if he couldn't quite see the connection.
'Well,' says he, 'here we are, and they're expectin' you, for
there's a lady waitin' on the platform.'

"'A lady?' says I, risin' from my tomb. I'd begun to think before
there was truth in the sayin', 'You can't win at two games on the
same day,' but when I heard there was a lady waitin' for me--well,
if there's any man in this here bull-pen can think what I thought,
let him whisper it in confidence, and I'll make it right with him.

"I never knew how I got off that train of cars.

"Well, I oughtn't to have been scart--it was the littlest,
thinnest, palest, tremblingest woman you ever saw--why, there
wasn't a Mrs. Scraggs on the face of the earth that couldn't 'a'
dandled her in her arms like a baby.

"'Is this the Reverend Silas Hardcrop?' says she.

"'Yes, madam,' says I, thinkin' it best to humor her, even if she
was small.

"'I wanted to meet you first--I wanted to say--to speak--there's
something I felt I must tell you,' she says.

"Thinks I: 'No, you don't. So long's I've got a gun in each hind
pocket I reckon the men folks and me will get long all right, but
private conversations with ladies is off the bill-of-fare.' So I
says:

"'Y-a-a-s?' in a tone of voice to put out a bonfire.

"'Oh, it doesn't matter,' she said quick and shaky; 'it was silly
of me. I only thought----' Well, she was tremblin' with cold or
somethin', and kind of near cryin', too--one of them women that
wears themselves out by botherin' to be good, and if they are good,
botherin' about what ought to be done next. In short, as the
saying is, I forgot my part.

"'Why, you poor little critter,' says I; 'you're near froze to
death--take a drop of this,' pullin' out a flask of Peg-leg's best.

"'What?' she says, starting back in horror. 'Can that be _whisky_?'

"'Madam!' says I, rememberin', 'how dast you? That's a
prescription put up by my favorite physician--a small dose will do
you a large good. Try a piece, and we'll go in the station, where
it's warmer, I hope, and talk it over.'

"She strangled some, but downed a trifle.

"There was a good old lignite fire blazin' away 'n the station.

"'Now that you've been _so_ kind to me,' she says, 'I dare tell you
what I thought.'

"She had stopped shiverin'--Peg-leg's best knocked shivers quick.

"'I don't want you to think I do not believe in our tenets, because
I do, I _do_!' says she; 'but it's been such a hard and weary year,
w