University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.
THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.

WHEN Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as
we related, it was not difficult to forecast his fate.
Everybody saw that he was going into a consumption.
One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to
live, but not longer. Nobody knew this so well as
Kike himself. He rejoiced in it. He was one of
those rare spirits to whom the invisible world is not
a dream but a reality, and to whom religious duty is
a voice never neglected. That he had sacrificed his
own life to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and
he had no regrets except that he had not been more
zealous. What was life if he could save even one
soul?

“But,” said Morton to him one day, “you are
wrong, Kike. If you had taken care of yourself you
might have lived to save so many more.”

“Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man
drowning,” replied Kike, “and you thought you could
save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn't stop
to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live
long enough to save many others. When God puts a
soul before me I save that one if it costs my life.
When I am gone God will find others. It is glorious
to work for God, but it is awful. What if by some

neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell? O!
Morton, I am oppressed with responsibility! I will be
glad when God shall say, It is enough.”

Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike. He
was but fulfilling the Methodist ideal; they admired
him while most of them could not quite emulate him.
Read the minutes of the old conferences and you will
see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones
in memory of young men who laid down their lives as
Kike was doing. Men were nothing—the work was
everything. Methodism let the dead bury their dead;
it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the
grave of one of its own heroes.

But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild,
and it had paid Kike only five dollars for his whole
nine months' work. Two of this he had spent for
horse-shoes, and two he had given away. The other
one had gone for quinine. Now he had no clothes
that would long hold together. He would ride to
Hissawachee and get what his mother had carded and
spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom
she loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be
entirely hers. He could come back in three days.
Two days more would suffice to reach Peterborough
circuit. So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his
appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee.
But he did not get back to camp-meeting. An attack
of fever held him at home for several weeks.

At last he was better and had set the day for his
departure from home. His mother saw what everybody
saw, that if Kike ever lived to return to his home it

would only be to die. And as this was, perhaps, his
last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him
of her intention to marry Brady. While Brady thought
to do the handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage
license, intending, whenever the widow should
mention the subject to Kike, to immediately propose
that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage.
It was quite contrary to the custom of that day for a
minister to officiate at a wedding of one of his own
family; Brady defied custom, however. But whenever
Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her
heart failed her. He was so wrapped up in heavenly
subjects, so full of exhortations and aspirations, that she
despaired beforehand of making him understand her
feelings. Once she began by alluding to her loneliness,
upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust
in the Lord he would be with her. What was she to
do? How make a rapt seer like Kike understand the
wants of ordinary mortals? And that, too, when he
was already bidding adieu to this world?

The last morning had come, and Brady was urging
on the weeping widow that she must go into the room
where Kike was stuffing his small wardrobe into his
saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.

“Oh, I can't bear to,” said she. “I won't never
see him any more and I might hurt him, and — ”

“Will,” said Brady, “thin I'll hev to do it mesilf.”

“If you only would!” said she, imploringly.

“But it's so much more appropriate for you to do
it, Mrs. Lumsden. If I do it, it'll same jist loike
axin' the b'y's consint to marry his mother.”

“But I can't noways do it,” said the widow. “If
you love me you might take that load offen me.”

“I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight,” and Brady
marched into the sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted
by his slight exertion, was resting in the shuck-bottom
rocking-chair. Brady took a seat opposite to him on
a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and roached
up his iron gray hair uneasily. To his surprise Kike
began the conversation.

“Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very
wisely, I think,” said Kike.

“Ye've noticed us, thin,” said Brady, in terror.

“To be sure I have.”

“Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'.
Ye're pecooliar loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize
with other folks because ye're livin' roight up
in hiven all the toime.”

“Why don't you live more in heaven?”

“Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help
me,” said Brady, adroitly. “But I'm one of the koind
that's lonesome, and in doire nade of company. I
was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd niver
be a fool agin. But ye see ye ain't niver been in
love in all yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?”

“Maybe I have been in love, too,” said Kike, a
strange softness coming into his voice.

“Did ye iver! Who'd a thought it?” And Brady
made large eyes at him. “Thin ye ought to fale fer the
infarmities of others,” he added with some exultation.

“I do. That's why I said you and mother were
very foolish.”

“Fwy, now; there it is agin. Fwat do ye mane?”

“Why this. When I was here before I saw that
you and mother had taken a liking to each other. I
thought by this time you'd have been married. And
I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't. But you're
as far away as ever. Here's mother's land that needs
somebody to take care of it. I am going away never
to come back. If I could see you married the only
earthly care I have would be gone, and I could die in
peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me.”

“God bliss ye, Koike,” said Brady, wiping his eyes.
“Fwy didn't you say that before? Ye're a prophet
and a angel, I belave. I wish I was half as good, or a
quarther. God bliss ye, me boy. I wish—I wish ye
would thry to live afwoile. I've been athrying' and
your mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to
spake to ye about this, and ye samed so hivenly we
thought ye would be displased. Now, will ye marry
us before ye go?”

“I haven't got any license.”

“Here 'tis, in me pocket.”

“Where's a witness or two?”

“I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye
to ye in the other room.”

“I'd like to marry you now,” said Kike. “I must
get away in an hour.”

And he married them. They wept over him, and
he made no concealment that he was going away
for the last time. He rode out from Hissawachee
never to come back. Not sad, but exultant, that he
had sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to

enter into the life everlasting. For, faithless as we are
in this day, let us never hide from ourselves the fact
that the faith of a martyr is indeed a hundred fold
more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife
and children.