Meanwhile, Flynn and Jackman, trudging toward the car station in the square, were discussing this strange case.
"That was a funny line o' talk about the ox treadin' out the corn. I never heard nothin' like that in our church."
But Jackman, being a Methodist and a student of the Bible before coming to New York and giving himself to detective work, was able to explain.
"That's in the Old Testament, to begin with; but Paul takes it up and says that, though it was meant, in the first place, to apply to the animals, its real application is to man. 'That he that ploweth may plow in hope, and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope'—that's the way it runs. That everyone should get a generous living wage and not be cheated of it in the end is the way you might put it into our kind of talk."
"Is it now? And it do seem fair—don't it?—for all the old woman yonder is so daft. And would that Paul be the same Saint Paul as we've got in our church?"
"Oh, the very same."
"Would he now? And you a Protestant! That's one thing I've often wondered—why there had to be so many religions and everyone wasn't a Catholic. It'd be just as easy, and cost us less. Ah, well! It's a quare world, and that poor woman's had a powerful dose o' trouble. I don't wonder she's got wheels in her head. Do you? Maybe you and me'd have them if we'd gone through the same." Having thus worked up to his appeal, he plunged into it. "I know wan little woman 'd be glad if I was to come home to-night and tell her we'd called the thing off. That's my Tessie. It's amazin' how she's set her heart on my not trackin' down this boy."
"Not to track him down would be to compound a felony," Jackman replied, severely.
"Ah, well! So it would, now. You sure have got the right dope there, Jackman, and that I'll tell Tessie. I'll say I'd be compounding a felony, and them words 'll scare her good."
So Flynn, too, resigned himself, putting on once more the mask of craft and implacability that was part of his stock in trade, and which Jackman rarely took off.