第86章

THE REGIONS BEYOND

The visit of the Superintendent to a mission field varied according to the nature of the field and the character of the work done, between an inquisitorial process and a triumphal march.Nothing escaped his keen eye.It needed no questioning on his part to become possessed of almost all the facts necessary to his full information about the field, the work, the financial condition, and the general efficiency of the missionary.One or two points he was sure to make inquiry about.One of these was the care the missionary had taken of the outlying points.He had the eye of an explorer, which always rests on the horizon.The results of his investigations could easily be read in his joy or his grief, his hope or his disappointment, his genuine pride in his missionary or his blazing, scorching rebuke.

The one consideration with the Superintendent was the progress of the work.The work first, the work last, the work always.

The announcement to Shock through his Convener, that the Superintendent purposed making a visit in the spring, filled him with more or less anxiety.He remembered only too well his failure at the Fort; he thought of that postscript in the Superintendent's letter to his Convener; he knew that even in Loon Lake and in the Pass his church organization was not anything to boast of; and altogether he considered that the results he had to show for his year's labour were few and meagre.

The winter had been long and severe.In the Pass there had been a great deal of sickness, both among the miners and among the lumbermen.The terrible sufferings these men had to endure from the cold and exposure, for which they were all too inadequately prepared, brought not only physical evils upon them, but reacted in orgies unspeakably degrading.

The hospital was full.Nell had been retained by The Don as nurse, and although for a time this meant constant humiliation and trial to her, she bore herself with such gentle humility, and did her work with such sweet and untiring patience, that the men began to regard her with that entire respect and courteous consideration that men of their class never fail to give to pure and high-minded women.

The Don was full of work.He visited the camps, treated the sick and wounded there, and brought down to the hospital such as needed to be moved thither, and gradually won his way into the confidence of all who came into touch with him.Even Ike, after long hesitation and somewhat careful observation, gave him once more his respect and his friendship.

The doctor was kept busy by an epidemic of diphtheric croup that had broken out among the children of the Loon Lake district, and began to take once more pride in his work, and to regain his self-respect and self-control.He took especial pride and joy in the work of The Don at the Pass, and did all he could to make the hospital and the club room accomplish all the good that Shock had hoped for them.

But though the hospital and club room had done much for the men of the Pass, there was still the ancient warfare between the forces that make for manhood and those that make for its destruction.

Hickey still ran his saloon, and his gang still aided him in all his nefarious work.Men were still "run" into the saloon or the red-light houses, there to be "rolled," and thence to be kicked out, fit candidates for the hospital.The hospital door was ever open for them, and whatever the history, the physical or moral condition of the patient, he was received, and with gentle, loving ministration tended back to health, and sent out again to camp or mine, often only to return for another plunge into the abyss of lust and consequent misery; sometimes, however, to set his feet upon the upward trail that led to pure and noble manhood.For The Don, while he never preached, took pains to make clear to all who came under his charge the results of their folly and their sin to body and to mind, as well as to soul, and he had the trick of forcing them to take upon themselves the full responsibility for their destiny, whether it was to be strength, soundness of mind, happiness, heaven, or disease, insanity, misery, hell.It was heart-breaking work, for the disappointments were many and bitter, but with now and then an achievement of such splendid victory as gave hope and courage to keep up the fight.

At Loon Lake during the winter Shock had devoted himself to the perfecting of his church organization A Communion Roll had been formed and on it names entered of men and women whose last church connection reached back for ten or fifteen or twenty years, and along with those the names of some who had never before had a place in that mystic order of the saints of God.And, indeed, with some of these Shock had had his own difficulty, not in persuading them to offer themselves as candidates, but in persuading himself to assume the responsibility of accepting them.To Shock with his Highland training it was a terribly solemn step to "come forward." The responsibility assumed, bulked so largely in the opinion of those whom Shock had always regarded as peculiarly men of God, that it almost, if not altogether, obliterated the privilege gained.