that if it didn't rain they would on the coming Saturday
start on that chicken house.

And they did. Frank came home that evening in unusually fine spirits
and asked his wife about the various new people. He told her of his
meeting with the stranger who seemed to know him but whom he did not
remember ever seeing before.

Jennie guessed him to be, "Mrs. Hamilton's husband. I've never seen
him either but they say he's such a pleasant man. They're both
Christian Scientists or something like that and she's ever so nice a
woman. They've only been here a few months but everybody likes them."

"Well," spoke up Frank, still thinking of the pleasant passing of what
was usually a tiresome train trip, "if Christian Science makes a man as
likable and neighborly as that I, for one, approve of Christian
Science. What did you say his name was--Hamilton?"

It was because Frank was so willing to let every man worship his God in
his very own way that Green Valley, that is the religiously watchful
part of it, had decided that Frank was an atheist. For, said these
cautious children of God, "He who is willing to believe in all things
believes in nothing."

But it wasn't religion that the two men talked that Saturday afternoon.
The sun was warm, the lumber dry, the saws sharp and with the work
going smoothly along there was plenty of time for talk, talk on all
manner of subjects.

Frank's wife had gone over to Randall's to a special meeting of the
sewing society. Not only were the women going to cut out and make up
little aprons and dresses for the inmates of the nearest orphanage but
they intended to discuss several new social problems that confronted
Green Valley. The two most vital being "What do you make of that new
saloon keeper and his wife?" and "What goes on behind those poolroom
curtains, especially nights?"

Not that there was in Green Valley any interfering Civic League or any
such thing as a Pure Morals Society. Green Valley had never had to
resort to such measures. It had hitherto trusted human nature, Green
Valley sunshine and neighborliness to do whatever work of social
mending and reforming had to be done.

But something had happened to the big city to the east, some new mayor
or some new civic force had stirred things up in that huge caldron of
humanity and slopped it over so that it had begun to trickle away into
such quiet little hollows as Green Valley. It trickled so slowly and
was as yet so thin a