CHAPTER XVII

A HOPELESS QUEST

There was work and a plenty of it for the charitably inclined to do during those sad March days. Some noble-souled women, caring not which side in the conflict was right or which side wrong, went about like ministering angels to relieve the destitute and care for the suffering. Ruth Tracy was one of these. Her days were filled with her hard and unlovely tasks among the poor, and her nights were often sleepless because of the scenes she had witnessed by day.

In her visits to the homes of the destitute she had often met the rector of Christ Church. His errands were similar to hers. They counseled together, they compared notes, they parceled out relief. Together they traveled through snow-burdened, wind-swept, desolate streets. More and more he came to rely upon her big-hearted judgment, and her sympathetic aid. He shared with her the problem of the poor that lay so heavily on his own heart. She became necessary to him, invaluable, indispensable. And as for her, his nobility of character, his great passion for suffering humanity, his tireless energy in the doing of all good deeds, these things loomed ever larger and larger in her mind, as she watched him day by day in the performance of his self-appointed and self-rewarded tasks.

In these tragic days Barry Malleson also did heroic service. It is true that he was not possessed, to any considerable extent, of the power of initiative. And it is true also that he had little capacity for making organized effort. But, acting under the advice and in-