Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/42

His religion was not a carefully kept suit of clothes to be put on for church services on the Sabbath and left to hang in the closet the rest of the week; he lived it every hour of the day. It was not a spiritual abstraction but as real to him as sunshine. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" was not merely a verse in the Bible, but the golden rule of his daily conduct. The Sermon on the Mount was not only gospel, but law as binding on him as if printed in one of the calf-bound statute books on his library shelves.

His ideal was the Christ ideal, and he did his honest best to live up to it. He had a childlike faith in the basic goodness of humanity. As there was no evil in him, he did not suspect evil in others. With pure motives himself, he was incapable of understanding the lengths to which passion and hatred could go. "Murder" was a dictionary word to him, but deep down in his heart he had no real conception of its meaning. So, in a sort of beautiful innocence, he moved through his tragic personal drama like Sir Galahad with serene eyes fixed on the Holy Grail.

What he lacked in physical bravery, he atoned for in moral courage. What he believed to be right he stood for unflinchingly, and neither danger, violence, nor threat of death could swerve him a hair's breadth to right or left. It was unfortunate that he had not entered the ministry in his youth. He would have made an ideal pastor of some little church in a quiet countryside, and a sheltered parsonage, with family and friends about him, would have been his logical spiritual background. He was meant for a cozy chair and a book in some cheerful fireside ingle. The way in which his career was distorted by grimly sardonic circumstances seems less a psychological problem than an ironical enigma of destiny. He became a pawn