house abut'nin' them side
but'ners.

"But fashion is fashion, an' when I send my gal out into society,
I'll send her in style. Patsy Butts," she whispered so loud that
everybody on her side of the house heard her--"when you starts up
that ole wheez-in' one gallus organ, go slow or you'll bust them
side-but'ners wide open."

When the Bishop came forward to preach his sermon, or talk to his
flock, as he called it, his surplice would have astonished anyone,
except those who had seen him thus attired so often. A stranger might
have laughed, but he would not have laughed long--the old man's
earnestness, sincerity, reverence and devotion were over-shadowing.
Its pathos was too deep for fun.

Instead of a clergyman's frock he wore a faded coat of blue buttoned
up to his neck. It had been the coat of an officer in the artillery,
and had evidently passed through the Civil War. There was a bullet
hole in the shoulder and a sabre cut in the sleeve.

CHAPTER VI

A BISHOP MILITANT

No one had ever heard the Bishop explain his curious surplice but
once, and that had been several years before, when the little chapel,
by the aid of a concert Miss Alice gave, contributions from the
Excelsior Mill headed by Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley, and other sources had
been furnished, and the Bishop came forward to make his first talk:

"This is the only church of its kind in the worl', I reckin'," he
said. "I've figured it out an' find we're made up of Baptis',
Metherdis', Presbyterian, 'Piscopalian, Cam'elites an' Hard-shells.
You've 'lected me Bishop, I reckon, 'cause I've jined all of 'em, an'
so far as I know I am the only man in the worl' who ever done that
an' lived to tell the tale. An' I'm not ashamed to say it, for I've
allers foun' somethin' in each one of 'em that's a little better than
somethin' in the other. An' if there's any other church that'll teach
me somethin' new about Jesus Christ, that puffect Man, I'll jine it.
I've never seed a church that had Him in it that wa'n't good enough
for me."

The old man smiled in humorous retrospection as he went on:

"The first company of Christians I jined was the Hard-shells. I was
young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad. I
liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the
way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight,
to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross--especially if we got our feet too
wet, which we mos' always