"Appeared with a Little Steam-launch, the

50

"The Whitewashed Cottages on the Hills " "Toil"

"The Hospital at Battle Harbour ”

"The Doctor on a Winter's Journey

"A Crew Quite Capable of Taking You into It" 150

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144

D

I

THE DOCTOR

OCTOR WILFRED T. GREN-
FELL is the young Englishman

who, for the love of God, practices medicine on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Other men have been moved to heroic deeds by the same high motive, but the professional round, I fancy, is quite out of the common; indeed, it may be that in all the world there is not another of the sort. It extends from Cape John of Newfoundland around Cape Norman and into the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Ungava Bay and Cape Chidley of the Labrador southward far into the Gulf of St. Lawrencetwo thousand miles of bitterly inhospitable shore which a man in haste must sail with his life in his hands. The folk are for the

most part isolated and desperately wretched -the shore fishermen of the remoter Newfoundland coasts, the Labrador "liveyeres," the Indians of the forbidding interior, the Esquimaux of the far north. It is to such as these that the man gives devoted and heroic service-not for gain; there is no gain to be got in those impoverished places: merely for the love of God.

I once went ashore in a little harbour of the northeast coast of Newfoundland. It was a place most unimportant-and it was just beyond the doctor's round. The sea sullenly confronted it, hills overhung it, and a scrawny wilderness flanked the hills; the ten white cottages of the place gripped the dripping rocks as for dear life. And down the path there came an old fisherman to meet the stranger.

"Good-even, zur," said he. "Good-evening."

He waited for a long time. Then, "Be you a doctor, zur ?" he asked.

"Sorry-but, no; really, I'm not." "Well, zur," he persisted, "I was thinkin' you might be, when I seed you comin' ashore. They is a doctor on this coast," he added, "but he's sixty mile along shore. 'Tis a wonderful expense t' have un up. This here harbour isn't able. An' you isn't a doctor, you says? Is you sure, zur ?” There was unhappily no doubt about it. "I was thinkin' you might be," he went on, wistfully, "when I seed you comin' ashore. But perhaps you might know something about doctorin'? Noa?"

"Nothing."

"I was thinkin', now, that you might. 'Tis my little girl that's sick. Sure, none of us knows what's the matter with she. Woan't you come up an' see she, zur? Perhaps you might do something-though you isn't a doctor."