ay
anything about that matter?"

"I did--in a roundabout way," she said, taking the great lump of wheat
dough in her hands and rolling it into a heap of dry flour at one end of
the long wooden bowl. "I didn't want him to take up a notion that we
want to marry her off, but I tried to find out what I could. Mr. Trott
never has had any love-affairs. He is mighty young--younger than you'd
naturally think to have the job he has, and somehow he never has taken
to a girl before. Mr. Cavanaugh says this is the first time, and I know
he is telling the truth. Oh, he had a lot to say in Mr. Trott's favor.
He says he has a wonderful mind for building and the like, and that the
time will come when he will make piles of money. He already gets high
wages, and it is always cash, too. He doesn't have to wait till the end
of the year like Joel Eperson and other farmers do, and then be up to
their eyes in debt, with nothing left over to begin another crop on."

"Does he drink or gamble? That is what I want to know," Whaley put in
suddenly.

"No, he doesn't. Mr. Cavanaugh says he hardly thinks of anything but
figuring, planning, and calculating. He goes to bed early and gets up
early, and can handle a gang of men better even than he can, he's so
popular with them."

"Didn't you find out about the feller's religion?"

"No, I didn't. I sorter touched on that--said you wanted to know--but
Mr. Cavanaugh made light of it--said all that would come out right in
due time. He said he was no hand for hurrying up the young on those
lines. He said John Trott at bottom was the right sort, and that he
would count on him serving the Lord in the long run as well as the next
one."

"I don't know as I'd let that old skunk pick a religion for a son-in-law
of mine." Whaley's lip was drawn tight as he spoke. "He don't take
enough interest in doctrine, and when you force him to talk about it he
says entirely too much about salvation through works alone. I like a man
that knows what he believes and can point straight to Biblical authority
in page, line, and word. It behooves a Christian to watch out what sort
of a mate his daughter picks. Infidelity will breed at a fireside faster
than tadpoles under skum in a mud-puddle."

"Well, I'm for keeping that part out of it just now," Mrs. Whaley
suggested, timidly. "This is a good chance for the girl, and you know
you have made a lot of folks mad by the way you talk to them."

"Well, I haven't said anything t