Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House, by J. T. Trowbridge

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Title: The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House
1878, From "Coupon Bonds"

Author: J. T. Trowbridge

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23165]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING-HOUSE

By J. T. Trowbridge

From "Coupon Bonds."

Copyright 1878, by James R. Osgood & Co

On a recent journey to the Pennsylvania oil regions, I stopped one
evening with a fellow-traveler at a village which had just been thrown
into a turmoil of excitement by the exploits of a horse-thief. As we sat
around the tavern hearth, after supper, we heard the particulars of the
rogue's capture and escape fully discussed; then followed many another
tale of theft and robbery, told amid curling puffs of tobacco-smoke;
until, at the close of an exciting story, one of the natives turned to
my traveling acquaintance, and, with a broad laugh, said, "Kin ye beat
that, stranger?"

"Well, I don't know--maybe I could if I should try. I never happened to
fall in with any such tall horse-stealing as you tell of, but I knew a
man who stole a meeting-house once."

"Stole a meetin'-house! That goes a little beyant anything yit,"
remarked another of the honest villagers. "Ye don't mean he stole it and
carried it away?"

"Stole it and carried it away," repeated my traveling companion,
seriously, crossing his legs, and resting his arm on the hack of his
chair. "And, more than all that, I helped him."

"How happened that?--for you don't look much like a thief yourself." All
eyes were now turned upon my friend, a plain New England farmer, whose
honest homespun appearance and candid speech commanded respect.

"I was his hired man, and I acted under orders. His name was
Jedwort--Old Jedwort, the boys called him, although he wasn't above
fifty when the crooked little circumstance happened which I'll make as
straight a story of as I can, if the company would like to hear it."

"Sartin, stranger! sartin! about stealin' the meetin'-house!" chimed in
two or three