Great was the excitement in Barton and the tributary country when it was announced that the mill needed no more money, and that, consequently, no more stock would be issued. In that mysterious way in which such things always happen, the secret escaped, and encountered every one, that his new position would prevent Fred Macdonald from drinking; non-stockholders had then the additional grievance that they had been deprived of taking any part in an enterprise for the good of a fellow-man, and all because the rich men of the village saw money in it. None of these injured ones dared to express their minds on this subject to Squire Tomple, to whom so many of them owed money, or to Judge Macdonald, who, in his family pride, would have laid himself liable to action by the grand jury, had any one suggested that his oldest son had ever been in any danger of becoming a drunkard. But to Mr. Crupp they did not hesitate to speak freely; Crupp owned no mortgages, no total abstainers owed him money; besides, he not only was not a church member, but he had been in that most infernal of all callings, rum-selling. So it came to pass that when one day Crupp went into Deacon Jones’s store for a dollar’s worth of sugar, and was awaiting his turn among a large crowd of customers, Father Baguss constituted himself spokesman for the aggrieved faction, and said, “It ’pears to me, Mr. Crupp, as if reformin’ was a payin’ business.” Crupp being human, was not saintly, so he flushed angrily, and replied, “It _ought_ to be, if the religion you’re so fond of is worth a row of pins; but I don’t know what you’re driving at.” “Oh! of course you don’t know,” said Father Baguss; “but everybody else does. You don’t expect to make any money out of that woolen mill, do you?” “Yes I do, too,” answered Crupp quickly. “I’ll make every cent I can out of it.” “Just so,” said Father Baguss, consoling himself with a bite of tobacco; “an’ them that’s borne the burden and heat of the day can plod along and not make a cent ’xcept by the hardest knocks. I’ve been one of the Sons of Temperance ever since I was converted, an’ that’s nigh onto forty year; I don’t see why I don’t get _my_ sheer of the good things of this world.” “If you mean,” said Crupp, with incomparable deliberation, “that my taking stock in the mill is a reward to me for dropping the liquor business, you’re mightily mistaken. I’d have taken it all the same if anybody had put me up to it when I was in the liquor business.” “Yes,” sighed Father Baguss, “like enough you would; as the Bible says, ‘The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.’ I can’t help a-gettin’ mad, though, to think it has to be so.” Two or three unsuccessful farmers lounging about the stove sighed sympathetically, but Crupp indulged in a sarcastic smile, and remarked, “_I_ always supposed it was because the children of light had got their treasure laid up in heaven, and were above such worldly notions.”