it up that Brother Cartwright was to write out a pledge
on the inside leaf of the Bible, and tie the Bible onto a string, and a
lead pencil onto another string, and let the strings down to Hank,
and he was to make his mark, fur he couldn't write, and they was to be
pulled up agin. Hank, he says all right, and they done it. But jest as
Hank was making his mark on the leaf of the book, that preacher done
what I has always thought was a mean trick. He was lying on the floor
with his head and shoulders into that hole as fur as he could, holding
a lantern way down into it, so as Hank could see. And jest as Hank made
that mark he spoke some words over him, and then he says:

"Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you are a member of the
church."

You'd a thought Hank would of broke out cussing agin at being took
unexpected that-a-way, fur he hadn't really agreed to nothing but
signing the pledge. But nary a cuss. He jest says: "Now, you get that
ladder."

They got it, and he clumb up into the kitchen, dripping and shivering.

"You went and baptized me in that water?" he asts the preacher. The
preacher says he has.

"Then," says Hank, "you done a low-down trick on me. You knowed I has
made my brags I never jined no church nor never would jine. You knowed
I was proud of that. You knowed that it was my glory to tell of it, and
that I set a heap of store by it in every way. And now you've went and
took it away from me! You never fought it out fair and square, neither,
man playing to outlast man, like you done with this here pledge, but you
sneaked it in on me when I wasn't looking."

They was a lot of men in that crowd that thought the preacher had went
too far, and sympathized with Hank. The way he done about that hurt
Brother Cartwright in our town, and they was a split in the church,
because some said it wasn't reg'lar and wasn't binding. He lost his
job after a while and become an evangelist. Which it don't make no
difference what one of them does, nohow.

But Hank, he always thought he had been baptized reg'lar. And he never
was the same afterward. He had made his life-long brags, and his pride
was broke in that there one pertic'ler spot. And he sorrered and grieved
over it a good 'eal, and got grouchier and grouchier and meaner and
meaner, and lickered oftener, if anything. Signing the pledge couldn't
hold Hank. He was worse in every way after that night in the cistern,
and took to lamming me harder and harde