“I have eaten your cheese cakes,” I vouchsafed.
He wrung my hand. “Good! Captain Grif doesn’t have much sympathy with the delinquent. I fancy his comments were characteristic.” A shadow fell athwart his face. “I was called to the bedside of a sick man—a dying man—a homesteader. He is dying in poverty and distress—alone—but for me, yonder in the mountains.”
My mood veered suddenly. “I know the man—if I can help,—” I began, and stumbled on; “In like straits I may find myself, some day.”
I felt my shoulder pressed. “No, David Dale. Not you! Will you walk with me a way?” he asked abruptly.
I turned with him and we left the dusty street, and took the road that bordered the river. Already the sun was slipping behind the western mountains, and the water ran rainbow colored, between its high, shelving banks. Father O’Shan took off his hat and bared his head to the breeze that was springing up.
“A day for gods to stoop—ay, and men to soar,” he quoted, favoring me with his warm smile. “I’ve had a hard day, Dale, a hard day.”
I think I have never seen so rare a face as his. Rugged and yet womanly sensitive and fine. He was a man ten years my senior, I dare say, and in his glance there was something gripping and compelling, something at once stern and gentle, whimsical and austere.
“A hard day—but you’ve been equal to it, Father O’Shan,” I cried impulsively. “When the day comes that I am broken in health, and old and friendless, I shall ask for no other physician, no truer companion, no more sympathetic assuager of pain than you.”
I grinned sheepishly as I spoke, but my companion answered earnestly:
“You speak as if you expected always to remain in your small corner, Dale. If I could prophesy I would say two years hence will not find you here.”