The Zeit-Geist | Page 9

inflamed
and almost useless, now produced in him a regular appetite for simple
nourishing food. The craving for strong drink had passed away, and
with his whole mind and heart he threw himself into such service as he
believed to be acceptable to God and the condition upon which he held
his health and his freedom. At the end of the week Toyner went home
to face the old life again with no safe-guard but the new inward
strength. No one there believed in his reformation. He had lost money
for his father in his last debauch; the man who was virtually a partner
would not trust him again. He had a nominal business of his own, an
agency which he had heretofore neglected, and now he worked hard,
living frugally, and for the first time in his life earned his own living.
The rules of conduct which the preacher had laid down for him were
simple and broad. He was to see God in everything, accepting all
events joyfully from His hand; he was so to preach Him in life and
word that others would love Him; he was to do all his work as unto a
God who beheld and cared for the minutest things of earth; he was to
abstain, not only from all sin, but from all things that might lead to evil.

At first he saw no contradiction in this rule of life; it seemed a plain
path, and he walked, nay ran, upon it for a long distance.
Between Toyner and his old friends the change of his life and thoughts
had made the widest breach. That outward show of companionship
remained was due only to patient persistence on his part and the
endurance of the pain and shame of being in society where he was not
wanted and where he felt nothing congenial. There was a Scotch
minister who, with the people of his congregation, had received and
befriended the reformed man; but because of Toyner's desire to follow
the most divine example, and also because of his love to Ann Markham,
he chose the other companionship. It was a high ideal; something
warred against it which he could not understand, and his patience
brought forth no mutual love.
When six months had passed away, Toyner had gained with his
neighbours a character for austerity in his personal habits and constant
companionship with the rough and the poor. The post of constable fell
vacant; Toyner's father had been constable in his youth; Toyner was
offered the post now, and he took it.
The constable in such villages as Fentown was merely a respectable
man who could be called upon on rare occasions to arrest a criminal.
Crime was seldom perpetrated in Fentown, except when it was of a
nature that could be winked at. Toyner had no uniform; he was put in
possession of a pair of hand-cuffs, which no one expected him to use;
he was given a nominal income; and the name of "constable" was a
public recognition that he was reformed.
Toyner had had many scruples of mind before he took this office. The
considerations which induced him to accept it were various. The
austere demand of law and the service of God were very near together
in his mind; nor are they in any strong mind ever separated except in
parable.
Bart Toyner, who had for years appeared so weak and witless,
possessed in reality that fine quality of brain and heart which is so often
a prey to the temptation of intoxicants. He was now working out all the

theory of the new life in a mind that would not flinch before, or shirk
the gleams of truth struck from, sharp contact of fact with fact as the
days and hours knocked them together. For this reason it could not be
that his path would remain that plain path in which a man could run
seeing far before him. Soon he only saw his way step by step, around
there was darkness; but through that darkness, except in one black hour,
he always saw the mount of transfiguration and the light of heaven.
CHAPTER IV.
Another six months passed, and an event occurred which gave a great
shock to the little community and gave Toyner a pain of heart such as
almost nothing else could have given. Ann's father, John Markham, had
a deadly dispute with a man by the name of Walker. Walker was a
comparatively new comer to the town, or he would have known better
than to gamble with Markham as he did and arouse his enmity. The
feud lasted for a week, and then Markham shot his enemy with a
borrowed fire-arm. Walker was discovered wounded, and cared for, but
with little hope of his recovery.