his capote on
the cord, and tramp, bare-legged, out to his two-acre farm, leaving his
slave, with a few small coins in the till, to keep shop should any
customer forestall his return.

"The fathers of all orders," explained Father Baby, "from their
earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the
flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning,
when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send
you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above
the understanding of a black rascal like you.".

The truth was, the friar loved to play in wet dirt. Civilized life and
the confinement of a shop worked a kind of ferment in his wild spirit,
which violent dancing somewhat relieved, but which intimate contact with
the earth cooled and settled. Father Baby sometimes stripped off his
capote and lay down in the hollow between furrows of corn, like a very
lean but peaceful pig. He would not have been seen, on any account, and
lifted an apprehensive head in the darkness of the morning if a bird
rustled past. This performance he called a mortification of his frame;
but when this sly churchman slipped up and put on his capote again, his
thin visage bore the same gratified lines which may be seen on the face
of a child making mud pies.

It had rained steadily since the political field day which had drawn
such crowds to Kaskaskia. The waters of the Okaw had risen, and Father
Baby's way to his work had been across fields of puddles, through which
he waded before dawn; knowing well that a week's growth of weeds was
waiting for him in its rankness.

The rain was not over. It barely yet restrained itself, and threatened
without falling; blotting out distance as the light grew. A damp air
blew from the northwest. Father Baby found the little avenues between
his rows of maize and pea vines choked with the liberal growth which no
man plants, and he fell furiously to work. His greatest pleasure was the
order and thrift of his little farm, and until these were restored he
could not even wallow comfortably. When he had hoed and pulled out
stubborn roots until his back ached, he stood erect, letting his hands
hang outspread, magnified by their mask of dirt, and rested himself,
thinking of the winter dinners he would enjoy when this moist land
should take on a silver coating of frost, and a frozen sward resist the
tread of his wooden shoe.

"O Lord," said Father Bab