e shock of it came in Shiloh's collapse--a blaze which
was indeed destined "to light the valley with a torch of fire."

On the third day Jud Carpenter came out to see about it; but at sight
of him the old man took down from the rack over the hall door the
rifle he had carried through the war, and with a determined gesture
he stopped the employment agent at the gate: "I am a man of God, Jud
Carpenter," he said in a strange voice, rounded with a deadly
determination, "but in the name of God an' humanity, if you come
into that gate after my little 'uns, I'll kill you in yo' tracks,
jes' as a bis'n bull 'ud stamp the life out of a prowlin' coyote."

And Jud Carpenter went back to town and spread the report that the
old man was a maniac, that he had lost his mind since Shiloh came so
near dying.

The problem which confronted the old man was serious.

"O Jack, Jack," he said one night, "if I jes' had some of that gold
you had!"

Jack replied by laying ten silver dollars in the old man's hand.

"I earned it,"--he said simply--"this week--shoeing horses--it's the
sweetest money I ever got."

"Why, Jack," said the Bishop--"this will feed us for a week. Come
here, Tabitha," he called cheerily--"come an' see what happens to
them that cast their bread upon the waters. We tuck in this outcast
an' now behold our bread come back ag'in."

The old woman came up and took it gingerly. She bit each dollar to
test it, remarking finally: "Why, hit's genuwine!"--

Jack laughed.

"Why, hit's mo' money'n I've seed fur years," she said--"I won't
hafter hunt fur 'sang roots to-morrow."

"Jack," said the Bishop, after the others had retired, and the two
men sat in Captain Tom's cabin--"Jack, I've been thinkin' an'
thinkin'--I must make some money."

"How much?" asked Jack.

"A thousand or two."

"That's a lot of money," said the outlaw quickly. "A heap fur you to
need."

"It's not fur me," he said--"I don't need it--I wouldn't have it for
myself. It's for him--see!" he pointed to the sleeping man on the low
cot. "Jack, I've been talkin' to the Doctor--he examined Cap'n Tom's
head, and he says it'd be an easy job--that it's a shame it ain't
been done befo'--that in a city to the North,--he gave me the name of
a surgeon there who could take that pressure from his head and make
him the man he was befo'--the _man_, mind you, the _man_ he was
befo'."

Jack sat up excited. His eyes glittered.

"Then there's Shiloh," went on the o