crazy coot, haven't I given you fair warning about
tongue-whaling me in public?" demanded the man who was pilloried.

"'Behold, all they that are incensed against thee shall be ashamed and
confounded,'" quoted the Prophet, pounding his fist against the lettered
breast. "'They shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall
perish.'"

Mr. Britt leaped off the porch, thrust the Prophet from his path, and
strode across the street toward the man in the door. The brother did
not lose his smile. He maintained his placid demeanor even when an angry
finger slashed through the air close under his nose.

"I never intended to pass speech with you again, you renegade," stormed
Tasper. "But I'm talking to-day for a town that I propose to represent
in the legislature, and I won't have it shamed any longer by a lunatic
that you're harboring."

Usial Britt lifted his eyebrows. "The legislature?" He puckered his lips
and whistled a few bars of "Hail to the Chief."

Candidate Britt waggled the monitory finger more energetically. "You are
sheltering and ste'boying on a crazy man who is making the rest of the
people in this town crazy. If they hadn't grown loony they'd ride him
out over the line on a rail."

The Prophet had arrived at Britt's shoulder. "'But God has chose the
foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.'"

"I don't guarantee my guest's brains," said the Britt in the door, "but
I do vouch for the correctness of his memory when it comes to the matter
of Gospel quotations. And a cracked record doesn't always spoil a good
tune."

"I'll have him in the lockup as a tramp, or on the poor farm as a
lunatic."

"You mean, that's where you would have him if the shelter of my roof
didn't give him legal protection," returned Usial, calm in the face of
wrath.

"'I was a stranger, and ye took me in,'" declaimed the Prophet.

"And I'm keeping you on," stated the cynical Usial, speaking for his
brother's benefit, "because you're a self-operating, red-hot gad that
is helping me torment yon pirate with texts after I had run out of cuss
words. Go ahead, Prophet! Shoot anything. It's a poor text that will not
hit him some place."

Obediently, the fanatic began to mouth Holy Writ in orotund. Tasper
Britt raised his fist. But the devil himself shrinks before The Word.
Britt did not strike. His face revealed his emotions; he coul