, and see so much, I know. I've thought of ye lately. I have
thought of coming to see ye. I'm na of your religion, but Mary is, and
what suits her is guid enough for me. I've tried to think of everything
under the sun that might help, and among other things I've thought of
ye. Jimmy was confirmed in your church, and he was more or less regular
up to his marriage."

"Less, Mr. Macnoun, much less!" said the priest. "Since, not at all.
Why do you ask?"

"He is sick," said Dannie. "He drinks a guid deal. He has been reckless
about sleeping on the ground, and noo, if ye will make this
confidential?"--the priest nodded--"he is talking aboot sleeping on the
railroad, and he's having delusions. There are devils after him. He is
the finest fellow ye ever knew, Father Michael. We've been friends all
our lives. Ye have had much experience with men, and it ought to count
fra something. From all ye know, and what I've told ye, could his
trouble be cured as the doctor suggests?"

The priest did a queer thing. "You know him as no living man, Dannie,"
he said. "What do you think?"

Dannie's big hands slowly opened and closed. Then he fell to polishing
the nails of one hand on the palm of the other. At last he answered,
"If ye'd asked me that this time last year, I'd have said 'it's the
drink,' at a jump. But times this summer, this morning, for instance,
when he hadna a drop in three weeks, and dinna want ane, when he could
have come wi' me to town, and wouldna, and there were devils calling
him from the ground, and the trees, and the sky, out in the open
cornfield, it looked bad."

The priest's eyes were boring into Dannie's sick face. "How did it
look?" he asked briefly.

"It looked," said Dannie, and his voice dropped to a whisper, "it
looked like he might carry a damned ugly secret, that it would be
better fra him if ye, at least, knew."

"And the nature of that secret?"

Dannie shook his head. "Couldna give a guess at it! Known him all his
life. My only friend. Always been togither. Square a mon as God ever
made. There's na fault in him, if he'd let drink alone. Got more faith
in him than any ane I ever knew. I wouldna trust mon on God's
footstool, if I had to lose faith in Jimmy. Come to think of it, that
'secret' business is all old woman's scare. The drink is telling on
him. If only he could be cured of that awful weakness, all heaven would
come down and settle in Rainbow Bottom."

They shook hands and parted withou