“Passages that ye’ve had to twist hind-side foremost, an’ bottom-side up, an’ add, an’ subtract, an’ divide, an’ multiply, an’ hammer, an’ saw, an’ bile down, an’ take to a grist-mill, afore you got at the meanin’ you wanted,” returned his brother, contemptuously. “That ain’t the kind of passage I’m after. There’s too much two-facedness an’ double-dealin’ about the Scripturs anyway, judgin’ by some of you folks. What I want is a square up an’ down passage that says, without no chance of its meanin’ anything else, ‘The world is comin’ to an end next week Thursday.’ I stump ye to show me sech a passage as that. _Ye can’t do it!_” The habits of a lifetime are strong even in strained and exalted states, acting like the lash of a familiar whip. Solomon Lennox was the younger brother; all his life he had borne a certain docility of attitude towards Simeon, which asserted itself now. The fervid orator stood for a moment silent before this sceptical, sneering elder brother. “I’d like to know how you account for Lonny’s drawin’s,” he said at length, in a tone which he might have used when bullied by Simeon in their boyhood. “Drawin’s,” drawled Simeon, and sarcasm itself seemed to hiss in the final s--“dr-r-awin’s! The little scamp is sharp as steel, an’ he’s watched an’ he’s eyed till he’s put two an’ two together. It’s easy enough to account for the drawin’s. The air here has been so thick lately with wings an’ wheels an’ horns an’ trumpets an’ everlastin’ fire that anybody that wa’n’t an idgit could breathe it in. An’ I miss my guess if his mother ’ain’t showed him the picturs in the big Bible mor’n once when you’ve been talkin’, an’ pointed out the hearth fire an’ the candlesticks an’ the powder-horn. Sophy Anne’s sharp, an’ she’s done more to learn that boy than anybody knows of, though I’ve got my doubts now as to how straight he’s really got it in his mind. Lord, them drawin’s ain’t nothin’. Solomon Lennox, you can’t look me in the face an’ say that you actilly believe all this darned tomfoolery!” Solomon for these few minutes had been on the old level of a brotherly argument, but now he arose suddenly to his latter heights. “I believe that the end of the world is near, that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is at hand, accordin’ to prophecy and revelation,” he proclaimed, and his eyes shone under his high forehead as under a majestic dome of thought and inspiration. Simeon whistled. “Ye don’t, though. Look at here, Solomon; tell ye what I’ll do. I’ll put ye to the test. Look at here, you say the world’s comin’ to an end next Thursday. Well, it stands to reason if it is, that you ’ain’t got no more need of temporal goods. S’pose--you give me a deed of this ’ere farm?” Solomon stared at his brother. Simeon shook his fist at him slowly. “_Ye won’t do it_,” he said, with a triumphant chuckle. “I _will_ do it.” “Git Lawyer Bascombe to draw up the papers to-morrow?” “_I will_.”