nherited unanalyzed from her childhood, when old Hosie Hollingsworth
had been the chief scandal of the town--an infidel, who had dared
challenge the creation of the earth in seven days, and yet was not
stricken down by a fiery bolt from heaven! She did not pursue the
subject of Bruce, but went directly to her business.

"I understand that you have an office to rent."

"So I have. Like to see it?"

"That is what I called for."

"Just come along with me."

He rose, and Katherine followed him to the floor above and into a room
furnished much as the one she had just left.

"This office was last used," commented old Hosie, "by a young fellow
who taught school down in Buck Creek Township and got money to study
law with. He tried law for a while." The old man's thin prehensile
lips shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. "He's down in
Buck Creek Township teaching school to get money to pay his back
office rent."

"How about the furniture?" asked Katherine.

"That was his. He left it in part payment. You can use it if you want
to."

"But I don't want those things about"--pointing gingerly to a pair of
cuspidors.

"All right. Though I don't see how you expect to run a law office in
Westville without 'em." He bent over and took them in his hands. "I'll
take 'em along. I need a few more, for my business is picking up."

"I suppose I can have possession at once."

"Whenever you please."

Standing with the cuspidors in his two hands the old lawyer looked her
over. He slowly grinned, and a dry cackle came out of his lean throat.

"I was born out there in Buck Creek Township myself," he said. "Folks
all Quakers, same as your ma's and your Aunt Rachel's. I was brought
up on plowing, husking corn and going to meeting. Never smiled till
after I was twenty; wore a halo, size too large, that slipped down and
made my ears stick out. My grandfather's name was Elijah, my father's
Elisha. My father had twelve sons, and beginning with me, Hosea, he
named 'em all in order after the minor prophets. Being brought up in a
houseful of prophets, naturally a lot of the gift of prophecy sort of
got rubbed off on me."

"Well?" said Katherine impatiently, not seeing the pertinence of this
autobiography.

Again he shifted his cigar. "Well, when I prophesy, it's inspired," he
went on. "And you can take it as the word that came unto Hosea, that a
woman lawyer settling in Westville is going to raise the very dickens
in this ol