‘You’ll come, old chap, you’ll come, you’ll come. Tell me you’ll come.’
And Graeme could say nothing in reply, but only looked at him. Then they silently shook hands, and we drove off. But long after we had got over the mountain and into the winding forest road on the way to the lumber-camp the voice kept vibrating in my heart, ‘You’ll come, you’ll come,’ and there was a hot pain in my throat.
We said little during the drive to the camp. Graeme was thinking hard, and made no answer when I spoke to him two or three times, till we came to the deep shadows of the pine forest, when with a little shiver he said—
‘It is all a tangle—a hopeless tangle.’
‘Meaning what?’ I asked.
‘This business of religion—what quaint varieties—Nelson’s, Geordie’s, Billy Breen’s—if he has any—then Mrs. Mavor’s—she is a saint, of course—and that fellow Craig’s. What a trump he is!—and without his religion he’d be pretty much like the rest of us. It is too much for me.’
His mystery was not mine. The Black Rock varieties of religion were certainly startling; but there was undoubtedly the streak of reality though them all, and that discovery I felt to be a distinct gain.