The Rev. James Scott was afraid of no living man, but there was a terrible gleam in John McIntyre's eyes that hinted of insanity. He looked at him a moment and then, with a motion as though washing his hands of him, he turned away. The rest of the company had fallen back from the doorway, and now followed the minister in speechless concern. They tramped along the old grassy road, followed by the call of the whip-poor-will from the darkening hillside above, and the lonely cry of the loon floating across the Drowned Lands. Uncle Hughie was the first to break the dismayed silence.
"Well! well! well! well! Ech! hech! Hoots! toots!" he ejaculated incoherently, quite unable to express his feelings.
"Man, ain't he a caution?" whispered Jake Sawyer fearfully.
"Gosh! now there's some truth in what he says," remarked the melancholy blacksmith in an undertone.
"D'ye think he would be right in his mind, poor body?" asked Uncle Hughie, searching for some palliation of John McIntyre's outrageous conduct.
"Mebby he's had notions about the earth spinnin' 'round like a top, an' they've drove him loony," suggested Spectacle John. "That often happens, they say."
But Silas Long was too deeply concerned over the tramp's wickedness to pay any heed to this frivolous remark.
The minister was walking ahead, in gloomy silence. His heart was still full of hot indignation, but it was mingled with regret and deep disappointment. He had wanted to do this lonely, sad man good, and in his haste, he feared, he had done him only harm.
But there was one pair of eyes that had regarded John McIntyre's action with perfect approval. Those eyes were now looking up at Jake Sawyer, alight with unholy joy. "Say," whispered the eldest orphan, jerking his foster-father's coat, "I like that man. He's awful bad, an' I think he's just bully."
The next day the tale of the tramp's outrageous treatment of the minister flew through Elmbrook like the news of a fire in the mill. Sandy McQuarry had been away in Lakeview all day, and did not hear it until he was seated with his family and the mill-hands at the supper table.