l:

"Carl, oh, _Carl_, where are you?"

He had to hurry. He crept along the side of the shack to the window.
It was too high in the wall for him to peer through. He felt for
something to stand upon, and found a short board, which he wedged
against the side of the shack.

He looked through the dusty window for a second. He sprang from the
board.

Alone in the shack was the one person about Joralemon more feared,
more fabulous than the Black Dutchman--"Bone" Stillman, the man who
didn't believe in God.

Bone Stillman read Robert G. Ingersoll, and said what he thought.
Otherwise he was not dangerous to the public peace; a lone old
bachelor farmer. It was said that he had been a sailor or a policeman,
a college professor or a priest, a forger or an embezzler. Nothing
positive was known except that three years ago he had appeared and
bought this farm. He was a grizzled man of fifty-five, with a long,
tobacco-stained, gray mustache and an open-necked blue-flannel shirt.
To Carl, beside the shack, Bone Stillman was all that was demoniac.

Gertie was calling again. Carl climbed upon his board and resumed his
inspection, seeking a course of action.

The one-room shack was lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned
lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a
gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy
books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine
table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed
English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute
stillness and loneliness intimidating.

While Carl watched, Bone dropped his book and said, "Here, Bob, what
d'you think of single-tax, heh?"

Carl gazed apprehensively.... No one but Bone was in the shack.... It
was said that the devil himself sometimes visited here.... On Carl was
the chill of a nightmare.

The dog raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the
floor, and rose, a gentlemanly, affable chap, to lay his muzzle on
Bone's knee while the solitary droned:

"This fellow says in this book here that the city 's the natural place
to live--aboriginal tribes prove man 's naturally gregarious. What
d'you think about it, heh, Bob?... Bum country, this is. No thinking.
What in the name of the seven saintly sisters did I ever want to be a
farmer for, heh?

"Let's skedaddle, Bob.

"I ain't an atheist. I'm an agnostic.

"Lonely, Bob? Go over and talk to