dn't let them work
Saturday and they wouldn't work Sunday. Your poor uncle was afraid to
let them work on Saturday, for, accordin' to his religion, you'd be
damned if you let your hired help work just the same as if you worked
yourself; but he used to say he'd be damned if he'd let them sit idle
and him payin' them big wages, and it was a bad mix-up, I tell you.
And then there was old man Redmond, he got religion and began to give
back things he said he'd stole--brought back bags to Steadman that he
'said he stole at a threshin' at my place; but they had Steadman's
name on them. It made lots of trouble, Bud, and I never saw anything
but trouble come out of this real rip-roarin' Methodist religion, and
I don't want you to get mixed up in it."

Bud went down the ravine that led to the river with a troubled heart.
There was something sweet and satisfying just within reach, but it
eluded him as he tried to grasp it. Bud had never heard of
conviction of sin, repentance and justification, but he knew that a
mysterious something was struggling within him. He found the cows,
and turned them homeward. Then he flung himself on the grassy slope
of the river-bank and gave himself to bitter reflections. "There is
no use of me tryin' to be anybody," he thought sadly. "I don't know
anything, and I'd just make a fool of myself if I was to try to do
anything."

A flock of plovers circled over his head, rapidly whirring their
wings, then sailing easily higher and higher into the blue of the
evening sky. He looked after them enviously.

"Things don't bother those chaps," he said to himself.

He started up suddenly. Some one was calling his name. Looking across
the ravine, he saw Pearl Watson standing outside the fence.

"Hello, Bud!" she shouted. "What's wrong?"

He ran down the bank and up the opposite side of the ravine.

"I am all out of humour, Pearl," he said. "I wish I had never been
born. I'm a big awkward lump."

Pearl looked at him closely.

"That's the devil, Bud," she said gravely. "He gets into people and
tells them they're no good, an' never will be. It's just his way of
keepin' people from doin' good things. You see, Bud, the devil ain't
so terrible particular about gettin' us to do bad things as just to
keep us from doin' good ones. If you do nothin' at all it will please
him all right, for all you've got to do to be lost is to do nothin'.
It's just like a stick in the river. If it just keeps quiet it will
go do