The hotel drudge stood still and looked after the couple with wondering eyes. The judge's wife dropped something as she walked. Jane hurried after her and picked it up. It was a glove. The girl pressed it to her lips again and again, hurried along for a few steps to return it, stopped suddenly, thrust it into her breast, and then, passing the back of her ungloved hand across her eyes, returned to the hotel, her eyes cast down and her ears deaf to occasional remarks intended specially for them.
CHAPTER XII.
Deacon Quickset was entirely truthful when he said to the keeper of the beer saloon that he had worried his pastor again and again to call on the repentant thief and try to bring him into the fold of the church; but he probably did not know that the said pastor had opinions of his own as to the time and manner in which such work should be done. Dr. Guide, under whose spiritual ministrations the deacon had sat every Sunday for many years, was a man of large experience in church work of all kinds, and, although he was extremely orthodox, to the extent of believing that those who already had united with his church were on the proper road to heaven, he nevertheless realized, as a practical man, that frequently there is more trouble with sheep in the road than with those who are straying about.
He had devoted no little of his time since he had been settled over the Bruceton church to the reclamation of doubtful characters of all kinds, but he frequently confided to his wife that one of the most satisfactory proofs to him of the divine origin of the church was that those already inside it were those most in need of spiritual ministrations. He had reclaimed some sad sinners of the baser sort from time to time with very little effort, but people concerning whom he frequently lay awake nights were men and women who were nominally in good standing in his own denomination and in the particular flock over which he was shepherd.
He had therefore made no particular haste to call on Sam Kimper, being entirely satisfied, as he told his wife, his only confidante, that so long as the man was following the course which he was reported to have laid down for himself he was not likely to go far astray, whereas a number of members of the congregation, men of far more influence in the community, seemed determined to break from the straight and narrow way at very slight provocation, and among these, the reverend doctor sadly informed his wife, he feared Deacon Quickset was the principal. The deacon was a persistent man in business,—"diligent in business" was the deacon's own expression in justification of whatever neglect his own wife might chance to charge him with,—but it seemed to some business-men of the town, as well as to his own pastor, that the deacon's diligence was overdoing itself, and that, in the language of one of the store-keepers, he had picked up a great deal more than he could carry. He was a director in a bank, agent for several insurance companies, manager of a land-improvement company, general speculator in real estate, and a man who had been charged with the care of a great deal of property which had belonged to old acquaintances now deceased. That he should be very busy was quite natural, but that his promises sometimes failed of fulfilment was none the less annoying, and once in a while unpleasant rumors were heard in the town about the deacon's financial standing and about his manner of doing business. Still, Dr. Guide did not drop Sam Kimper from his mind, and one day when he chanced to be in the vicinity of Larry Highgetty's shop he opened the door, bowed courteously to the figure at the bench, accepted a chair, and sat for a moment wondering what he should say to the man whom he was expected by the deacon to bring into his own church.
"Mr. Kimper," said the reverend gentleman, finally, "I trust you are getting along satisfactorily in the very good way in which I am told you have started."
"I can't say that I've any fault to find, sir," said the shoemaker, "though I've no doubt that a man of your learnin' an' brains could see a great deal wrong in me."
"Don't trouble yourself about that, my good fellow," said the minister: "you will not be judged by my learning or brains or those of any one else except yourself. I merely called to say that at any time that you are puzzled about any matter of belief, or feel that you should go further than you already have done, I would be very glad to be of any service to you if I can. You are quite welcome to call upon me at my home at almost any time, and of course you know where I can always be found on Sundays."
"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the cobbler, "but somehow when I go to thinkin' much about such things I don't feel so much like askin' other people questions or about learnin' anythin' else as I do about askin' if it isn't a most wonderful thing, after all, that I've been able to change about as I have, an' that I haven't tumbled backwards again into any of my old ways. You don't know what those ways is, I s'pose, Dr. Guide, do you?"
"Well, no," said the minister, "I can't say that my personal experience has taught me very much about them."