For a long, breathless moment Hampton stared incredulously at his
questioner, crushing his cigar between his teeth. Twice he started to
speak, but literally choked back the bitter words burning his lips,
while an uncontrollable admiration for the other's boldness began to
overcome his first fierce anger.
"By God!" he exclaimed at last, rising to his feet and pointing toward
the door. "I have shot men for less. Go, before I forget your cloth.
You little impudent fool! See here--I saved that girl from death, or
worse; I plucked her from the very mouth of hell; I like her; she 's
got sand; so far as I know there is not a single soul for her to turn
to for help in all this wide world. And you, you miserable, snivelling
hypocrite, you little creeping Presbyterian parson, you want me to
shake her! What sort of a wild beast do you suppose I am?"
Wynkoop had taken one hasty step backward, impelled to it by the fierce
anger blazing from those stern gray eyes. But now he paused, and, for
the only time on record, discovered the conventional language of polite
society inadequate to express his needs.
"I think," he said, scarcely realizing his own words, "you are a damned
fool."
Into Hampton's eyes there leaped a light upon which other men had
looked before they died,--the strange mad gleam one sometimes sees in
fighting animals, or amid the fierce charges of war. His hand swept
instinctively backward, closing upon the butt of a revolver beneath his
coat, and for one second he who had dared such utterance looked on
death. Then the hard lines about the man's mouth softened, the fingers
clutching the weapon relaxed, and Hampton laid one opened hand upon the
minister's shrinking shoulder.
"Sit down," he said, his voice unsteady from so sudden a reaction.
"Perhaps--perhaps I don't exactly understand."
For a full minute they sat thus looking at each other through the fast
dimming light, like two prize-fighters meeting for the first time
within the ring, and taking mental stock before beginning their
physical argument. Hampton, with a touch of his old audacity of
manner, was first to break the silence.
"So you think I am a damned fool. Well, we are in pretty fair accord
as to that fact, although no one before has ever ventured to state it
quite so clearly in my presence. Perhaps you will kindly explain?"
The preacher wet his dry lips with his tongue, forgetting himself when
his thoughts began to crystallize into expression.