held it there on trial. To him it was the
story of a Reformer who, eighteen centuries ago, had served his day.
Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there
anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the
awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? He doubted
it. People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was as
unnatural and distorted as his body. God, looking down into his heart
that night, saw the savage wrestling there, and judged him with other
eyes than theirs.

The story stood alive in his throbbing brain demanding hearing. All
things were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that his
companions sneered at; most real of all, the unhelped pain of life, the
great seething mire of dumb wretchedness in streets and alleys, the cry
for aid from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other work
to do than to listen,--pleasanter. But he, coming out of the mire, his
veins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up their
pain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth to
him,--more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. By
the reality, the peril of the world's instant need, he tried the
offered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night.
Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had doubted him as this
man did, their work in the coming heaven might be higher,--and ours,
who hear them. When the girl had finished reading, she went out into
the cool air. The Doctor passed her without notice. He went, in his
lumbering way, down the hill into the city; glad to go; the trustful,
waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad
against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go
to the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens,
its foul cellars;--his place and work. If he stumble blindly against
unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do
you think their work is lost?

Margret stood looking down at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had
her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and
kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the
wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending toil lay in
them, whatever hungry loneliness, or coarseness of deed, she saw it
all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the big blue-corded veins
in her wris