"Well, there are worse places than Green Valley," admitted Frank, thinking that the man must be the occupant of some one of the new bungalows that had gone up that spring and summer. "Green Valley," continued Frank, "has its faults and its fools and bad spots here and there in the roads and entirely too much back-fence and street-corner gossip. But I've seen days here in Green Valley that just about melt all the meanness out of one, they're so fine; and moonlight so soft and pure and holy that you wouldn't mind dying in it. And Green Valley folks are ornery enough on top and when things are going smoothly for you. But just let there be a smash-up or a stroke of bad luck and their shells crack and humanness just oozes out of them. They're about as decent a lot as you'll find anywhere." This, after a hard day and on an empty stomach, was a remarkable speech for Frank Burton. He was not much given to voicing his real feelings and showing his heart to light-hearted Green Valley and usually covered his deeper sentiments with a sturdy flow of fault-finding. But there was something magnetic about the young stranger and to his own growing surprise Frank talked on and enjoyed doing it. The two men left the train together and parted at Martin's drug store with the understanding that if it didn't rain they would on the coming Saturday start on that chicken house. And they did. Frank came home that evening in unusually fine spirits and asked his wife about the various new people. He told her of his meeting with the stranger who seemed to know him but whom he did not remember ever seeing before. Jennie guessed him to be, "Mrs. Hamilton's husband. I've never seen him either but they say he's such a pleasant man. They're both Christian Scientists or something like that and she's ever so nice a woman. They've only been here a few months but everybody likes them." "Well," spoke up Frank, still thinking of the pleasant passing of what was usually a tiresome train trip, "if Christian Science makes a man as likable and neighborly as that I, for one, approve of Christian Science. What did you say his name was--Hamilton?" It was because Frank was so willing to let every man worship his God in his very own way that Green Valley, that is the religiously watchful part of it, had decided that Frank was an atheist. For, said these cautious children of God, "He who is willing to believe in all things believes in nothing." But it wasn't religion that the two men talked that Saturday afternoon. The sun was warm, the lumber dry, the saws sharp and with the work going smoothly along there was plenty of time for talk, talk on all manner of subjects.