Uncle Hughie gazed indignantly over the golden mill-pond and hummed "The March o' the Cameron Men."
"Well, sir, that McIntyre man has a hard row to hoe," said Jake Sawyer, wisely steering away from the dangerous topic. "It's a caution now, ain't it, how some folks seems to have everything they want in this world, an' others gets all the things nobody wants?"
"Man, did you ever think what a queer, botched-up world we live in, anyhow?" inquired William Winters, who, whenever he found himself beyond the influence of his well-managed home, was always in a rebellious state. "The minister, now, 'ud like to make ye believe everything's ordered for our good, but it don't look that way to me. Gosh! Sometimes, when I'm patchin' up somethin' at the shop, I think I could take my hammer an' bang things up into better shape myself than the Almighty's done."
"Lord love ye, William!" cried Silas Long in alarm. "Take care wot ye're sayin'!"
"Well, when I was at Neeag'ra Falls," persisted the blacksmith, "there was a man preachin' there on the streets that said he didn't believe there was any God at all——"
'"Ere, William," interrupted the astronomer, shoving his telescope into Winters' hand, as one would give a new toy to a complaining child, "you take a squint through this 'ere spyglass, an' if you ain't convinced in five minutes that there is a God, well, sir, you can smash it, that's all."
Sandy McQuarry regarded the blacksmith sternly. For sufficient reasons of his own, he never entered the Elmbrook church, but for all that he was as strict in religious matters as he was at gaining a penny in a bargain.
"Ye've no right to creeticize the Almighty yon way, Weeliam," he admonished. "If He wishes to make one vessel to honor, and another, such as this MacIntyre, to dishonor, it is the Lord's wull, an' we maun jist abide by it."
The blacksmith, one eye inside the telescope, paid no attention.
"That's so," agreed Spectacle John, with suspicious cordiality, "especially as He's made an occasional vessel jist to hold money."