For some time the three sat in silence, each wrapped in earnest thought. As Constance listened to the snow-laden wind beating against the window, she pictured Keith battling his way through the dreary night, or else crouching by a lonely camp fire. Her ideas of Christianity were undergoing a marked change. Formerly she had associated religion with large churches, where well-dressed 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!" groaned Sol. "What will they do next? They don't realize what they're doin' to-night. They must be mad or they wouldn't burn the mission house, whar the Injuns keep their supplies. What will the natives do when they return? God help us then!"