The little man is quite admirable in the sturdiness of his faith, in the power of his belief, that is the one supreme ideal always before him, and I shook hands with him.

“But I fear he is very ill now.  A boy just told me they had to carry him from his boat, when he returned this morning.”

“I’ll go with you now to Frenchy’s,” said Helen.

“Are you not afraid?” asked the little parson.

“Are you?” she asked, just a little rudely, I fear.

“With me it is a matter of duty and love, you know,” he replied.

“With me also,” she said, with head bent down.  Then she looked up again.

“I don’t think you have any better right to expose yourself than I,” she said, with spirit.  “You have children of your own, and a wife to think of.  Your life is a full one, rounded out and devoted to a work that is very great.  Mine is only beginning; nothing has come from it yet; I have done nothing.  It all lies before me and I won’t stand aloof as if I were outside of laboring humanity, while there is sickness to be fought.  I’m going with you.”

She came to me.

“I hope you don’t think I’m very bad, Daddy?” she said.  “I’m sorry to give you so much trouble, but something tells me I must go.  I just have to!”

I looked at her, as she walked rapidly away with the parson, and then sat down on the steamer chair that had been brought up again, and for the first time I felt that age was creeping up on me.  It looks as if all of us, ill or hale, poor or rich, are but the playthings of nature, bits of flotsam on the ocean of human passions.  Your poor dear sister, Jennie, died young, and I believe that her life with me was a happy one as long as she was spared.  After a little while Helen began to fill some of the emptiness she had left, but now there come again to me memories of a sweet face, uplifted lovingly to my own, and I am overcome with a sense of loss indescribable.  And yet this is mingled with some pride.  My daughter is no doll-like creature, no romantic, unpractical fool destined to be nothing but a clog to the man who may join his life to hers.  She will never lag behind and cry for help, and hers will be the power to walk side by side with him.  She can never be a mere bauble, and will play her own part.

Oh!  Jennie.  The pluck of the child, the readiness with which she wants to give the best of herself because she thinks it right and just, and because she refuses to concede to others a monopoly of helpful love!

That young man, if he lives, will be a fit mate for any woman, but I swear to you that if it comes to that I will insist upon paying the salary of some man to take his place.  I want my girl nearer to me than in Sweetapple Cove!

After a time I pulled out the letter Mr. Barnett had handed me.  It was from that young rascal Harry Lawrence.  He says he’s heard from you about that caribou shooting, and wants to come up anyway and find out how I look after my tough summer in this neck of the woods, and he’s never been to Newfoundland anyway, etc., etc.