ne day of the week, and this glib-tongued man contradicting him
for seven. Yet no statute forbids him to do this. What can you
suggest, Mr. Pound?"

Mr. Pound sought an inspiration in the ceiling. "The man has no
visible means of support," he said after a moment. "His child is badly
clothed, and, I presume, badly fed. Right there is an indictment.
Vagrancy."

This bold suggestion was greeted with general approval save by the
squire, who protested that a man could not be called a vagrant who had
paid seventy dollars in cash for his clearing and was never known to
beg or steal.

"But I tell you he is a moral vagrant," argued Mr. Pound, "and I will
make such a charge against him. It will be your duty then, Squire
Crumple, to offer him his choice between six weeks in jail and leaving
the valley and taking his bottle with him."

Still the squire was unconvinced, but he saw himself being overawed by
my father and the minister, and his efforts to combat them evolved
futile excuses.

"Who will arrest him?" he pleaded.

"Haven't we a constable?" retorted my father. "What did we elect Byron
Lukens for?"

"Precisely!" cried Mr. Pound.

"The one arrest he has made was a source of endless trouble," returned
Squire Crumple. "He had to lock the prisoner overnight in his best
room, and his wife has since said distinctly and repeatedly that----"

"You can avoid trouble with Mrs. Lukens by arresting him in the
morning," said Mr. Pound.

"And the chances are he will leave the valley rather than go to jail,"
my father added.

"But suppose he is cantankerous and chooses jail, what will we do with
the girl?" argued the reluctant magistrate.

"The girl?" Mr. Pound waved his great hands about the table. "Surely
we can find her a better home and better parents than she has now.
Surely there are among us good women who will esteem it a privilege to
care for an orphaned child."

My mother said "surely," too, and so did all the other good women at
the board. Even Miss Spinner, while not prepared to receive the child
into her home, was ready to teach her "as she should be taught."

"And she should be taught," my mother broke in. "Her father has been
the stumbling-block. I heard him say myself to a committee of our
Ladies' Aid that he would gladly place her in Miss Spinner's
Sunday-school class if Miss Spinner could convince him that she had any
knowledge worth imparting. I never liked to tell you that before, Miss