Tall, gaunt, swarthy, black-bearded--his masses of grizzled, uncombed hair and the red scar across his nose and cheek added to his sinister appearance. His tumble-down house stood on a rocky bit of land back of the Sawyer pasture, and the acres of his farm stretched out on all sides of it. He lived alone, ate alone, plowed, planted, sowed, harvested alone, and was more than willing to die alone, “unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” The road that bordered upon his fields was comparatively little used by any one, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thickly set with chokecherry trees and blackberry bushes it had been for years practically deserted by the children. Jacob's Red Astrakhan and Granny Garland trees hung thick with apples, but no Riverboro or Edgewood boy stole them; for terrifying accounts of the fate that had overtaken one urchin in times agone had been handed along from boy to boy, protecting the Moody fruit far better than any police patrol. Perhaps no circumstances could have extenuated the old man's surly manners or his lack of all citizenly graces and virtues; but his neighbors commonly rebuked his present way of living and forgot the troubled past that had brought it about: the sharp-tongued wife, the unloving and disloyal sons, the daughter's hapless fate, and all the other sorry tricks that fortune had played upon him--at least that was the way in which he had always regarded his disappointments and griefs. This, then, was the personage whose moral rehabilitation was to be accomplished by the Daughters of Zion. But how? “Who will volunteer to visit Mr. Moody?” blandly asked the president. _Visit Mr. Moody!_ It was a wonder the roof of the barn chamber did not fall; it did, indeed echo the words and in some way make them sound more grim and satirical. “Nobody'll volunteer, Rebecca Rowena Randall, and you know it,” said Emma Jane. “Why don't we draw lots, when none of us wants to speak to him and yet one of us must?” This suggestion fell from Persis Watson, who had been pale and thoughtful ever since the first mention of Jacob Moody. (She was fond of Granny Garlands; she had once met Jacob; and, as to what befell, well, we all have our secret tragedies!) “Wouldn't it be wicked to settle it that way?” “It's gamblers that draw lots.” “People did it in the Bible ever so often.” “It doesn't seem nice for a missionary meeting.” These remarks fell all together upon the president's bewildered ear the while (as she always said in compositions)--“the while” she was trying to adjust the ethics of this unexpected and difficult dilemma. “It is a very puzzly question,” she said thoughtfully. “I could ask Aunt Jane if we had time, but I suppose we haven't. It doesn't seem nice to draw lots, and yet how can we settle it without? We know we mean right, and perhaps it will be. Alice, take this paper and tear off five narrow pieces, all different lengths.”