It was Channing's custom, when he called at Storm, to bid her a nonchalant, not to say indifferent, farewell, and repair by devious ways to the ravine; where some moments later he welcomed a very different Jacqueline from the demure young person he had left—ardent, glowing, very eager to atone to him for the enforced restraint of the previous encounter. The coquette in Jacqueline was only skin deep.
One day, arriving at Storm at a belated lunch hour, the hospitable negress who opened to him led him back at once into the dining-room; and there he found a guest quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing with a courteous, "Howdy, stranger!"
"No, no, darter"—he continued without interruption his conversation with Jacqueline. "'Tain't a mite of use puttin' that little washtub in my room no more, bekase you ain't a-goin' to toll me into it. I takes my bath when I gits home to Sally. She kinder expects it of me. Hit's a wife's privilege to cut her man's hair and pare his nails and scrub his ears an' all them little things, 'specially ef she ain't got no chillun to do hit fur, an' I'd feel mighty mean ef I disapp'inted her. I don't do much fer Sally, noways. No, darter, oncet or twicet a year's often enough fer a human critter to git wet all over, 'cep'n in a nateral way, by swimmin' in the crick. These here baths and perfumery-soaps an' all ain't nature. They're sinful snares to the flesh, that's what they be, not fitten' fer us workers in the Lord's vineyard."
"You think the Lord prefers you dirty?" murmured Jacqueline, with a side glance at the astonished Channing.
"I dunno, darter, but some of His chillun does, an' that's a fack. Ef I was too clean, I wouldn't seem to 'em like home-folks." He added, in all reverence, "I 'lows the Lord went dirty Hisself sometimes when He was among pore folks, jes' to show 'em He wa'n't no finer than what they be."
"I haven't a doubt of it," said Philip Benoix, beside him.
Channing suddenly realized who this peddler was. Jacqueline had spoken of him often—a protégé of her mother's whom she called the Apostle, half fanatic and half saint, who appeared at Storm occasionally on his way between the mountains of his birth and the city where he had taken unto himself a wife; bringing down to the "Settlements," for sale, certain crude handiwork of the mountain women, carrying back with him various products of civilization, such as needles, and shoe-strings, and stick-candy, and Bibles. It was his zeal in spreading what he called "the Word of God" along his route that had won the old peddler his title of "the Apostle."
Channing looked at him with new interest, the literary eye lighting even while he frowned at the sight of so uncouth a creature seated at lunch with ladies.
The Apostle suddenly turned to him with a gentle, quizzical smile, and Channing had the startled sensation of having spoken his thoughts unwittingly aloud.
"Stranger, I reckon you ain't never been up in them barren mountings, whar men has to wrastle with the yearth and the Devil fer every mouthful of food they puts into their bellies? When I comes down from thar, I always aims a bee line fer Sister Kildare's house, bekase I'm hongry. She don't never turn no hongry man away. 'Tain't safe to turn a hongry man away. You cain't never tell," he added slowly and significantly, "who He might be."