“You’re right, old man.  Keep us up to the mark, right up to the mark,” chuckled Father Orin.  “I’m mighty tired, and I’m afraid I might shirk if you would let me.”

As he bent down with a bantering chuckle to pat the horse’s inflexible neck, a man’s voice suddenly hailed them from the darkening woods lying at their back.

“Hello!  Hello!  Hold on!” the unseen man shouted.

They turned quickly and stood still, looking in the direction from which the shouting came.  A horseman soon appeared under the trees and came galloping after them, and when he had drawn nearer, the priest saw, with some annoyance, that it was Tommy Dye.  As he reined up beside them, Toby turned his head slowly and gave the horse precisely the same look that Father Orin gave the rider.  Toby wanted to have nothing more to do with a tricky race-horse than Father Orin wished to have to do with a shady adventurer.

Tommy Dye looked at them both with a grin.  “I saw you just now—­you and the new doctor—­a-toting them there youngsters.”

Father Orin straightened up, feeling and showing the embarrassment and indignation that every man, lay and clerical alike, feels and shows at being seen by another man acting as a nurse to a child.

“Well, what of it?” he retorted, as naturally as if he had never worn a cassock.

Tommy Dye grinned again, more broadly than before.  He took off his hat and rubbed his shock of red hair the wrong way.  The humor of the recollection became too much for him, and he roared with laughter.  Toby of his own indignant accord now moved to go on, and Father Orin gathered up the reins saying rather shortly that he had urgent business, and must be riding along.

“I say—­wait a minute.  What makes you in such an all-fired hurry?” Tommy Dye called after them.

Toby stopped reluctantly, and he and Father Orin waited with visible unwillingness, until Tommy Dye came up again and stammeringly began what he had to say.  He did not know how to address a priest.  He had never before had occasion to speak to a churchman of any denomination.  So that he now plunged in without any address at all: 

“I say—­who pays for them there youngsters, yonder?” he blurted.

Father Orin merely looked at him in silence for a moment, and then gathered up the reins once more.

Tommy Dye saw that there was something amiss, that he had made some mistake, and not knowing what it was, he resorted to the means which he usually employed to set all matters right.  He hastily plunged his hand in the outer pocket of his coat, and then dropped the bottle back in its place still more hastily, after another glance at the priest.

“Well, I thought you might like it,” he said with a touch of defiance, feeling it necessary to assert himself.  “When a man’s face is as red as yours, I don’t see why a fellow mightn’t ask him to take a drink.”

Father Orin laughed with ready good humor.