It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to Brother Jennings' and see about church matters. "I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2:30." "All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable sidewise glance. "You promised, you remember?" "The--devil--I did!" the old man snarled. The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm, bright morning. II. The school-house down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl, like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the Iowa timber lands. The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centered in the family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown, great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as savages. If anything went wrong in 'Hell's Corners' everybody knew that the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the Dixons. In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the school-house next day, said: "If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse in my barn." "I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly. There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically Western scene. The women were rigidly on one side of the school-room, the men as rigidly on the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in their Sunday splendor. On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much the same way conversed about children and raising onions and strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting. "Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."