ith him, and he was
listless, and he made strange gestures and did foolish things as he
stumbled down the mountain. He was going over a little knoll now, and
he could see the creek that ran around his house, but he was not
touched. He would just as soon have lain down right where he was, or
have turned around and gone back, except that it was hot and he wanted
to get to the water. He remembered that it was nigh Christmas; he saw
the snow about him and the cakes of ice in the creek. He knew that he
ought not to be hot, and yet he was--so hot that he refused to reason
with himself even a minute, and hurried on. It was odd that it should
be so, but just about that time, over in Virginia, a cattle dealer,
nearing home, stopped to tell a neighbor how he had tricked some
black-whiskered fool up in the mountains. It may have been just when
he was laughing aloud over there, that the Senator, over here, tore his
woollen shirt from his great hairy chest and rushed into the icy
stream, clapping his arms to his burning sides and shouting in his
frenzy.

"If he had lived a little longer," said a constituent, "he would have
lost the next election. He hadn't the money, you know."

"If he had lived a little longer," said the mountain preacher high up
on Yellow Creek, "I'd have got that trade I had on hand with him
through. Not that I wanted him to die, but if he had to--why--"

"If he had lived a little longer," said the Senator's lawyer, "he would
have cleaned off the score against him."

"If he had lived a little longer," said the Senator's sister, not
meaning to be unkind, "he would have got all I have."

That was what life held for the Senator. Death was more kind.

PREACHIN' ON KINGDOM-COME

I've told ye, stranger, that Hell fer Sartain empties, as it oughter,
of co'se, into Kingdom-Come. You can ketch the devil 'most any day in
the week on Hell fer Sartain, an' sometimes you can git Glory
everlastin' on Kingdom-Come. Hit's the only meetin'-house thar in
twenty miles aroun'.

Well, the reg'lar rider, ole Jim Skaggs, was dead, an' the bretherin
was a-lookin' aroun' fer somebody to step into ole Jim's shoes. Thar'd
been one young feller up thar from the settlemints, a-cavortin' aroun',
an' they was studyin' 'bout gittin' him.

"Bretherin' an' sisteren," I says, atter the leetle chap was gone,
"he's got the fortitood to speak an' he shorely is well favored. He's
got a mighty good hawk eye fer spyin' ou