A blind horse is quick to observe and take fright at anything uncanny. He is the natural ghost-finder of the highways, and that voice was too much for the old roan. To him it sounded like something that had been resurrected. It was a ghost-voice, arising after many years. He shied, sprang forward, half wheeled and nearly upset the buggy, until brought up with a jerk by the powerful arms of his driver. The shaft-band had broken and the buggy had run upon the horse's rump, and the shafts stuck up almost at right angles over his back. The roan stood trembling with the half turned, inquisitive muzzle of the sightless horse--a paralysis of fear all over his face. But when Bud came forward and touched his face and stroked it, the fear vanished, and the old roan bobbed his tail up and down and wiggled his head reassuringly and apologetically. "Wal, I declar, Bishop," grinned Bud, "kin yo' critter fetch a caper?" The Bishop got leisurely out of his buggy, pulled down the shafts and tied up the girth before he spoke. Then he gave a puckering hitch to his underlip and deposited in the sand, with a puddling _plunk_, the half cup of tobacco juice that had closed up his mouth. He stepped back and said very sternly: "Whoa, Ben Butler!" "Why, he'un's sleep a'ready," grinned Bud. The Bishop glanced at the bowed head, cocked hind foot and listless tail: "Sof'nin' of the brain, Bud," smiled the Bishop; "they say when old folks begin to take it they jus' go to sleep while settin' up talkin'. Now, a horse, Bud," he said, striking an attitude for a discussion on his favorite topic, "a horse is like a man--he must have some meanness or he c'udn't live, an' some goodness or nobody else c'ud live. But git in, Bud, and let's go along to meetin'--'pears like it's gettin' late." This was what Bud had been listening for. This was the treat of the week for him--to ride to meetin' with the Bishop. Bud, a slubber-slave--henpecked at home, brow-beaten and cowed at the mill, timid, scared, "an' powerful slow-mouthed," as his spouse termed it, worshipped the old Bishop and had no greater pleasure in life, after his hard week's work, than "to ride to meetin' with the old man an' jes' hear him narrate." The Bishop's great, sympathetic soul went out to the poor fellow, and though he had rather spend the next two miles of Ben Butler's slow journey to church in thinking over his sermon, he never failed, as he termed it, "to pick up charity even on the roadside," and it was pretty to see how the old man would turn loose his crude histrionic talent to amuse the slubber. He knew, too, that Bud was foolish about horses, and that Ben Butler was his model! They got into the old buggy, and Ben Butler began to draw it slowly along the sandy road to the little church, two miles away up the mountain side. CHAPTER II BEN BUTLER