Bert did not answer at once. He knew well the locality Dr. Chrystal had in mind, and the class of people that inhabited it. For square after square, tenement houses, tall, grimy, and repulsive, alternated with groggeries, flaunting, flashy, and reeking with iniquity. The residents were of the lowest and poorest order. Filth, vice, and poverty, held high carnival the whole year round. In the day time crowds of tattered roughs played rudely with one another in the streets, and after dark, drunken soldiers, sailors, and wharf men, made night hideous with their degraded revelry or frenzied fighting.
And yet these people had souls to save, and even though they might seem sunken in sin beyond all hope of recovery, they had children that might be trained to better ways and a brighter future. It was these children that Dr. Chrystal had in mind when he spoke to Bert. A union mission school had lately been established in the very heart of this unattractive district, and it was sorely in need of workers.
Both Bert and Frank were quite competent to undertake work of this kind, did they but give their minds to it, and Dr. Chrystal was anxious to have their interest in it thoroughly aroused before he went away.
After a few moments' silence, during which his brain had been very busy with conflicting thoughts, Bert looked up into his pastor's face, and said, in a doubtful way:
"Don't you think, sir, that is rather hard work to put us at at first?"
Dr. Chrystal gave him a tender smile. "It is hard work, I know, Bert," said he. "I would not for a moment try to argue that it is anything else, but I am none the less desirous of seeing you engaged in it. You and Frank would make splendid recruiting sergeants for the little mission school, and you could be very helpful in keeping order, or even in teaching at the morning session. By doing this you would not interfere with either your church-going or your own Sunday school in the afternoon. I wish you would talk the matter over with Frank, and, of course, consult your parents about it."
Bert readily promised that he would do this, for although he, as was natural enough, shrank from undertaking what could not be otherwise than trying and difficult work, yet he felt that if his father fully approved of it, and Frank took it up heartily, he would be able at least to give it a trial. Dr. Chrystal was evidently well pleased with the result of the conversation, and in parting with Bert took his hand in his, and pressing it warmly, said:
"God's best blessings be upon you, Bert. You are fitted to do good work for Him. May you ever be a workman that needeth not to be ashamed."
Little did Bert imagine that these would be the last words Dr. Chrystal would address to him personally, or that, as he turned away with a seraphic smile upon his face, he would see him but once more alive.
The following Sunday was the last that Dr. Chrystal would spend with his congregation previous to his going away, and as he appeared before them at the morning service it was the general opinion that his abstention from work was taking place none too soon, for he certainly seemed to sorely need it.