Douglas hesitated, then he asked, "Catholics have a thing they call the confessional, haven't they? Well, it's a good idea if the chap they confess to is the right kind. I don't believe a word of your religion and yet I have a feeling that you are the right kind. Judith! She's twenty-one now. I'm six foot one. She's about two inches shorter. Weighs, I guess, fifty pounds lighter. Finest gray eyes you ever saw. Red cheeks. Her mouth used to be too big, but now it's perfect. Rides and breaks a horse better than any man in the Valley, bar none. Loves animals and can tame and train anything. A great reader." Douglas paused. "She sounds very attractive. What's the trouble?" asked the preacher. Douglas twisted his hands together. "You know who Inez Rodman is. Well, she is Jude's best friend! And she has formed all of Judith's ideas about love and marriage." "Yet you say Judith is straight?" "She sure-gawd is! But how can it last? She's restless and discontented and Inez is brilliant, feeds Judith's mind." "Has her mother any influence over her?" "None at all." "How about her father?" asked the preacher. "Of course, he's only her foster-father. She likes him and she hates him. He certainly couldn't help her." "And you are sure there is no hope in Judith's mother?" "O she's just broken, like a patient fool horse. Good as gold, you know, but with about as much influence over Jude as a kitten. Judith hasn't any one to tie to, not any one. Peter is all right but he jaws too much. She hasn't any one." "Doesn't she care for you?" "She says she's fond of me. Fond of me! I'd rather she hated me. I'd as soon have a dish of cold mush from a woman like Jude, as fondness." "And do you think I could influence Judith?" "I don't know. But I want you to try. And it isn't all Judith with me. I love Lost Chief. I never want to live anywhere else. And I'd like to see it the kind of a place my grandfather Douglas wanted it to be. No, it honestly isn't all for Judith, though she's the beginning and the end of it." There was something almost affectionate in the preacher's deep-set eyes as he watched Douglas. "Do you realize, my boy, what you are asking? When you bring a preacher into Lost Chief, you are going to rouse an antagonism against yourself that will astound you. These people are of New England stock. There is no more intelligent stock in America, nor stock that is more conceited, more narrow, more obstinate, nor more ruthless. And the farther a New Englander gets from religion, the more brutal his virtues become. If you take me into Lost Chief, you are going to start a depth of strife of which we cannot foresee the end."