It it a perfectly simple situation. There are thirty thousand men-more or less of them, according to the season--making the wages of men in the woods. Most of them accumulate a hot desire to wring some enjoyment from life in return for the labor they do. They have no care about money when they have it. They fling it in gold over the bars (and any sober man may rob their very pockets); they waste in a night what they earn in a winter--and then crawl back to the woods. Naturally the lumber-towns are crowded with parasites upon their lusts and prodigality--with gamblers and saloon-keepers and purveyors of low passion. Some larger capitalists, more acute and more acquisitive, of a greed less nice -profess the three occupations at once. They are the men of real power in the remoter communities, makers of mayors and chiefs of police and magistrates--or were until Higgins came along to dispute them. And their operations have been simple and enormously profitable--so easy, so free from any fear of the law, that I should think they would (in their own phrase) be ashamed to take the money. It seems to be no trouble at all to abstract a drunken lumber-jack's wages. * * * * * It takes a big man to oppose these forces--a big heart and a big body, and a store of hope and courage not easily depleted. It takes, too, a good minister; it takes a loving heart and a fist quick to find the point of the jaw to preach the gospel after the manner of Higgins. And Higgins conceives it to be one of his sacred ministerial duties to protect his parishioners in town. Behind the bunk-houses, in the twilight, they say to him: "When you goin' t' be in Deer River, Pilot? Friday? All right. I'm goin' home. See me through, won't you?" Having committed themselves in this way, nothing can save them from Higgins--neither their own drunken will (if they escape him for an interval) nor the antagonism of the keepers of places. This is perilous and unscholarly work; systematic theology has nothing to do with escorting through a Minnesota lumber-town a weak-kneed boy who wants to take his money home to his mother in Michigan. Once the Pilot discovered such a boy in the bar-room of a Bemidji saloon. "Where's your money?" he demanded. "'N my pocket." "Hand it over," said the Pilot. "Ain't going to." "Yes, you are; and you're going to do it quick. Come out of this!" Cowed by these large words, the boy yielded to the grip of Higgins's big hand, and was led away a little. Then the bartender leaned over the bar. A gambler or two lounged toward the group. There was a pregnant pause. "Look here, Higgins," said the bartender, "what business is this of yours, anyhow?" "What business--of _mine?_" asked the astounded Pilot. "Yes; what you buttin' in for?" "This," said Higgins, "_is my job!_"