as blasphemous. Seems she hadn't went to church since she was a
gal. I don't say she ain't behavin' herself and all that, but 'tain't
orthodox for a person like that to jest set down before her do' in the
grass and git religion without ever goin' nigh a church and makin'
public confession of her sins--not that everybody don't know what she
has been!

"If them kind of heresies spread, where will the church be? What's the
use of havin' churches? We want you to go down there and 'tend to her,
Brother Thompson. Some folks in this community have been worried ever
since she done it.

"We ain't satisfied with her experience after the way she's carried
on--talks as if she'd found God as easy as if she'd been an innocent
child, when some of us that have lived honorable and decent all our
lives had to mourn and repent and take on like a house afire before we
could claim the blessin'."

"I'll look into Sister Prout's condition as soon as possible, Brother
Rheubottom," said William, folding one long leg over the other and
fidgeting in his chair, because he wanted to be back at his
bookshelves, settling the relations of his commentaries for the coming
year.

"She ain't even a sister," retorted our visitor, who had risen and was
on his way to the door. "She's never j'ined the church. When somebody
named it to her as a duty if she'd repented of her sins she jest
laughed and said she wouldn't. Not bein' respectable enough to belong
in with church folks she 'lowed she'd stay outside with the wicked
where she belonged and not embarrass nobody by settin' by 'em in
church. 'Lowed she reckoned she could find enough to do out there
instead of 'h'isting herself up with respectable women in the foreign
missionary society.' That's the way she talks, Brother Thompson, and
there can't nobody stop her!"

Bowtown was an ugly little streaked mountain village that followed the
windings of the country road for half a mile and then gave out. The
last house was not a house at all, but an old box car. And this was
the home of Sal Prout. But she denied that it was a box car, with a
hundred fanciful deceptions. First, it was whitewashed within and
without; second, it was covered with house vines; third, the dooryard
smiled at you from the face of a thousand flowers, like a Heavenly
catechism of color. But go as often as we would we never found Sal at
home. She was busy with the wicked. She could do anything from
pulling fodder to nu