"Food?" he repeated doubtfully, almost as if he had not understood me. "No, but I shall eat."
"If a heretic's food——" I began.
"Heaven's grace is vouchsafed in divers ways," he cut me off curtly. "It may be this opportunity has been given you to find an escape from sin. I will eat your food, Englishman."
Tawannears and Peter listened sullenly to my invitation, and their faces expressed neither welcome nor toleration as the Jesuit walked back with us to the recess under the bluff.
His hollow eyes lighted with unusual interest when he spied our raft.
"You are crossing the Great River, Monsieur Ormerod?"
He seemed tricked out of his dour mannerisms for the moment. His voice took on the casual courtesy of one gentleman to another. But it was a fleeting manifestation, no doubt an echo from some long-buried past.
"Yes," I said, "as I told the Chevalier——"
"Strange," he interrupted me abruptly, his old manner returning, "that you of all men should be appointed to aid in the fulfilling of my mission. How inscrutable are God's ways! Yet there must be a meaning in this. Blessed Virgin aid me!"
My comrades would have nothing to do with him. They took their food and removed out of ear-shot, leaving me to do the honors, which was only fair, inasmuch as I had foisted him upon them. But it insured an ill evening for me, for Black Robe utilized the opportunity to examine me at length upon my religious convictions—sketchy, at best, I fear, after a lifetime of wandering—and read me a lecture upon the errors of my creed. I marvel much as I look back upon that incident. In many ways I hold he was wrong, but of all men I have known as well I must account him the most holy. He knew not the meaning of the word self-interest. Life for him was service of the Word of God, as he understood it. He wasted no time in the search of Truth, for he held that it was ready to hand, ay, inscribed in letters of fire across the skies for all men to see.