church before he started?

"No."

Then he'd have to look downstairs for him.

Clytie told the Widow to call again and they'd get him sure. So she came
back next day and laid down a dollar. That fetched old Buck Williams'
ghost on the jump, you bet, but he said he hadn't laid eyes on Bud yet.
They hauled the Sweet By and By with a drag net, but they couldn't get a
rap from him. Clytie trotted out George Washington, and Napoleon, and
Billy Patterson, and Ben Franklin, and Captain Kidd, just to show that
there was no deception, but they couldn't get a whisper even from Bud.

I reckon Clytie had been stringing the old lady along, intending to
produce Bud's spook as a sort of red-fire, calcium-light,
grand-march-of-the-Amazons climax, but she didn't get a chance. For
right there the old lady got up with a mighty set expression around her
lips and marched out, muttering that it was just as she had thought all
along--Bud wasn't there. And when the neighbors dropped in that
afternoon to plan out a memorial service for her "lost lamb," she chased
them off the lot with a broom. Said that they had looked in the river
for him and that she had looked beyond the river for him, and that they
would just stand pat now and wait for him to make the next move. Allowed
that if she could once get her hands in "that lost lamb's" wool there
might be an opening for a funeral when she got through with him, but
there wouldn't be till then. Altogether, it looked as if there was a
heap of trouble coming to Bud if he had made any mistake and was still
alive.

The Widow found her "lost lamb" hiding behind a rain-barrel when she
opened up the house next morning, and there was a mighty touching and
affecting scene. In fact, the Widow must have touched him at least a
hundred times and every time he was affected to tears, for she was using
a bed slat, which is a powerfully strong moral agent for making a boy
see the error of his ways. And it was a month after that before Bud
could go down Main Street without some man who had called him a noble
little fellow, or a bright, manly little chap, while he was drowned,
reaching out and fetching him a clip on the ear for having come back and
put the laugh on him.

No one except the Widow ever really got at the straight of Bud's
conduct, but it appeared that he left home to get a few Indian scalps,
and that he came back for a little bacon and corn pone.

I simply mention the Widow in passing as an example