All this while the ancient had been droning something about the beauties of the old flat-bed presses, and the goshly-gorfulness of machine printing. Now Shea became aware of a more personal note in the droning.
“If I was you,” and the ancient chuckled in his dirty white beard, transfixing Thady Shea with his one bright-blue eye, “if I was you, I’d grow whiskers!
“They’s places and places I can’t never go no more without these here whiskers. Yes, they is! I’m a sinful man an’ proud of it; mebbe ye think I’m old, but I can show you young fellers a thing or two, he, he! Grow whiskers, Thady. You can take ’em with ye to go a-sinning, and then go back over the same trail without ’em, and nobody the wiser!”
Shea’s gorge rose. He suddenly saw Dad Griffith as the latter really was—a foul old man, a worthless wastrel of humanity, seemingly dead to all higher things. He grew afraid for himself; he was vaguely alarmed, as though he had touched some slimy, crawling thing in the darkness. He came to his feet with an impellent desire to crush this unholy man like a toad, to flee into the night, to lie under the stars and seek clearance for his troubles. However, he did none of these things. Shea reached for his pipe, filled it, lighted it with an ember from the fire. Here he got a new sensation—the tang and sweetness of an ember-lighted pipe!
“Let’s be moving,” said Thady Shea, crisply. “It’s a fine night.”
An hour later they were plodding along, sharing the load of provisions. Thady Shea was quite aware that something was wrong with him in the body, but he felt no definite pain. It was an errant “something” which he could not place, and which he was too uplifted in spirit to heed.
The night wore on. With every step, Thady Shea was learning from the lore of Dad Griffith. He was learning the worldly wise lore of the roads—to walk with straight feet, to carry his body uphill on bended knees, to take the high side of a wet trail. The ancient talked continually, eternally. The ancient seemed to like Thady Shea immensely.
Some time after midnight they left the road by a faint and unknown trail, followed it until they were weary, and then camped. Griffith had a pair of tattered blankets. Thady Shea refused to share them; he slept in his clothes. When he wakened at sunrise his head was heavy with fever. A mile distant the ancient descried a creek, and they moved over to it for the day. Thady Shea felt peculiar, and detailed his symptoms, whereupon the ancient produced a tattered little case of leather. He opened the case and disclosed three vials.
“All the med’cine a man needs, I claim,” he declared. “Middle one’s quinine; right’s physic; left’s physic again, only more so. Take your choice, one or all!”
“Give me the more so,” said Thady, who felt miserable in the extreme.