“These things must be,” he said aloud as he looked. While he lost himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the plains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man’s face and figure suggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod.
His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully to himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet with an air of equality.
“Good day, Monseigneur” (this honour of the Church had come at last to the aged missionary), he said warmly. “Good day--good day!”
The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, “Ingolby.” As the distance grew between them, he said sadly: “These are the men who change the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own--
“‘I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of Succoth.’
“Hush! Hush!” he said to himself in reproach. “These things must be. The country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truth before the trader.”
Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his salutation. He did not speak. The priest’s face was very grave, if not a little resentful. His salutation was reserved.
“The tyranny of gold,” he murmured, “and without the mind or energy that created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a jerry-builder; but he builds.”
He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy.
“Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--”
“Such men must be, perhaps,” he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he murmured as one murmurs a prayer:
“Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.”
“Great Scott, look at her! She’s goin’ to try and take ‘em!” exclaimed Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon.
“She ain’t such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low water, too, when every rock’s got its chance at the canoe. But, my gracious, she is goin’ to ride ‘em!”