to the preacher thar. Have I,
Jim?"

"No, Uncle Jasper."

"Much obleeged to you, Jim; and instead of stayin' five weeks with us as
you said you 'lowed to, I wush you'd stay longer. I need you to prove
things by. Couldn't make it five months, could you, Jim?"

"No, Uncle Jasper, I must get back to my mountain-side flock. There's
many a poor old man tottering along that needs me to help him walk."

"That's a fact," said Starbuck, and turning to Mrs. Mayfield he
continued: "He settles nearly all their troubles, ma'm; he's not only
their church but their cou't house. I've seed him preach the gospel with
one hand and with the other one tear up a lawsuit."

Lou, standing on a chair, had taken down an old gun which rested upon
deer horns above the fire place, and was exhibiting it to Tom. "My
great grandfather carried it at the battle of New Orleans," she said;
and reverently the young man took the gun and pressed the butt to his
shoulder, taking aim. "No wonder our country has a spirit that can't be
crushed," he remarked, lowering the ancient war hound and looking into
its black mouth.

"When we've got such guns?" she said, smiling down upon him, still
standing on the chair.

"No, not such guns but men who do such deeds and women who are proud of
them."

Jasper looked round and saw that the young man in his carelessness had
the gun pointed at him. "Here," he called, "turn that thing tuther way."

"Why it isn't loaded, is it?" Tom asked, returning the gun to Lou.

"No, but them's the sort that usually goes off and kills folks. Thar's
an old sayin', ma'm," he said to Mrs. Mayfield, "that thar's danger in a
gun without lock, stock, or barrel--you kin w'ar a feller out with the
ram-rod."

Lou replaced the gun and sat down. Tom stood over her, slily showing her
some verses. Mrs. Mayfield, glancing round, understood that it was a
"poetic situation," and remarked to Jasper. "Just now we were speaking
of trouble. Heart-hunger is the real poetry of life--heart-hunger and
heart-ache; our pleasures are but jingling rhymes."

Jasper and his wife exchanged glances, and the old man said: "Husband
dead, ma'm?"

"Worse than that, Mr. Starbuck."

"Why, ain't that awful," Margaret declared.

Jasper studied for a few moments and then inquired: "Wan't hung, was
he?"

She shook her head, sighed and made answer: "We were divorced."

Then the old man thought to be consoling. "Well, let us hope that you
won't marry him over ag