t.

"Jeems Henery, air you the gamblin'est boy on Viper?" James Henry nodded
cheerfully.

"Air you the cussin'est boy on Viper?" Again there was a nod of cheerful
acknowledgment.

"Jeems Henery, air you the bigges' liar on Viper?" James Henry, looking
with adoring eyes at the Angel, nodded shameless shame for the third time,
and the Angel turned triumphantly.

"Thar now!" Astounded, St. Hilda looked from one brother to the other.

"Well, not one word of this have I heard before."

"Jeems Henery is a sly un--ain't you, Jeems Henery?"

"Uh-huh."

"Ain't nobody who can ketch up Jeems Henery 'ceptin' me."

"Well, Willie, if this is more than I can handle, don't you think you'd
better not go home but stay here and help me with James Henry?" The Angel
did not even hesitate.

"I reckon I better," he said, and he visibly swelled with importance.
"I had to lam' Jeems Henery this mornin', an' I reckon I'll have to
keep on lammin' him 'most every day."

"Don't you lam' James Henry at all," said St. Hilda decisively.

"All right," said the Angel. "Jeems Henery, git about yo' work now."

Thereafter St. Hilda kept watch on James Henry and he was, indeed,
a sly one. There was gambling going on. St. Hilda did not encourage
tale-bearing, but she knew it was going on. Still she could not catch
James Henry. One day the Angel came to her.

"I've got Jeems Henery to stop gamblin'," he whispered, "an' I didn't have
to lam' him." And, indeed, gambling thereafter ceased. The young man who
had come for the summer to teach the boys the games of the outside world
reported that much swearing had been going on but that swearing too had
stopped.

"I've got Jeems Henery to stop cussin'," reported the Angel, and so
St. Hilda rewarded him with the easy care of the nice new stable she
had built on the hillside. His duty was to clean it and set things in
order every day.

Some ten days later she was passing near the scene of the Angel's new
activities, and she hailed him.

"How are you getting along?" She called.

"Come right on, Miss Hildy," shouted the Angel. "I got ever'thing
cleaned up. Come on an' look in the _furthest_ corners!"

St. Hilda went on, but ten minutes later she had to pass that way again
and she did look in. Nothing had been done. The stable was in confusion
and a pitchfork lay prongs upward midway of the barn door.

"How's this, Ephraim?" she asked, mystified. Ephraim was a
fourteen-year-old boy who did the s