nut that he
was tryin' to crack? I talked with him long enough to find out what he
was; he was an _atheist_."

Mrs. Dysart leaned forward and whispered the last word in an awe-struck
tone, with her fat eyes fixed reproachfully upon her husband.

"Oh, I guess not, Emeline," pleaded John.

Mrs. Dysart shut her lips and her eyes very tight, and nodded slowly and
affirmatively. "Yes, he was. He set right in that identical spot where
Mr. Palmerston is a-settin', and talked about the seven theological
periods of creation, and the fables of Jonah and the whale and Noah's
ark, till I was all of a tremble. Mebbe that's science, Jawn, but _I_
call it blasphemin'."

Dysart rested his elbows on his knees and looked over the edge of the
porch as if he were gazing into the bottomless pit.

"Oh, come, now, Mrs. Dysart," Palmerston broke in cheerfully; "I'm not
at all afraid of Mr. Dysart losing his faith, but I'm very much afraid
of his losing his money. I wish he had as good a grip on his purse as he
has on his religion."

Mrs. Dysart glanced at the young man with a look of relief to find him
agreeing with her in spite of his irreverent commingling of the temporal
and the spiritual.

"Well, I'm sure we've lost enough already, when it comes to that," she
continued, folding her hands resignedly in her convex lap. "There was
that artesian well down at San Pasqual"--

"Well, now, Emeline," her husband broke in eagerly, "that well would
have been all right if the tools hadn't stuck. I think yet we'd have got
water if we'd gone on."

"We'd 'a' got water if it had 'a' been our heavenly Fawther's will,"
announced Mrs. Dysart, with solemnity, rising slowly from her chair,
which gave a little squeak of relief. "I've got to set the sponge," she
went on in the same tone, as if it were some sacred religious rite. "I
wish you'd talk it over with Mr. Palmerston, Jawn, and tell him the
offer you've had from this perfessor--I'm sure I don't know what he's
perfessor of. He ain't a perfessor of religion--I know that."

She sent her last arrow over her wide shoulder as she passed the two men
and creaked into the house. Her husband looked after her gravely.

"Now that's the way with Emeline," he said; "she's all faith, and then,
again, she has no faith. Now, I'm just the other way." He rubbed his
bald head in a vain attempt to formulate the obverse of his wife's
character. "Well, anyway," he resumed, accepting his failure cheerfully,
"the p