town in time to get to the
little old church of his childhood for morning service. Then he would go
home with the Shenks for dinner, spend the afternoon, get the books and
come home when he was ready. There was no hurry. J.W., Sr., had given
him two Sundays' leave of absence from Sunday school. The next Sunday
would be his and Marty's, but this would be his and Jeannette's.

Not that he needed to make any special plans for being with Jeannette
Shenk; of late he had found the half hour drive down to the old farm the
prelude to a pleasant evening. Sometimes he would make the round trip
twice, running out to bring Jeanette into town, when something was
going on, and taking her home afterward in the immemorial fashion.

As J.W. turned to the church yard lane leading up to the old horseshed,
he noticed that there were only two cars there besides his own--and one
old-time sidebar buggy, battered and mud-bedaubed, with a decrepit and
dejected-looking gray mare between the shafts.

It was time for meeting, and he contrasted to-day's emptiness of the
long sheds with the crowding vehicles of his childhood memories. In
those days so tightly were buggies and surries and democrats, and even
spring wagons and an occasional sulky wedged into the space, that it was
nothing unusual for the sermon to be interrupted by an uproar in the
sheds, when some peevish horse attempted to set its teeth in the neck of
a neighbor, with a resultant squealing and plunging, a cramping of
wheels and a rattle of harness which could neutralize the most
vociferous circuit rider's eloquence.

At the door, J.W. fell in with the little group of men, who, according
to ancient custom, had waited in the yard for the announcement of the
first hymn before ending their talk of crops and roads and stock, and
joining the women and children within.

Inside the contrast with the older day was even more striking. The
church, small as it was, seemed almost empty. The Shenks were there,
including Jeannette, as J.W. promptly managed to observe. Father Foltz
and his middle-aged daughter stood in their accustomed place; they had
come in the venerable sidebar buggy, just as for two decades past.
Mother Foltz hadn't been out of the house in years, and among J.W.'s
earliest recollections were those of the cottage prayer meetings that he
had attended with his father in Mrs. Foltz's speckless sickroom. Then
there were the four Newells, and Mrs. Bellamy, and Mr. and Mrs. Haggar