At the house Jane McPherson sat waiting for her boy. She was thinking of
the scene in the church and a hard light was in her eyes. Sam went past
the sleeping room of his parents, where Windy McPherson snored peacefully,
and up the stairway to his own room. He undressed and, putting out the
light, knelt upon the floor. From the wild ravings of the man in the jail
he had got hold of something. In the midst of the blasphemy of Mike
McCarthy he had sensed a deep and abiding love of life. Where the church
had failed the bold sensualist succeeded. Sam felt that he could have
prayed in the presence of the entire town.

"Oh, Father!" he cried, sending up his voice in the silence of the little
room, "make me stick to the thought that the right living of this, my
life, is my duty to you."

By the door below, while Valmore waited on the sidewalk, Telfer talked to
Jane McPherson.

"I wanted Sam to hear," he explained. "He needs a religion. All young men
need a religion. I wanted him to hear how even a man like Mike McCarthy
keeps instinctively trying to justify himself before God."




CHAPTER IV


John Telfer's friendship was a formative influence upon Sam McPherson. His
father's worthlessness and the growing realisation of the hardship of his