sized him up, being due to twist his tail in next
Sunday's chapter. Now let us get through praying, quick as the Lord
will let us, because them calves ain't had their buttermilk."

When we knelt, the widow still sat rigid, and with her wooden leg
scratched out upon the oil-cloth vague outlines of a gallows. Afterward
she explained. "Yer husband, Mrs. Smith, bad cess to him, is mighty
proud av his spectacles, phwat he can't see through and all, and showing
off his learning and pride av a Sunday."

"But why draw gallows on the floor?"

"And why for should I not draw gallows on the flure, seeing he'll never
drown? It's hung he'll be for a opprissing the fatherless and the widow,
and burn he will afther for a Protestant. Yis," she flashed round on her
son, "feed buttermilk to thim calves, and hould up yer head _alladh_,
'cause you inherit glory while he's frying!"

Away from the widow's hate and her son's vengeance, I led my man out
under the stars. I gave him his cigar, that black explosive charged with
deadly fumes, lighted him a sulphur match. It soothes his passions, and
the pasture scent makes him gentle, but when I fear my grizzly bear, and
hardly dare to stroke, I lead him by the keen silver spring, across the
hollow where our flowers would make a devil smile, and on through the
wild rose tangle, to my cathedral pines. To-night he seemed suspicious,
even there, biting off tags of the vindictive Psalms. Nor would he sit
under the father tree until I sang to him.

"When Faith's low doorway leads into the church,
Light from austere saints mellows dusty gloom,
Sad music echoes in the stony heavens,
And this bleak pavement masks a charnel hell.
Yet in man's likeness God makes Pain divine
And here Truth's dawn breaks upwards towards the Light.

Come to the hill-top: blackbird choristers
Peal their clear anthem to the kneeling gorse;
The old trees pray, their thirsty faces rapt,
While congregations of great angel clouds
Receive the holy Sacramental Light
From God's high priest, the ministering Sun!"

"What do you want?" asked Jesse, all the rancor gone.

"Jesse, do you know that it's nearly a year since we married?"

"Ten months, Kate, and fourteen days. Do you think I don't reckon?"

I sat down on the root of the little governess tree, the humblest in the
grove. "In the Bible, dear, who was the son of Jesse?"

"David, of course."

"Do you remember, dear: 'for