They got him law-books. He read law, he made buckskin gloves; he made gloves, he read law. He was admitted to the bar. He became justice-of-the-peace in his backwoods settlement. Men got to coming for miles to the glover’s cot to tell their troubles and look into his deep eyes, hear his counsel, and feel his glad hand. He was a real peacemaker under the guise of a lawyer. His ethics backed up to and rested upon the Sermon on the Mount. He bought land, hired it tilled, built himself a better house, and settled into the character of a country squire. He was of the little church flock, and the rest of the flock came to set great store by his good sense, his wholesome cheer, indomitable activity, and, withal, his straight reliance on God. In fact, the helpless glover’s dwelling was the meeting-place for the flock about as often as the church building; for everybody said, “We get new strength to keep a-going when we meet around the cot.” _The Modern Wolf a Playful Cub?_ See how I got back my faith? The prone fisherman on his stone-boat was a godsend to me. I saw that personal life is so rich that no one can be broken in body to the point where, in case he “layeth down his life for the sheep,” he will be making a mean gift. I half suspect that God raises up out of the ground, as it were, in many of these pastorless communities a proxy for the parson that, beholding the wolf, leaveth the sheep and fleeth to the city--a proxy, like the glover-lawyer, who is no quitter. And in some parishes where the preacher still sticks (his face set, however, toward the city) I fancy a man or a woman or a child can be found who is naïvely scaring off the wolf. Norris Shepardson was such a man. Farmer, poet, refined spirit, he went about his work making everybody believe that a new day is fresh from God. Ambrose Brimmer, a member of the community, didn’t happen to be much of a churchman, and his Sunday haymaking teased the parson mightily. I remember well one perfect trout day, when Ambrose was showing me the holes in a stream strange to my rod, that we got to talking about preachers. “I don’t care a damn if the parson does see me haying on Sunday,” said Ambrose; “but if I get a sight of Norris Shepardson driving up the road, I skedaddle and hide, you bet! You know Norris Shepardson. Well, Norris Shepardson is a Christian and no quack.” And Ambrose was right. Norris Shepardson was a Christian from his eyelashes to his finger-tips; and his sweet belief in you put you straightway under obligation to goodness when he cast a glance your way. It is probably true that I have been something of a modern-life fan. But when I try to think of the Master’s parables of the shepherd, the sheep, and the wolf, and of the one sheep that was lost while the ninety and nine were safe in the fold, I confess that I am troubled about my modern-life philosophy. Are modern sheep any the less in need of a downright shepherd because they are modern?