u make yo'selves at
home," she said, "I hope you'll l'arn not to pay no attention to Jasper.
Lou, haven't you spoke to the folks?"

"No'm, but I can. Howdy."

CHAPTER II.

JIM, THE PREACHER.

During the rest of the day the visitors were permitted to amuse
themselves. Lou was shy, Margaret was distantly respectful and the old
man went about in leisurely attendance upon his affairs, not yet wholly
unsuspicious. A week before the arrival of the "folks from off yander,"
as the strangers were termed, there had come to Jasper's house a nephew,
Jim Starbuck, a mountain-side preacher. His air bespoke that gentleness
resultant of passion bound and gagged. At eighteen he had been known as
the terror of the creek. Without avail old Jasper had argued with him,
with fresh scalps dangling at his own belt. One night Jim turned a
revival meeting into a fight with bench legs, beat a hard-hearted money
lender until he was taken home almost a mass of pulp. At nineteen he
turned a hapless school teacher out of the school house, nailed up the
door, and because the teacher muttered against it, threw the pedagogue
into the creek. At twenty he seemed to hear a voice coming from afar. A
man going to mill said that he saw Jim beside a log on his knees in the
woods, praying; he was called a liar, knocked down his insulter and went
on with his grist. He had spoken the truth, for on the night following,
Jim arose in the congregation, renounced his reckless ways, and with a
defiance of the world that among the righteous awaked applause, he came
forward and knelt at the mourners' bench. His religion "took," they
said, as if speaking of vaccination, and before long he entered the
pulpit, ready gently to crack the irreligious heads of former companions
still stubborn in the ways of iniquity. From behind a plum bush, in the
corner of the fence, he had seen Mrs. Mayfield and had blinked, as if
dazzled by a great light. Nor was it till the close of day that he had
the courage to come into her presence, and then for a moment he
gazed--and vanished. Old Jasper found him mumbling beneath the moon.

"Lost anythin', Jim?"

"Nothing that I ever thought I had, Uncle Jasper."

"Look like a man that is huntin' fur his terbacker."

"I've quit tobacco long ago, Uncle Jasper."

"Huh, give that up, too? Then you have been hit hard. But atter all, my
boy, a lick that ain't hard don't count fur much. Understand I believe
in yo' Book all right, but not