So they were not wholly dependent upon Hunt’s salary. He could afford to take a vacation, and it was on this ground—the need of rest—that he had resigned from the pulpit of Ditson Corners’ First Church. They had left some really good friends behind them in the little Berkshire town—some who truly appreciated the young minister. But the clique against him had shown its activity much too promptly to salve Hunt’s pride. His resignation had been accepted without question, and he had remained only to see Bardell established in his place.
Betty condemned herself that she could not enter whole-heartedly into Hunt’s high expectations of the new field that lay before him. It was adventure—high adventure—to his mind. And why should a parson not long for a bigger life and broader development as well as another healthy man?
He was going to Canyon Pass without a penny being guaranteed him. Joe Hurley urged him to come; but he told him frankly that there would be opposition. Certain Passonians would not welcome a parson or the establishment of religious worship.
But this opposition was that of the enemy. The Reverend Willett Ford Hunt was not afraid of the devil in an open fight. Opposition in the church itself was what had conquered him at Ditson Corners. Let the phalanxes of wickedness confront him at Canyon Pass, he would stand against them!
Betty saw him coming back down the aisle of the car, smiling broadly, a handsome, muscular figure of a man. He did not look the cleric. She had been so used to seeing him in the black frock-coat and immaculate white collar that she was at first rather shocked when he had donned another suit to travel in.
He was almost boyish looking. He was a big man, and she believed him capable of big things. She could almost wish he had selected some other road in life—although that thought was shocking to her, too. Ford might well have been a business man, an engineer, a banker, a promoter. Betty’s ideas were somewhat vague about business life; but she felt sure Ford would have shone in any line. She was a loyal sister.
She shook herself out of the fog of her own thoughts and smiled up at him.
“Met a man in the smoking room who knows that country about Canyon Pass like a book, Bet,” Hunt said, dropping down beside her. “It really is a part of the last frontier. We shall always be a pioneer people, we Americans. There is something in the raw places of the earth that intrigues us all—save the saps. And sap, even, hardens in such an environment as this we are bound for.”
“I hope you will not be disappointed, Ford.”
“Disappointed? Of course I shall be disappointed and heart-sick and soul-weary. But I believe my efforts will not be narrowed and circumscribed and bound down by formalism and caste. As Joe says, I won’t be ‘throwed and hog-tied.’ The old-time revivalists used to urge their converts to ‘get liberty.’ I’ll get liberty out there, I feel sure, in Canyon Pass.”