In spite of himself the minister gasped. Then, as the situation dawned clearly upon him, his mouth corners began—in spite of themselves—to curve upward. But in time he remembered the minister's wife, and drew them back to their centres of gravity. He waited a little. It was safer. “Aunt Olivia isn't at home and I'm glad. She doesn't care. Perhaps she would laugh. Oh, I know,” appealed Rebecca Mary, piteously, “I know he's a rooster! It isn't because I don't know—but he's FOLKS to me! You needn't do anything but just smooth his feathers a little and say the Lord bless you. I thought perhaps you'd come and do that. I could, but I wanted you to, because you're a minister. I thought—I thought perhaps you'd try and forget he's a rooster.” “I will,” the minister said, gently. Now his lips were quite grave. He took Rebecca Mary's hand and went with her. “He's a good man,” murmured the minister's wife, watching them go. She had known he would go. “He was one of my parishioners,” the minister was saying for the comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the past tense. Rebecca Mary chronicled the sad event in her diary: “Tomas Jefferson passed away at ten minutes of three this afternoon blessed are them that die in the Lord. The minnister did not get here in time. I wish I had asked him to run for he is a very good minnister and would have. He helped me berry him in the cold cold ground and we sang a him. I dident ask him to pray because he was only a rooster, but he was folks to me. I loved him. It is very lonesome. I dred wakening up tomorrow because he always crowed under my window. The Lord gaveth and the Lord has taken away.” This last Rebecca Mary erased once, but she wrote it again after a moment's thought. For, she reasoned, it was the Lord part of Aunt Olivia which had given Thomas Jefferson to her. In the primitive little creed of Rebecca Mary every one had a Lord part, but some people's was very small. Not Aunt Olivia's—she had never gauged Aunt Olivia's Lord part; it would not have been consistent with her ideas of loyalty. It was very lonely, as Rebecca Mary had known it would be. At best her life had never been overfull of companionships, and the sudden taking- off—it seemed sudden, as all deaths do—of Thomas Jefferson was hard to bear. Strange how blank a space one great, white rooster can leave behind him! The yard and the orchard seemed full of blank spaces, though in a way Thomas Jefferson's soul seemed to frequent his old beloved haunts. Rebecca Mary could not see it pecking daintily about, but she felt it was there. “His soul isn't dead,” she persisted, gently. She clung to the comfort of that. And one morning she thought she heard again Thomas Jefferson's old, cheery greeting to the sunrise. The sound she thought she heard woke her instantly. Was it Thomas Jefferson's soul crowing?