“Tell you what it is, gentlemen,” said he, “there’s nothin’ like puttin’ your hand in your pocket to show you what doin’ good is. Here I’ve been thinkin’ all my life that I was doin’ good by subscribin’ to Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, an’ all such things, and yet there was _the_ chance right in my own hands, and I was too blind to see it. I done it at last on a risk, as if God didn’t know best when he inspires men to righteous deeds; an’ I was fearful, time an’ again, that it mightn’t turn out well; but I’ve been more abundantly blessed at it than I ever expected to be. It makes a man feel kind of like Christ must have felt, to be able to help a fellow-creature out of his troubles and sins. Look at Tom Adams now! he’s always sober, his children go to Sunday-school, and he’s never around looking as if you’d rather not meet him, and _I_, thank the Lord! feel even better over it than _he_ does.” The postmaster slyly tipped a grave wink at Lawyer Bottom, and the lawyer sagely laid a wise forefinger athwart his own nose. Dr. White dropped a short bark, intended for a cough, which somehow provoked a smile all around. Suddenly a small boy rushed into the store, exclaiming, “O Deacon Jones! Tom Adams fell out of the wagon and broke his leg!” The deacon’s ecstatic expression instantly vanished into thin air, and he asked, with a face full of misery, “And the horses ran away?” “No,” said the boy. “_They’re_ all right.” Dr. White sprang up, seized his cane, and asked, “Where is he?” “That’s so,” asked the deacon, still more sorrowful of countenance, as he continued, “just as corn’s beginnin’ to come in, too, an’ needin’ to be measured an’ sacked; that’s just the way things go in this wicked world!” Lawyer Bottom, who did not believe much in God, and believed still less in the deacon, asked, “Well, deacon, then you wouldn’t advise me to take somebody on my hands for the sake of the spiritual payment I’ll be likely to get out of the operation?” The deacon rallied himself by a tremendous effort, but his countenance did not indicate that the answer he was about to make would be of that softness that turns away wrath; he was saved from disgracing himself, however, by still another boy, who came flying through the main street on horseback, shouting, “Fire! fire! The woolen mill! Fire!” The deacon’s store emptied in an instant of every one but Parson Brown, for all the other listeners were men of some means, and stockholders in the mill. “Here!” shouted the deacon, cutting the cords of a “nest” of pails; “take buckets along with you; like enough it’ll need everybody’s help, and the mill’s only half insured, too! Parson, would you mind sittin’ here until my boy gets back? I’m losin’ enough to-day without having to shut up store, too.”