d unbeliever.

The man turned and looked at him. "You know better than that," he said
sharply.

Tim felt ashamed. John McIntyre would think him young and innocent,
like Billy Winters and Johnny McQuarry, who believed everything their
Sunday-school teacher said.

"Huh! I bet God ain't smart enough to make an engine like that," he
said profanely. He waited for the effect of this, but there was
apparently none; so he proceeded to give forth some more of the
unorthodox views that never failed to shock pretty Miss Marjorie Scott,
his Sunday-school teacher. "I don't believe half folks tell about God,
'cause I'm a--I'm a----" He hesitated, rummaging through his memory
for that terribly wicked name that Silas Long had given the new
watchman. It came to light at last. "I'm a infiddle!" he burst forth
proudly.

He waited, but even this tremendous disclosure called forth no remark.
Probably the man had consorted with infidels and such like all his
life, and thought nothing of them. Tim drew a deep breath. It gave
one a feeling of ecstatic fear to be able to utter such statements
unrebuked. He tried another.

"Miss Scott says--she's my Sunday-school teacher, only I don't go to
Sunday-school much, you bet--she says God made everybody, but I told
her if He made Spectacle John Cross He'd orter be ashamed. An' I bet
the devil made ole Mis' Cummins. She was the woman that brought us up,
an' I say, she was a corker!"

The man slowly turned his weary eyes and fixed them on the child's
face. The reflected light from the glimmering pond lit up the small,
wizened countenance, and for the first time he noted the signs it bore
of cruel suffering and ill usage.

"Another," he said, half aloud.

"What?" asked Tim, glad to have elicited even one word.

The man did not repeat it. "Where do you live?" he asked.

"Up at Jake Sawyer's. I'm one o' the Sawyer orphants, I told you."

It was impossible for even John McIntyre, living a life apart, though
he did, not to have heard something of the Sawyer orphans' fame. He
nodded.

"Are they good to you?"

Tim hesitated. He would have liked to tell a tale of woe and terrible
tortures, but his genuine regard for his foster-parents forbade. "Yes,
course," he answered shortly. "Only they tried to make me stay home
to-night 'cause the preacher was comin'. But I cut out, you bet; I
can't stand preachers."

The man made no comment. His sudden interest seemed to have as
su