a charity
which takes the form of human rather than mere spiritual help.

Father Jose loved humanity because it was humanity. Creed and race
made no difference to him. It was his way to stand beside the stile of
Life ready to help any, and everybody, over it who needed his help. He
saw little beyond that. He concerned himself with no doctrine in the
process. Help--physical, moral. That was his creed. And every day of
his life he lived up to it.

The habits of the white folk at St. Agatha Mission varied little enough
from day to day. It was the custom to foregather at Mrs. Mowbray's
home in the evening. After which, with unfailing regularity, Murray
McTavish was wont to join the little priest in his Mission House for a
few minutes before retiring for the night to his sleeping quarters up
at the Fort.

It was eleven o'clock, and the two men were together now in the shanty
which served the priest as a home.

It was a pathetic parody of all that home usually conveys. The comfort
of it was only the comfort radiating from the contentment of the owner
in it. Its structure was powerful to resist storm. Its furnishing was
that which the priest had been able to manufacture himself. But the
stove had been a present from Allan Mowbray. The walls were whitened
with a lime wash which disguised the primitive plaster filling in
between the lateral logs. There were some photographs pinned up to
help disguise other defects. There were odds and ends of bookshelves
hung about, all laden to the limit of their capacity with a library
which had been laboriously collected during the long life of Mission
work. Four rough chairs formed the seating accommodation. A table,
made with a great expenditure of labor, and covered with an old
blanket, served as a desk. Then, at the far end of the room, under a
cotton ceiling, to save them from the dust from the thatch above, stood
four trestle beds, each with ample blankets spread over it. Three of
these were for wayfarers, and the fourth, in emergency, for the same
purpose. Otherwise the fourth was Father Jose's own bed. Behind this
building, and opening out of it, was a kitchen. This was the entire
habitation of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of others.

Murray was sitting at the other side of the stove and his bulky figure
was only partly visible to the priest from behind the stovepipe. Both
men were smoking their final pipe before retiring. The priest w