Five minutes later, peeping through the kitchen window, I saw the mettlesome bay standing beside the big-headed, thick-necked gray, and the two men, each with one foot planted far forward after the manner of traders, facing one another with concert eloquence concerning the respective merits of the two animals. Presently they entered the house together, Doctor Betterled evidently in a cheerful frame of mind and William wearing his chastened look. Late in the afternoon, when our guest rode away, he was mounted on the bay; but he had not mentioned the horse race of the previous Saturday. William stood, the genial host, bareheaded at the gate till the rider's back was turned; then he came into the house, dropped into a chair at the open window and fixed his eyes, with a deep frown above them, upon the gray horse asleep in his dotage under the apple tree in the barnyard. "That horse has three windgalls, he is swinneyed in both shoulders, and I think he has a gravel in one of his forefeet!" he remarked in a tone of deep dejection. I laughed and felt more nearly kin to him morally than I had ever felt before. There was a squint-eyed shrewdness in the way he involved and disposed of the Presiding Elder that was wittily familiar to me, and all the more diverting because William never suspected the Machiavellian character of his conduct. He kept his eye on God, as usual, letting not his soul's right hand know what his left one was doing. But, going back to Brother Brock and the subject of Methodist stewards in general. The preacher soon discovers that the rich ones are the most obstreperous. And besides the good ones, the rich, obstreperous ones are divided into two classes. The first class consists of those who threaten to resign if everything is not done according to their desires, which they hide and compel you to find out the best way you can. Occasionally a preacher gets into a community where everybody in the church--from the janitor to the steward and treasurer--has this mania for threatening to resign. I shall never forget William's first experience with such a church. It was in a little village where human interest consisted in everybody hating, suspecting or despising everyone else. He went about like a damned soul, trying to restore peace and brotherly love. But they would have none of either. Each steward approached him privately and tendered his resignation, giving reasons that reflected upon the character of some other steward. Then the organist tendered her resignation because the Sunday-school superintendent had reflected upon her playing, and she retaliated by reflecting upon his unmarried morals. When the superintendent heard of her complaint and withdrawal he at once sent in his resignation, because he did not wish to cause contention in the church.