than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged,
one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was
the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken--if more
calmly and critically so--in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail
struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the
manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The
edge of acrimony crept into the argument.

"The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'" Thompson declared.
"My dear sir, you cannot dispute--"

"Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past," MacLeod
interrupted. "Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in
man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the
way o' provender dinna happen nowadays--although some ither modern
commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a
rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and
fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish.
At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the
same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem
o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's
solved."

With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up
a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.

Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was
roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He
abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going,
Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which