The Doctor told him that God would forgive him if he truly repented, but that the people, being human, could not, for he had wronged them sorely.  Then he charged the people that for a whole year none of them should speak or deal with that man; but if he made an honest effort to mend his way, they could feel free to talk with him and deal with him again at the end of the year.

“This relentless judge,” says Norman Duncan, “on a stormy July day carried many bundles ashore at Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labrador.  The wife of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s agent examined them with delight.  They were Christmas gifts from the children of the “States” to the lads and little maids of that coast.  The Doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts.”  The wife of the agent stowed away the gifts to distribute them at next Christmas time.

“It makes them very happy,” said the agent’s wife.

“Not long ago,” said Duncan, “I saw a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly.  Are they not afraid to play with these pretty things?”

“Sometimes,” she laughed, “but it makes them happy just to look at them.  But they do play with them.  There is a little girl up the bay who has kissed the paint off her dolly!”

And so even the tiniest, most forlorn little lad or lass is not forgotten by Doctor Grenfell.  He is the Santa Claus of the coast.  He never forgets.  Nothing, if it will bring joy into the life of any one, is too big or too small for his attention.

Can we wonder that Grenfell is happy in his work?  Can we wonder that nothing in the world could induce him to leave the Labrador for a life of ease?  Battling, year in and year out, with stormy seas in summer, and ice and snow and arctic blizzards in winter, the joy of life is in him.  Every day has a thrill for him.  Here in this rugged land of endeavor he has for thirty years been healing the sick and saving life, easing pain, restoring cripples to strength, feeding and clothing and housing the poor, and putting upon their feet with useful work unfortunate men that they might look the world in the face bravely and independently.

There is no happiness in the world so keen as the happiness that comes through making others happy.  This is what Doctor Grenfell is doing.  He is giving his life to others, and he is getting no end of joy out of life himself.  The life he leads possesses for him no element of self-denial, after all, and he never looks upon it as a life of hardship.  He loves the adventure of it, and by straight, clean living he has prepared himself, physically and mentally, to meet the storms and cold and privations with no great sense of discomfort.

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell is the same sportsman, as, when a lad, he roamed the Sands o’ Dee; the same lover of fun that he was when he went to Marlborough College; the same athlete that made the football team and rowed with the winning crew when a student in the University—­sympathetic, courageous, tireless, a doer among men and above all, a Christian gentleman.