To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example, took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement. “Lord, Minty!” he gasped. “Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n five years ago. I--” “I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter,” interrupted his sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; “that settles it!” and she slammed the door in his face. Matters were at such a pass finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. “Lord,” he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, “Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from the wrath to come.” He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding her hens. “She shore did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did,” chuckled Granny Carnes, when this episode reached her ears. As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous. “He's that wore upon that nobody dassent to go anigh him,” said Mrs. Pinson, solemnly. “An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever struck the women o' Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the outbeatenes'.” But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum, impassive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side. “Well, ma,” began Tobe, with assumed gayety, turning up his plate, “what for a day have you had?” Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said never a word.