tried to boil water and make
tea. The blizzard defeated them. In the blinding snow, they set their
course by the compass, and the dogs plunged on. They said nothing to
the dogs after that, but let them follow their own cold noses. The
wonderful beasts took them straight to a tiny shore village. A short
dash from the village, and the long run was over. In a jiffy, Grenfell
had out the surgical instruments and put the patient under ether.
To-day the woman is not merely alive but in the best of health, and
she thinks of Dr. Grenfell as the Greeks used to think of a god.

XVII

WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE

We have seen by this time that Grenfell does not rush slam-bang into
danger for the mere sake of "the tumult and the shouting," like a
soldier of fortune.

Once he said to me: "I'm like these dogs. Every time they hear a fight
going on at the other end of the village they feel that they have to
get into it, and off they go, pell-mell. Whenever I hear of a good
scrap in progress anywhere in the world, my first impulse is to drop
everything else and get into the struggle. Then I realize that I'm
serving my fellow-man as truly by staying just where I am, and trying
to do my duty in my place."

He is fearlessly willing to spend his life in heroic deeds: but he
always has a definite purpose in view: he is not posing for the
motion-pictures. So when he harnesses his dogs to go on a journey we
may be pretty sure that at the other end of the run there is some man,
woman or child who needs the Doctor, and who takes the medicine of
hope just from seeing him at the bedside, before he has done anything
with a knife or a needle.

In the spring of 1919 the Doctor had to go to New York. It wasn't a
sick person this time: it was a board of directors that wanted to hear
his report on his work, and was to discuss with him big plans to raise
$1,500,000 for an endowment fund to carry it on. A Seamen's Institute,
a string of hospitals, several mission steamers, an industrial school
and a number of dispensaries take a lot of money to run, even with
many volunteer helpers.

Most of us, if we find it inconvenient to attend a meeting, telephone
or write politely to say we have the laryngitis or the shingles or
some other good excuse, and are very, very sorry that we cannot come.

But Grenfell, having said he would be in New York at the end of May,
was bound to be there in spite of fog and bog, sea and snow and berg,
if it was huma