The man in the road laughed a strange, hoarse, mirthless laugh, saying as he continued to advance, "I thought it must be you. You nearly ran me down." And Dan climbed in by the physician's side.
The minister made no explanation, nor did his friend, after the first few
surprised questions, press him. But when they were turning in towards
Dan's gate the big fellow burst forth, "Don't stop, Harry—not here! For
God's sake, if you love me, take me on to your house for a little while!"
Then did Dr. Harry guess the truth that later he came to know.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE TIE THAT BINDS
"The Ally was there in power. The day of the rack, the thumbscrew and the stake, is long past: in place of these instruments of religious discipline we have—the Ally."
All the next day Dan remained at Dr. Harry's home, returning to his own rooms in the evening. Early the following morning he was to take the train for the annual gathering of the denomination, that was to be held in a distant city. He would be away from Corinth three days at least.
The minister's little study, when he had lighted the lamp that night, seemed filled with a spirit that was never there before. It was as if, during his absence, some unseen presence had moved in to share the apartment with him. The very books and papers impressed him as intimate companions, as if, in thus witnessing and—in truth—taking part in the soul-struggle of the man, they had entered into a closer relation to him, a relation sacred and holy. He was conscious, too, of an atmosphere of privacy there that he had never sensed before, and, for the first time in his life, he drew the window shades.
In the battle that Hope Farwell had set for him to fight Dan had sought to be frankly honest with himself, and to judge himself coldly, without regard to the demands of his heart. If he had erred at all it was in an over-sensitiveness to conscience, for conscience has ever been a tricky master, often betraying its too-willing slaves to their own self-injury. It is, a large question whether one has a greater right to injure himself than to harm another.
Dan could not admit, even to himself, that he had in any way neglected the church, or fallen short of his duties as a hired shepherd. But after all, was he not to some degree in error in his judgment of his people? Had he not, perhaps, misunderstood the spirit that moved them? He had come to Corinth from his school with the thought fixed in his mind that the church was all right. Had he not, by the unexpected and brutal directness of his experience, been swung to the other extreme, conceiving conditions as all wrong?