"Tell you what, flog him and send him adrift." The man who proposed this was a stranger, with an anchor and other hall-marks of the sea on his hairy arms.
"Wolves would eat 'im on the mountain."
"Wolves eat a Chinaman! They 'd eat a gum boot fust!"
"Tell you what we'll do," growled the Gopher, "reform him."
"Reform hell!" said the sailor to himself.
"Come, let's do a little missionary business, and begin at home," urged the Gopher. "Get the Judge to reprimand him. Have him talk to him an hour, then let the Parson speak to him another hour. If he lives that through he will be an honest man, or if not honest he will at least be harmless."
Now they had no preacher in the Forks, not even the semblance of one yet, neither had they a lawyer or doctor, but this Parson was a power in the camp. He was perhaps the most popular man there. He was certainly the most influential, for he was a man who could talk. They called him the Parson because he was certainly the profanest man in all the mines.
The idea was novel and was at once adopted.
Here at last was a practical application of the popular feeling, in older republics, that the officers are the servants of the public.
The little Judge here was certainly the people's servant. If he had not been, if he had asserted himself at all and taken up arms and fortified himself behind a barricade of books, they would simply have called a miners' meeting in half an hour, and in half an hour would have had the little man ousted and another man in his place, and then back to their work as if nothing ever had happened. Never in the world had men known such absolute liberty as was attained here. There was not even the dominion of woman. And yet they were not happy.