The man listened alertly. When the minister paused, he said:
“The young woman you speak of appears to have a deep pocket.”
The minister did not deny this. And the man spoke again, after a period of frowning silence:
“What was her idea?— Orr, you said her name was?—in doing all this for Brookville? Rather remarkable—eh?”
His tone, like his words, was mild and commonplace; but his face wore an ugly sneering look, which enraged the minister.
“Miss Orr’s motive for thus benefiting a wretched community, well-nigh ruined years ago by the villainy of one man, should be held sacred from criticism,” he said, with heat.
“Well, let me tell you the girl had a motive—or thought she had,” said the stranger unpleasantly. “But she had no right to spend her money that way. You spoke just now of the village as being ruined years ago by the villainy of one man. That’s a lie! The village ruined the man.... Never looked at it that way; did you? Andrew Bolton had the interests of this place more deeply at heart than any other human being ever did. He was the one public-spirited man in the place.... Do you know who built your church, young man? I see you don’t. Well, Andrew Bolton built it, with mighty little help from your whining, hypocritical church members. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, for miles about; every old maid with a book to sell; every cause—as they call the thousand and one pious schemes to line their own pockets—every damned one of ’em came to Andrew Bolton for money, and he gave it to them. He was no hoarding skinflint; not he. Better for him if he had been. When luck went against him, as it did at last, these precious villagers turned on him like a pack of wolves. They killed his wife; stripped his one child of everything—even to the bed she slept in; and the man himself they buried alive under a mountain of stone and iron, where he rotted for eighteen years!”
The stranger’s eyes were glaring with maniacal fury; he shook a tremulous yellow finger in the other’s face.
“Talk about ruin!” he shouted. “Talk about one man’s villainy! This damnable village deserves to be razed off the face of the earth! ...But I meant to forgive them. I was willing to call the score even.”
A nameless fear had gripped the younger man by the throat.