“Here, boy,” he cried, smiling down into Jim’s face “Here, I’ll give you a toast.” The stormy light in the ranchman’s eyes had died out, and in them there lurked a question that had something like fear in it. But his glass was not raised, and Peter urged him. “A toast, lad huyk your glass right up, and we’ll drink it standing.”
Jim rose obediently but slowly to his feet, and his glass was lifted half-heartedly. There was no responsive enthusiasm in him now; it had gone utterly. Peter’s voice suddenly filled the room with a mocking laugh, and his toast rang out in tones of sarcasm the more biting for their very mildness.
“The devil’s abroad. Here’s to the devil, because there’s no God and the devil reigns. Nothing we see in the world is the work of anybody but the devil. The soil that yields us the good grain, the grass that feeds our stock, the warm, beneficent sun that ripens all the world, the beautiful flowers, the magnificent forests, the great hills, the seas, the rivers, the rain; everything in life. All the beautiful world, that thrills with a perfect life, that rolls its way through æons of time held in space by a power that nothing can shake. All the myriads of worlds and universes we see shining in the limitless billions of miles of space at night, everything, everything. It is the arch-fiend’s work, for there is no God. Here’s to the mad, red, dancing devil, to whom we go!”
Jim’s glass crashed to the floor. He seized the bottle of whiskey and served that in the same way.
“Stop it, you mad fool!” he cried in horror. And Peter slowly put his whiskey down untasted.
Then the dark, horror-stricken eyes looked into the smiling blue ones, and in a flash to Jim’s troubled mind 70 came inspiration. There was a long, long pause, during which eye met eye unflinchingly. Then Jim reached out a hand.
“Thanks, Peter,” he said.
Peter shook his grizzled head as he gripped the outstretched hand.
“I’m glad,” he said with a quaint smile, “real glad you came along––and stopped me drinking that toast. Going?”
Jim nodded. He, too, was smiling now, as he moved to the door.