" continued Carmichael. "Two years he ran
it--and won both times. You may not appreciate quite what that means."

And, with a patience foreign to his character as they knew it,
Carmichael proceeded to explain.

"But," he added, "that was nothing to his performance last Sunday, in
getting here from beyond the boundary in the time he did it
in--barefoot! It would have been good enough in shoes. But don't you
forget his feet. I can see them--and feel them--still."

"Oh, he's a grand chap," the overseer allowed.

"We never said he wasn't," his ally chimed in.

Carmichael took no notice of a tone which the youth with the putty face
had never employed toward him before.

"He was also in his school eleven," continued Carmichael, still in a
reflective fashion.

"Was it a public school?" inquired Smart.

"Yes."

"_The_ public school?" added Chaucer.

"Not mine, if that's what you mean," returned Carmichael, with just a
touch of his earlier manner. "But--he knew my old Head Master--he was
quite a pal of the dear Old Man! . . . We had such lots in common,"
added the manager, more to himself than to the other two.

The overseer's comment is of no consequence. What the book-keeper was
emboldened to add matters even less. Suffice it that between them they
brought the old Carmichael to his feet, his glasses flaming in the
moonshine, his body thrown pugilistically backward, his jaw jutting like
a crag--the old Carmichael in deed--but not in word.

"I told you just now I didn't care twopence what either of you thought
of me," he roared, "though there wasn't the least necessity to tell you,
because you knew! So I needn't repeat myself; but just listen a moment,
and try not to be greater fools than God made you. You saw a real man
last Sunday, and so did I. I had almost forgotten what they were
like--that quality. Well, we had a lot of talk, and he told me what they
are doing on some of the other stations. They are holding services,
something like what he held here, every Sunday night for themselves.
Now, it isn't in human nature to fly from one extreme to the other: but
we are going to have a try to keep up our Sunday end with the other
stations; at least I am, and you two are going to back me up."

He paused. Not a syllable from the pair.

"Do you hear me?" thundered Carmichael, as he had thundered in the
dormitory at school, now after twenty years in the same good cause once
more. "Whether you like it or not, you fello