f the boy, and went on into the house, while Rebecca and Thirza made
a stealthy circuit of the barn and a polite and circumspect entrance
through the parsonage front gate.

Rebecca told the minister's wife what she could remember of the
interview between Cassius Came and Elisha Simpson, and tender-hearted
Mrs. Baxter longed to seek and comfort her Little Prophet sobbing in the
tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and what was much worse,
the fear in his heart that he deserved it.

Rebecca could hardly be prevented from bearding Mr. Came and openly
espousing the cause of Elisha, for she was an impetuous, reckless,
valiant creature when a weaker vessel was attacked or threatened
unjustly.

Mrs. Baxter acknowledged that Mr. Came had been true, in a way, to his
word and bargain, but she confessed that she had never heard of so cruel
and hard a bargain since the days of Shylock, and it was all the worse
for being made with a child.

Rebecca hurried home, her visit quite spoiled and her errand quite
forgotten till she reached the brick house door, where she told her
aunts, with her customary picturesqueness of speech, that she would
rather eat buttermilk bread till she died than partake of food mixed
with one of Mr. Came's yeast-cakes; that it would choke her, even in the
shape of good raised bread.

"That's all very fine, Rebecky," said her Aunt Miranda, who had a
pin-prick for almost every bubble; "but don't forget there's two other
mouths to feed in this house, and you might at least give your aunt and
me the privilege of chokin' if we feel to want to!"

IV

Mrs. Baxter finally heard from Mrs. Came, through whom all information
was sure to filter if you gave it time, that her husband despised a
coward, that he considered Elisha a regular mother's-apron-string boy,
and that he was "learnin'" him to be brave.

Bill Peters, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though
whenever Mr. Came went to Moderation or Bonnie Eagle, as he often did,
Mrs. Baxter noticed that Elisha took the hired man's place. She often
joined him on these anxious expeditions, and, a like terror in both
their souls, they attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea
of obedience.

"If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely
with her, wouldn't we?" prattled the Prophet, straggling along by her
side; "and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and
Mr. Came says it's more'