"Yes, Mr. Strong, and I tell you the rummies will almost hold a prayer-meeting when you leave Milton. And they mean to make you trouble enough until you do leave. If I was you," the man paused, curiously—"if I was you, I'd get up and leave this God-forsaken town, Mr. Strong."
"You would?" Philip glanced at the letter which still lay upon the couch beside him. "Suppose I should say I had about made up my mind to do just that thing?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Strong, you don't mean that!" The man made a gesture toward Philip that revealed a world of longing and of hunger for fellowship that made Philip's heart throb with a feeling of intense joy, mingled with an ache of pain. The man at once repressed his emotion. It had been like a lightning flash out of a summer cloud.
"Yes," said Philip, as if continuing, "I have been thinking of leaving
Milton."
"That might be best. You're in danger here. No telling when some harm may come to you."
"Well, I'm thinking I might as well leave. My work here has been a failure, anyway."
"What! A failure? Mr. Strong, you don't know the facts. There has never been a minister in Milton who did so much for the poor and the working-man as yourself! Let me tell you," the man continued, with an earnestness that concealed an emotion he was trying to subdue, "Mr. Strong, if you were to leave Milton now, it would be a greater loss to the common people than you can imagine. You may not know it, but your influence among us is very great. I have lived in Milton as boy and man for thirty years, and I never knew so many laboring-men attend church and the lectures in the hall as during the few months you have been here. Your work here has not been a failure; it has been a great success."
A tear stole out of Philip's eye and rolled down and fell with a warm splash on the letter which lay beside him. If a $2,500 call could be drowned by one tear, that professorship in Sociology in Fairview Seminary was in danger.
"So you think the people in this neighborhood would miss me a little?" he asked almost as modestly as if he were asking a great favor.
"Would they, Mr. Strong! You will never know what you have done for them. If the mill-men were to hear of your leaving they would come down here in a body and almost compel you to stay. I cannot bear to think of your going. And yet the danger you are in, the whiskey men——"