From the table beside his plate, he took the Bible and read a chapter, and, standing, prayed extemporaneously. Then, only, did he seat himself to the meagre breakfast on which he had insisted. The widow nibbled at some bread and sipped her coffee, too sad with this little thing that to her was so great to talk or eat. Before he had finished, Craig said:

"Now let us understand each other, Mrs. Marlow. I eat to live and to have strength to work. Anything more than that is gluttony and an abomination. I did not expect to have to go over this matter a second time, and I will not a third. This must be final.”

"Yessir," she said, between a sob and a silence. Her castles were dashed to the ground, the future mattered nothing.

He turned to go to his loft, and for an instant it seemed as if something of the tragedy in which he had part struck him, for he turned, as if to speak a word of comfort; then he felt the absurdity of making a mountain of trouble out of the mole-hill of a plate of biscuit grown cold, and left unsaid the word that might have proved him human.

CHAPTER IV

То

TOM BLANKET

THE uninvited, Padanaram was prohibitive. There was no public house where a meal or a night's lodging could be had. The two or three shopkeepers dealt by mail with their regular jobbers, to the exclusion of travelling salesmen, and acted as factors for the purchase of the country crops. These shops were the centre of village gossip, since there was no saloon or tavern. Indeed, a man seen entering such a place would have received the brand of social ostracism.

The clergyman was usually a married man and a renter. The winter schoolmaster boarded around; but the spring and fall schools were, as a rule, under charge of some home-bred girl, to whom the twelve dollars of monthly salary, actually paid in money, seemed a fortune.

The daily stage arrived in the evening, and in the morning afforded any unfortunate stranger means of escape to a land of possible lodging and food. Excepting for the mail contract, a stage would have been a financial impossibility.

It was because of these conditions that Tom Blanket, the stage driver, hesitated to accept a passenger who offered himself at the railway station one afternoon. He knew that if any one was expected at Padanaram, he would have heard days in advance. The stranger was, therefore, coming unheralded. Such a thing had not happened before in his twelve years of staging. On

the one side was the three shilling fare; on the other the chance of exposing a fellow being to sleeping supperless in a chance barn. Finally he made a compromise with conscience and demanded:

"Be you expected?"

The stranger, a well-shaped fellow of medium height, whose laughing blue eyes were a warning to a cautious man to add a half dozen years to the estimate of twentyone to be drawn from his entire face, answered:

"If I was, you would n't have to ask. I'll sit side of you." He threw his carpet-bag into the body of the stage, and climbed to the designated seat, thus releasing Tom of further sense of responsibility.

The twelve miles to Padanaram, covered by easy stages, with frequent stops for business or gossip at the scattered farmhouses, gave opportunity for exercise of the serious art of interrogation. With the skill of a master, Tom ignored the stranger until the first stop, during which he left him in the stage with the other packages. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched secretly until he saw a shade of weariness overspread the other's face, when he abruptly drawled out the information:.

·

"Jest north o' the meetin'-house, to the right, thar 's a empty barn, half full o' good clean hay."

"The fact 's interesting, if not useful," said the passenger, showing a disposition to talk.

"You'll find it useful when ye get sleepy," retorted the driver.

"Do you mean I can't get a place to sleep?" asked the other.

"Oh, ye kin sleep thar all right. I'll call round fur you in the mornin' at seven."

"You've got a meeting-house then?" the passenger

asked, showing less disposition to make weight of the lodging matter than Tom had hoped. "Is it orthodox?" "Sartain; it's ours, hain't it?"

"The preacher's all right?"

"Say," the driver exploded. "I s'pose thar hain't a smarter one this side o' 'Gusta, ef thar be thar."

The stranger seemed to take unusual interest in the answer, as if he detected in it something that the other had not said. He made this apparent in his next question:

"Don't he give you enough hell-fire?"

"We tried him afore we hired him," Tom answered. If the church had been cheated in the bargain, it was not for him to say so.

"Well; what is the matter?" Tom looked with frank wonder at the man who was pressing him to the wall. Still, he found it impossible to dodge an answer:

"I'm a perfessin' Christian myself, an' so 's most of us; an' as sech, I know the foundation o' faith. Sometimes, though, I don't like to hev hell crammed down my throat. It's a kind of insiniwation I don't live up to my privileges fur the pahson to think he's got to spring hell ev'ry Sabbath day!"

"How'd you get your money's worth, if he did n't?" demanded the other.

"I'd rayther hear 'bout the golden streets an' thet sorter thing. Ef my curosity gets the better o' me, I kin make sartain o' hell, without his help; but t'other place is diff'runt."

The other laughed with a boyish laugh that was good to hear. At least, Tom Blanket thought so, glancing at him with a broad smile playing over his rough, weatherbeaten face.

"Say, I bet you kin sleep out all right. Thet 's the

way I uster hear folks laff. They don't do it now guess 'tain't orthodox.”

"Don't this hell-preaching parson of yours laugh?" Tom was silent, as if considering, and then, with sudden conviction in his conclusion, exclaimed:

"I swan, he don't! I hed n't thought on it afore; but he don't!"

"He and God must be awfully out of sorts with each other."

It was a new point of view, and as such worth the attention of a Yankee who suspected more than he knew. When he was ready with his judgment he spoke:

"It does seem a terrible waste on the part o' the Lord tu hev made some men, ef he meant 'em to laff. Sometimes He must be darned mad with Himself.”

"Well," said the youngster, to his surprise taking a serious view of the matter, "you know he botched the very first batch of dough."

"In Adam's fall, we sinnëd all." Tom came back to primaries, in an effort to counter a form of expression he was not quite certain he was safe in enjoying.

"When you spread that original sin over the whole world, is n't it mighty considerable thin in spots?" demanded the youngster.

"Do you know what happens when a fish-worm's cut in tu?" asked Tom.

"No."

"Thar 's two fish-worms; both on 'em orignals."

About a mile before reaching the Padanaram postoffice, they caught sight, on the treeless hill top, of a tall figure in black, sharp against the misty blue of the afternoon sky.

"By gum! Thar's the pahson now," exclaimed Tom.