"Yes."
The answer was curt, and the minister saw that the young man resented any cross-examination of his private affairs. He therefore turned the conversation at once to impersonal matters.
"How do you like Canada? How does it strike you?"
"Fine!" answered Dean, relieved at the turn of the conversation. "So big."
"You mean the extent of the country?"
"It's not that, quite. I mean that people seem to think in a bigger way. I suppose it comes from having so much space around one."
The train was now passing through the endless miles of forest-land and tangled hills on the route to Fort William, with scarcely a sign of human habitation except by the occasional wayside stations. Now and again the train would thunder over a high trestle bridge above a leaping torrent-river. Dean waved his hand vaguely to include the primeval vastnesses around them.
"That's right," answered the minister. "There's no cramping here. Room for everyone. Room for spiritual growth as well as material growth. I know the feeling you have. When I was a young man about your age I came to Canada from the slums of Liverpool. I had been twice in jail in Liverpool. It was for theft. In England I should probably have developed into a chronic thief. There's little chance for a man who has once been in prison.... But Canada gave me my chance. Canada didn't bother about my past. Canada only wanted to know what I could do in the future."
Dean's eyes widened at this frank avowal. He had never seen or heard of a man—and especially a man in the ministry—who would openly confess to a prison-brand upon him.
"No wonder you like Canada," was his lame answer.