"Frank will never think of us again when he gets to spinning yarns with Mr. Cragmore. I want you to meet him, Bethany. He is one of the most original men I ever heard talk. He's a young minister from the 'auld sod.' They called him the 'wild Irishman' when he first came over, he was so fiery and impetuous. There is enough of the brogue left yet in his speech to spice everything he says. He and Frank are a great deal alike in some things. They are both tall and light-haired. They both have a deep vein of humor and an inordinate love of joking. They are both so terribly in earnest with their Christianity that everybody around them feels the force of it; and when they once settle on a point, they are so tenacious nothing can move them. I often tell Frank he is worse than a snapping-turtle. Tradition says they do let go when it thunders, but nothing will make him let go when his mind is once clinched." There was a stop of twenty minutes at noon. At the sound of a noisy gong in front of the station restaurant, Mr. Marion came in with his friend. Capacious lunch-baskets were opened out on every side, with the generous abundance of an old-time camp-meeting. "Where is Herschel?" inquired Mr. Marion. "I intended to ask him to lunch with us." "I saw him going into the restaurant," replied his wife. "You must have a talk with him this afternoon, George," said Mr. Marion. "I've been all up and down this train trying to get people to be neighborly. I believe Dr. Bascom is the only one who has spoken to him. They were all having such a good time when I interrupted them, or they didn't know what to say to a Jew, and a dozen different excuses." "O, Frank, don't get started on that subject again!" exclaimed Mrs. Marion. "Take a sandwich, and forget about it." Bethany Hallam laughed more than once during the merry luncheon that followed. She could not remember that she had laughed before since her father's death. The young Irishman's ready wit, his droll stories, and odd expressions were irresistible. He seemed a magnet, too, drawing constantly from Frank Marion's inexhaustible supply of fun. "You have seen only one side of him," remarked Mrs. Marion, when her husband had taken him away to introduce David. "While he was very entertaining, I think he has shown us one of the least attractive phases of his character." David had felt very much out of place all morning. It was one thing to travel among ordinary Gentiles, as he had always done, and another to be surrounded by those who were constantly bubbling over with religious enthusiasm. He did not object to sitting beside a hot-water tank, he said to himself, but he did object to its boiling over on him. His neighbors would have been very much surprised could they have known he was studying them with keen insight, and finding much to criticise. Even some of their songs were objectionable to him, their catchy refrains reminding him of some he had heard at colored minstrel shows.