The barn-door toward the dock was now open, and, in a humble way, the firm of “Tyler & Fisher” began business, drying their fish on the flakes adjoining Aunt Stanshy’s barn, while in the barn itself they stored their possessions, as might be necessary.
A note from Mr. Walton arrived about that time. It was written in his frank, simple, hearty way, congratulating both the men on the stand they had taken. Referring to Tim’s desire for fellowship in his new effort, of which Mr. Walton had heard, he added, “There is another who will stand by you, the Great Brother who came as a babe at Bethlehem, and Christmas will soon remind us of it. Feeling for us and loving us, he at last died for us. Ask him to stand with you. He came to help just such poor weak fellows as we all are.”
That touched the “firm,” and the next Sunday they both sat in a back seat near the stove by the church-door. As Tim Tyler sat there in old St. John’s and heard the dreary wind roaring without, he thought of the fishing-boats that scud before such winds anxious to make port and reach home.
“That’s me, I hope, trying to get home,” he thought, “and find harbor in God’s Church, will hold us all.”
[Chapter XVIII.]
A New Departure.
Again the club was only a memory. It was like a walking-stick that, when the mountain-tramp is over, the vacationist puts on the wall as a memento.
“How is your club getting along, Charlie?” asked Miss Bertha Barry, one day, when she was calling at Aunt Stanshy’s.
“We—we—don’t meet,” said Charlie, mournfully. Juggie was there, also, calling on a once brother knight, and he, too, looked sad.