Page:The Black Cat v01no02 (1895-11).pdf/5

Rh other out on the air. Service must have been about to begin, for there was only a girl standing out on the steps, and the horses in ranks along the fences, who slept, or brushed flies, or hated their neighbors, as their natures gave impulse. Billy sent the place over to a hotter climate, and turned on his heel to shake off its dust just as the restless eyes of a high-headed roan brought him to a halt.

It was then that he had heard a voice he felt he would never forget.

"There is room," it called.

Billy Owen had gone on looking over the roan. He was not the man to waste Sunday in church.

"Father's to preach on fighting," he heard it again. "There are fights that he stands by."

It was a voice, Billy thought, the bees would look for. He threw her a glance that shouldn't reveal any weakness for the sort of blood-spilling that the parson approved of, and straightway for got to look off again. Rudy Field was smiling at him, and Rudy was radiant with the spirit of well-doing. The bell's noisy excitement had given way to the voices of the people in an opening hymn of thanksgiving, and the girl hurried off the steps, passed the horses, and laid her hand on his arm.

"He says men ought to break each other's noses if there's cause; but it's the cause," she added pregnantly, turning her eyes away towards the church.

"If two men want to get up and fight just for the pleasure of fightin'," said Billy, "and are glad to shake hands when one of 'em is hollerin'?"

Rudy's gentle eyes gave out their inspiration.

"Come and see if he'll say," she said. And Billy went to his undoing. It was never clear to him what the parson's fighting views really were. There must have gone through them fiber of good sort, because he remembered the noisy approval of his fellowmen. As for himself, a straight little form and a thin little face, with a voice singing up to the angels, left no consciousness of a judicial sort. After the last rousing hymn and the dignity of the benediction, he had sat so still that the church was emptying and the parson was up to him. If Billy had wanted to,