the audience was pouring out, from under the
Hamlet spell of Booth, and Laz remarked: "Feller that preached in thar
to-night must be as long-winded as our man Fetterson; but I'll bet Old
Fetter could outswop him in a hoss trade."

"That's a theatre," Foster informed him, and after musing for a time he
said:

"Place whar they swollow knives, I reckon. Seed a feller do that at a
school-house one night, an' I thought he'd killed hisse'f, but he spit
it out jest like a stick of molasses candy. Wall, suh, I never seed as
many lanterns hung up befo'. An' I want to tell you they've got good
roads through this place. What's that feller doin' over thar with that
crowd about him?"

"Preaching," Foster answered.

"Wall, he couldn't call up mourners--the wagins would run over 'em. What
do you think of all this, Jasper?"

"Who, me?" the old man replied as if startled out of a dream, "I wasn't
thinkin' of it--didn't see it."

"I don't reckon," said Laz, "that all these folks knows we air goin' to
jail."

Old Jasper shook as if with a chill. "We know it, an' that's enough," he
replied.

The wagon, directed by Foster, turned into a darker street, into an
alley, and drew up in front of a building black in the dusk. The old
man's legs were so stiffened that they had to help him out and
rheumatically he walked through the portals of stone-walled disgrace.
Into a cell they turned him, and when the bolt grated, he leaped from
the rock beneath his feet, leaped as he had when he struck Peters; and
then into a corner he sank with a groan.

The two boys were given the liberty of a long corridor, and up and down
they walked, light of foot, in reverence for the dejected man behind the
bars.

CHAPTER XXII.

CAME TO WEEP.

Old Mrs. Barker, true to instinct, hastened to put on her saddest
bonnet, kept in an old chest at the demand of funerals, and with all
speed set out for the afflicted home. Margaret was feeding the chickens
when this consoling stimulator of grief arrived, and what little sun was
left, immediately went down.

Beneath the mantle-piece there was no blaze, the weather being hot, so
they could not sit down "and weep the fire out," but they could hover
over old ashes and weep them wet. The real griefs in old Mrs. Barker's
life had been but few. It was a mercy-shaft that had shot Old Barker
down; rheumatic cripple, he had beaten her with his crutch, and at his
death she could not from her rebellious eye wring