"You don't dare to say these things to her face!" Judith's eyes were full of the tears of anger.
"I'd just as soon," Douglas grinned.
"I'm going to tell her what I think of her and what she is doing to the youth of Lost Chief," stated Mr. Fowler.
"She's not a bit worse for Lost Chief than Charleton Falkner," exclaimed
Judith. "And you don't pick on him!"
"He couldn't be as bad as Inez," insisted the preacher. "There is nothing so bad for a community as her kind of a woman."
"That just isn't so, Mr. Fowler," protested Douglas. "Charleton is worse than Inez ever thought of being. All I'm complaining about is her influence on Judith."
"You both talk as if I had no mind of my own!" Judith said indignantly. "If you knew the temptations I'd withstood, you'd not be so free with your comments about me. And if all I'm going to get when I come up here is criticism, I'm not coming any more. Don't you follow me, Douglas!" and Judith, in her short khaki suit, swept out of the cabin with a grace and dignity that would have done credit to a velvet train.
The preacher was deeply perturbed. He rose and paced the floor. "Douglas, I've tried to play this thing your way. But now I am through compromising. There can be no compromise with God. I'm no longer going to keep silence when events like those this afternoon take place. Undoubtedly my stay in Lost Chief will be short. But while I'm here I am going to stand openly and vehemently for the ten commandments."
Douglas tilted his chair back, folded his arms on his chest, and dropped his chin. "Something's wrong with your religion," he said.
"Nothing is wrong with my religion," retorted the preacher. "But Lost Chief is more wrong than most places. It's a transplanted New England community, and people who come from Puritan stock can't get along without God. They are worse than any one else without Him."