Thus did it happen with Mr. Bodger, of Bunker’s Mills, and with Mr. Hackfeather, of Ellenville South Farms, who both found their way to Jericho Pond that pleasant afternoon, the theological student a little in advance of the business man. Mr. Hackfeather came to rebuke a shocking case of impropriety in two so young; Mr. Bodger came to express the sentiment of society at large toward a man who would inflict corporal chastisement on a lady. Terrible as with an army with banners, and consumed with the fire of righteousness, Mr. Hackfeather bore down on the old-fashioned garden at the back of the bungalow, in the full glory of the Spring afternoon. As to his person, he was attired in a long, black diagonal frock-coat, worn unbuttoned, and so well worn that its flaps waved in the wind with all the easy grace of a linen duster. Trousers of the kind that chorus together: “We are pants,” adorned his long, thin but heavily-kneed legs. A shoestring necktie, a low cut waistcoat, and a whole-souled, oh-be-joyful shirtfront added to this simple but harmonious effect, and his last year’s hat had a mellow tone against the pale Springtime greens. He tackled Miss Hipsy (who had so far relented from her austerity as to take the baby while the nurse got dinner,) in that old-fashioned garden; and the benign influences of budding nature had no effect whatever upon his pious wrath. He pointed out the discrepancy in the dates of the vital statistics of the Wick family, and he told Miss Hipsy that she was [Illustration] the servant of sin, (who had been a respectable woman for forty-three years, and if some as ought to know better said it was forty-seven there was no truth in it,) that she was the slave of iniquity and abettor of sin, (and if them she knowed of, one leastways, was alive to-day she would not be insulted,) that the demon vice should not rear its hideous head in that unpolluted community, (and she wasn’t rarin’ no heads, but she could go to them she knowed of as could rare their heads as high as him or any of his friends,) and that even if he, Mr. Hackfeather, had to face all the minions of Satan, and all the retinue of the Scarlet Woman, he would purify the stain or die in the attempt. Mr. Hackfeather’s allusion to the Lady of Babylon probably was born of a mixed condition of mind, and a desire to use forcible language. It did not seem clear to him and it did not seem clear to Miss Hipsy, either. She said she was no such a thing, and never expected to live to see the day she would be so called, especially at her time of life. And, tearful and vociferous, Miss Hipsy marched back to the bungalow, delivered over the baby to the Irish nurse, packed her little old hair trunk with the round top, dragged it down herself to the lakefront dock, and there sat on it in stern grandeur until the afternoon boat came down the lake and took her to Ellenville, presumably to the sheltering arms of them that she knowed of.