‘Every man must play his game in his place, old chap. I’d like to see you tackle it, though, right well,’ said Graeme earnestly. And so he did, in the after years, and good tackling it was. But that is another story.
‘But, I say, Graeme,’ persisted Beetles, ‘about this business, do you mean to say you go the whole thing—Jonah, you know, and the rest of it?’
Graeme hesitated, then said—
‘I haven’t much of a creed, Beetles; don’t really know how much I believe. But,’ by this time he was standing, ‘I do know that good is good, and bad is bad, and good and bad are not the same. And I know a man’s a fool to follow the one, and a wise man to follow the other, and,’ lowering his voice, ‘I believe God is at the back of a man who wants to get done with bad. I’ve tried all that folly,’ sweeping his hand over the glasses and bottles, ‘and all that goes with it, and I’ve done with it’
‘I’ll go you that far,’ roared big Barney, following his old captain as of yore.
‘Good man,’ said Graeme, striking hands with him.
‘Put me down,’ said little Wig cheerfully.
Then I took up the word, for there rose before me the scene in the League saloon, and I saw the beautiful face with the deep shining eyes, and I was speaking for her again. I told them of Craig and his fight for these men’s lives. I told them, too, of how I had been too indolent to begin. ‘But,’ I said, ‘I am going this far from to-night,’ and I swept the bottles into the champagne tub.
‘I say,’ said Polly Lindsay, coming up in his old style, slow but sure, ‘let’s all go in, say for five years.’ And so we did. We didn’t sign anything, but every man shook hands with Graeme.
And as I told Craig about this a year later, when he was on his way back from his Old Land trip to join Graeme in the mountains, he threw up his head in the old way and said, ‘It was well done. It must have been worth seeing. Old man Nelson’s work is not done yet. Tell me again,’ and he made me go over the whole scene with all the details put in.