For all his brave words, Elmer had none of Jim’s resolute contempt for the church. He was afraid of it. It connoted his boyhood. . . . His mother, drained by early widowhood and drudgery, finding her only emotion in hymns and the Bible, and weeping when he failed to study his Sunday School lesson. The church, full thirty dizzy feet up to its curiously carven rafters, and the preachers, so overwhelming in their wallowing voices, so terrifying in their pictures of little boys who stole watermelons or indulged in biological experiments behind barns. The awe-oppressed moment of his second conversion, at the age of eleven, when, weeping with embarrassment and the prospect of losing so much fun, surrounded by solemn and whiskered adult faces, he had signed a pledge binding him to give up, forever, the joys of profanity, alcohol, cards, dancing, and the theater. These clouds hung behind and over him, for all his boldness. Eddie Fislinger, the human being, he despised. He considered him a grasshopper, and with satisfaction considered stepping on him. But Eddie Fislinger, the gospeler, fortified with just such a pebble-leather Bible (bookmarks of fringed silk and celluloid smirking from the pages) as his Sunday School teachers had wielded when they assured him that God was always creeping about to catch small boys in their secret thoughts—this armored Eddie was an official, and Elmer listened to him uneasily, never quite certain that he might not yet find himself a dreadful person leading a pure and boresome life in a clean frock coat. “—and remember,” Eddie was wailing, “how terribly dangerous it is to put off the hour of salvation! ‘Watch therefore for you know not what hour your Lord doth come,’ it says. Suppose this train were wrecked! Tonight!” The train ungraciously took that second to lurch on a curve. “You see? Where would you spend Eternity, Hell-cat? Do you think that any sportin’ round is fun enough to burn in hell for?” “Oh, cut it out. I know all that stuff. There’s a lot of arguments— You wait’ll I get Jim to tell you what Bob Ingersoll said about hell!” “Yes! Sure! And you remember that on his death-bed Ingersoll called his son to him and repented and begged his son to hurry and be saved and burn all his wicked writings!” “Well— Thunder— I don’t feel like talking religion tonight. Cut it out.” But Eddie did feel like talking religion, very much so. He waved his Bible enthusiastically and found ever so many uncomfortable texts. Elmer listened as little as possible, but he was too feeble to make threats. It was a golden relief when the train bumped to a stop at Gritzmacher Springs. The station was a greasy wooden box, the platform was thick with slush, under the kerosene lights. But Jim was awaiting him, a refuge from confusing theological questions, and with a furious “G’night!” to Eddie he staggered off. “Why didn’t you make him shut his trap?” demanded Jim.