The Hermit pointed to the most westward cliff in sight from the doorway.
“If you have not in mind to repent, James Kincard, I shall know it.”
“Maybe you'd put them ideas of yours again?”
The Hermit restated his position accurately on the subject of heathen hearts and the altar of lucre.
“Ain't no mistake about that, Hermit? We-ell, now—”
The Hermit shook his head sternly, and strode away. Old Kincard gave a subterranean chuckle, such as a volcano might give purposing eruptions, and fixed his eyes on the western cliff, five miles away, a grayish spot in the darker woods.
Alas, Baal-Peor!
Yet he was never indeed a wood-god. He was always remembering how fine it had been in Babylon. He had not cared for these later devotions. He had been bored and weary. Since he was gone, split and dead, perhaps it was better so. He should have a funeral pyre.
“And,” said Chub Leroy, “we'll keep his ashes in an urn. That's the way they always did with people's ashes.”
We came up the Cattle Ridge Road Monday afternoon, talking of these things. Chub carried the urn, which had once been a pickle-jar. Life still was full of hope and ideas. The Hermit must be laid low in his arrogance. Apollo, now, had strong points. Consider the pythoness and the oracle. The Hermit couldn't prophesy in the same class with a pythoness. The oracle might run,