"Confound that fellow!" muttered Bartram, "he's in my way wherever I move. I've heard too much of him in the stores and the courts and everywhere else that I have been obliged to go. I have to hear of him at the residence of my own sweetheart whenever I call there, and now I find Eleanor herself, who has never been able to endure any of the commoner specimens of humanity, apparently taking up the cudgels in his defence. I wish I could understand the fascination that fellow exerts over a number of people so much better than himself. Hang it! I am going to find out. He is a fool, if ever there was one, and I am not. If I can't get at the secret of it, it will be the first time that I have ever been beaten in examining and cross-examining such a common specimen of humanity." Thus speaking, the lawyer crossed the street and entered the shop, but, to his disgust, found both the cobbler's sons there with their father. The boys, with a curiosity common to all very young people, and particularly intense among the classes who have nothing in particular to think of, stared at him so fixedly that he finally rose abruptly and departed without saying a word. The boys went out soon after, and Billy remarked to Tom, as the two sauntered homeward,-- "Tom, what do you s'pose is the reason that feller comes in to see dad so much?" "Gettin' a pair of shoes made, I s'pose," said Tom, sulkily, for he had just failed in an attempt to extract a quarter of a dollar from his father. "The shoes that dad was makin' for him," said Billy, "was done two or three weeks ago, 'cause I took 'em to his office myself. But he comes to the shop over an' over again, 'cause I've seen him there, an' whenever he comes he manages to get talkin' with dad about religion. He always begins it, too, 'cause dad never says nothin' about it unless the lawyer starts it first." "Well," said Tom, "seems to me that if he wants to know anythin' on that subject he could go to some of the preachers, that ought to know a good deal more about it than dad does." "Can't tell so much about that sort o' thing," said Billy. "There's lots of men in this town that don't know much about some things that knows a good deal about some others. You know when that dog we stole last summer got sick, there was nobody in town could do anythin' for him except that old lame nigger down in the holler." "Well, you're a sweet one, ain't you?" said Tom. "What's dogs got to do with religion, I'd like to know? You ought to be ashamed o' yourself, even if you ain't never been to church." "Well," said Billy, "what I was meanin' is, some folks seem to know a good deal about things without bein' learned, that other folks will give their whole time to, an' don't know very much about. Every place that I go to, somebody says somethin' to me about dad an' religion. Say, Tom, do you know dad's mighty different to what he used to be before he got took up?"