"Oh, The Don and the doctor took hold, and the men all helped."
The Superintendent said nothing, but his eyes were alight with a kindly smile as they rested on his big missionary, and he took his arm in a very close grip as they walked from shack to shack.
All this time Shock was pouring into his Superintendent's ear tales of the men who lived in the mountains beyond the Pass. He spoke of their hardships, their sufferings, their temptations, their terrible vices and their steady degradation.
"And have you visited them?" inquired the Superintendent.
He had not been able to visit them as much as he would have liked, but he had obtained information from many of the miners and lumbermen as to their whereabouts, and as to the conditions under which they lived and wrought. Shock was talking to a man of like mind. The Superintendent's eye, like that of his missionary, was ever upon the horizon, and his desires ran far ahead of his vision.
It was from The Don that the Superintendent learned of all Shock's work in the past, and of all that had been done to counteract the terrible evils that were the ruin of the lumbermen and miners. Won by the Superintendent's sympathy, The Don unburdened his heart and told him his own story of how, in his hour of misery and despair, Shock had stood his friend and saved him from shame and ruin.
"Yes, sir," The Don concluded, "more than I shall ever be able to repay he has done for me, and," he added humbly, "if I have any hope for the future, that too I owe to him."
"You have cause to thank God for your friend, sir," said the Superintendent, "and he has no reason to be ashamed of his friend. You are doing noble work, sir, in this place, noble work."
A visit to the nearest lumber camp and mines, a public meeting in the hospital, and the Superintendent's work at the Pass for the time was done.
As he was leaving the building The Don called him into his private room.