To his
mind, what was the good of having riches and power, if you could not also
have love, licence and the loot of the conqueror!
He had wrestled with the Lord in prayer; he had been a class-leader and a
lay-preacher; he had exhorted and denounced; he had pleaded and
proscribed; yet never in all his days of professed religion had a heart
for others really moved Joel Mazarine.
He had given now and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of mind
which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it for the
real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not emptied
itself for others, at any time, or anywhere.
He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of
Sinai. It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of
the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion. It was
some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was born,
pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him a
professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and
money-maker. For such a man there never could be peace.
In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except his
torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the Cross Trails
on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping, sprang up from the
roadside and slip-slopped after his wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped
--catching the thud of the horses' hoofs, and making its footsteps
coincide.
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