The man turned and looked at him. "You know better than that," he said sharply.
Tim felt ashamed. John McIntyre would think him young and innocent, like Billy Winters and Johnny McQuarry, who believed everything their Sunday-school teacher said.
"Huh! I bet God ain't smart enough to make an engine like that," he said profanely. He waited for the effect of this, but there was apparently none; so he proceeded to give forth some more of the unorthodox views that never failed to shock pretty Miss Marjorie Scott, his Sunday-school teacher. "I don't believe half folks tell about God, 'cause I'm a—I'm a——" He hesitated, rummaging through his memory for that terribly wicked name that Silas Long had given the new watchman. It came to light at last. "I'm a infiddle!" he burst forth proudly.
He waited, but even this tremendous disclosure called forth no remark. Probably the man had consorted with infidels and such like all his life, and thought nothing of them. Tim drew a deep breath. It gave one a feeling of ecstatic fear to be able to utter such statements unrebuked. He tried another.
"Miss Scott says—she's my Sunday-school teacher, only I don't go to Sunday-school much, you bet—she says God made everybody, but I told her if He made Spectacle John Cross He'd orter be ashamed. An' I bet the devil made ole Mis' Cummins. She was the woman that brought us up, an' I say, she was a corker!"
The man slowly turned his weary eyes and fixed them on the child's face. The reflected light from the glimmering pond lit up the small, wizened countenance, and for the first time he noted the signs it bore of cruel suffering and ill usage.
"Another," he said, half aloud.
"What?" asked Tim, glad to have elicited even one word.
The man did not repeat it. "Where do you live?" he asked.
"Up at Jake Sawyer's. I'm one o' the Sawyer orphants, I told you."