r money, or anything, and don't intend to
return an equivalent. You are a small sized bilk. But what's the matter
with your Pa and the church, and what has the silver mine stock got to
do with it?"

"Well, you remember that exhorter that was here last fall, that used
to board around with the church people all the week, and talk about Zion
and laying up treasures where the moths wouldn't gnaw them, and they
wouldn't get rusty, and where thieves wouldn't pry off the hinges. He
was the one that used to go home with Ma from prayer meetings, when Pa
was down town, and who wanted to pay off the church debt in solid silver
bricks. He's the bilk. I guess if Pa should get him by the neck he would
jerk nine kinds of revealed religion out of him. O, Pa is hotter than he
was when the hornets took the lunch off of him. When you strike a pious
man on the pocket-book it hurts him. That fellow prayed and sang like an
angel, and boarded around like a tramp. He stopped at our house over a
week, and he had specimens of rock that were chuck full of silver and
gold, and he and Pa used to sit up nights and look at it. You could pick
pieces of silver out of the rock as big as buck shot, and he had some
silver bricks that were beautiful. He had been out in Colorado and found
a hill full of the silver rock, and he wanted to form a stock company
and dig out millions of dollars. He didn't want anybody but pious men
that belonged to the church, in the company, and I think that was one
thing that caused Pa to unite with the church so suddenly. I know he was
as wicked as could be a few days before he joined the church; but this
revivalist, with his words about the beautiful beyond where all shall
dwell together in peace, and sing praises; and his description of that
Colorado mountain where the silver stuck out so you could hang your hat
on it, converted Pa. That man's scheme was to let all the church
people who were in good standing, and who had plenty of money, into the
company, and when the mine begun to return dividends by the car load,
they could give largely to the church and pay the debts of all the
churches, and put down carpets and fresco the ceiling. The man said he
felt that he had been steered on to that silver mine by a higher power,
and his idea was to work it for the glory of the cause. He said he liked
Pa, and would make him vice president of the company. Pa, he bit like
a bass, and I guess he invested five thousand dollars in stock, a