was the only person in the church that was surprised. When
they'd got through givin' us the right hand o' fellowship, and I went
back to our pew, Abram took hold o' my hand and held on to it like he
never would let go, and I knew I'd done the right thing and I never
would regret it."

There was a light on the old woman's face that made me turn my eyes
away. Here was a personal revelation that should have satisfied the
most exacting, but my vulgar curiosity cried out for further light on
the past.

"What would you have done," I asked, "if Uncle Abram hadn't turned the
horse that Sunday morning--if he had gone straight on to Goshen?"

Aunt Jane regarded me for a moment with a look of pitying allowance,
such as one bestows on a child who doesn't know any better than to ask
stupid questions.

"Shuh, child," she said with careless brevity, "Abram couldn't 'a'
done such a thing as that."

[Illustration]

VII

HOW SAM AMOS RODE IN THE

TOURNAMENT

[Illustration]

"There's one thing I'd like mighty well to see again before I die,"
said Aunt Jane, "and that is a good, old-fashioned fair. The apostle
says we must 'press forward, forgetting the things that are behind,'
but there's some things I've left behind that I can't never forget,
and the fairs we had in my day is one of 'em."

It was the quietest hour of an August afternoon--that time when one
seems to have reached "the land where it is always afternoon"--and
Aunt Jane and I were sitting on the back porch, shelling butter-beans
for the next day's market. Before us lay the garden in the splendid
fulness of late summer. Concord and Catawba grapes loaded the vines on
the rickety old arbor; tomatoes were ripening in reckless plenty, to
be given to the neighbors, or to lie in tempting rows on the
window-sill of the kitchen and the shelves of the back porch; the
second planting of cucumber vines ran in flowery luxuriance over the
space allotted to them, and even encroached on the territory of the
squashes and melons. Damsons hung purpling over the eaves of the
house, and wasps and bees kept up a lively buzzing as they feasted on
the windfalls of the old yellow peach tree near the garden gate.
Nature had distributed her sunshine and showers with wise generosity
that year, and neither in field nor in garden was there lack of any
good thing. Perhaps it was this gracious abundance, presaging fine
exhibits at the coming fair, that turned Aunt Jane's thoughts tow