mes they air dug up by mistake fur sich. See that
squirrel. Look how he rattles up that hickory bark. Wall, down yan we
turn to the right an' go up a little rise, dip down ag'in, then go up
an' keep on a goin' up fur about a mile an' thar's the church. Who
preaches to-day, Margaret?"

"Brother Fetterson."

"Ah, hah, good man; an' I want to say that he's got mighty fine jedgment
when it comes to a hoss. He fust rid in here on a hoss that had about
fo' j'ints to the squar foot. Some of our fellers told him he was so
thin he oughtn't be rid in the day--ought to keep him fur the dark;
called him a sort of night mare. But he tuck it good natured an' jest
kep' on a chawin' o' his tobacker. Then atter a while he lows that mebby
some good brother mout like to swap with him, an' ever'body laughed
fitten to kill. Then he said mebby they mout like to swop saddles. Wall,
they done that an' right thar was the rise of that preacher in the good
opinion of this here community, fur it wan't long till he swopped off
his hoss, a givin' the saddle to boot, an' he kept on a swoppin' till
the fust thing we knowed he had the finest hoss in the whole
neighborhood, an' the fust feller he swopped with was a walkin' an' a
totin' his saddle. That's the sort of a preacher the folks likes to
hear, fur they've got confidence in his jedgment."

The log meeting-house was on a hill in the midst of a walnut grove. Its
roof was green with moss and its sides gray and yellow. Many a storm
had swept over this old pile of wood. In it the ordinance of secession
had been read. Knives flashed, pistols barked, and blood was poured out
upon the floor. Old Oliver's horses ate their oats at the marble altar
of an ancient cathedral; and within these log walls, and at this long
slab, this mourners' bench, tear-stained by a generation long since in
the grave, the horses of the guerrillas ate their corn. Descendants of
the same men, carrying on what might have seemed a continuation of the
same family quarrel, first one side and then another occupied Dry Fork
as a fort; and when the rain was pouring as if to wash away the blood,
Buell slept on a bench in this old house, and two days later Bragg's
orders were issued from its pulpit.

Numerous horses were tied about and the mule colt was blowing his treble
horn. Maidens in their finery and young fellows rigged out from the pack
of the nomadic Hebrew walked about, glancing shyly at one another. On
the grass beneath the