It was a pathetic parody of all that home usually conveys. The comfort of it was only the comfort radiating from the contentment of the owner in it. Its structure was powerful to resist storm. Its furnishing was that which the priest had been able to manufacture himself. But the stove had been a present from Allan Mowbray. The walls were whitened with a lime wash which disguised the primitive plaster filling in between the lateral logs. There were some photographs pinned up to help disguise other defects. There were odds and ends of bookshelves hung about, all laden to the limit of their capacity with a library which had been laboriously collected during the long life of Mission work. Four rough chairs formed the seating accommodation. A table, made with a great expenditure of labor, and covered with an old blanket, served as a desk. Then, at the far end of the room, under a cotton ceiling, to save them from the dust from the thatch above, stood four trestle beds, each with ample blankets spread over it. Three of these were for wayfarers, and the fourth, in emergency, for the same purpose. Otherwise the fourth was Father José's own bed. Behind this building, and opening out of it, was a kitchen. This was the entire habitation of a man who had dedicated his life to the service of others.
Murray was sitting at the other side of the stove and his bulky figure was only partly visible to the priest from behind the stovepipe. Both men were smoking their final pipe before retiring. The priest was listening to the trader in that watchful manner of one deeply interested. They were talking of Alec, and the prospects of the new decision. Murray's thoughts were finding harsh expression.
"Say, we're all between the devil and the deep sea," he said, with a hard laugh. "The boy's only fit to be tied to a woman's strings. That's how I see it. Just as I see the other side of it. He's got to be allowed to make his own gait. If he doesn't, why—things are just going to break some way."
The priest nodded. He was troubled, and his trouble looked out of his keen eyes.
"Yes," he agreed. "And the devil's mostly in the deep waters, too. It's devil all around."
"Sure it is." Murray bent down to the stove and lit a twist of paper for his pipe. "Do you know the thing that's going to happen? When we get clear away from here, and that boy's pocket is filled with the bills his ma has handed him, I'll have as much hold on him as he's going to have on those dollars. If I butt in he'll send me to hell quick. And if I don't feel like taking his dope lying down there'll be something like murder done. If I'm any judge of boys, or men, that kid's going to find every muck hole in Leaping Horse—and there's some—and he's going to wallow in 'em till some one comes along and hauls him clear of the filth. What he's going to be like after—why, the thought makes me sweat! And Allan—Allan was my friend."
"But—you advised his mother?" The priest's eyes were searching.
Murray crushed his paper tight in his hand.
"How'd you have done?" he demanded shortly.
The priest weighed his words before replying.