Thompson felt his face burn.

“Things like that made a bad impression,” he returned diffidently.  “I suppose in all walks of life there are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  I hope it hasn’t prejudiced you against churchmen in general.”

“One single incident?” she smiled.  “That wouldn’t be very logical, would it?  No.  We’re not so intolerant.  I don’t suppose dad would actually have gone the length of thrashing him, if the preacher hadn’t taken a high and mighty tone as a sort of bluff.  That particular preacher happened to be a local nuisance.  I suppose in a settled, well-organized community, public opinion and convention is a check on such men.  They keep within bounds because there’s a heavy penalty if they don’t.  Up here where law and conventions and so on practically don’t exist, men of a certain stamp aren’t long in reverting to pure animalism.  It’s natural enough, I dare say.  Dad would be the last one to set himself up as a critic of any one’s personal morality.  But it isn’t very nice, especially for preachers, who come here posing as the representatives of all that is good and pure and holy.”

“You get terribly sarcastic at times, Miss Carr,” Thompson complained.  “A man can preach the Gospel without losing his manhood.”

“If he had any clear conception of manhood I don’t see how he could devote himself to preaching as a profession,” she said composedly.  “Of course, it’s perhaps an excellent means of livelihood, but rather a parasitic means, don’t you think?”

“When Christ came among men He was reviled and despised,” Mr. Thompson declared impressively.

“Do you consider yourself the prototype of Christ?” the girl inquired mockingly.  “Why, if the man of Galilee could be reincarnated the first thing He would attack would be the official expounders of Christianity, with their creeds and formalisms, their temples and their self-seeking.  The Nazarene was a radical.  The average preacher is an out-and-out reactionary.”

“How do you know?” he challenged boldly.  “According to your own account of your life so far, you have never had opportunity to find the truth or falsity of such a sweeping statement.  You’ve always lived—­” he looked about the enfolding woods—­“how can one know what the world outside of Lake Athabasca is, if one has never been there?”

She laughed.

“One can’t know positively,” she said.  “Not from personal experience.  But one can read eagerly, and one can think about what one reads, and one can draw pretty fair conclusions from history, from what wise men, real thinkers, have written about this big world one has never seen.  And the official exponents of theology show up rather poorly as helpful social factors, so far as my study of sociology has gone.”

“You seem to have a grudge against the cloth,” Thompson hazarded a shrewd guess.  “I wonder why?”