In His Steps | Page 8

yet the silence was unbroken by any voice or
movement worth mentioning in the audience. The man passed his other
hand across his eyes, and then, without any warning, fell heavily
forward on his face, full length up the aisle. Henry Maxwell spoke:
"We will consider the service closed."

Chapter Two

Henry Maxwell and a group of his church members remained some
time in the study. The man lay on the couch there and breathed heavily.
When the question of what to do with him came up, the minister
insisted on taking the man to his own house; he lived near by and had
an extra room. Rachel Winslow said:
"Mother has no company at present. I am sure we would be glad to give
him a place with us."
She looked strongly agitated. No one noticed it particularly. They were
all excited over the strange event, the strangest that First Church people
could remember. But the minister insisted on taking charge of the man,
and when a carriage came the unconscious but living form was carried
to his house; and with the entrance of that humanity into the minister's
spare room a new chapter in Henry Maxwell's life began, and yet no
one, himself least of all, dreamed of the remarkable change it was
destined to make in all his after definition of the Christian discipleship.
The event created a great sensation in the First Church parish. People
talked of nothing else for a week. It was the general impression that the
man had wandered into the church in a condition of mental disturbance
caused by his troubles, and that all the time he was talking he was in a
strange delirium of fever and really ignorant of his surroundings. That
was the most charitable construction to put upon his action. It was the
general agreement also that there was a singular absence of anything
bitter or complaining in what the man had said. He had, throughout,

spoken in a mild, apologetic tone, almost as if he were one of the
congregation seeking for light on a very difficult subject.
The third day after his removal to the minister's house there was a
marked change in his condition. The doctor spoke of it but offered no
hope. Saturday morning he still lingered, although he had rapidly failed
as the week drew near its close. Sunday morning, just before the clock
struck one, he rallied and asked if his child had come. The minister had
sent for her at once as soon as he had been able to secure her address
from some letters found in the man's pocket. He had been conscious
and able to talk coherently only a few moments since his attack.
"The child is coming. She will be here," Mr. Maxwell said as he sat
there, his face showing marks of the strain of the week's vigil; for he
had insisted on sitting up nearly every night.
"I shall never see her in this world," the man whispered. Then he
uttered with great difficulty the words, "You have been good to me.
Somehow I feel as if it was what Jesus would do."
After a few minutes he turned his head slightly, and before Mr.
Maxwell could realize the fact, the doctor said quietly, "He is gone."
The Sunday morning that dawned on the city of Raymond was exactly
like the Sunday of a week before. Mr. Maxwell entered his pulpit to
face one of the largest congregations that had ever crowded the First
Church. He was haggard and looked as if he had just risen from a long
illness. His wife was at home with the little girl, who had come on the
morning train an hour after her father had died. He lay in that spare
room, his troubles over, and the minister could see the face as he
opened the Bible and arranged his different notices on the side of the
desk as he had been in the habit of doing for ten years.
The service that morning contained a new element. No one could
remember when Henry Maxwell had preached in the morning without
notes. As a matter of fact he had done so occasionally when he first
entered the ministry, but for a long time he had carefully written every
word of his morning sermon, and nearly always his evening discourses
as well. It cannot be said that his sermon this morning was striking or
impressive. He talked with considerable hesitation. It was evident that
some great idea struggled in his thought for utterance, but it was not
expressed in the theme he had chosen for his preaching. It was near the
close of his sermon that he began to gather a certain strength that had

been painfully lacking at the