in
whispering groups and invaded the rival edifice until it was crowded as
it had seldom been before. Scattergood in prayer meeting! Scattergood,
who had never been inside a church since the day of his arrival in
Coldriver, forty years before.... Even Yvette Hinchbrooke and her
affairs sank into insignificance.

But the amazing presence of Scattergood in church was as nothing to the
epochal fact that, after the prayer and hymn, he was seen slowly to get
to his feet. Scattergood Baines was going to lift up his voice in
meeting!

"Folks," he said, "I've knowed Coldriver for quite a spell. I've knowed
its good and its bad, but the good outweighs the bad by a darn sight."
The congregation gasped.

"I run on to a case to-day," he said, and then paused, apparently
thinking better of what he was going to say and taking another course.
"They's one great way to reach folks's hearts and that's through their
sympathy. All of you give up to furrin missions to rescue naked fellers
with rings in their noses. That's sympathy, hain't it? Mebby they hain't
needin' sympathy and cast-off pants, but that's neither here nor there.
You _think_ they do.... Coldriver's great on sympathy, and it's a
doggone upstandin' quality." Again the audience sucked in its breath at
this approach to the language of everyday life.

"If I was wantin' to stir up your sympathy, I'd tell you about a leetle
feller I seen yestiddy. Mebby I will. He wa'n't no naked heathen, and he
didn't have no ring into his nose. He was jest a boy. Uh-huh! Calculate
he might 'a' been ten year old. Couldn't walk a step. Suthin' ailed his
laigs, and he had to lay around in a chair in one of these here kind of
cheap horspittles. Alone he was. Didn't have no pa nor ma.... But he had
to be looked after by somebody, didn't he? Somebody had to pay them
bills."

Scattergood blew his nose gustily. "Mebby he could 'a' been cured if
they was money to pay for costly doctorin', but they wa'n't. It took all
that could be got jest to pay for his food and keep.... Patient leetle
feller, too, and gentlelike and cheerful. Kind of took to him, I did."

He paused, turned slowly, and surveyed the congregation, and frowned at
the door of the church. He coughed. He waited. The congregation turned,
following his eyes, and saw Mandy, Scattergood's ample-bosomed wife,
enter, bearing in her arms the form of a child. She walked to
Scattergood's pew and handed the boy to him. Scattergood held the chi