He jumped to open the door, but it opened afore he got there and Beriah come in. He didn't pay no attention to the welcome he got from the gang, but just stood on the sill, pale, but grinning the grin that a terrier dog has on just as you're going to let the rat out of the trap. Somebody outside says: “Whoa, consarn you!” Then there was a thump and a sloshy stamping on the steps, and in comes Eben and the widder. I had one of them long-haired, foreign cats once that a British skipper gave me. 'Twas a yeller and black one and it fell overboard. When we fished it out it looked just like the Kelly woman done then. Everybody but Beriah just screeched--we couldn't help it. But the prophet didn't laugh; he only kept on grinning. Emma looked once round the room, and her eyes, as well as you could see 'em through the snarl of dripping hair and hat-trimming, fairly snapped. Then she went up the stairs three steps at a time. Eben didn't say a word. He just stood there and leaked. Leaked and smiled. Yes, sir! his face, over the mess that had been that rainbow necktie, had the funniest look of idiotic joy on it that ever _I_ see. In a minute everybody else shut up. We didn't know what to make of it. 'Twas Beriah that spoke first. “He! he! he!” he chuckled. “He! he! he! Wasn't it kind of wet coming through the woods, Mr. Cobb? What does Mrs. Kelly think of the day her beau picked out to go to camp-meeting in?” Then Eben came out of his trance. “Beriah,” says he, holding out a dripping flipper, “shake!” But Beriah didn't shake. Just stood still. “I've got a s'prise for you, shipmate,” goes on Eben. “Who did you say that lady was?” Beriah didn't answer. I begun to think that some of the wet had soaked through the assistant prophet's skull and had give him water on the brain. “You called her Mis' Kelly, didn't you?” gurgled Eben. “Wall, that ain't her name. Her and me stopped at the Baptist parsonage over to East Harniss when we was on the way home and got married. She's Mis' Cobb now,” he says. Well, the queerest part of it was that 'twas the bad weather was really what brought things to a head so sudden. Eben hadn't spunked up anywhere nigh enough courage to propose, but they stopped at Ostable so long, waiting for the rain to let up, that 'twas after dark when they was half way home. Then Emma--oh, she was a slick one!--said that her reputation would be ruined, out that way with a man that wa'n't her husband. If they was married now, she said--and even a dummy could take THAT hint. I found Beriah at the weather-shanty about an hour afterwards with his head on his arms. He looked up when I come in.