"This is wonderful! And now, my dear fellow, since you've helped me so much, how can I help you?"
La Mancha looked across the valley, then slowly raised his eyes up to the Throne Mine; but what he said or what the Curate answered belongs to themselves and to the Almighty.
CHAPTER XI
One of the Blackguard's endearing traits had always been his generosity—boundless in that when he had nothing of his own to give he lent and gave things that were not his own, causing thereby much internecine strife. The only time he had ever been known to be worsted in fair fight was after lending to an intending deserter the shot-gun which he had borrowed from Buckeye Blossom, heavy-weight champion of Medicine Hat. But now he had got religion, and had fought two pitched battles for the right to read his Bible. Not that the boys cared much what was his choice of literature, it being all the same to the crowd whether he amused himself with the Bible, or a dictionary, or the New York Police Gazette, provided that he kept it to himself; but the Blackguard, for want of practice in the art, found it convenient to read like a schoolboy, aloud. Hence the pitched battles, which resulted in undisturbed readings from the Gospels, mingled with a running commentary, so naive, so quaint, and so exceedingly funny, that the audience waxed daily in numbers, until, for peace and quiet, the reader betook himself to the shelter of the woods. Here he read daily, expounding the Scriptures to an audience of disdainful squirrels and song-birds.
But to return to the matter of his generosity.
The immediate outcome of his queer religion was that the Blackguard became more avaricious than Shylock. When his chum, Dandy Irvine, sent him that box of cigars from Windermere, instead of giving them all away to his friends, he sold them two for a shilling. Some brought cash, with which, and a little credit, he bought a further supply; but for the most part the boys accepted the trading as a joke, running up accounts which they imagined to be purely fictitious. Then pay-day came, when the Blackguard was able for the first time to partially release his left arm, when, also for the first time, he had staff-pay not hypothecated by any previous fine. After the parade he went to all his debtors.
"Little Murphy, you owe me one dollar for cigars."
"Oh, come off," said little Murphy innocently. "What game do you think you're playing at?"
"Pay or fight," said the Blackguard.