II

It was a mountain surrey, with a top and rolled curtains, three rigid
seats, and drawn by ugly, powerful horses in highly simplified harness. At
the rear a number of mailbags, already coated with a dun film, were
securely strapped.

The driver lounged forward, skilfully picking flies with his whip from the
horses' backs. He had a smooth countenance, deeply tanned, and pale, clear
blue eyes. At his side sat a priest in black, a man past middle age, with
ashen, embittered lips, and a narrowed, chilling gaze. They were silent,
contemplative; but, from the seat behind them, flowed a constant, buoyant,
youthful chatter. A girl with a shining mass of chestnut hair gathered
loosely on a virgin neck was recounting the thrilling incidents of
"commencement week" for the benefit of a heavily-built young man with a
handsome, masklike countenance. On the last seat a carelessly-garbed male
was drawing huge clouds of smoke from a formidable cigar.

Gordon Makimmon, the driver, did not know the latter. He had engaged and
paid for his seat the night before, evading such indirect query as
Makimmon had addressed to him. It was a fundamental principle of
Greenstream conduct that the direct question was inadmissible; at the same
time, the inhabitants of that far, isolated valley were, on all occasions,
coldly curious about such strangers, their motives and complexions of
mind, as reached their self-sufficient territory. This combined
restriction and necessity produced a wily type of local inquisitor. But
here Gordon's diplomacy had been in vain, his surmising at sea. The others
were intimate and familiar figures:

Father Merlier's advent into Greenstream had occurred a number of years
before. He had arrived with papers of introduction to one of the few
papist families in that rigorously protestant neighborhood; and,
immediately, had erected outside the village of Greenstream a small
mission school and dwelling, where he addressed himself to the herculean
task of gaining converts to his faith. At first he had been regarded with
unconcealed distrust--boys, when the priest's back was turned, had thrown
stones at him; the turbulent element, on more than one occasion, had
discussed the advisability of "running" him from the community. But it was
true of both boys and men that, when they had confronted the beady, black
glitter of Merlier's unfaltering gaze, encountered the patent contempt of
his rigid lips, they had subsided into an uni