Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and whose influence was worth securing. Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny anecdotes--little stories that had been aired in the same order at every other tavern and store in the county. From sheer _ennui_ it was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away. They could at least get some fun out of it. Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And "push on" he did. In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away. Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting. The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type. His speech was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases. His illustrations were exceedingly uncouth. It by no means followed that he was not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather to his advantage,--the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the backwoods audience. But the party from the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything. They came for amusement, and set themselves diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead among his new friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his rarest gift. The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up" with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the discourse. The women were startled and the grave brethren turned their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men. In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room. Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them. "You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of four."