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"The sin-buster an' I had words about you, Joan. Yes'm, he give me quite a line of preachin' about you, Joan, as how you hed oughter develop yer own life in yer own way along the lines laid out by him. I told him as how I knowed best what was right an' fittin' fer my own wife; as how, with a mother like your'n you needed watchin' more'n learnin'; as how you belonged to me an' not to him.
An' I kinder figured out you was a weedy feller, awful solemn-like, an' of course you ain't, but it's real hard for me to notion that there ain't two Mr. Holliwells, you an' the weedy sin-buster I've ben picturin'. Like as not I'll get to thinkin' of you like two fellers." Joan sighed. "Seems like when I onct get a notion in my head it jest sticks there some way."
Presently the horsemen came in sight the one that rode first was tall and broad and fair, she could see under his hat-brim his straight nose and firmly modeled chin. "The sin-buster!" said Joan; then, looking at the other, who rode behind him, she caught at the tree with crooked hands and began to sink slowly to her knees. He was tall and slight, he rode with inimitable grace.
He was the first person to wonder at that effect of Joan's cadenced music. "The valley of the shadow " she had missed a familiar phrase and added value to a too often repeated line. "Joan! Joan!" said the "sin-buster," an exclamation drawn from him on a deep breath, "what an extraordinary girl you are! What a marvelous woman you are going to be!"
"Oh, that's what I am, eh? That's a new one to me. Yes. I suppose I am. It's rather a fine name to go by sin-buster," and he laughed very low and very amusedly. Joan looked him over and slowly smiled. "You look like you could bust anything you'd a mind to," she said, and led the way toward the house, her rake across her shoulder.
He would sit over the stove and tell her the story of his crime. They were horrible home-comings, horrible evenings, but the next morning they would seem like dreams. To-morrow this strangeness of Pierre's would be mistlike and unreal. "I seen your sin-buster in town," said Pierre.
Holliwell, he's a first-class sin-buster, best I ever knowed." Morena laughed. He was beginning to enjoy his visitor. "Sin-buster?" "That's one name fer a parson. Well, sir, I guess Holliwell is plumb close to bein' a prize devil-twister." "Tell me how you first met him. It ought to be a good story." But the young man's face grew bleak at this. "It ain't a good story, sir," he said grimly.
I know you are not my parishioners, though, no doubt, you should be, but I'm going to lay claim to your hospitality, for all that, if I may?" Joan had moved her rake into the grasp of her left hand and had taken the proffered palm into her other, all warm and fragrantly stained. "You're the new sin-buster, ain't you?" she asked gravely. The young man opened his blue and friendly eyes.
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