They talked fitfully, as intimate friends do. The old man knew that it was worry over the town's harsh reaction to the Sunday fox hunt that had brought Terry to him. He broached the subject.

"d.i.c.k, I have wanted to see you since Sunday morning. I had a question to ask you n.o.body else could answer."

As Terry turned to him with somber mien he concluded, his eyes twinkling: "I wanted to know if it was the best fox ever!"

And that was all, though Terry stayed to sup with him. Till nine o'clock they sat before the fire, the priest in a worn rocker drawn up close to the hearth: the single log burning glorified his fine old face as he placidly rocked and pondered.

He had spent the morning among his foreign parishioners, who lived in the squalid section of the town, across the river. A frugal, law-abiding lot, they furnished the brawn needed in the three pulp factories and lived a life apart from the balance of the towns-people, bitterly but voicelessly resenting the villagers' careless ostracism of all who came under the easy cla.s.sification of the term "wop." There existed a tacit agreement among property owners that no house north of the river should be sold or leased to a foreigner, and that no garlic might taint the atmosphere their children breathed in school, they had erected a small schoolhouse upon the southside. So, sequestered six days in the week in a settlement that was entirely foreign, communicating their thoughts in the tongues of the Mediterranean and the Balkans, the southsiders mingled with Americans only during the brief hours of Sunday worship.

In his morning visit Father Jennings had again met with several evidences of Terry's curious influence over the foreigners. Terry understood them instinctively, grasped their viewpoints and ideals, and was the only layman on the northside in whom they confided, called in to settle knotty problems and to partake of the hospitality they lavished upon appropriate occasions of weddings, christenings and the neverending procession of days of patron saints. Subtle, romantic, circ.u.mscribed by alien environment, they recognized in him a kindred spirit and opened their hearts wide to him. Terry, his ardent young pastor--Dr. Mather--and Father Jennings were the only northsiders whom they called friends. None of the three had been named on the town's "Committee on Americanization." ...

The priest roused from his revery and for a long time contemplated the quiet, thoughtful lad who sat beside him. Gradually a deep concern spread across his comfortably aged features, a presentiment of impending loss shadowed his pleasant eyes. He reached out to lay his hand on Terry's forearm.

"d.i.c.k," he said, "there is plenty for you to do right here in Crampville--what is this I hear about your going to the Philippines?"

CHAPTER II

TERRY DECIDES

Christmas Eve, the large snowflakes drifted slowly down out of a windless sky. The dusk was cheerful with the sound of sleigh bells that announced the arrival or departure of last-hour shoppers.

Terry, at his desk in the great living room, surveyed the finished trophy happily. It was an unusually black and l.u.s.trous pelt. He buried his face in the silky mat a moment, then drew out paper and pen, and wrote:

DEANE-DEAR:--

Some three years ago a mother fox suffered that this one might be born: denied herself food that he might satisfy his urgent little appet.i.te as he grew bigger and stronger. When he was big enough he left her and forgot her--she may have suffered then, too.

He lived as foxes do. Things died that he might eat; rabbits, pheasants, chickens, field-mice. He stalked all things less strong and clever than himself. A cruel cycle, but it is the law of the wild, something that you and I cannot alter.

He enjoyed the summers best, with their longer days, fuller larders, sweet wood odors, long naps in the cool shadows of the thicket. But winter came, with its hardships and its cold, a cold that little foxes feel the same as you and I.

But it was this cold that stimulated and silkened his fur, made it this wondrous, prized thing.

Then I came, and he ceased to be what he was--a hunter of smaller, weaker things--and became what you see here: a finer thing--a token. Your kind heart need find no cruelty in a merciful shot that spelled no pain and that by stopping him a.s.sured that gentler, weaker things will live on and on.

_And he_ will be glad, too, as not _only_ is he forever freed from cold and hunger and stark fear, but his is to be a tender office.

Will you lay it at your bedside, that each night it may cushion your last step at slumbertime, and each morning soften the first contact between the vistas of dreamland and the less yielding surfaces of life to which we wake.

So even the things of the wild are made to serve. To serve--is that not the law of man?

My part in it? But little: none other than I will have touched it till it reaches your dear hands. I shaped it, wrought to preserve its beauties that it might give you pleasure.

To give pleasure--is that not the law of love?

A very, very Merry Christmas!

d.i.c.k.

He sent his gift, at about nine o'clock. In gay mood, he wandered about the great house: entered the kitchen where f.a.n.n.y was singeing the Christmas turkey: returned to the living room to throw a fresh log in the wide fireplace. His mood was too expansive for indoors. He donned short coat and thick cap, but as he pa.s.sed out of the gate a scared little lad, a foreigner, rushed up breathlessly and begged him to come--trouble was brewing on the southside.

His questions elicited meager information. Excited, the lad relapsed so often into his native tongue that Terry could make nothing of his tale.

Hand in hand they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the reefered figure that smiled up at him through the falling flakes, Tony's dark scowl faded as he reached out his powerful hands and with a joyous shout fairly lifted Terry into the house.

Terry laughed as the gaudily dressed occupants of the room crowded around him, and greeted most of the score of swarthy men and women by name. Tony masterfully stripped him of his overcoat and cap and placed them in the kitchen from which emanated odors of strange things cooking. The room was stifling with heat and with smells--beer, garlic, tobacco, perfumes, kerosene.

Tony charged in from the kitchen with a bottle of beer but Terry shook his head. Tony was hospitably insistent, "What! No beer?"

"No thanks, Tony."

"What's matt'? Bad stomach?"

"Yes," smiled Terry, "call it that."

He plunged into the business in hand. "Tony, what's the trouble here to-night?"

Tony's first word of explanation was instantly submerged beneath a chorus of voices; the excited crowd surged around Terry, as voluble of gesture as of tongue. Pandemonium descended.

Terry finally silenced the din by standing on his chair and pantomiming his desire to be heard. "Now, listen to me," he began, after quiet was restored, "I'm going to ask you all to keep silent, and to promise me that no one will speak except those I call by name."

They all promised--each one not once but in a series of lengthy a.s.surances which he had to raise his hand to cut short.

"Now, Tony, you first. What's the matter?"

Tony's face registered his utter disgust. "What'sa matt'? What'sa matt'? Evra teeng 'sa matt'! Tommor' we christen our bab' and evra'

bod' want a name heem!" He glared at the restless circle which ringed them.

The odd wistful twist at the corner of Terry's mouth disappeared for a moment in his slow smile; this was so like these people, who bore big troubles stoically and reacted powerfully to inconsequentials.

He called on several others. All were relatives of Tony or of his wife; sisters, brothers, several "in-laws," Tony's father, two uncles.

Each had his or her name for the child, and sound reasons for the choice.

"Tony, where is Felice?" he asked, noting that Tony's wife was not in the crowded dining room.

Tony took him into a dimly lighted room, where his wife lay in bed; the guiltless cause of all this dissension, obviously inured to clamor, was asleep in her arm. She smiled up at Terry as he sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand.

Tony stood looking down at Felice and their first-born, his heart in his eyes.

"Tony, what does Felice wish to name your son?" Terry asked suddenly.

Receiving no answer, he looked up at Tony and read in the agonized contrition of Tony's dark face that she had not yet been consulted.

Tears glistened in the forgiving eyes Felice turned on Tony, and as he flung himself down at the side of the bed and buried his face in her pillow, Terry tiptoed out of the room and softly closed the door.

In a few minutes Tony flung the door open and strode into the room, unashamed of the tears that shone on his rough cheeks.

"You all a go to h.e.l.l-a with your a-names! Felice, she name-a our boy and to-morrow we go Padre Jenneeng. She a name heem"--he paused with true Latin sense of the value of suspense--"She a name heem--Reechar'