"Brother Jim, what's this about the proposed work of your young people? Suppose you tell me about it, if you don't mind. I've heard a good many things to-day, and I just thought I'd run over and get the straight of it."
Cameron laughed as he carefully selected a rosy-cheeked apple. "You're the second caller I've had to-day who needed straightening out. I've been wishing you would run in, and if you had not, I would have been over to see you this evening. This work is right along lines that you and I have talked over many times." And then he told the whole story.
When Cameron had finished, the older man asked a few questions, and then slowly nodding his head, repeated softly: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven."
"Brother Cameron, you know that I belong to a church that is noted for its conservative spirit, but I have been preaching more years than you have lived, and have been at it too long to be bound altogether by the particular belief of any particular people, and I want to say to you that if I were a younger man, I would take just your course exactly. There is no use, Brother Jim, of our flinching or dodging the question. The church is not meeting the problems of the day, and it's my candid opinion that ninety-nine out of every hundred preachers know it. But I'm too old to make the fight. I haven't the strength to do it. But my boy, do you go in to win, and may God's richest blessing rest upon you. And you'll stir this city as it never was stirred before. I only wish I were twenty years younger; I'd stand by you. But this needs young blood and I am an old, worn-out man. It is almost time that I was going home, and I dare not take up any work like this that will need years of patient labor to complete." He arose to his feet, and grasping Cameron's hand, said, "Good night, Brother Jim; we older men must turn our work, all unfinished, over to younger, stronger hands to complete. My boy, see that you keep that which is committed unto you, and don't, Oh don't, be sidetracked by the opinions of men. The victory will be yours, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Good-night Jim, I thank God for this day."
CHAPTER XII
The sun sank into the prairie and tinted the sky all red and green and gold where it shone through the rents in the ragged clouds of purple black. The glowing colors touching dull, weather-beaten steeples and factory stacks, changed them to objects of interest and beauty. The poisonous smoke from smelter and engine, that hung always over the town like a heavy veil, shot through with the brilliant rays, became a sea of color that drifted here and there, tumbled and tossed by the wind, while above, the ball of the newly painted flag-staff on the courthouse tower gleamed like a signal lamp from another world. And through it all, the light reflected from a hundred windows flashed and blazed in wondrous glory, until the city seemed a dream of unearthly splendor and fairy loveliness, in which the people moved in wonder and in awe. Only for a moment it lasted. A heavy cloud curtain was drawn hurriedly across the west as though the scene in its marvelous beauty was too sacred for the gaze of men whose souls were dwarfed by baser visions. For an instant a single star gleamed above the curtain in the soft green of the upper sky; then it too vanished, blotted out by the flying forerunners of the coming storm.
About nine o'clock, when the first wild fury of the gale had passed, a man, muffled in a heavy coat and with a soft hat pulled low over his face, made his way along the deserted streets. In front of the Goodrich hardware and implement store, he stopped and looked carefully about as though in fear of some observer. Then taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and entered. Walking quickly through the room to the office, as though familiar with the place, he knelt before the big safe, his hand upon the knob that worked the combination. A moment later the heavy door yielded to his hand. Taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, he selected one without hesitation, and upon applying it, the cash box opened, revealing a large sum of money. Catching up a package of bills, he placed it in his side coat pocket, and locking the cash box again, was closing the safe, when he paused as though struck with a sudden thought. The storm without seemed to be renewing its strength. The dashing of sleet and snow against the windows, the howling of the wind, the weird singing of the wires, and the sharp banging of swinging signs and shutters, carried terror to the heart of the man kneeling in the dimly lighted office. Sinking on the floor, he buried his face in his hands and moaned aloud, "My God—What am I doing? What if I should fail?"
Again there came a lull in the storm; everything grew hushed and still, almost as if the very spirit of the night waited breathlessly the result of the battle fought in the breast of the tempted man. Rising slowly to his knees, he swung back the heavy doors and once more unlocking the cash box reached out to replace the package of bills; but with the money before his eyes he paused again. Then with a sudden exclamation, "I won't fail this time; I can't lose always," he quickly closed the safe, and with the money in his pocket, sprang to his feet and hurried out of the building, where the storm met him in all its fury, as though striving to wrest from him that which he had taken from another. But with set face and clenched fists, he pushed into the gale, and a few minutes later knocked at the door of a room on the top floor of a big hotel. He was admitted and greeted cordially by two men who were drinking and smoking.
"Hello Frank," they exclaimed; "We thought you had crawfished this time sure. What makes you so late; it is nearly ten?"
"Oh, the old man had some work for me, of course. What a beastly night. Where's Whitley?" He tried to speak carelessly, but his eyes wavered and his hands trembled as he unbuttoned his heavy coat.