predecessor had renounced that particular field and the ministry
together, with what to Thompson had seemed the blasphemous statement
that the North was no place for either God or man.

The place was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The
swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the
door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the
corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. The
floor was of logs roughly hewn to flatness. Upon four blocks stood a
rusty cookstove. A few battered, smoke-blackened pots and pans stood on
a shelf and hung upon nails driven in the walls. A rough bedstead of
peeled spruce poles stood in a corner. The remains of a bedtick moldered
on the slats, its grass stuffing given over to the nests of the birds
and rodents.

It was so utterly and dishearteningly foreign to the orderly
arrangement, the meticulous neatness of the home wherein Thompson had
grown to young manhood under the tutelage of the prim spinsters that he
could scarcely accept as a reality that this, henceforth, was to be his
abode.

He could only stand, with a feeling in his throat that was new in his
experience of emotions, staring in dismay at this forlorn habitation
abandoned to wind and weather, to the rats and the birds.




CHAPTER IV