ssed people
attended, and the services were conducted by white-robed clergymen,
assisted by high-class music and well-trained choirs. She knew that
the clergy, for the most part, were a devoted, hard-working class, but
the thought of connecting them with the heroic in life had never
entered her head.

Once she had attended a Synod service, where the clergy marched in, two
by two, singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Though she had been told
that some of them were men broken down by strenuous toil in frontier
work among the Indians and miners, she had experienced no thrill or
quickening of the heart. Her heroes were of a different class:
soldiers, who fought and died for their country, or sailors, who braved
the perils of the great deep. Of these she loved to read, while a
missionary book, or a magazine telling of the noble deeds done, and
lives given for the cause of Christ, was something not to be considered.

But her eyes had been opened, and she saw a man, a student of no mean
order, who had given up his life to uplift a band of uncouth Indians in
a lonely region, away from all the refinements of civilization, who
knew nothing of ease or of popular applause. And the most wonderful of
all was that he did not consider it a sacrifice, but simply a joy to be
able to serve. Then to see this man, in his noble efforts to assist
and cheer the miners, opposed, scoffed at, and driven out, perhaps to
die, by the very ones he had tried to help, was strange to contemplate.
She had heard people laugh at missionaries and their efforts to benefit
the natives. Now a longing entered her heart to go to those very
people, and tell them what she had seen of the efforts of one man.

The report of a rifle startled her from her reverie. Then the sound of
voices came faintly through the night.

Sol sprang to his feet, and rushed to the door.

"Stay here!" he cried. "I'll be back in a minute."

Presently he returned with a pained expression upon his face.

"I was afeared of it," he replied, in answer to Constance's inquiring
look. "Them varmints are burnin' the mission house. Blow out the
candle, an' come to the winder to see fer yerselves."

With the room in darkness, and the curtain drawn back, the three stood
and watched the scene of destruction. The flames, fanned by the wind,
were sending up huge forked tongues into the night, while anon a rifle
shot or a shout would wing its way across the snow.

"God help us!" gr