“I must go. I must leave you. Excuse me. Drive on without me, Miss Carruth. That is a friend of mine in trouble there.”
Bayard stopped the coachman with an imperious tap, and a “Hold on, John!”
“A what of yours?” cried Helen.
“It is one of my people,” explained Bayard curtly. He leaped from the carriage, raised his hat, and ran.
“Just release this man, if you please,” he said to the police authoritatively. “I know him; I am his minister. I’m going on the train he meant to take. I’ll see him safely home. I’ll answer for him.”
“Well—I don’t know about that, sir,” replied the smaller policeman doubtfully.
But the larger one looked Bayard over, and made answer: “Oh, bejabers, Tim, let ’im goa!”
Job, who was not too far gone to recognize his preserver, now threw his arms affectionately around Bayard’s recoiling neck, and became unendurably maudlin. In a voice audible the width of the street, and with streaming tears and loathsome blessings, he identified Bayard as his dearest, best, nearest, and most intimate of friends. A laughing crowd collected and followed, as Bayard tried to hurry to the station, encumbered by the grip of Job’s intoxicated affection. Now falling, now staggering up, now down again, and ever firmly held, Job looked up drunkenly into the white, delicate face that seemed to rise above him by a space as far as the span between the heavens and the earth. Stupidly he was aware that the new minister was doing something by him that was not exactly usual. He began to talk in thick, hyphenated sentences about his wife and home, his boy, and the trip he had taken to Georges’. He had made, he averred, a hundred dollars (which was possible), and had two dollars and thirty-seven cents left (which was altogether probable). Job complained that he had been robbed in Boston of the difference, and, weeping, besought the new minister to turn back and report the theft to the police.
“We shall lose the train, Job,” said Bayard firmly. “We must get home to your wife and little boy.”