nces--and finally, though he wuz good natured, and did all his
pranks through light-hearted mischief and not malice, yet at last he
did git mad at the old deacon, who wuz comin' it dretful strong on him
with his doctrines and exhortin' him, tellin' him he wuz a lost soul
and had been from before his birth. Then Richard sassed him right back
and told him he didn't believe in _his_ idee of the Deity.

The old deacon couldn't stand such talk. He turned him outdoors,
slammed the door in his face, and forbid Faith to speak to him again.
She obeyed her Pa and her own conscience; but it seemed to take all
the nip out of her life. You see, she loved this young man; and when
anyone like Faith loves it hain't for a week or a summer, but for
life.

He writ to her burnin' words of love and passion, for he loved her too
in the old-fashioned way Adam did Eve--no other woman round, you know.
And the words he writ wuz, I spoze, enough to melt a slate stun, let
alone a heart, tender and true. She never writ a word back, and at
last she wouldn't read his letters and sent 'em back onopened. That
madded him and he went on from bad to worse, swung right out into
wickedness. He seemed to git harder and harder, and finally seein' he
could make no more impression on Faith than he could on white clear
crystal, he went off west, as fur as Michigan at first, so I hearn,
and so on, I don't know where to.

[Illustration: "_The old deacon couldn't stand such talk. He turned him
outdoors, slammed the door in his face, and forbid Faith
to speak to him again._" (_See page 13_)]

Well, Faith lived on in the old home, very calm and sweet actin', with
a shadder on her pretty face, worryin' dretful about her lover, so it
wuz spozed. But at last it seemed to wear off and a clear white light
took its place on her gentle forward, as if her trouble had bleached
off the earthly in her nature so her white soul could show through
plain. Mebby she'd got willin' to trust even _his_ future with the
Lord.

Dretful good to children and sick folks and them that wuz in trouble,
Faith wuz. Good to her Pa, who wuz very disagreable in his last days,
findin' fault with his porridge and with sinners, and most of them
round him. But she took care on him patient, rubbed his back and
soaked his feet, and read the Sams to him, and reconciled him all she
could, and finally he went out into the Great Onknown to find out his
own mistakes if he had made any, and left Faith alo