He parted from them at the threshold.
CHAPTER VI
I
"I have always contended, Griff, that a bigot and a patriot are incompatible," remarked Stephen as he sat on the side of his bed, and looked across the room and out into the sunlit street beyond.
"Is that something you have just discovered?" answered Sergeant Griffin without taking his eyes from the newspaper before him. He was seated by the window, musing the morning news, his curved pipe hanging idle from his mouth, from which incipient clouds of smoke lazily issued and as lazily climbed upward and vanished through the open casement into threads of nothingness.
"No," was the reply, "but I have come to the conclusion that the philosophy of religious prejudice cannot be harmonized with true patriotism. They stand against each other as night and day. The one necessarily excludes the other."
"Do you know, Captain," the sergeant reasoned, pointing towards Stephen with the stem of his pipe, "a hard shell and a fool are somewhat alike; one won't reason; the other can't."
"I guess you're right," Stephen laughed. "But love of country and love of one's neighbor should be synonymous. This I have found by actual experience to be almost a truism."