After the first exchange of noisy greetings, "Say, Marty, dad's asked me to run down in your part of the world and look at some new barn furniture that's been put in around Ellis--ventilators and stanchions and individual drinking cups for the Holsteins--not like the way we used to treat the cows on our farm, hey? Well, what do you say if I turn fashionable for once and come down for the week-end--not this week, but next?" No need to ask Marty a question like that. "Come on down. Make it Friday and I'll show you the sights. We've got something doing at the Ellis Church, something I want you to see." Then Marty thought of a few books that he had left at home--"And--hello, J.W., are you listening? Well, how'd you like to go out to the farm before you come down here? Jeanette has gathered a bundle of my books, and I need 'em. Won't you get 'em for me and bring them along?" Certainly, J.W. would. The farm was home to both the boys, and J.W. was almost as welcome there as Marty; to one member of the family quite so, though she had never mentioned it. On the next Sunday morning J.W. drove out of town in time to get to the little old church of his childhood for morning service. Then he would go home with the Shenks for dinner, spend the afternoon, get the books and come home when he was ready. There was no hurry. J.W., Sr., had given him two Sundays' leave of absence from Sunday school. The next Sunday would be his and Marty's, but this would be his and Jeannette's. Not that he needed to make any special plans for being with Jeannette Shenk; of late he had found the half hour drive down to the old farm the prelude to a pleasant evening. Sometimes he would make the round trip twice, running out to bring Jeanette into town, when something was going on, and taking her home afterward in the immemorial fashion. As J.W. turned to the church yard lane leading up to the old horseshed, he noticed that there were only two cars there besides his own--and one old-time sidebar buggy, battered and mud-bedaubed, with a decrepit and dejected-looking gray mare between the shafts. It was time for meeting, and he contrasted to-day's emptiness of the long sheds with the crowding vehicles of his childhood memories. In those days so tightly were buggies and surries and democrats, and even spring wagons and an occasional sulky wedged into the space, that it was nothing unusual for the sermon to be interrupted by an uproar in the sheds, when some peevish horse attempted to set its teeth in the neck of a neighbor, with a resultant squealing and plunging, a cramping of wheels and a rattle of harness which could neutralize the most vociferous circuit rider's eloquence. At the door, J.W. fell in with the little group of men, who, according to ancient custom, had waited in the yard for the announcement of the first hymn before ending their talk of crops and roads and stock, and joining the women and children within.