ays to
her, 'I won't take nothin' less than a elder or a bishop on this 'ere
vital question.' When I want a sheep, I don't go to the underlin,' but
to the boss; and so I brought this appeal up to you on a writ of _habeas
corpus_, or whatever you may call it."

The presiding elder laughed again, and looked closely at Jonas. Then he
stepped to the door and called in the circuit preacher, Mr. Hall, and
the class leader, Mr. Goshorn, both of whom happened to be in the next
room engaged in an excited discussion with a brother who was a little
touched with Millerism.

"What's this Mr. Harrison tells me about your forbidding the banns in
his case?"

"He's a New Light," said Brother Hall, showing his abhorrence in his
face, "and it seemed to me that for a Methodist to marry a New Light was
a sin--a being yoked together unequally with an unbeliever. You know,
Father Williams, that New Lights are Arians."

The old man seemed more amused than ever. Turning to Jonas, he asked him
if he was an Arian.

"Not as I knows on, my venerable friend. I may have caught the disease
when I had the measles, or I may have been a Arian in infancy, or I may
be a Arian on my mother's side, you know; but as I don't know who or
what it may be, I a'n't in no way accountable fer it--no more'n Brother
Goshorn is to blame fer his face bein' so humbly. But I take it Arian is
one of them air pleasant names you and the New Light preachers uses in
your Christian intercourse together to make one another mad. I'm one of
them as goes to heaven straight--never stoppin' to throw no donicks at
the Methodists, Presbyterians, nor no other misguided children of men.
They may ride in the packet, or go by flat-boat or keel-boat, ef they
chooses. I go by the swift-sailin' and palatial mail-boat New Light, and
I don't run no opposition line, nor bust my bilers tryin' to beat my
neighbors into the heavenly port."

Brother Goshorn looked vexed. Brother Hall was scandalized at the
lightness of Jonas's conversation. But the old presiding elder, with
keen common-sense and an equally keen sense of the ludicrous, could not
look grave with all his effort to keep from laughing.

[Illustration: BROTHER GOSHORN.]

"Are you an unbeliever?" he asked.

"I don't know what you call onbeliever. I believe in God and Christ, and
keep Sunday and the Fourth of July; but I don't believe in all of
Brother Goshorn's nonsense about wearing veils and artificials."

"Well," said Brothe