A full moon was sailing high in the heavens now, and Drew's animated face showed clear in the pale gleam. Jock hitched his chair nearer.
"Do you mean to insinuate," he asked, "that you've been wasting your time and health studying a line of preaching that hasn't got a red-hot hell in the background for sinners?"
"I mean just that." Drew threw back his head proudly.
"What in thunder do you do with them, then?"
"We try—by God's help I'm going to try—to take fear from them. Make them want to be decent. Make them want to use the powers they have in themselves. Make them want to work with God, not alone for God."
Jock's face was a puzzle. Admiration, pity, bewilderment, and a desire to laugh, waged war. Finally he drawled:
"Well, I'll be eternally durned, if I ain't sorry that a bright chap like you has wasted his youth, and pretty nearly drowned the vital spark, in arriving at such a cold-storage conclusion as this here one you've been airing. Why any one with half an eye can see that if hell-fire can't stir sinners, a slow call to duty ain't going to get a hustle on them. I swear if it wasn't so late, I'd get Gaston over here to listen to your views. Gaston is open to all kinds of tommy-rot that has a new mark on it. I'll be jiggered if I don't believe Gaston will want to pay you a salary to keep you here just for a diversion. But take my advice, and keep to old-fashioned lines, to-morrer 'specially, when you come to the marrying. Lord! Lord! But Jude would be having a picnic if he grasped that rose-coloured streamer of yours."
Drew made no reply. He was thinking, and his thoughts led where he knew Jock could not follow.
Presently a thin, blue-veined hand stole out in the darkness and found Filmer's.
"I—I—didn't know such men as you—such a place as this—existed," said the low, eager voice. "It's like having died and awakened in a new atmosphere, where even the people are different. It's—it's quite an inspiration."