"At five!" persisted Marien, the smile giving way before a shadow of impatience.
John laughed.
"It must seem funny to you," he declared, "but I have an engagement at five-thirty which makes it impossible to be here at five. The engagement itself would seem funnier still; but to me it is not funny—only one of the tragedies into which my life is continually drawn. At that hour I am to visit a poor woman who lives on a house boat on the canal. Monday is her husband's pay day, and he invariably reaches home on that night inflamed with liquor, and abuses the woman outrageously. I have promised to be with her when he comes in. I may wait an hour, and I may wait half the night."
"Oh," gasped Marien, with a note of apprehension. "And suppose he turns his violence on you?"
"Why, then I shall defend myself," John answered, good-humoredly, "but without hurting Olaf.
"I am likely to spend the night on that canal boat," he added, "and in the morning Olaf will be ashamed and perhaps penitent. He may thank me and ask me to meet him at the factory gate next Monday night and walk home with him to make sure that his pay envelope gets safely past the door of intervening saloons."
"But why so much concern about unimportant people like that?" questioned Marien, her eyes big with curiosity and wonder.
"Any person in need is important to me," confessed John modestly.
"But how can you spare the time from the regular work of the church?"
"That is my regular work."
Marien paused a moment as if baffled.
"But—but I thought a minister's work was to preach—so eloquently that people will not get drunk; to pray,
