“First blood, parson! Old Jones has hired Tom for a year, and he’s only got ten hours a day to work.” The holy man raised his hands, despite the incumbrances of half a biscuit and a coffee cup, and exclaimed, “Bless the Lord for the first fruits of the seed so newly sown. Who would have thought so undemonstrative a man would have been the first to heed the word of exhortation?” “He’s the first to see money in it--that’s why,” explained Crupp. “My dear sir, do you really ascribe Deacon Jones’s meritorious action to sordid motives?” asked the old pastor, opening his mouth and eyes as if the answer for which he waited was to come through them. “Hum--well, no--I reckon ’twas a little mixed,” replied Mr. Crupp, meditatively analyzing a blossom of a honeysuckle growing by the pastor’s window. “I dinged at him, you preached at him, he thought it over, and whatever Jonathan Jones thinks over long is pretty sure to have money in it somewhere in the end. He’ll make mor’n he’ll lose on Tom, an’ it’s best he should--he’ll have a better heart to try another experiment of the same sort one of these days. But I didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast--beg your pardon, Mrs. Wedgewell and young ladies, for not ringing the bell, but I was too full of the news to behave myself. Good by.” And Mr. Crupp started for his own breakfast-table, while the Reverend Jonas’s eyes seemed directed at some object just out of sight, as he abstractedly raised his coffee cup to his lips. CHAPTER V. AN ASTONISHED VIRGINIAN.