singular adventures 
 among the Palefaces and through these to the discovery of his mission, 
 which he conceives to be the recall of the Christian ministry to the 
 way whereby it is to save the world. In the pursuit of this mission 
 he encounters various adversaries, not least among them falling in 
 love, which is near being the ruin of all his plans. 
 
 ***If the reader will send his name and address, the publisher will send, from 
 time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 THE RUNAWAY PLACE 
 
 A MAY IDYL OF MANHATTAN 
 
 By WALTER P. EATON and ELISE M. UNDERBILL. $1.25. 
 
 Men and maids have met before in Central Park ("THE RUN- 
 AWAY PLACE"); but the man in this idyl was out of a job which 
 was entirely volitional, and he was proud of it ! and the mysterious 
 maid was on a vacation from Somewhere; so, being loafers, they had 
 time to be lovers, and to meet adventures by the way. Really, 
 though, they were only children, having forgotten to grow up. The 
 authors win the sympathy of those who have not forgotten childhood 
 fancies, whims, and recollections, though the characters degenerate 
 into grown-ups now and then. 
 
 There is something here of Kenneth Graham's half playful, half 
 wistful love of vanished days. 
 
 Mr. Eaton made his reputation as a dramatic critic of the New 
 York Sun, and as the author of "The American Stage of To-day." 
 Miss Underbill is new as a writer, but not as a student of children. 
 
 THE LONG GALLERY 
 
 By EVA LATHBURY. $1.50. 
 
 This romance is dominated by the influence of dead ancestors 
 whose pictures hang in the long gallery of Southern Court in 
 England. Contrasting with that is a Kenneth-Graham-like glamor 
 of the days spent in the old play room at the Court. Three un- 
 usually attractive women are the leading figures. The oldest is one 
 whose mystery is connected with The Long Gallery. The other two 
 are charming girls, well contrasted, but only one of them with a 
 mystery. The men who woo them are also clearly drawn. There 
 is considerable wit, with the verbal fencing of clever folk, while at 
 other times the note of tragedy is audible. 
 
 *** If the reader will send his name and address, the publisher will send, from 
 time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 FOR TRAVELERS 
 
 By CLARA CRAWFORD PERKINS 
 FRENCH CATHEDRALS AND CHATEAUX 
 
 Two volumes, with photogravure frontispieces and 62 half-tone 
 plates. 8vo. $5.00 net, boxed, carriage extra. 
 
 Covers the cathedrals, palaces, and chateaux around which so 
 much of history and romance has gathered. The author has a full 
 knowledge and comprehension of her subject. 
 
 While appealing especially to those who have visited France, its 
 elaborate illustrations and historical and architectural comment make 
 this work an admirable guide to intelligent sight-seeing. 
 
 "A most valuable work. A more complete study of the architecture, or 
 clever scheme of giving lucid pictures of its history could not be desired." 
 
 The Reader. 
 " Of genuine artistic value. Notable for its excellent arrangement." 
 
 Boston Herald. 
 
 THE BUILDERS OF SPAIN 
 
 Two volumes, with two photogravure frontispieces and 62 half- 
 tone plates. 8vo. $5.00 net, boxed, carriage extra. 
 
 A sumptuous and popular work similar to "French Cathedrals 
 and Chateaux " in scope, appearance, and careful arrangement. 
 
 " A very delightful book." Baltimore Sun. 
 
 " It is a pleasure to take up a beautiful book and find that the subject matter 
 is quite as satisfactory as the artistic illustrations, the rich covers and the clear 
 
 Erint .. The author handles with much skill a subject with which she is 
 tmiliar and one which is much neglected by the average reader. The illus- 
 trations, many of them photogravures, are far out of the ordinary and add 
 much to the text, for they are illustrations in the true sense." Springfield 
 Republican. 
 
 POEMS FOR TRAVELERS 
 
 Compiled by MARY R. J. DuBois. i6mo. Cloth, $1.50 ; 
 leather, $2.50. 
 
 Covers France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece 
 in some three hundred poems (nearly one-third of them by Americans) 
 trom about one hundred and thirty poets. All but some forty of 
 these poems were originally written in English. 
 
 THE POETIC OLD WORLD 
 
 Compiled by Miss L. H. HUMPHREY. i6mo. Cloth, $1.50 ; 
 leather, $2.50. 
 
 Covers Europe, including Spain, Belgium and the British Isles, 
 in some two hundred poems from about ninety poets. Some thirty, 
 not originally written in English, are given in both the original and 
 the best available translation. 
 
 *** If the reader will send his name and address, the publisher will send, from 
 time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS KEW YORK
 
 BOOKS THAT CHEER 
 
 By CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS 
 
 Uniform 12rno. Each, $1.25. 
 
 A HOLIDAY TOUCH 
 
 And other tales of dauntless Americans. 
 
 This volume consists chiefly of anecdotes of Americans who 
 won out smiling ; among them are A Study in Optimism, 
 Buffum and the Cannibals, Uncle Eli's Induced Ambegris, A 
 Dinner to Paul, With a Money King to Back Me, and several 
 delightful burlesques, including The Only Vice of Awjul Adkins 
 and A Coat of Alpaca, while a brace of Christmas stories in 
 highly contrasted veins open and close the book. Despite the 
 extravagance of the situations there is often a touch of quiet 
 pathos. 
 
 FOE'S RAVEN IN AN ELEVATOR 
 
 Being a later edition of "More Cheerful Americans." Illus- 
 trated by Mrs. Shinn and others. 
 
 Eighteen humorous tales in the vein of the author's popular 
 "Cheerful Americans," with a dozen equally humorous pictures, 
 six of them by Florence Scovel Shinn. To these is appended 
 a delightfully satirical paper on "How to Write a Novel for 
 the Masses." 
 
 AT. Y. Times Review: "Really funny. You have to laugh laugh sud- 
 denly and unexpectedly." 
 
 Chicago Record-Herald: "There is enough of the Stockton flavor in this 
 volume to make it deserve a new career in its fresh dress. The book is 
 pleasantly illustrated." 
 
 Washington Star: "Each one of them is a blessing. It will aid diges- 
 tion, induce health, and add to the joy of the living." 
 
 CHEERFUL AMERICANS 
 
 Illustrated by Mmes. Shinn, Cory, and others. 
 
 Seventeen humorous tales, including three quaint automo- 
 bile stories, and the "Americans Abroad" series, "The Man 
 of Putty," "Too Much Boy," "The Men Who Swapped Lan- 
 guages," " Veritable Quidors," etc. 
 
 N. Y. Times Saturday Review says of one of the stories: "It is worthy 
 of Frank Stockton." The rest of the notice praises the book. 
 
 N. Y. Tribune: "He is unaffectedly funny, and entertains us from 
 beginning to end." 
 
 Nation: "The mere name and the very cover are full of hope. . . . 
 This small volume is a safe one to lend to a gambler, an invalid, a hypo- 
 chondriac, or an old lady; more than safe for the normal man." 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NE W YORK
 
 STIRRING MYSTERY STORIES 
 
 ANGEL ESQUIRE 
 
 By EDGAR WALLACE. 12mo, $1.50. 
 
 A rattling good detective story in which an inexperienced girl 
 has to contend with three unscrupulous and during criminals for 
 millions strangely bequeathed to one of the four. The situation 
 and incidents are highly original, and the game with fate is 
 played with a light-hearted good humor that is particularly 
 alluring. 
 
 By BURTON E. STEVENSON 
 THAT AFFAIR AT ELIZABETH 
 
 Another story in which Lester, the young lawyer, and Godfrey, 
 the reporter, play the part of detectives in unraveling a modern 
 mystery. $1.50. 
 
 " A well-constructed detective story . . . surrounding the disappearance 
 of a bride a few minutes before the hour set for her wedding. A murder is 
 committed at about the time of her vanishing, and the two etoriesare vigorously 
 interwoven, being worked out to a surprising conclusion." Chicago Post. 
 
 "Starts with a capital situation. . . . The reader is utterly unable to guess 
 at the secret." N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 THE MARATHON MYSTERY 
 
 The story of a strange happening in a New York apartment 
 house, and at a Long Island house party. The plot is unusual, 
 full of surprises ; the handling is masterful. It has been repub- 
 lished in England and Germany. With five scenes in color by 
 ELIOT KEEN. $1.50. 
 
 "The author has stepped at once to the front ranks among American writers 
 of detective tales . . . a.yarn with genuine thrills." Bookman. 
 
 "Distinctly an interesting story one of the sort that the reader will not lay 
 down before he goes to bed." New York Sun. 
 
 THE HOLLADAY CASE 
 
 This remarkable story begins with the finding of a New York 
 banker stabbed to death in his office. Suspicion falls on his 
 daughter. A kidnapping and pursuit over seas follow. The 
 story contains a minimum of horror and a maximum of ingenu- 
 ity, and the mystery is kept up to the next to last chapter. 
 With frontispiece by'ELiOT KEEN. $1.25. 
 
 "A good detective story, and it is the better because the part of the hero is 
 not filled by a member of the profession. . . . The reader will not want to 
 pnt the book down until he has reached the last page. Most ingeniously con- 
 structed and will written into the bargain." JV. Y. Tribune. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS (vi '07) NEW YORK
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
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