He had not looked for such a kindly office on the part of Sam Carr.  That individual’s caustic utterances and critical attitude toward theology had not forewarned Thompson that sympathy and kindliness were fundamental attributes with Sam Carr.  If he had an acid tongue his heart was tender enough.  But Carr was no sentimentalist.  When he had bestowed Thompson in a comfortable room and painstakingly dressed the injured foot he left his patient much to his own devices—­and to the ministrations of his daughter.

As a consequence, while the wound in his foot healed rapidly, Mr. Thompson suffered a more grievous injury to his heart.  Sophie Carr affected him much as strong drink affects men with weak heads.  The more he saw of her the more he desired to see, to feast his eyes on her loveliness—­and invariably, when alone, to berate himself for such a weakness.  He had never dreamed that a man could feel that way about a woman.  He did not see why he, of all men, should succumb to the fascination of a girl like Sophie Carr.

But the emotion was undeniable.  Perhaps Sophie would have been surprised if she could have known the amount of repression Mr. Thompson gradually became compelled to practice when she was with him.

That was frequently enough.  They were all good to him.  From Carr’s Indian woman—­who could, he now learned, speak passable English—­down to the sloe-eyed youngest Carr of mixed blood, they accepted him as one of themselves.  However, it happened to be Sophie who waited on him most, who impishly took the greatest liberties with him, who was never averse to an argument on any subject Thompson cared to touch.  He had never supposed there was a normal being with views on religion and economics, upon any manifestation of human problems, with views so contrary to his own.  The maddening part of it was her ability to cite facts and authorities whose existence he was not aware of, to confute him with logic and compel him to admit that he did not know, that much of what he asserted so emphatically was based on mere belief rather than demonstrable fact or rational processes of arriving at a conclusion.  Sometimes both Sam Carr and Tommy Ashe were present at these oral tilts, sitting back in silent amusement at Mr. Thompson’s intellectual floundering.

A clean cut in the flesh of a healthy man heals quickly.  In two weeks Thompson could put his full weight on the injured member without pain or any tendency to reopening the wound.  Whereupon he repaired to his cabin again, in a state of mind that was very disturbing.  Without accepting any of the Carr dictums upon theology and theological activities, he was fast growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people into the fold.  He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a task as his life work.  Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of a dilemma.