pron. "I declare, I don't see how "----

"_Some_ preachers, not _all_ preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
t'other kind."

"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.

"Now, Merry Etty, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I
go in an' set the tea on."

Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
call the hired hand out of the cornfield.

"How'd y' come to send _him_ here?" asked Mrs. Bacon, nodding toward
Pill.

"Damfino! I kind o' liked him--no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
the cistern.

At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe," ate with his knife,
talked on fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover, told
of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them--hired man and
all--to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench on
religious matters at all.

The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open month, at times forgetting to
eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.

"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact--that is, I think
so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent--in
plain terms, poor--they _can't_ do any better than they do. But we pull
through--we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
bet a hat I can _down_ you three out of five."

"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
bet.

"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon from his lion-like
throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the shadow of his
gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders at the same
time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a rare specimen.

After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Marietta,
beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
putting on one of Mrs. Bacon's aprons to help milk the cows.

* * * * *

But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
into their food as usua