sermon; they fancied their own singing of Rock of Ages and Jesus, Lover of My Soul. They asked Higgins to come again. Frequently after that–and ever oftener–Higgins walked into the woods when the drive was on, or into the camps in winter, to preach to the boys. They welcomed him; they were always glad to see him–and with great delight they sang Jesus, Lover of My Soul and Throw Out the Life-Line. Nobody else preached to them in those days; a great body of men–almost a multitude in all those woods: the Church had quite forgotten them.

“Boys,” said Higgins, “you’ve always treated me right, here. Come in to see me when you’re in town. The wife ’ll be glad to have you.”

They took him at his word. Without warning, one day, thirty lumber-jacks crowded into the little parlor. They were hospitably received.

“Pilot,” said the spokesman, all now convinced of Higgins’s genuineness, “here’s something for you from the boys.”

A piece of paper (a check for fifty-one dollars) was thrust into the Pilot’s hand, and the whole crew decamped on a run, with howls of bashful laughter, like a pack of half-grown school-boys. And so the relationship was first established.

It was in winter, Higgins says, that the call came; and the voice of the Lord, as he says, was clear in direction. Two lumber-jacks came out of the woods to fetch him to the bedside of a sick homesteader who had been at work in the lumber-camps. The homesteader was a sick man (said they), and he had asked for the Pilot. The doctor was first to the man’s mean home. There was no help for him, said he, in a log-cabin deep in the woods; if he could be taken to the hospital in Duluth there might be a chance. It was doubtful, of course; but to remain was death.

“All right,” said Higgins. “I’ll take him to the hospital.”

The hospital doctor in Duluth said that the man was dying. The Pilot so informed the homesteader and bade him prepare. But the man smiled. He had already prepared. “I heard you preach–that night–in camp–on the river,” said he. It seems that he had been reared in a Christian home, but had not for twenty years heard the voice of a minister in exhortation until Higgins chanced that way. And afterward–when the lights in the wannigan were out and the crew had gone to sleep–he could not banish the vision of his mother. Life had been sweeter to him since that night. The Pilot’s message (said he) had saved him.

“Mr. Higgins,” said he, “go back to the camp and tell the boys about Jesus.”

Higgins wondered if the Lord had spoken.

“Go back to the camps,” the dying man repeated, “and tell the boys about Jesus.”

Nobody else was doing it. Why shouldn’t Higgins? The boys had no minister. Why shouldn’t Higgins be that minister? Was not this the very work the Lord had brought him to this far place to do? Had not the Lord spoken with the tongue of this dying man? “Go back to the camps and tell the boys about Jesus.” The phrase was written on his heart. “Go back to the camp and tell the boys about Jesus.” How it appealed to the young preacher–the very form of it! All that night, the homesteader having died, Higgins–not then the beloved Pilot–walked the hospital corridor. When day broke he had made up his mind. Whatever dreams of a city pulpit he had cherished were gone. He would go back to the camps for good and all.

And back he went.

We had now come over the logging-road near to the third camp. The story of the call was finished at sunset.

“Well,” said the Pilot, heartily, with half a smile, “here I am, you see.”

“On the job,” laughed one of the company.

“For good and all,” Higgins agreed. “It’s funny about life,” he added, gravely. “I’m a great big wilful fellow, naturally evil, I suppose; but it seems to me that all my lifelong the Lord has just led me by the hand as if I were nothing but a little child. And I didn’t know what was happening to me! Now isn’t that funny? Isn’t the whole thing funny?”

XI
FIST-PLAY

It used sometimes to be difficult for Higgins to get a hearing in the camps; this was before he had fought and preached his way completely into the trust of the lumber-jacks. There was always a warm welcome for him in the bunk-houses, to be sure, and for the most part a large eagerness for the distraction of his discourses after supper; but here and there in the beginning he encountered an obstreperous fellow (and does to this day) who interrupted for the fun of the thing. It is related that upon one occasion a big Frenchman began to grind his axe of a Sunday evening precisely as Higgins began to preach.

“Some of the boys here,” Higgins drawled, “want to hear me preach, and if the boys would just grind their axes some other time I’d be much obliged.”

The grinding continued.

“I say,” Higgins proceeded, his voice rising a little, “that a good many of the boys have asked me to preach a little sermon to them; but I can’t preach while one of the boys grinds his axe.”

No impression was made.

“Now, boys,” Higgins went on, “most of you want to hear me preach, and I’m going to preach, all right; but I cant preach if anybody grinds an axe.”

The Frenchman whistled a tune.

“Friend, back there!” Higgins called out, “can’t you oblige the boys by grinding that axe another time?”

There was some tittering in the bunk-house–and the grinding went on–and the tune came saucily up from the door where the Frenchman stood. Higgins walked slowly back; having come near, he paused–then put his hand on the Frenchman’s shoulder in a way not easily misunderstood.

“Friend,” he began, softly, “if you–”

The Frenchman struck at him.

“Keep back, boys!” an old Irishman yelled, catching up a peavy-pole. “Give the Pilot a show! Keep out o’ this or I’ll brain ye!”

The Sky Pilot caught the Frenchman about the waist–flung him against a door–caught him again on the rebound–put him head foremost in a barrel of water–and absent-mindedly held him there until the old Irishman asked, softly, “Say, Pilot, ye ain’t goin’ t’ drown him, are ye?” It was all over in a flash: Higgins is wisely no man for half-way measures in an emergency; in a moment the Frenchman lay cast, dripping and gasping, on the floor, and the bunk-house was in a tumult of jeering. Then Higgins proceeded with the sermon; and–strangely–he is of an earnestness and frankly mild and loving disposition so impressive that this passionate incident had doubtless no destructive effect upon the solemn service following. It is easy to fancy him passing unruffled to the upturned cask which served him for a pulpit, readjusting the blanket which was his altar-cloth, raising his dog-eared little hymn-book to the smoky light of the lantern overhead, and beginning, feelingly: “Boys, let’s sing Number Fifty-six: ‘Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.’ You know the tune, boys; everybody sing–‘While the nearer waters roll and the tempest still is high.’ All ready, now!” A fight in a church would be a seriously disturbing commotion; but a fight in a