r your
dedication, but the book says it can be done. So you might as well
soften up now--"he vigorously rubbed the dried bare side with some
oily preparation--"as later."

"What a destiny, old chap! Surely no other fox ever born to lady-fox
can be as happy as you're going to be!" He rubbed industriously.
"You're not for me, you know. No, sir! I wouldn't bring you out of the
hills into this burg--where they kill ambition by preaching content
with your lot, where the hoarders of pennies are venerated and the
pluggers canonized--I wouldn't bring you here just for me. For I'm not
worthy of you. No, sir-ree! Don't you know I'm no good--didn't you see
that yesterday? Why, Old Samuel Terwilliger said I'm an atheist
because I quoted Ingersoll's graveside oration--said no Christian
would repeat anything that man ever said, even if his watch is a
bargain at a dollar!... Samuel likes bargains."

Working rapidly, with no lost motions, he rambled on, congratulatory,
reproachful, whimsical. Having carried the curing to a point where a
twenty-four-hour time process was the next essential factor, he
carefully pegged the skin to the barn door.

* * * * *

That evening Susan came running home excitedly, having learned that
one of the elders had asked that a meeting be called to consider
Dick's case, and that the young pastor had very promptly and very
emphatically vetoed the proceeding. It seemed that Bruce had heard of
the move and persuaded his father not to support it, after a stormy
scene in which he had threatened to resign his own membership if they
moved against Terry.

Ellis looked long at Terry: "Nothing small about Bruce, Dick. Some
fellows, under the circumstances--all the circumstances--might have
let you have it to the hilt."

Terry smiled gravely. "Good old Bruce," he said.

He left the room, slowly, and sat alone in the library. It had struck
deep, that even one God-fearing but not God-loving old man should
think him unfit to sit in the church in which his father and mother
had been married, from which they had been carried side by side for
their long rest. It was midnight when he went up the broad staircase
to his room.

The following afternoon he dropped in to see Father Jennings, the
gentle little priest who had been beloved by two generations of all
denominations--and those of none. Terry loved the old study, which in
forty years had taken on something of the priest's character