“Splinters! Why, I’d ’a’ ruther hed a splinter stickin’ in every inch o’ my body then ole Hen Bingle’s two hundred pound a-drawin’ me from my nat’ral height o’ five feet six inter a man o’ six feet five. That’s what it seemed like. He ast how deep me well was, an’ ’hen I answered forty foot with fifteen foot o’ wotter at the bottom, he sayd he’d never speak to me agin if I let go my holt on him. I sayd I guesst he wouldn’t, an’ he let out a whoop that brought the missus an’ the little ones a-tumblin’ outen the house. “Marthy stared at us a minute. Then she sais, ‘Where was you a-goin’?’ “‘To fight Spaynyards,’ sais I, sheepish like. “‘An’ you, Hen Bingle?’ she asts. “‘Same,’ gasps Hen. “‘Does your wife know you’re out?’ sais the missus, stern ez a jedge. “‘No,’ sais Hen. “‘Then I’ve a mind to go over to your placet an’ git her,’ sais Marthy. “‘It’s two miled,’ Hen groaned, ‘an’ I’ll be drownded agin you git back. Lemme up now an’ I’ll go home an’ stay there.’ “Marthy turns around quiet like, walks inter the house an’ comes out with the family Bible. “‘Hen Bingle,’ she sais solemn-like, holdin’ the book to his mouth, ‘does you promise to tell the whole truth an’ nothin’ but the truth, an’ not to go to war?’ “Hen didn’t waste no time in kissin’ that book so loud I could hear an echo of it over along the ridge. I kissed it pretty loud meself, to be sure. The missus lifted Hen outen the well an’ he snuck off home. His woman never knowd nawthin’ about the trouble tell she met my missus two weeks later, at protracted meetin’ over to Pine Swamp church. Ez fer me, but fer that splinter I’d be in Sandyago now.” CHAPTER XXI. _Eben Huckin’s Conversion._ Eben Huckin’s father had been a United Presbyterian and his mother a Methodist. Eben belonged to neither church, a fact which he ascribed to his having been drawn toward both denominations by forces so exactly equal that he had never become affiliated with either. Yet he prided himself on being a man of profound religious convictions. How could it be otherwise with one whose forefathers had for generations sung psalms and slept through two-hour sermons on the hard, uncomfortable benches of the bluest of blue-stocking Presbyterianism or prostrated themselves at the mourners’ bench on every opportunity? The austerity of these ancestors afforded him a reason for habitually absenting himself from Sunday services in either of the two temples where his parents had so long and faithfully worshiped. The church-folk in the valley were getting entirely too liberal. He was a conservative. “‘Hen the United Presbyter’ans hes to hev an organ to sing by an’ the Methydists gits to hevin’ necktie parties an’ dancin’, it’s time for a blue-stockin’ like me to set at home o’ Sundays an’ dewote himself to readin’ Lamentations,” he was wont to explain to his cronies at the store.