into him at Coulter; but his flashing eye, his mighty
sweeping hand, gave the lie to every word of meekness that fell from his
school-bound tongue. He longed for life in its fullest, best, most human
form. He was fiery as a pirate among the wild rowdies he had lived with
yet he had that other side--a child or a little girl could bully him
into absolute, abject submission.

Whoever knows the West of the late '70s can have no doubt as to where
the whirlpool of red-blooded life surged deepest, most irresistibly;
where the strong alone could live and where the strongest only could
win. In the Black Hills the strongest of the savages met the strongest
of the whites, and there every human lust and crime ran riot. It was not
accident but a far-sighted wisdom on the part of his directors that sent
Jim to Cedar Mountain.

This town of the Black Hills was then in the transition stage. The
cut-throat border element was gone. The law and order society had done
its work. The ordinary machinery of justice was established and doing
fairly well. The big strikes of gold were things of the past; now
plodding Chinese and careful Germans were making profitable daily wages;
and farmers were taking the places of the ranchmen. But there was still
a rowdy element in the one end of the town, where cowboy and miner left
their horses waiting for half the night, by the doors of noisy life and
riot. This was the future field of pastoral work selected for the Rev.
James Hartigan by elders wise in the testing of the human spirit.

All alone, Jim set forth on his three days' journey from Coulter, by way
of Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago, to the West, and seldom has a grown
man had so little knowledge of the world to rely upon. On the train he
met with a painted woman, whose smirks and overtures he did not
understand; and some farmer folk of simple kindness. In the coach, where
all slept on their seats at night, he was like another brother to the
little folks, and when a lumberjack, taking advantage of his size,
sought to monopolize two seats, whereby the old farmer was left
standing, Jim's mild and humorous "Sure, I wouldn't do that; it doesn't
seem neighbourly," as he tapped the ruffian's shoulder, put a new light
on the matter; and the lumberjack, after noting the shoulders of the
speaker, decided that it _wasn't_ neighbourly, and removed his feet.

Most of the passengers said "good-bye" at Chicago, and the rest at
Sidney Junction, where Jim chan