Bull emitted a low whistle.

“An elegant slogan,” he commented.

He shifted his position.  In his interest his pipe had gone out, and he leant forward on his upturned box.

“Yes,” Father Adam went on.  “And, like your notion, it was something not easily shifted from his mind.  It was planned and figured to the last detail.  It was so planned it could not fail.  So he thought.  So all concerned thought.  You see, he had ten million dollars capital of his own; and he was something of a genius at figures and finance—­his people reckoned.  He was a man of some purpose, and enthusiasm, and—­something else.”

“Ah!”

Bull’s alert brain was prompt to seize upon the reservation.  But denial was instant.

“No.  It wasn’t drink, or women, or any foolishness of that sort,” the missionary said.  “The whole edifice of his purpose came tumbling about his ears from a totally unexpected cause.  Something happened.  Something happened to the man himself.  It was disaster—­personal disaster.  And when it came a queer sort of weakness tripped him, a weakness he had always hitherto had strength to keep under, to stifle.  His courage failed him, and the bottom of his purpose fell out like—­that.”

Father Adam clipped his fingers in the air and his regretful eyes conveyed the rest.  Then, after a moment, he smiled.

“He’d no—­iron guts,” he said, with a sigh.  “He had no stomach for battle in face of this—­this disaster that hit him.”

“It has no relation to his—­undertaking?”

“None whatever.  I know the whole thing.  We were ‘intimates.’  I know his whole life story.  It was a disaster to shake any man.”

The missionary sighed profoundly.

“Yes, I knew him intimately,” he went on.  “I deplored his weakness.  I censured it.  Perhaps I went far beyond any right of mine to condemn.  I don’t know.  I argued with him.  I did all I could to support him.  You see, I appreciated the splendid notion of the thing he contemplated.  More than that, I knew it could be carried out.”

He shook his head.

“It was useless.  This taint—­this yellow streak—­was part of the man.  He could no more help it than you could help fighting to the death.”

“Queer.”

A sort of pitying contempt shone in the younger man’s eyes.

“Queer?” Father Adam nodded.  “It was—­crazy.”

“It surely was.”

The missionary turned back to the prospect beyond the doorway.  But it was only for a moment.  He turned again and went on with added urgency.

“But the scheme wasn’t wholly to be abandoned.  It was—­say, here was the crazy proposition he put up.  You see I was his most intimate friend.  He said:  ’The forests are wide.  They’re peopled with men of our craft.  There must be a hundred and more men capable of doing this thing.  Of putting it through.  Well, the forests must provide the man, or the idea must die.’