way from thar sins. Yes'm, Sister Sudley, that's jes what
p'inted out my jewty plain afore my eyes, an' I riz up an' kem ter be
instant in a-do-in' of it. 'I'll not leave my own nevy in the tents
o' sin,' I sez. 'I hev chil'in o' my own, hearty feeders an' hard on
shoe-leather, ter support, but I'll not grudge my brother's son a home.'
Yes, Laurely Sudley, I hev kem ter kerry him back with me. Yer jewty
ain't been done by him, an' I'll leave him a dweller in the tents o' sin
no longer."

His enthusiasm had carried him too far. Lau-relia's face, which at first
seemed turning to stone as she gradually apprehended his meaning and his
mission, changed from motionless white to a tremulous scarlet while he
spoke, and when he ceased she retorted herself as one of the ungodly.

"Ye mus' be mighty ambitious ter kerry away a skin full o' broken
bones! Jes let Tyler Sudley hear ez ye called his house the tents o' the
ungodly, an' that ye kem hyar a-faultin' me, an' tellin' me ez I 'ain't
done my jewty ennywhar or ennyhow!" she exclaimed, with a pride which,
as a pious saint, she had never expected to feel in her husband's
reputation as a high-tempered man and a "mighty handy fighter," and with
implicit reliance upon both endowments in her quarrel.

"Only in a speritchual sense, Sister Sudley," Nehemiah gasped, as he
made haste to qualify his asseveration. "I only charge you with havin'
sp'iled the boy; ye hev sp'iled him through kindness ter him, an' not
_ye_ so much ez Ty. Ty never hed so much ez a dog that would mind him!
His dog wouldn't answer call nor whistle 'thout he war so disposed. _I_
never faulted ye, Sister Sudley; 'twar jes Ty I faulted. I know Ty."

He knew, too, that it was safer to call Ty and his doings in
question, big and formidable and belligerent though he was, than his
meek-mannered, melancholy, forlorn, and diminutive wife. Nehemiah rose
up and walked back and forth for a moment with an excited face and a
bent back, and a sort of rabbit-like action. "Now, I put it to you,
Sister Sudley, air Ty a-makin' that thar boy plough terday?--jes
_be-you-ti-ful_ field weather!"

Sister Sudley, victorious, having regained her normal position by one
single natural impulse of self-assertion, not as a religionist, but
as Tyler Sud-ley's wife, and hence entitled to all the show of respect
which that fact unaided could command, sat looking at him with a changed
face--a face that seemed twenty years younger; it had the ex