The innkeeper was frankly indignant. What made the whole affair seem especially aggravating and personal, was the fact that his wife was a communicant of that church, Mr. Tucker's religion as well as his distillery, was in his wife's name, and her devotion cost him annually the equivalent of many gallons of his famous “Lone Stager Rye,” a whisky which sophisticated travellers had pronounced to be unrivalled west of the Alleghanies.
During the interchange of certain light domestic confidences that had preceded Mrs. Tucker's departure for the lecture, her husband had remarked that he did not believe in mixing liquor and religion; whereupon Mrs. Tucker, who was young and pretty and high-spirited had retorted that he could never be accused of doing that, since he never ventured inside a church door; this had led to more words; and Mr. Tucker with some heat had denounced the lecturer as a meddlesome busybody; he had further informed his wife that he served drinks every hour of the day, and every day of his life, to better men.
“Meaning yourself, I suppose.” said Mrs. Tucker, tartly, but with heightened colour.
Mr. Tucker had ignored this, and had reminded her that even ministers of the Gospel had been known to seek his bar, and had there slacked their clerical thirst, without fear and without shame, “As man to man,” he added feelingly.
“One minister,” corrected Mrs. Tucker, “and he had a very red nose.”
This seemed such an unworthy objection to Mr. Tucker that he had allowed the matter to drop. But the lecture and the rain combined had proven disastrous to business. Colonel Sharp had dropped in for his usual nightcap, a carefully-measured three fingers; he had favoured Mr. Tucker with a Latin quotation, and Mr. Tucker had favoured him with the opinion that they were likely to have a spell of weather. Next, a belated farmer had stopped to have a jug filled with apple brandy; he had ventured a few occult observations on the condition of the crops, and had informed Mr. Tucker that it was the first rainy tenth of June in two years, and that up to four o'clock in the afternoon it had been the hottest tenth of June in five years; then he had gathered his jug of brandy up under his arm, and had departed into the night; and the innkeeper, rotund and grey, with his two sparse wisps of hair carefully plastered back of his ears, and looking not unlike an aged and degenerate cupid, a cupid, who through some secret grief had taken to drink, dozed in solitude before his bar.
Suddenly, he was aroused by hearing a step on the brick pavement outside the door. A man seemed to pause there irresolutely; then a hand was placed upon the latch, the door swung slowly open, and Truman Rogers, with his son at his side, stood revealed upon the threshold.
“Come in, man, come in,” cried Mr. Tucker.
Rogers pulled the door to after him, and moved into the room; his clothes were wet and steaming, the wide brim of his hat drooped, hiding his face, and in the half light of the dingy lamps he looked more like a gaunt shadow than a living man.
The boy at his side kept fast hold of his hand; he, too, was shivering under the drag of his clammy garments, but he seemed to exercise a certain protecting care toward his father, for his glance was full of childish tenderness, not unmixed with concern.