"Why?" asked Mr. Dale. He did not know John Ward very well, and had no particular feeling about him one way or the other; but people interested Mr. Dale, and he had meant some time to study this man with the same impersonal and kindly curiosity with which he would have examined a new bug in his collection.
"Because, if he's the man I think he is,—and I guess there is no doubt about it—thin, dark, and abstracted-looking, named Ward, and studying at the Western Theological Seminary that year,—I saw him do a thing—well, I never knew any other man who would have done it!"
"What was it, sir?" said Mr. Dale, turning his mild blue eyes upon the young man, and regarding him with an unusual amount of interest.
Dick laughed. "Why," he answered, "I saw that man,—there were a lot of us fellows standing on the steps of one of the hotels; it was the busiest street and the busiest time of the day, and there was a woman coming along, drunk as a lord. Jove! you ought to have seen her walk! She couldn't walk,—that was about the truth of it; and she had a miserable yelling brat in her arms. It seemed as though she'd fall half a dozen times. Well, while we were standing there, I saw that man coming down the street. I didn't know him then,—somebody told me his name, afterwards. I give you my word, sir, when he saw that woman, he stood still one minute, as though he was thunderstruck by the sight of her,—not hesitating, you know, but just amazed to see a woman looking like that,—and then he went right up to her, and took that dirty, screeching child out of her arms; and then, I'm damned if he didn't give her his arm and walk down the street with her!"
Mr. Dale felt the shock of it. "Ah!" he said, with a quick indrawn breath.
"Yes," continued Dick, who enjoyed telling a good story, "he walked down that crowded street with that drunken, painted creature on his arm. I suppose he thought she'd fall, and hurt herself and the child. Naturally everybody looked at him, but I don't believe he even saw them. We stood there and watched them out of sight—and—but of course you know how fellows talk! Though so long as he was a minister"—Dick grinned significantly, and looked at Mr. Dale for an answer; but there was none.
Suddenly the old man stood still and gravely lifted his hat: "He's a good man," he said, and then trudged on again, with his head bent and his hands clasped behind him.
Mr. Forsythe looked at him, and whistled. "Jove!" he exclaimed, "it doesn't strike you as it did Dr. Howe. I told him, and he said, 'Bless my soul, hadn't the man sense enough to call a policeman?'"
But Mr. Dale had nothing more to say. The picture of John Ward, walking through the crowded street with the woman who was a sinner upheld by his strong and tender arm, was not forgotten; and when Dick had left him, and he had lighted his slender silver pipe in the quiet of his basement study, he said again, "He's a good man."