I was on my feet in an instant, regretting the pain I had given him; and yet it seemed worth while now, having made my inadvertent remark, to show him frankly what lay in my mind. Such things sometimes help men.
“I meant no offence, sir,” I said, “and I apologize for my flummery, but when I saw you coming up the hill, looking so gloomy and disconsolate on this bright day, as though you disapproved of God's world, the question slipped out before I knew it.”
My words evidently struck deep down into some disturbed inner consciousness, for he asked—and his words seemed to slip out before he thought:
“Is THAT the way I impressed you?”
I found my heart going out strongly toward him. “Here,” I thought to myself, “is a man in trouble.”
I took a good long look at him. He still a young man, though worn-looking—and sad as I now saw it, rather than gloomy—with the sensitive lips and the unworldly look one sees sometimes in the faces of saints. His black coat was immaculately neat, but the worn button-covers and the shiny lapels told their own eloquent story. Oh, it seemed to me I knew him as well as if every incident of his life were written plainly upon his high, pale forehead! I have lived long in a country neighbourhood, and I knew him—poor flagellant of the rural church—I knew how he groaned under the sins of a Community too comfortably willing to cast all its burdens on the Lord, or on the Lord's accredited local representative. I inferred also the usual large family and the low salary (scandalously unpaid) and the frequent moves from place to place.
Unconsciously heaving a sigh the young man turned partly aside and said to me in a low, gentle voice:
“You are detaining my boys from church.”
“I am very sorry,” I said, “and I will detain them no longer,” and with that I put aside my whistle, took up my bag and moved down the hill with them.
“The fact is,” I said, “when I heard your bell I thought of going to church myself.”