uld Small try to win Hannah's love to throw it away
again, as he had done with others? At least he would not spare any pains
to turn the heart of the bound girl against Ralph.

The bright flame on the forestick, which Ralph had been watching,
flickered and burned low.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CHURCH OF THE BEST LICKS.

Just as the flame on the forestick, which Ralph had watched so
intensely, flickered and burned low, and just as Ralph with a heavy but
not quite hopeless heart rose to leave, the latch lifted and Bud
re-entered.

"I wanted to say something," he stammered, "but you know it's hard to
say it. I ha'n't no book-larnin to speak of, and some things is hard to
say when a man ha'n't got book-words to say 'em with. And they's some
things a man can't hardly ever say anyhow to anybody."

Here Bud stopped. But Ralph spoke in such a matter-of-course way in
reply that he felt encouraged to go on.

"You gin up Hanner kase you thought she belonged to me. That's more'n
I'd a done by a long shot. Now, arter I left here jest now, I says to
myself, a man what can gin up his gal on account of sech a feeling fer
the rights of a Flat Cricker like me, why, dog-on it, says I, sech a man
is the man as can help me do better. I don't know whether you're a
Hardshell or a Saftshell, or a Methodist, or a Campbellite, or a New
Light, or a United Brother, or a Millerite, or what-not. But I says, the
man what can do the clean thing by a ugly feller like me, and stick to
it, when I was jest ready to eat him up, is a kind of a man to tie to."

Here Bud stopped in fright at his own volubility, for he had run his
words off like a piece learned by heart, as though afraid that if he
stopped he would not have courage to go on.

Ralph said that he did not belong to any church, and he was afraid he
couldn't do Bud much good. But his tone was full of sympathy, and, what
is better than sympathy, a yearning for sympathy.

"You see," said Bud, "I wanted to git out of this low-lived, Flat Crick
way of livin'. We're a hard set down here, Mr. Hartsook. And I'm gittin'
to be one of the hardest of 'em. But I never could git no good out of
Bosaw with his whisky and meanness. And I went to the Mount Tabor church
concert. I heard a man discussin' baptism, and regeneration, and so on.
That didn't seem no cure for me, I went to a revival over at Clifty.
Well, 'twarn't no use. First night they was a man that spoke about Jesus
Christ in sech a way tha