He hastened out, passing Kintchin and commanding him to come on. Margaret busied herself with picking up scraps of paper, among them doubtless being an account of what the captain did, and threw them out into the yard. Standing at the door, and glancing down the road, she spied Mrs. Mayfield, Jim, Tom and Lou coming from a stroll among the hills. Back into the house she ran, snatched down a turkey-wing fan from a nail in the wall, dusted a rocking-chair, smoothed herself, and was rocking placidly as any lady of leisure when the hill-side romancers entered the room.
CHAPTER XII.
DIDN'T DO ANYTHING HEROIC.
During all the morning Jim had been silent. Standing on a purple knob, arms folded, gazing far away toward the rugged scenes of his life's work, he had reminded the world-woman of some discoverer, a Cortez viewing the Pacific; and when to break the spell of his attitude she asked him why he gazed so fixedly, he replied: "I am looking away off yander at the duty I am neglecting, ma'm."
"Why, you couldn't neglect a duty, Mr. Reverend."
"I didn't think so, but I am. I put myself in mind of the old feller that stood all day a smelling of a rose bush when the weeds were choking his corn. In my wheat field the tares are coming up, now that I am away, and I ought to be there to pull them up by the roots."
"But you need a vacation. Ail preachers take vacations. Why, in the cities, they—"
"Yes, ma'm," he broke in. "Sometimes they shut up their churches, I know, and they go away from their desks and their pulpits; but they are learned men, bristling with sharp points against the man who attacks their creed. I am not armed that way. I can't argue; I can't defend the church against the smart men that Satan has hired. All I can do is to preach in my rough way and go about and beg men to do as near right as they can."
"And St. Paul could not have done more, Mr. Reverend."