iew of the ministerial character. William
spent all his time in the stricken homes of his people. It was not a
sense of duty or conscience or courage that caused him to face the
deadly disease with such fortitude, but it was the instinct of the
shepherd for his flock. And he readily permitted me to accompany him
with the curious indifference to consequences shown by those who have
had their heads grandly turned by Heavenly thoughts. Life meant little
to him, immortality meant everything. He risked his own life and the
life of his wife because it is the nature of the true priest to care
more for his people than he does for himself or his wife, just as it is
the nature of the good shepherd to lay down his life for his sheep.

At the end of three weeks we had buried half the membership of Redwine
Church and had received the secrets of many passing souls. For a man
cannot die with his secret in him. It belongs to history and will not
be buried. One old woman, Sister Fanny Claris, who had been a faithful
member of our church for years, confessed to William at the very last
that she had always wanted to be a Baptist, but that her husband had
been a Methodist and she had "gone with him."

"If I could have been put clean under the water when I j'ined and not
had sech a little jest flung on my head, seems as if I'd feel safer
now," she wailed. "And I've took the Lord's Supper with sinners and
all kinds when it was in my conscience to be more particular and take
it 'close communion' style like the Baptists. Besides, I have believed
in the doctrine of election all my life, and I ain't noways sho' about
mine now, although I've tried to do my duty." The fading eyes looked
at us out of the old face sternly crimped with the wrinkles she had
made working for God under an alien creed.

"My soul's never been satisfied, not for a single day, in your church
with its easy ways and shiftless doctrines," she concluded faintly.

For once William was silenced. It was not an occasion upon which to
vindicate Methodism in an argument. Neither did he have enough
tautness of conviction concerning certain terrible doctrines to meet
the emergency of her dogmatic needs. And so she passed unshriven to
the mercies of a God who is doubtless sufficiently broad-minded to have
such baptisms properly attended to somewhere in Heaven.

CHAPTER V

GOD'S ANNUALS

But the dying are not the only ones who suffer most from the sickness
of