"You will not like to hear them--no."

"I'm not likely to think about them one way or another," was the
contemptuous reply.

Pierre's eyes half closed. The young, impetuous half-baked college man.
To set his little knowledge against his own studious vagabondage! At that
instant he determined to play a game and win; to turn this man into a
vagabond also; to see John the Baptist become a Bedouin. He saw the
doubt, the uncertainty, the shattered vanity in the youth's mind, the
missionary's half retreat from his cause. A crisis was at hand. The youth
was fretful with his great theme, instead of being severe upon himself.
For days and days Pierre's presence had acted on Sherburne silently but
forcibly. He had listened to the vagabond's philosophy, and knew that it
was of a deeper--so much deeper--knowledge of life than he himself
possessed, and he knew also that it was terribly true; he was not wise
enough to see that it was only true in part. The influence had been
insidious, delicate, cunning, and he himself was only "a voice crying in
the wilderness," without the simple creed of that voice. He knew that the
Methodist missionary was believed in more, if less liked, than himself.
Pierre would work now with all the latent devilry of his nature to unseat
the man from his saddle.

"You have missed the great thing, alors, though you have been up here two
years," he said. "You do not feel, you do not know. What good have you
done? Who has got on his knees and changed his life because of you? Who
has told his beads or longed for the Mass because of you? Tell me, who
has ever said, 'You have showed me how to live'? Even the women, though
they cry sometimes when you sing-song the prayers, go on just the same