Playing With Fire

by Amelia E. Barr

"I did not heed him. I buttoned up my coat and set my eyes far off to the river side."

"You did right."

"It stands to reason that Scotchmen ought to look after their own first."

"I suppose I am quite forgotten. I have had no letters. I do not know whether anything has happened or not."

"You left no address. You wrote to no one. Yes, to me you sent one letter, full to its edges with uncertainties. You must remember Marion is married and greatly taken up with her husband. You never answered Donald's letter, and the lad, of course, takes it for granted that his silence was what you wished. Ian, you have tried wandering, and there is no peace or profit in it. Now, then, if you cannot pray, you can work; if you can't love God, you can love your fellow creatures. Dr. James Lindsey was here last week, and I spoke to him about you. When you were a stripling you were all for surgery, and Dr. James thinks you will yet make a fine surgeon. You are to live with him, and he was delighted at the very thought of your company. It is the great opportunity left you, and I hope you see all its possibilities and will accept them."

Ian was satisfied at the prospect. It was quite true that even in boyhood he had had a craving for the surgical profession, and the arrangements made for him by the two elder gentlemen were so homely and generous, and so full of kind consideration, that he was greatly moved by their unselfishness. In a few days he went to London, and was met at the train by Dr. Lindsey. Ian was not ignorant of him. He had seen him at his uncle's house several times, and he knew that the Major and Dr. James had been friends since ever they were barefooted laddies, fishing in the mountain streams together.

Neither was Lindsey ignorant of Ian. He had heard him preach, and he knew something of the soul struggle through which he was passing. Indeed, he had his own plans for relieving this spiritual misery, and, as soon, therefore, as Ian reached London, he found all his days filled with study and labor. But his surroundings were homelike and pleasant, and the men were intellectually well matched.

Now, the road downward is easy and rapidly taken, and Ian had managed to slip from the pinnacle of ministerial fame into silence and forgetfulness in about one year, but it took him a ten years' climb to win his way to about the same pitch of public favor in his new vocation. But of this ten years I shall have little to say. The road upward is a climb to the very top, and all men find it so, but Ian enjoyed the study and the practical work of his profession and became extraordinarily skillful in it.

Their lives were by no means dull or monotonous. Truly the day was given up to business, but they usually dined together at seven, and afterward went to the opera or theater, or perhaps to a reception at some house where they were familiar and honored guests. Or, if they wished to stay at their own fireside, they were the best of good company for each other. Nothing that touched man's soul or body came amiss for their discussion, and if Ian was the more widely and generally educated, Dr. Lindsey had the keener spiritual instinct, and his soul often ventured where Ian's followed only with flagging and uncertain wings. In the summer they made short trips to the Continent or they went to Glasgow, and, being joined there by the Major, sailed north to the Macrae country, and then home by Cromarty and Fife.

When Ian had been in London ten years Dr. Lindsey began to talk of a rather longer holiday than usual. "But first," he added, "here is a letter from Squire Airey, and he wants either you or me to run up to Airey Hall to examine his fractured arm. It is all right, I know, but he is frightened and impatient, and you might go as far as Furness and make him comfortable."