During the last few months Edna’s school had not been as large as usual, and when at last it closed for the summer vacation, it numbered only fifteen scholars, and she was not quite certain that she should open it again. She was as popular as ever. No one had aught to say against her, but Uncle Phil’s “Synagogue” had gotten him into a world of trouble, and made him many enemies. So long as the work made little or no progress, the people were quiet and regarded the thing as a crazy kind of project which, let alone, would die a natural death. And for a time it did bid fair to do so, for what with the trouble to get men, and the fearfully high prices when he did get them, and the bother it was to see to them, Uncle Phil was inclined to take the matter easy, and after the cellar-wall was laid, there were weeks and months during which nothing was done, and Squire Gardner said, with a knowing wink, “We hain’t lost the old man yet,” and began to talk seriously of repairing his own church and having the ladies get up a Fair, of which his wife and Ruth were to be head and front. Accordingly Ruth came down one day to talk with Edna about it, and get her interested, as with her taste and skill she was sure to be a powerful ally if once enlisted in the cause. But Edna would not commit herself, and Ruth returned home disheartened and disappointed. That night Uncle Phil was attacked with dizziness and a rush of blood to his head, which frightened him nearly out of his wits. “I can’t die yet,” he said, when recovered somewhat, “but it came pretty nigh takin’ me off. Yes, yes; had a narrer escape; but I can’t go yet; it’s no use talkin’. I ain’t ready, and that synagogue business ain’t moved a peg this two months; but if the Lord will set me on my legs agin, I promise to go at it at once. Try me and see if I don’t.” He was taken at his word, and once well again he attacked the chapel with a right good-will, and brought out men from Millville, and boarded them himself, and kept them at work early and late, and proved so conclusively that he was in earnest, that his opponents took the alarm, and waiting upon him a second time grew so warm and even provoking that Uncle Phil blazed up fiercely, and said he wouldn’t give a red toward any other church, nor ask anybody to give to his, and swore so hard that the Unitarians asked “how soon he intended to be confirmed;” while the Orthodox added that “it was of such materials the Episcopal church was composed,” and then Uncle Phil wondered if he was not being “persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” and if it would not be put to his account as a kind of offset for the _hay_ he had raked up and gotten into the barn away from the rain on two or three different Sundays which he could remember.