eavens, man! when?"

"Just as soon as Trampas makes the first move," Scipio replied easily.

I became dignified. Scipio had evidently been told things by the
Virginian.

"Yes, I up and asked him plumb out," Scipio answered. "I was liftin' his
trunk in at the door, and I couldn't stand it no longer, and I asked him
plumb out. 'Yu've sure got Trampas where yu' want him.' That's what
I said. And he up and answered and told me. So I know." At this point
Scipio stopped; I was not to know.

"I had no idea," I said, "that your system held so much meanness."

"Oh, it ain't meanness!" And he laughed ecstatically.

"What do you call it, then?"

"He'd call it discretion," said Scipio. Then he became serious. "It's
too blamed grand to tell yu'. I'll leave yu' to see it happen. Keep
around, that's all. Keep around. I pretty near wish I didn't know it
myself."

What with my feelings at Scipio's discretion, and my human curiosity, I
was not in that mood which best profits from a sermon. Yet even though
my expectations had been cruelly left quivering in mid air, I was not
sure how much I really wanted to "keep around." You will therefore
understand how Dr. MacBride was able to make a prayer and to read
Scripture without my being conscious of a word that he had uttered. It
was when I saw him opening the manuscript of his sermon that I suddenly
remembered I was sitting, so to speak, in church, and began once more to
think of the preacher and his congregation. Our chairs were in the
front line, of course; but, being next the wall, I could easily see
the cow-boys behind me. They were perfectly decorous. If Mrs. Ogden had
looked for pistols, daredevil attitudes, and so forth, she must have
been greatly disappointed. Except for their weather-beaten cheeks and
eyes, they were simply American young men with mustaches and without,
and might have been sitting, say, in Danbury, Connecticut. Even Trampas
merged quietly with the general placidity. The Virginian did not, to be
sure, look like Danbury, and his frame and his features showed out
of the mass; but his eyes were upon Dr. MacBride with a creamlike
propriety.

Our missionary did not choose Miss Wood's text. He made his selection
from another of the Psalms; and when it came, I did not dare to look at
anybody; I was much nearer unseemly conduct than the cow-boys. Dr. Mac
Bride gave us his text sonorously, "'They are altogether become filthy;
There is none of them that doeth good, n