Mr. Clare was silent a moment, then he said gently, “If they ever seem willing to let me pray with them, I assure you I shall not be slow to comply.”
He was very silent and thoughtful for the remainder of the day, and in the evening propounded a very strange question to Father McClosky.
“I say, Bryan, if you were a shepherd, a literal shepherd, you know, and one of your sheep were to stray into the desert and be lost, what would you do?”
“Sure, I trust I’d seek till I found it,” replied the Father, with a look of inquiry.
“And if you couldn’t find it one way you’d try another, eh? You wouldn’t simply stand on the edge of the wilderness and cry ‘Co-nan, co-nan!’ and then turn back satisfied, saying, ‘Well, it’s not my fault; I’ve called you, and there my responsibility ends’?”
Father McClosky laughed, but quickly looked grave and troubled. “Sure, we clergy have much to answer for,” he said. “There’s mighty few of us, maybe none, but could say his mea culpa to the sins of negligence and indifference. We’re all mighty unselfish about responsibility, and perfectly willing to make any one that wants it a present of our share.”
“I don’t think that peculiarity is confined to the clergy,” said Mr. Clare.
If it were, the remainder of this chapter might have remained a blank.
For the situation of Micklegard was, as this story has frequently indicated, upon a river, the physical beauty of which was the pride of every dweller upon its banks, though its moral character might be marred by treachery and fickleness. It was fed by mountain streams which were liable to a sudden rise at the time of the melting of the winter snows, or at any season after continuous heavy rain, and these floods, or “high water,” as they were euphoniously termed by those who seemed rather to prefer to have their cellars washed out occasionally, sometimes rose to the height of devastating inundations. The cause of their increased frequency and destructiveness was by some said to be the will of God; by others, a judgment on the wicked; others still ascribed it to the reckless destruction of the forests that had once clothed the hills to the top, and by retaining much of the snow on their sturdy branches, and, in spring, lessening the influence of the sun, had prevented its too rapid melting. That these views were at all reconcilable, that the will of God might be that the hills should bring righteousness to the people by teaching the reckless and money-loving that they could not safely trifle with the forces of nature, few seemed able to understand. Yet, if this lesson had been thoroughly learned, and followed out to its logical consequences, the calamity of which I have now to write would certainly never have occurred.
The winter which had just ended had been unusually mild; very little snow had fallen, even in the hills; but the months of April and May had been marked by an unusual rainfall, and the Mickle River, though not over its banks, stood at a height which, earlier in the year, would have been decidedly alarming, but which was viewed at this season with complacency as an excellent preparation for the summer droughts.