"Wa'al, sir," declared David with the utmost gravity, "fer the next five years I never missed attendin' church on Thanksgivin' day but _four_ times; but after that," he added, "I had to beg off. It was too much of a strain," he declared with a chuckle, "an' it took more time 'n Polly c'd really afford to git me ready." And so he rambled on upon such topics as suggested themselves to his mind, or in reply to his auditor's comments and questions, which were, indeed, more perfunctory than otherwise. For the Verjooses, the Rogerses, the Swaynes, and the rest, were people whom John not only did not know, but whom he neither expected nor cared to know; and so his present interest in them was extremely small. Outside of his regular occupations, and despite the improvement in his domestic environment, life was so dull for him that he could not imagine its ever being otherwise in Homeville. It was a year since the world--his world--had come to an end, and though his sensations of loss and defeat had passed the acute stage, his mind was far from healthy. He had evaded David's question, or only half answered it, when he merely replied that the rector had called upon him. The truth was that some tentative advances had been made to him, and Mr. Euston had presented him to a few of the people in his flock; but beyond the point of mere politeness he had made no response, mainly from indifference, but to a degree because of a suspicion that his connection with Mr. Harum would not, to say the least, enhance his position in the minds of certain of the people of Homeville. As has been intimated, it seemed at the outset of his career in the village as if there had been a combination of circumstance and effort to put him on his guard, and, indeed, rather to prejudice him against his employer; and Mr. Harum, as it now appeared to our friend, had on one or two occasions laid himself open to misjudgment, if no more. No allusion had ever been made to the episode of the counterfeit money by either his employer or himself, and it was not till months afterward that the subject was brought up by Mr. Richard Larrabee, who sauntered into the bank one morning. Finding no one there but John, he leaned over the counter on his elbows, and, twisting one leg about the other in a restful attitude, proceeded to open up a conversation upon various topics of interest to his mind. Dick was Mr. Harum's confidential henchman and factotum, although not regularly so employed. His chief object in life was apparently to get as much amusement as possible out of that experience, and he was quite unhampered by over-nice notions of delicacy or bashfulness. But, withal, Mr. Larrabee was a very honest and loyal person, strong in his likes and dislikes, devoted to David, for whom he had the greatest admiration, and he had taken a fancy to our friend, stoutly maintaining that he "wa'n't no more stuck-up 'n you be," only, as he remarked to Bill Perkins, "he