that good may come' I seem to
recognize as a tenet of the Church of the Jesuits."

"I protest. I really do protest," objected the clergyman,
scandalized.

"All right," agreed Ned Trent, with good-natured contempt. "That
is not the point. Do you refuse?"

"Can't you see?" begged the other. "I'm sure you are reasonable
enough to take the case on its broader side."

"You refuse?" insisted Ned Trent.

"It is not always easy to walk straightly before the Lord, and my
way is not always clear before me, but----"

"You refuse!" cried Ned Trent, rising impatiently.

The reverend Archibald Crane looked at his catechiser with a trace
of alarm.

"I'm sorry; I'm afraid I must," he apologized.

The stranger advanced until he touched the desk on the other side
of which the Reverend Archibald was sitting, where he stood for
some moments looking down on his opponent with an almost amused
expression of contempt.

"You are an interesting little beast," he drawled, "and I've seen a
lot of your kind in my time. Here you preach every Sunday, to
whomever will listen to you, certain cut-and-dried doctrines you
don't believe practically in the least. Here for the first time
you have had a chance to apply them literally, and you hide behind
a lot of words. And while you're about it you may as well hear
what I have to say about your kind. I've had a pretty wide
experience in the North, and I know what I'm talking about. Your
work here among the Indians is rot, and every sensible man knows
it. You coop them up in your log-built houses, you force on them
clothes to which they are unaccustomed until they die of
consumption. Under your little tin-steepled imitation of
civilization, for which they are not fitted, they learn to beg, to
steal, to lie. I have travelled far, but I have yet to discover
what your kind are allowed on earth for. You are narrow-minded,
bigoted, intolerant, and without a scrap of real humanity to
ornament your mock religion. When you find you can't meddle with
other people's affairs enough at home you get sent where you can
get right in the business--and earn salvation for doing it. I
don't know just why I should say this to you, but it sort of does
me good to tell it. Once I heard one of your kind tell a sorrowing
mother that her little child had gone to hell because it had died
before he--the smug hypocrite--had sprinkled its little body with a
handful of water. There's humanity for you! It ma