Chapter 4

REJECTED



The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church, where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside, driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the shade of the church building.

Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.

"That's Hayes," said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian, lolling upon the grass. "He likes to be bossing something."

"That's so, Ewen," replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face, his mouth and nose running into a single feature.

"I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley," answered another man, stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.

"Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs. I have no word agin Hayes," replied Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky farm in Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of better fortune. "I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs," he reiterated. "In fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for his beneficent work."

"But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same," persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.

"Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen," agreed Nathan, who was never known to oppose any man's opinion.

"He's doin' his best," insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.

"Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that," said Nathan.

"But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle," said Ewen.

"Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen."

Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a chorus of childish laughter.

"That's the preacher's class," said Boggs. "Quare sort o' Sunday School where the kids carry on like that."

"Seems rather peculiar," agreed Nathan, "peculiar in Sunday School, it does."

"What's the matter with young Pickles?" enquired Ewen.

The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon young Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the church, and looking in. He was apparently convulsed with laughter, with his hand hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.

"Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?" continued Ewen.

Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:

"It's the preacher, I