and where to get off, and a few other common arguments of gentlemen of
his class, but the minister had a surprising height as he stood in the
moonlight, and there was that something strange and spiritual about him
that seemed to meet the intention and disarm it. His jaw dropped, and
he could not utter the words he had been about to speak. This was
insufferable--! But there was that raised hand. It seemed like some one
not of this world quite. He wasn't afraid, because it wasn't in him to
be afraid. That was his pose, not afraid of those he considered his
inferiors, and he did not consider that anyone was his superior. But
somehow this was something new in his experience. A man like this! It
was almost as if his mere being there demanded a certain homage. It was
queer. The young man passed a hand over his hot forehead and tried to
think. Then the minister's voice went calmly on. It was almost as if he
had not said that other at all. Perhaps he had not. Perhaps he dreamed
it or imagined it. Perhaps he had been taking too much liquor and this
was one of the symptoms--! Yet there still ringing in his ears--well
his soul anyway,--were those quiet words, "That will be about all,
sir!" Sternly. As if he had a _right_ to speak that way _to
him_! To Laurence Shafton, son of the great Wilson J. Shafton, of
New York! He looked up at the man again and found a sort of respect for
him dawning in himself. It was queer, but the man was--well,
interesting. What was this he was saying?

"I am sorry"--just as if he had never rebuked him at all, "I am sorry
that there seems to be no other way. If I had a car I would take you to
the nearest railway station, but there are no trains to-night, not even
twenty miles away until six in the morning. There are only four cars
owned in the village. Two are gone off on a summer trip, the third is
out of commission being repaired, and the fourth belongs to the doctor,
who happens to be away on the mountain to-night attending a dying man.