"'You better just bar out the carpenters o' this world, friends, an' done with it!' "It was Abel Halsey, standin' in the entry, lookin' as handsome as the law allows. An' I see he happened to be there because the Through was about due,--that's the one that don't stop here,--an' you can always get a good view of it from this slope. You know Abel never misses watchin' a fast train go 'long, if he can help himself. "'What's the i-dea?' Abel says. 'How can you pray at all in closets an' places that ain't been dedicated? I shouldn't think they'd be holy enough, 's'e.' "'That,' says the postmaster, sure o' support, 'ain't the question.' "'I thought it couldn't be,' says Abel, amiable. 'Well, what is the question? Whether prayer is prayer, no matter where you're prayin'?' "'Oh, no,' says Eppleby Holcomb, soothin', 'it ain't that.' "'I thought it couldn't be that,' says Abel. 'Is it whether the Lord is in dedicated spots an' nowheres else?' "'Abel Halsey,' Timothy tarts up, 'you needn't to be sacrilegious.' "'But,' says Abel, 'the question is, whether _you_'re sacrilegious to deny a prayer-meetin' or any other good use to the church or to any other place, dedicated or not. Well, Timothy, I think you are.' "Timothy clears his throat an' dabs at the palm of his hand with his other front finger. But before he could lay down eternal law, we sort o' heard, almost before we knew we heard, folks hurryin' past out here on the frozen ground. An' they was shoutin', like questions, an' a-shoutin' further off. We looked out, an' I can remember how the whole slope up from the village there was black with folks. "We run outside, an' I know I kep' close by Abel Halsey. An' I got hold o' what had happened when somebody yelled an answer to his askin'. You probably heard all about that part. It was the day the Through Express went off the track down there in the cut beyond the Pump pasture. "We run with the rest of 'em, me keepin' close to Abel, I guess because he's got a way with him that makes you think he'd know what to do no matter what. But when he was two-thirds o' the way acrost the pasture, he stops short an' grabs at my sleeve. "'Look here,' he says, 'you can't go down there. You mustn't do it. We donno what'll be. You stay here,' he says; 'you set there under the cottonwood.' "You kind o' _haf_ to mind Abel. It's sort o' grained in that man to hev folks disciple after him. I made him promise he'd motion from the fence if he see I could help any, an' then I se' down under that big tree down there. I was tremblin' some, I know. It always seems like wrecks are somethin' that happen in other states an' in the dark. But when one's on ground that you know like a book an' was brought up on,--when it's in the daylight, right by a pasture you've been acrost always an' where you've walked the ties,--well, I s'pose it's the same feelin' as when a man you know cuts up a state's prison caper; seem's like he _can't_ of, because you knew him.