point of attending;
it was alleged by some to see if Jovita's glossy Indian-inky eyes would
suffer aberration in her devotions. But the rose-crested head was never
lifted from the well-worn prayer-book or the brown hands which held
a certain poor little cheap rosary like a child's string of battered
copper coins. Buckeye lounged by the wall through the service with
respectful tolerance and uneasy shifting legs, and came away. But the
apparently simple event did not end there. It was unconsciously charged
with a tremendous import to the settlement. For it was discovered the
next day by Mrs. "Bob" Carpenter and Nan Shuttleworth that the Methodist
Church at Fiddletown was too far away, and Buckeye ought to have a
preacher of its own. Seats were fitted up in the loft of Carpenter's
store-house, where the Reverend Henry McCorkle held divine service,
and instituted a Bible class. At the end of two weeks it appeared
that Jovita's invasion--which was to bring dissipation and ruin to
Buckeye--had indirectly brought two churches! A chilling doubt like a
cold mist settled along the river. As the two rival processions passed
on the third Sunday, Jo Bateman, who had been in the habit of reclining
on that day in his shirtsleeves under a tree, with a novel in his hand,
looked gloomily after them. Then knocking the ashes from his pipe, he
rose, shook hands with his partners, said apologetically that he had
lately got into the habit of RESPECTING THE SABBATH, and was too old
to change again, and so shook the red dust of Buckeye from his feet and
departed.

As yet there had not been the slightest evidence of disorderly conduct
on the part of the fair proprietress of the tienda, nor her customers,
nor any drunkenness or riotous disturbance that could be at all
attributed to her presence. There was, it is true, considerable
hilarity, smoking, and some gambling there until a late hour, but
this could not be said to interfere with the rest and comfort of other
people. A clue to the mystery of so extraordinary a propriety was given
by Jovita herself. One day she walked into Parks' Emporium and demanded
an interview with the proprietor.

"You have made the rules for thees Booki?"

"Yes--that is--I and my friends have."

"And when one shall not have mind the rule--when one have say, 'No! damn
the rule,' what shall you make to him? Shall you aprison him?"

Mr. Parks hastened to say with a superior, yet engaging smile that it
never had bee