"No, I don't," said Bulger. "What'd be the use? I know where the hitch is. Don't it say somewhere for a man to give up his own family or friends and serve the Lord?" "If they stand in his way; not otherwise." "I've got no family," continued the old man, "nor no friends--but one. And that one is what's driven me to ruin." "Free yourself!" cried the sergeant. "He is no friend, but an enemy who stands between you and salvation." "No," answered Bulger, emphatically, "no enemy. The best friend I ever had." "But you say he's driven you to ruin!" The old man chuckled dryly: "And keeps me in rags and livin' on scraps and sleepin' like a dog in a patched-up kennel. And yet I never had a better friend. You don't understand, sergeant. You lose all your friends but the best one, and then you'll know how to hold on to the last one." "Do you drink, comrade?" asked the sergeant. "Not a drop in twenty years," Bulger replied. The sergeant was puzzled. "If this friend stands between you and your soul's peace, give him up," was all he could find to say. "I can't--now," said the old man, dropping into a fretful whine. "But you just let me keep on beating the drum, sergeant, and maybe I will some time. I'm a-tryin'. Sometimes I come so near thinkin' it out that a dozen more licks on the drum would settle it. I get mighty nigh to the point, and then I have to quit. You'll give me more time, won't you, sergeant?" "All you want, and God bless you, comrade. Pound away until you hit the right note." Afterward the sergeant would often call to Bulger: "Time, comrade! Knocked that friend of yours out yet?" The answer was always unsatisfactory. One night at a street corner the sergeant prayed loudly that a certain struggling comrade might be parted from an enemy who was leading him astray under the guise of friendship. Bulger, in sudden and plainly evident alarm, immediately turned his drum over to a fellow volunteer, and shuffled rapidly away down the street. The next night he was back again at his post, without any explanation of his strange behaviour. The sergeant wondered what it all meant, and took occasion to question the old man more closely as to the influence that was retarding the peace his soul seemed to crave. But Bulger carefully avoided particularizing. "It's my own fight," he said. "I've got to think it out myself. Nobody else don't understand." The winter of 1892 was a memorable one in the South. The cold was almost unprecedented, and snow fell many inches deep where it had rarely whitened the ground before. Much suffering resulted among the poor, who had not anticipated the rigorous season. The little squad of Salvationists found more distress then they could relieve.