“Say, Daddy, I never knew Sandy Campbell—Mr. Campbell, I mean, was like that.”
“Like what, Paul?”
“Well, he’s funny, you know, but he is awful, awfully nice. He understands a fellow so quick—and—you know, Daddy, he made me think of—I mean he talked to me—— Daddy, Tom Powers makes fun of him but I think he’s just splendid.”
“How do you mean?” asked his father.
The boy was silent for some moments and then said shyly, “I don’t know exactly. Oh, he is just splendid, Daddy!” he exclaimed with a rush of enthusiasm. “He talked to me just like mother used to.”
“Did he, boy?” said his father, with a sudden choke in his voice. “Then he must indeed be splendid.”
CHAPTER XIV
The Reverend Donald Fraser was pushing his buckskin broncho faster than he really liked, but he was late for his next appointment and he had to run in to Pine Croft for a hurried meal. Gaspard had insisted upon this, and the unique experiences of the morning strongly inclined him to this course.
The morning had furnished one of the rare oases which here and there dotted the otherwise somewhat dreary landscape of his ministerial experience in the Windermere Valley.
The recall of Gaspard to his place in the church had undoubtedly been an event of quite impressive importance with the minister, just as the moral and physical collapse of the rancher had dealt a heavy blow to the cause for which the minister stood in the community. The unexpected and voluntary forward step in the religious life taken by Paul too had furnished an additional exhilaration in the experiences of the morning. Paul had been to him somewhat of an enigma. He had never met with just such another in all his forty years of varied service in the slums of Glasgow and on the mission fields of the West. But he had been none the less delighted, indeed thrilled, by the act of the boy in making his first communion in this rather irregular and startling manner. The boy was all right. The training of a wise and saintly mother had furnished the mould for his soul stuff that would determine his character and destiny. He wanted a word with both father and son before the first impressions of the day had been dissipated. He believed in striking while the iron was hot.