Nobody spoke for a moment.  Douglas watched Mr. Fowler anxiously, but the old preacher appeared to have no weapons with which to meet the occasion.  Douglas felt that the situation was getting out of hand.  He knew how to meet physical resistance, but he realized that he was only a novice in the sort of strategy that controls by mental superiority alone.  He ground his teeth together.

“I’m young yet and I’ll learn!  See if I don’t!” Then he pressed his lips together and waited.

Peter broke the silence.

“How about it, Fowler?”

“I’ll agree to nothing.  I am through compromising.”  The old man’s eyes were blazing in a white face.

“You’re foolish!” exclaimed the postmaster.  “But we insist on giving you one more chance.  Let’s see what you can do for us next Sunday.  I move we adjourn.”  And the meeting broke up with a considerable amount of laughter.

There was very little discussion of the situation in the cabin, that night.  Mr. Fowler seemed inexpressibly tired and broken, and Douglas, with a sudden welling of pity to his throat, persuaded him to go to bed.  Nor did he, later, interfere with the old preacher’s choice of a sermon.  There was a deep conviction growing within Douglas that the religious issue of the situation was entirely beyond his own directing.

Peter, however, had no such conviction and he took considerable pains to try to get Fowler to go back to the subject of immortality.  But the old man had the bit in his teeth and there was no holding him.  The post-office door on Saturday bore the announcement that Sunday’s sermon would be on The Sins of Lost Chief.  Just below the preacher’s placard was an invitation from Jimmy Day for Lost Chief to attend his birthday dance on Saturday evening.

Douglas told of the invitation at the supper table.  Mr. Fowler made no comment, but old Johnny said, “I suppose Scott will be taking Judith.”

“I don’t see why!” exclaimed Douglas suddenly.

“You’re all rejus like in the church now.  You ain’t got the time for womaning.  Are you still fond of Jude?” peering at Douglas anxiously.

“I guess you know how I feel about Judith, Johnny,” said Doug in a low voice.

“Like I used to feel about her mother?” The old man put a hand on Doug’s arm.

Douglas nodded.

“And would it break your heart if Scott or any other man got her?”

Douglas nodded again, then rose.  “I think I’ll run down to see her a minute.  I won’t be gone long.”

Mr. Fowler smiled.  “Good luck to you, boy!”

“Keep your fingers crossed for me,” said Doug, slamming out of the door.

Judith kept her finger in “Vanity Fair.”  “We were all going in a crowd,” she said.  “You’ve been cutting us a good deal lately.  Why not come in out of the wet and be just one of us?”

“I want to take you, myself,” insisted Douglas in a low voice.  They were standing in the kitchen, with the door into the living-room closed.  “I want you to wear that white dress with the thing-ma-jiggers on the waist and your hair all loose around your face.  And I’m going to make love to you every minute.”