“I am not a preacher,” he protested. “I am not a 'mixer.' They all say so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain.”
“Young man,” said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice, “you know not what transformations in character this war will work. Would I were twenty years younger,” he added passionately, “twenty years sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort, when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need peace.”
Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his superintendent recalled him.
“I have a bit of work to do,” he said, “in which I need your help. I wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in this district. We start this evening.”
There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders. The two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new estimate of the chaplain's work. As he came into closer touch with camp life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier's need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment, by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training, from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain's privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his own unfitness for the work.
When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.
But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's life. He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q., he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser in the office.
“Gone out for the afternoon, sir,” was the word from the orderly in charge.
Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a squad of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill. As he drew near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the N. C. O. in charge.
“That chap knows his job,” he said to himself, “and looks like his job, too,” he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright, soldier-like figure.