It was evening. Caius was watering his father's horses. Between the barns and the house the space was grass; a log fence divided it, and against this stood a huge wooden pump and a heavy log hollowed out for a trough. House and barns were white; the house was large, but the barns were many times larger. If it had not been that their sloping roofs of various heights and sizes formed a progression of angles not unpleasant to the eye, the buildings would have been very ugly; but they had also a generous and cleanly aspect which was attractive.

Caius brought the horses to the trough in pairs, each with a hempen halter. They were lightly-built, well-conditioned beasts, but their days of labour had wrought in them more of gentleness than of fire. As they drank now, the breeze played with their manes and forelocks, brushing them about their drooping necks and meek faces. Caius pumped the water for them, and watched them meditatively the while. There was a fire low down in the western sky; over the purple of the leafless woods and the bleak acres of bare red earth its light glanced, not warming them, but showing forth their coldness, as firelight glancing through a window-pane glows cold upon the garden snows. The big butter-nut-tree that stood up high and strong over the pump rattled its twigs in the air, as bare bones might rattle.

It was while he was still at the watering that the elder Simpson drove up to the house door in his gig. He had been to the post-office. This was not an event that happened every day, so that the letter which he now handed Caius might as well as not have been retarded a day or two in its delivery. Caius took it, leading the horses to their stalls, and he examined it by the light of the stable lantern.

The writing, the appearance of the envelope and post-mark, were all quite unfamiliar. The writing was the fine Italian hand common to ladies of a former generation, and was, in Caius' mind, connected only with the idea of elderly women. He opened the letter, therefore, with the less curiosity. Inside he found several pages of the same fine writing, and he read it with his arm round the neck of one of the horses. The lantern, which he had hung on a nail in the stall, sent down dim candlelight upon the pair.

When Caius had read the letter, he turned it over and over curiously, and began to read it again, more out of sheer surprise than from any relish for its contents. It was written by one Madame Josephine Le MaÎtre, and came from a place which, although not very far from his own home, was almost as unknown to him as the most remote foreign part. It came from one of the Magdalen Islands, that lie some eighty miles' journey by sea to the north of his native shore. The writer stated that she knew few men upon the mainland—in which she seemed to include the larger island of Prince Edward—that Caius Simpson was the only medical man of whom she had any personal knowledge who was at that time unemployed. She stated, also, that upon the island where she lived there were some hundreds of fisher-folk, and that a very deadly disease, that she supposed to be diphtheria, was among them. The only doctor in the whole group refused to come to them, because he feared to take back the infection to the other islands. Indeed, so great was the dread of this infection, that no helpful person would come to their aid except an English priest, and he was able only to make a short weekly visit. It was some months now since the disease had first appeared, and it was increasing rather than diminishing.

"Come," said the letter, "and do what you can to save the lives of these poor people—their need of you is very great; but do not come if you are not willing to risk your life, for you will risk it. Do not come if you are not willing to be cut off from the world all the months the ice lies in the gulf, for at that time we have no communication with the world. You are a good man; you go to church, and believe in the Divine Christ, who was also a physician. It is because of this that I dare to ask you. There is a schooner that will be lying in the harbour of Souris for two or three weeks after the time that you receive this letter. Then she will come here upon her last winter trip. I have arranged with the captain to bring you to us if you can come."

After that the name of the schooner and its captain was given, a list also of some of the things that he would need to bring with him. It was stated that upon the island he would receive lodging and food, and that there were a few women, not unskilled in nursing, who would carry out his instructions with regard to the sick.

Caius folded the letter after the second reading, finished his work with the horses, and walked with his lantern through the now darkening air to the house. Just for a few seconds he stopped in the cold air, and looked about him at the dark land and the starry sky.

"I have now neither the belief nor the enthusiasm she attributes to me," said Caius.

When he got into the bright room he blinked for a moment at the light by which his father was reading.

The elder man took the letter in his hard, knotted hand, and read it because he was desired to do so. When finished, he cast it upon the table, returning to his newspaper.

"Hoots!" said he; "the woman's mad!" And then meditatively, after he had finished his newspaper paragraph: "What dealings have you ever had with her?"

"I never had any dealings with her."

"When you get a letter from a strange woman"—the father spoke with some heat—"the best thing that you can do with it is to put it in the fire."

Now, Caius knew that his father had, as a usual thing, that kindly and simple way of looking at the actions of his fellow-men which is refinement, so that it was evident that the contents of the letter were hateful. That was to be expected. The point that aroused the son's curiosity was to know how far the father recognised an obligation imposed by the letter. The letter would be hateful just in so far as it was considered worthy of attention."I suppose," said the young man dubiously, "that we can easily find out at Souris whether the statements in the letter are true or not?"

The father continued to read his paper.

The lamp upon the unpolished walnut table had no shade or globe upon it, and it glared with all the brilliancy of clean glass, and much wick and oil. The dining-room was orderly as ever. The map of Palestine, the old Bible, and some newly-acquired commentaries, obtruded themselves painfully as ornaments. There was no nook or corner in which anything could hide in shadow; there were no shutters on the windows, for there was no one to pass by, unless it might be some good or evil spirit that floated upon the dark air.

Mr. Simpson continued to read his paper without heeding his son. The mother's voice chiding the maid in the next room was the only sound that broke the silence.

"I'll write to that merchant you used to know at Souris, father," Caius spoke in a business-like voice. "He will be able to find out from all the vessels that come in to what extent there is disease on the Magdalens."

The exciting cause in Caius of this remark was his father's indifference and opposition, and the desire to probe it.

"You'll do nothing of the sort." Simpson's answer was very testy. "What call have you to interfere with the Magdalens?" His anger rose from a cause perhaps more explicable to an onlooker than to himself.

In the course of years there had grown in the mind of Caius much prejudice against the form and measure of his parents' religion. He would have throttled another who dared to criticise them, yet he himself took a certain pleasure in an opportunity that made criticism pertinent rather than impertinent. It was not that he prided himself on knowing or doing better, he was not naturally a theorist, nor didactic; but education had awakened his mind, not only to difficulties in the path of faith, but to a higher standard of altruism than was exacted by old-fashioned orthodoxy.

"I think I'd better write to Souris, sir; the letter is to me, you see, and I should not feel quite justified in taking no steps to investigate the matter."

How easy the hackneyed phrase "taking steps" sounded to Caius! but experience breeds strong instincts. The elder man felt the importance of this first decision, and struck out against it as an omen of ill.

"In my opinion you'll do well to let the matter lie where it is. How will you look making inquiries about sick folk as if you had a great fortune to spend upon philanthropy, when it turns out that you have none? If you'd not spent all my money on your own schooling, perhaps you'd have some to play the fine gentleman with now, and send a hospital and its staff on this same schooner." (This was the first reproach of his son's extravagance which had ever passed his lips; it betokened passion indeed.) "If you write you can't do less than send a case of medicines, and who is to pay for them, I'd like to know? I'm pretty well cleared out. They're a hardened lot of wreckers on those islands—I've heard that told of them many a time. No doubt their own filth and bad living has brought disease upon them, if there's truth in the tale; and as to this strange woman, giving no testimony or certificate of her respectability, it's a queer thing if she's to begin and teach you religion and duty. It's a bold and impudent letter, and I suppose you've enough sense left, with all your new fangles, to see that you can't do all she asks. What do you think you can do? If you think I'm going to pay for charity boxes to be sent to people I've no opinion of, when all the missionary subscriptions will be due come the new year, you think great nonsense, that's all." He brought his large hard hand down on the table, so that the board rang and the lamp quaked; then he settled his rounded shoulders stubbornly, and again unfurled the newspaper.

This strong declaration of wrath, and the reproaches concerning the money, were a relief to Caius. A relief from what? Had he contemplated for a moment taking his life in his hand and obeying the unexpected appeal? Yet he felt no answering anger in return for the rebuke; he only found himself comfortably admitting that if his father put it on the score of expense he certainly had no right to give time or money that did not belong to him. It was due to his parents that all his occupation should henceforth be remunerative.

He put the letter away in his pocket, but, perhaps because he laid it next his heart, the next day its cry awoke within him again, and would not be silenced.

Christianity was identified in his mind with an exclusive way of life, to him no longer good or true; but what of those stirring principles of Socialism that were abroad in the world, flaunting themselves as superior to Christianity? He was a child of the age, and dared not deny its highest precepts. Who would go to these people if he did not go? As to his father, he had coaxed him before for his own advantage; he could coax him now for theirs if he would. He was sufficiently educated to know that it was more glorious to die, even unrenowned, upon such a mission, than to live in the prosperity that belongs to ordinary covetousness, that should it be his duty to obey this call, no other duty remained for him in its neglect.

His personal desire in the matter was neither more nor less noble than are the average feelings of well-meaning people towards such enterprise. He would have been glad to find an excellent excuse to think no more of this mission—very glad indeed to have a more attractive opening for work set before him; but, on the other hand, the thought of movement and of fresh scenes was more attractive than staying where he was. Then, it would be such a virtuous thing to do and to have done; his own conscience and everyone who heard of the action must applaud it. And he did not think so much of the applause of others as of the real worthiness of the deed. Then, again, if he came back safely in the spring, he hoped by that time the offer of some good post would be waiting for him; and it would be more dignified to return from such an excellent work to find it waiting, than to sit at home humbly longing for its advent.

Caius went to Souris and questioned the merchants, talked to the captains of the vessels in the port, saw the schooner upon which Madame Le MaÎtre had engaged his passage. What seemed to him most strange in the working out of this bit of his life's story, was that all that the letter said appeared to be true. The small island called Cloud Island, where the pestilence was, and to which he had been invited, was not one at which larger ships or schooners could land, so that it was only from the harbour of another island that the seamen got their news. On all hands it was known that there was bad disease upon Cloud Island, that no doctor was there, and that there was one lady, a Madame Le MaÎtre, a person of some property, who was devoting herself to nursing the sick. When Caius asked who she was, and where she came from, one person said one thing and one another. Some of the men told him that she was old, some of them affirmed that she was young, and this, not because there was supposed to be any mystery concerning her, but because no one seemed to have taken sufficient interest in her existence to obtain accurate information.

When Caius re-entered the gate of his father's farm he had decided to risk the adventure, and obey the letter in all points precisely.

"Would you let it be said that in all these parts there was no one to act the man but a woman?" he said to his father.

To his mother he described the sufferings that this disease would work, all the details of its pains, and how little children and mothers and wives would be the chief sufferers, dying in helpless pain, or being bereft of those they loved best.

As he talked, the heart of the good woman rose up within her and blessed her son, acknowledging, in spite of her natural desires, that he was in this more truly the great man than she had fancied him in her wildest dreams of opulence and renown. She credited him with far purer motives than he knew himself to possess.

A father's rule over his own money is a very modified thing, the very fact of true fatherhood making him only a partner with his child. Caius was under the impression that his father could have refused him the necessary outfit of medical stores for this expedition, but that was not the way old Simpson looked at it.

"If he must, he must," he said to his wife angrily, gloomily, for his own opinion in the matter had changed little; but to Caius he gave his consent, and all the money he needed, and did not, except at first, express his disapproval, so that Caius took the less pains to argue the matter with him.

It was only at the last, when Caius had fairly set out on his journey, and, having said good-bye, looked back to see his father stand at the gate of his own fields, that the attitude of the stalwart form and gray head gave him his first real insight into the pain the parting had cost—into the strong, sad disapproval which in the father's mind lay behind the nominal consent. Caius saw it then, or, at least, he saw enough of it to feel a sharp pang of regret and self-reproach. He felt himself to be an unworthy son, and to have wronged the best of fathers. Whether he was doing right or wrong in proceeding upon his mission he did not know. So in this mind he set sail.