He glanced at the remainder of his cigar. It was a very good cigar, and he did not care to sacrifice it by giving the other all the elbow room that the entire smoking compartment of the car afforded—as he, otherwise, would not have hesitated an instant to do! If his soul had nurtured any one especial hatred in its late period of bitter and blasphemous fury, it was a hatred of religion and all connected with it. He detested the sight of a priest. It always made him think of that night in Ton-Nugget Camp when memories had got the better of him. A priest of God! He hated them all. And he made no distinction as between creeds. They were all alike. They were Murdock Shaws! And he, if his father had had his way, would now be wearing a soutane, and dangling a crucifix from his neck, and sporting one of those damnable round hats like the man in front of him!
“Do you know this country at all?” inquired the priest.
“I do not,” Raymond answered curtly from behind his paper.
The other did not appear to notice the rebuff.
“No more do I,” he said engagingly. “I have never been below Quebec before, and I am afraid, unfortunately, that I am about to suffer for my ignorance. I am going to St. Marleau.”
Raymond lowered his paper, and for the first time gave the other more than a casual glance. He found his vis-à-vis to be dark-eyed, of rather pleasant features—this he admitted grudgingly—and a young man of, he judged, about his own age.
“What is the matter with St. Marleau?” Personal interest prompted him to ask the question; nothing could prompt him to infuse even a hint of affability into his tones.
The priest shrugged his shoulders, and smiled whimsically.
“The matter with St. Marleau is that it is on the bank of the river, and that the station is three miles away. I have been talking to the conductor. I did not know that before.”
Raymond had not known it before either. The information did not please him. He had taken it as a matter of course that the railroad would set him down at the village itself.