Chapter 32

The Reverend John Baird and his friend the Reverend Lucien Latimer were lodged in a quiet house in a quiet street. The lecturing tour had been fatiguing, and Baird was glad of such repose as he could secure. In truth, the excitement and strain of his work, the journeying from place to place, the hospitalities from which he could not escape, had worn upon him. He had grown thinner, and often did not sleep well at night. He used to find himself lying awake repeating to himself mechanically words from his own lecture. "Repentance is too late," his voice would whisper to the darkness. "Repentance cannot undo."

His audiences found him an irresistible force. He had become more than the fashion of the hour; he was its passion. People liked to look at as well as to hear him. He was besieged by lion-hunters, overwhelmed with attentions in each town or city he visited. Reporters followed him, interviewers besought appointments, agreeable people invited him to their houses, intrusive people dogged him. Latimer stood between him and as many fatigues as he could. He transacted business for him, and interviewed interviewers; and he went to tiring functions.

"When I enter a room without you, and make your excuses, they must make the most of my black face; and they make the most of it, but they don't love me," he said. "Still it is a thing to be borne if it saves you when you need all your forces. What does it matter? I have never expected to be smiled at for my own sake as they smile at me for yours."

In these days of close companionship each found in each new qualities increasing the tie between them. Latimer felt himself fed by the public affection surrounding the man who was his friend. He was thrilled by the applause which thundered forth at his words; he was moved by the mere sense of his success, and the power he saw him unknowingly exercise through mere physical charm.

"I am nearer being a happy, or at least a peaceful, man than I had ever thought to be," he said to Baird; "your life seems to fill mine, and I am less lonely." Which was indeed a truth.

On the evening of the day on which big Tom had caught his glimpse of the two strangers in the corridor of the Capitol, Baird dined at the house of the Senator, whose adverse mood had promised such small encouragement to the De Willoughby claim. And in the course of the meal the host spoke of both claim and claimants.

"The man is a sort of Colossus," he said, "and he looked all the heavier and bigger because my last visitor had been the smallest and most insignificant of the hoosier type."

"Is this man a hoosier?" was asked.

"No. He has lived among the most primitive, and Rutherford tells me is a sort of county institution; but he is not a hoosier. He has a large, humane, humorous face, and a big, humorous, mellow voice. I