91

11. In the Lantern Light 100

12. Wanted to Dream 112

13. In a Magazine 122

14. Nothing Remarkable in It 132

15. Must Leave the Town 143

16. Sawyer's Plan 155

17. At the Creek 164

18. At the Wagon Maker's Shop 174

19. A Restless Night 181

20. Afraid in the Dark 191

21. With Old Jasper 197

22. The "Boosy" 207

23. After an Anxious Night 222

24. At Mt. Zion 235

25. At Nancy's Home 249

26. Out in the Dark 262

27. The Revenge 270

28. A Gentleman Mule-Buyer 278

29. Gone Away 294

30. The Home 306

31. There Came a Check 316

32. Laughed at His Weakness 326

33. The Petition 338

OLD EBENEZER.

CHAPTER I.

SAM LYMAN.

In more than one of the sleepy neighborhoods that lay about the drowsy
town of Old Ebenezer, Sam Lyman had lolled and dreamed. He had come
out of the keen air of Vermont, and for a time he was looked upon as a
marvel of energy, but the soft atmosphere of a southwestern state
soothed the Yankee worry out of his walk, and made him content to sit
in the shade, to wait for the other man to come; and, as the other man
was doing the same thing, rude hurry was not a feature of any business
transaction. Of course the smoothing of Lyman's Yankee ruffles had
taken some time. He had served as cross-tie purchaser for a new
railway, had kept books and split slabs for kindling wood at a saw
mill; then, as an assistant to the proprietor of a cross-roads store,
he had counted eggs and bargained for chickens, with a smile for a
gingham miss and a word of religious philosophy for the dame in
home-spun. But he was now less active, and already he had begun to
long for easier employment; so he "took up" school at forty dollars a
month. In the Ebenezer country, the school teacher is regarded as a
supremely wise and hopelessly lazy mortal. He is expected to know all
of earth, as the preacher is believed to know all of heaven, and when
he has once been installed into this position, a disposi