orrupts,' says the
clergy. 'Leave the cash to us,' they says. 'We'll see to that for you,
while you keeps out o' temptation and saves your souls alive.'"

When Mrs. Woodburn told the old man the news about Joses, he received it
gravely.

"Moved on, has he?" he said. "I'm sorry. I shall miss him. I always
misses that sort. Shouldn't feel at home like without some of them
around. Well, Mar, we shall all meet in the yappy yappy land, plea Gob
in his goodness." He burst into a sort of chaunt, wagging his head, and
beating time with his fist--

"_Ho, won't that be jiy-ful?
Jam for the fythe-ful._

I wouldn't miss that meetin', Mar, not for all the nuts on Iceland's
greasy mountains, the Psalmist made the song about. I sees it all like
in a wision." His eyes closed, and his hands and feet swam vaguely. "Me
and Monkey o' the one side, and the Three J's o' tother, pitchin' the
tale a treat at tops of our voices." He opened his eyes slowly, ogled
Ma, tapped her knee, winked, and ended confidentially: "One thing, old
dear. I'll lay they'll give Putnam's best same there as here. Now
then!"

CHAPTER LII

Putnam's Once More

It was Sunday morning at Putnam's, and in Maudie's estimation things
were more _comme il faut_ than they had been for long past.

About a fortnight since there had been trouble in the yard during the
night, and after it, for some hours before he went away, the
Monster-without-Manners had been subdued almost to gentlemanliness.

Then two of the fan-tails had been taken ill. Maudie from the top of the
ladder had watched their dying contortions with the cynical interest of
a Roman matron criticizing the death-agonies of a gladiator in the
arena. When after staggering about the fan-tails turned over on their
backs and flopped, Maudie descended from her perch and toyed with them
daintily during their last moments, finally carrying their corpses up
into the loft.

After that, Maudie felt queer herself, and not only from the results of
a stricken conscience. Indeed, but for the urgent and instant
ministrations of Putnam's Only Gentleman she would have followed where
the good fan-tails had gone.

Thereafter, for a space of a week, there had fallen on the yard a
hallowed time of peace very different from the period of oppression and
irritable energy which had preceded it. Maudie attributed the change to
the absence of the Monster-without-Manners who had departed quietly with
th