“Good! Good man!” spoke up Pole Baker, impulsively, unconscious of where he was. “Jas', yo're the right stuff.” And then, in the dead silence that followed his ejaculation, Pole realized what he had said and lowered his head in red embarrassment, for Dole's fierce eyes were bearing down on him. The preacher's pent-up wrath burst; he was really more infuriated at the man who had just left the church, but he had to make an example of some one, and Pole had laid himself open to attack. “This is no place fer rowdies,” he snarled. “That outlaw back thar who has been continually disturbing these proceedings ort to be jailed. He's undertakin' to bring his violations of decency into the very house of God.” A vast surprise clutched the congregation, who, knowing Pole, scented trouble. And Pole did not disappoint them. With his flabby hat in his brawny grasp, Pole stood up, but his wife, who sat on the women's side across the aisle from him with her three eldest children, stepped to him and drew him back in his seat, sitting by him and whispering imploringly. Dole stared fiercely for a moment, and then, seeing that the disturbance was over, he shrugged his broad shoulders and applied himself to the business in hand. “Is thar anybody else pro or con that ud like to be heerd?” It was the widow Pellham, sitting well towards the front, who now rose. “I feel like Jas' Marmaduke does,” she began, falteringly. Her hearers could not see her face, for she wore a black calico sunbonnet, and it was tilted downward. “I believe I 'll be committin' of a grievous sin ef I let my natural back'ard-ness keep me quiet. Abner Daniel was the fust, last, an' only pusson that made me see the true way into God's blessed sunshine out o' the pitch-black darkness that was over me. All of you, especially them livin' nigh me, knowed how I acted when my daughter Mary died. We'd lived together sence she was born, an' after her pa passed away she was all I had. Then God up an' tuck 'er. I tell you it made a devil out'n me. I liter'ly cussed my Maker an' swore revenge agin 'Im. I quit meetin' an' closed my door agin my neighbors. They all tried to show me whar I was wrong, but I wouldn't listen. Some nights I set up from dark till daylight without candle or fire, bemeanin' my God fer the way He'd done me. You remember, brother Dole, that you come a time or two an' prayed an' read, but I didn't budge out'n my cheer an' wouldn't bend a knee. Then that other little preacher, that was learnin' to preach, an' tuck yore place when you went off to bury yore mother--he come an' made a set at me, but every word he said made me wuss. I ordered _him_ off the hill, an' told 'im ef he appeared agin I'd set my dog on 'im. I don't know why everybody made me so mad, but they did. The devil had me by the leg, an' was a-drag-gin' me as fast to his hole as a dog kin trot. But one mornin' Abner Daniel come over with that thar devilish twinkle in his eyes that ud make a cow laugh, an' begun to