“But would you go as far as you could personally to establish a better standard of Sunday observance?” pursued Hunt. “Heh?” ejaculated the puzzled Judson. Hunt, still smiling, mounted the steps of the store, closed the door, and turned the great key which had been left in the outside of the lock. He removed the key and handed it to Bill Judson as he came down the steps again. “Mr. Judson,” he said in a perfectly unmoved voice, “if you will begin by keeping that door locked on Sundays you will be leading the way in this community toward a proper observance of the Lord’s Day.” Joe Hurley was on the point of bursting out laughing. But he thought better of joining Collins, Mack, and Tierney in wild expressions of joy at the old man’s discomfiture. Judson’s face turned from its usual weather-beaten tan to a purple-red. His rheumy eyes sparked. Then slowly, reflectively, a grin wreathed his tobacco-stained lips and crinkled the outer corners of his eyelids. “Parson,” he said, thrusting out his hand again, “you’re on! I’ll show these fellers I’m a good sport. Nobody was ever able to say honestly that Bill Judson took water; and I won’t give ’em the chance’t to say it now.” CHAPTER X—MUTTERINGS OF A STORM It was Joe Hurley who saw Betty appear on the porch of the hotel. Perhaps his gaze had been fixed in that direction for that very purpose. It was a vision to draw the eyes of any man hungry for a picture of a well-dressed and modest young woman. Betty Hunt was like nothing that had ever before stepped out upon the Main Street of Canyon Pass. “Come on, Willie,” urged Hurley, seizing the minister’s sleeve. “You’ve jarred Judson clean to bedrock. Spare him any more for now. Come on. Your sister is waiting for us to take her to the Great Hope.” Betty was not gaily appareled. Her frock was black and white, and so was her hat. She still remembered Aunt Prudence’s death—and that she was a parson’s sister! But it was the way the frock was made, and how it and the hat became her that marked Betty as an object of approval, to the male Passonians at least. “Such a beautiful day, Mr. Hurley,” Betty ventured. “One might think it a respectable country town if only one could forget last night.” She stared at Hurley with accusation. He dropped his head sheepishly. Somehow Betty Hunt put the matter as though it were his fault! “We’re going to change all that in time,” said Hunt cheerfully. “These people are not so bad, Betty——” “That they couldn’t be worse? Yes, I know,” retorted his sister. “Why, Betty!” murmured Hunt, “isn’t that a bit uncharitable?” “I have no thought for charity in a place like this,” declared the girl. “Such dirt, vileness and disorder I never dreamed of! These people are not even human! I cannot excuse them. No branch of the human family could possibly be ignorant enough for us to excuse what I have already seen about me in Canyon Pass.” “Great saltpeter!” murmured Hurley.