e and was
setting the folks by the ears.

The Prophet's morning greeting did not make for amity. He stood straight
and pointed in turn to the visible statues and then to Tasper Britt, in
person. "Baal, and the images of Baal!" he shouted. "Stone, all three!"

Then he stepped from the door and spread a prodigiously big umbrella--an
umbrella striped in dingy colors and of the size of the canopies seen
over the drivers of delivery wagons. The employment of such a shield
from the sun in midwinter indicated that the Prophet was rather more
than eccentric; his garb conveyed the same suggestion. He wore a frayed
purple robe that hung on his heels when he came striding across the
street. On a broad band of cloth that once had been white, reaching from
shoulder to waist, diagonally across his breast, were the words, "The
Light of the World."

Tasper Britt surveyed him with venomous gaze as he advanced. But Britt
shifted his stare and put additional venom into the look he gave a
man who came to the door and stood there, leaning against the jamb and
surveying the scene with a satisfied grin. There was no need of the name
"Britt" above his head to proclaim his kinship with the man who stood on
the tavern porch. The beard of the Britt in the door was gray, and his
head was bald. But he was Tasper Britt, in looks, as Britt unadorned
ought to have been. There was something like subtle reproach in his
sticking to nature as nature had ordained. And the folks of Egypt had
been having much to say about Usial Britt putting this new touch of
malice into the long-enduring feud between twin brothers--even though
he merely went on as he had been going, bald and gray. But because Usial
had taken to going about in public places wherever Tasper appeared, and
unobtrusively got as near his brother as possible on those occasions,
and winked and pointed to himself and suggested "Before using!" the
malice was apparent.

Usial, in the door, stroked his smooth poll complacently and grinned.

Tasper, on the porch, shook his fist.

Prophet Elias marched close to the porch and struck an attitude. "Hear
ye! Hath not Job said, 'The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the
joy of the hypocrite but for a moment'?"

A man who was humped over a sawbuck in a nearby yard straightened up
and began to pay strict attention. A driver halted a sled loaded with
unshaved hoop poles, and listened. The commercial drummer came out on
the porch.

"Look here, you