Dr. Grenfell confesses with shame that his first impulse was to return a sharp, vexed answer, and to ask, "What do you mean by holding up my mission boat for such a reason?" But then he realized his mistake. In a way, it would be as good a deed to put a prop under the old man's spirit with a good book as to take off his leg with a knife.
"Haven't you got any books?"
"Yes, Doctor. I've got two, but I've read 'em through, over and over again, long ago."
"What were they?"
"One is the Works of Josephus, sir, and the other is Plutarch's Lives."
The old fellow was overjoyed when the Doctor put aboard his bobbing skiff a box of fifty books—a mixture of everything from Henty's stories to sermons.
Dr. Grenfell never could tell what a day—or a night—would bring forth. If variety is the spice of life, his life in the north has been one long diet of paprika.
Once late in the fall he was creeping along the Straits of Belle Isle in a motor-boat—the only one in those waters at that time.
It broke down, as the best of motor-boats sometimes will, and the tidal current, with that brutal habit which tidal currents have, began to pull the boat on the rocks as with an unseen hand.
They tied all the lines they had together, attached the anchor, and put it overboard.