CHAPTER V

MRS. MARLOW'S NEW BOARDER

HE stranger overtook the clergyman as

THE

the

latter was turning toward the bars that let into the highway. He had been humorously conscious for some time that Craig was so deeply buried in thought that he had no perception of the presence of any one; and he was waiting his expression of surprise, when he could no longer ignore him. The clergyman glanced up and met his presence with,

"Good afternoon, brother-ah-why! Barnaby! Where did you drop from?" His hand went out, and the grasp was of most unclerical warmth.

"From the station stage, just now," laughed the other. "I've been tracking you for the last quarter of a mile. You carry the burdens of this world,” and he swept his hand to include the scattered houses, "heavily."

Craig gazed around at the expanse of meadow and trees, with house and barn peeping out here and there and the broad river in the distance. The lengthening shadows were as yet sharp cut in the July sunlight, and every trifle stood forth with exaggerated importance that lent reality to the silence of time sleeping through the summer hour. Yet there was a beauty in it all that the stranger seemed to breathe into his very soul, and the clergyman to recognise as something alien to his mood.

"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" retorted Craig. "Or a soul

entrusted to his charge?" he added before his pause became a break.

"Do you hold yourself responsible for all the souls under your charge?" asked Barnaby, in surprise.

"Is there any other meaning possible to my pastorate?” Craig asked simply.

Barnaby seemed to find the question a strange one, for he studied it with some care before reaching a satisfactory answer. Then he said:

"It wasn't possible for you to miss being a clergyman.”

"No: since I am one," said Craig. "Nor you."

"Oh!" exclaimed Barnaby, suddenly, as speaking of something he had forgotten. "That's all over. My dad and I've made up, and it's forget and forgive. I've let the pulpit slip, and taken to the bar as a means of making the public support me."

Craig winced, visibly and physically. The glow of welcome that had lighted his face faded, and his mood grew cold and awkward. He was a man who felt opposition as personal hostility, and to whom the purpose of life was the atmosphere of life itself.

"You have done right," he said. "A man who could do that would be guilty not to do it. The Master has never softened His command to the young man, 'Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and come and follow me.' Unless one can obey, let him spare the Church and himself."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Barnaby, carelessly, but not illnaturedly; "you can't take these things literally. You'd get yourself tied up in a hard knot in twenty-four hours. One 's got to be practical."

For an instant the clergyman seemed to feel the dividing impulse of courtesy and duty, but he had so

sternly shut his heart to the world that the issue was in no sense doubtful. He would have known himself unworthy his high calling, had it been.

"You're blasphemous!" he exclaimed. "It is not for man to speak thus of the word of the Lord!"

"Is a man simply to go it blind?" sneered Barnaby. "Yes!" exclaimed Craig. "Obey! That's all God has left to you and be thankful he has left that much. You've nothing to do with consequences." "Not even if the consequence is hell?”

"Not even if the consequence is hell," repeated the clergyman. "That is God's business, not yours. It's for you to obey: it's for Him to say finally whether you shall escape hell or not."

"A comforting doctrine!" sneered Barnaby.

"What has it to do with comfort or discomfort? You are to work out your salvation with fear and trembling

"Yes: but still to work it out," interrupted Barnaby. "Neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase."

"You can find a Bible passage for anything," was Barnaby's attempted retreat.

"Don't forget that I'm a clergyman," said Craig, a note of personal irritation sounding in his voice.

one.

"Don't be afraid," answered Barnaby. "I've got all the forgetting I can do in forgetting I was going to be You've not welcomed me to Padanaram yet." "You 've not told me what you have come for," said Craig, clearly implying that there were considerations even above the welcoming of a friend.

"I've come to see you," said Barnaby, with the note of disappointment in his voice at what, to one of his shallower nature, was simply a conditional greeting.

"I have put from me friendships," said Craig slowly and as one who so speaks a thing likely to seem offensive as to avoid, if possible, offence. "The clergyman has no right to ties other than those of the steward and servant of the Lord. I have ceased to know the individual, save as behind him is the soul to be saved."

"God gave us bodies as well.”

"Yes, since we have them," said Craig, "and carnal lusts and vain desires;" showing no lack of courage in facing all that the other might urge. "They are the incarnate enemies of the Spirit which we must, at the price of eternal death, subdue."

"A rather large-sized task, for which we are mightily poorly equipped," said Barnaby.

"It's the grace of God alone that makes success even possible; and His, not ours, is the glory."

"That being the case," demanded the other; "don't you think His grace might have gone a little farther and spared us the whole thing?"

As they swung around the bend of the road, Barnaby on the outer curve and the clergyman deep in search for an answer to crush such hideous blasphemy, there came to view a tall slip of a girl, quaintly and coarsely dressed, and carrying a basket too heavy for her strength. A ray of sun stole under the broad rim of her hat of roughly plaited straw, and fell on a face that startled the younger man with a sense of intense sadness. Yet, when he looked again, he felt that he had read wrongly. The face was transfigured with a smile so softly radiant that it was sacrilege to associate with it even the thought of

sorrow.

Craig turning his head, the bitter answer of his righteous wrath burning on his lips, caught and followed the direction of Barnaby's glance, and so perceived the girl.

"Good afternoon, sister Seagrave; are your mother and father well?"

In an instant she had passed, leaning sideways to balance the weight of the great basket, and as Barnaby tried to recall the face, it was the impress of sadness that was uppermost in the picture, so intense that he longed to run back and peep under the rough hat-brim, in the hope that he would see again that smile of tenderHe gazed in wonder at Craig who, knowing the girl, could coldly ask of her a commonplace question. "Don't you know," he demanded brusquely, as if Craig had already disputed him; "your sister Seagrave is is glorious?"

ness.

Craig turned and studied the bent figure, now passing from sight beyond the curve.

"I don't know what 'glorious' means applied to a human creature," he said slowly.

"Come, Craig!" exclaimed his companion, "that's carrying the thing a little too far! You 're a man before you're a clergyman, and I know you can't look on a woman like that and not feel a thrill through your whole body. You know what I mean, you can't help it!"

"I do not know what you mean," said Craig coldly. "She's farmer Seagrave's daughter; a church member, whose interest is barely lukewarm. She taught the village school last spring, and I fear has notions above her station in life and not fitting a humble Christian woman. I know all these things; but I don't know what you are trying to tell me, and I don't want to know."

Barnaby felt a large sense of satisfaction that he had surprised all this information regarding the girl without asking for it, and he accepted the reprimand with a complacence that somewhat mollified Craig's displeasure,