Pierre smiled. “I reckon we get closer to God out there than you do here. We sure get the fear of Him even if we don’t get nothin’ else. When you fight winter an’ all outdoors an’ come near to death with hosses an’ what-not, why, I guess you’re gettin’ close to somethin’ not quite to be explained. Holliwell, he’s a first-class sin-buster, best I ever knowed.”
Morena laughed. He was beginning to enjoy his visitor. “Sin-buster?”
“That’s one name fer a parson. Well, sir, I guess Holliwell is plumb close to bein’ a prize devil-twister.”
“Tell me how you first met him. It ought to be a good story.”
But the young man’s face grew bleak at this. “It ain’t a good story, sir,” he said grimly. “It ain’t anything like that. I must wish you good-by, an’ thank you kindly.”
“But you’ll let me see you again? Where are you stopping? Holliwell’s friends are mine.”
Pierre gave him the address of a small, downtown hotel, thanked him again, and, standing in the hall, added, “If I’m wrong in the notion that brought me to New York, I’ll be goin’ back again to my ranch, Mr. Morena. I’m goin’ back to ranchin’ on the old homestead. I’ve got it fixed up.” He seemed to look through Jasper into an enormous distance. Morena was almost uncannily aware of the long, long journey by which this man’s spirit had trodden, of the desert he faced ahead of him if the search must fail. Was it wrong to warn Jane? Ought this man to be given his chance? Surely here stood before him Jane’s mate. Jasper wished that he knew more of the history back of Pierre and the girl. A man could do little but look out for his own interests, when he worked in the dark. Which would be the better man for Jane?—this Jane so trained, so educated, so far removed superficially from the ungrammatical, bronzed, clumsily dressed, graceful visitor. In every worldly respect, doubtless, Prosper Gael. Only—there were Pierre’s eyes and the soul looking out of them.
Jasper said good-bye half-absently.
An hour later he went to call on Jane.
He found her done up in an apron and a dust-cap cleaning house with astonishing spirit. She and the Bridget, who had recently been substituted for Mathilde, were merry. Bridget was sitting on the sill, her upper half shut out, her round, brick-colored face laughing through the pane she was polishing. Jane was up a ladder, dusting books.