“I presume I am,” admitted the American genially. “I’ve been all sorts of things in my day, preacher, teacher, editor. My father used to be a circuit rider in New England forty years ago or more. Pious––good Lord! Why, he was one of the kind who believe the good book ‘from kiver to kiver,’ you know. Used to preach interminable sermons about the mercy of the Lord in holding us all over the smoking pit and not dropping us in! Why, man! after listening to him expound the Scriptures at night I used to go to bed with my hair on end and my skin all goose-flesh. No wonder I urged him to send me to the Presbyterian Seminary!”
“And you were ordained?” queried Josè, dark memories rising in his own thought.
“Thoroughly so! And glad I was of it, too, for I had grown up as pious and orthodox as my good father. I considered the ordination a through ticket to paradise.”
“But––now––”
“Oh, I found myself in time,” continued the man, answering Josè’s unspoken thought. “Then I stopped preaching beautiful legends, and tried to be genuinely helpful to my congregation. I had a fine church in Cincinnati at that time. But––well, I mixed a trifle too much heresy into my up-to-date sermons, I guess. Anyway, the Assembly didn’t approve my orthodoxy, and I had as little respect for its heterodoxy, and the upshot of it was that I quit––cold.” He laughed grimly as he finished the recital. “But,” he went on gravely, “I now see that it was due simply to my desire to progress beyond the acceptance of tradition and allegory as truth, and to find some better foundation upon which to build than the undemonstrable articles of faith embraced in the Westminster Confession. To me, that confession of faith had become a confession of ignorance.” He turned his shrewd eyes upon Josè. “I was in somewhat the same mental state that I think you are in now,” he added.
“And why, if I may ask, are you now exploring?” asked Josè, disregarding the implication.
“Oh, as for that,” replied the American easily, “I used to teach history and became especially interested in ancient civilizations, lost cities, and the like, in the Western Hemisphere. Long before I left the ministry oil was struck on our little Pennsylvania farm, and––well, I didn’t have to work after that. So for some years I’ve devoted myself strictly to my particular hobby of travel. And in my work I find it necessary to discard ceremony, and scrape acquaintance with all sorts and conditions. I especially cultivate clergymen. I’ve wanted to know you ever since I first saw you out here. But I couldn’t wait for a formal introduction. And so I broke in unceremoniously upon your meditations a few moments ago.”
“I am grateful to you for doing so,” said Josè frankly, holding out a hand. “There is much that you can tell me––much that I want to know. But––” He again looked cautiously around.
“Ah, I understand,” said Hitt, quickly sensing the priest’s uneasiness. “What say you, shall we meet somewhere down by the city wall? Say, at the old Inquisition cells?”