As Jube came up the path to the log cabin they were sitting together on the porch, and welcomed him with sparse words, indeed, but with a solemn pleasure in him which their eyes betokened. “Enny mo’ news from the Settle_mint_, Jubal?” asked his mother. They lived a considerable distance higher on the mountain, and a bulging slope hid from them the little hamlet. So Mrs. Donnard felt at times afar off, and exhibited that avidity for the news of the day natural to a woman in the country, oppressed by the sense that, without extreme vigilance, she is in a position to be debarred a choice bit of gossip some day. Jube had that reluctance to detail often manifested by the favored mortal who has been “to town,” what he has heard having ceased to be a novelty. To be sure, Mrs. Donnard might seem to have been feasted with news to-day, and Jube had naught to add to the narrative of the proceedings already given by his father; but she took a long time to fairly assure herself of this, and the revived reference to the subject impaired the parson’s cheerfulness. “I hev labored an’ I hev labored in this field,” he remarked, “an’ it ’pears ter do no good.” He had both his knotted hands clasped on his stick, and rested his long chin on them. “A set o’ hard-hearted, stiff-necked half-livers!” said the parson’s wife uncompromisingly. “Fightin’ an’ quar’lin’ whar thar ought ter be peace,—peace in the fold.” “Ginerally less peace in the fold ’n ennywhar else,” affirmed his helpmeet. “Eli Strobe,—an old-time member an’ a settled married man.” “Wife been dead ten year or more,” said Mrs. Donnard, domestically accurate. “An’ Teck Jepson, what actially ’peared ter be gifted with visions! Kin tell ’bout folks in the Bible till ye kin mos’ see ’em a-walkin’ out afore ye.” “But Teck Jepson hev a prideful walk _hisself_,—’pears ter know all the folks air a-starin’ at him, ’specially wimmin. I dunno ez I b’lieve in the savin’ grace o’ enny men folks ez sets up ter be better lookin’ n’ the angel Gabriel, ef the truth war knowed,” objected the discerning Mrs. Donnard. “Teck Jepson gone an’ c’mitted murder,—laws-a-massy! I jes’ feel how the members o’ the church in Piomingo Cove ez be always a-laffin’ an’ gibin’ at we-uns, will crack thar heels tergether an’ shout whenst they hear ’bout’n it.” “That thar smooth-faced, fat, jokified Brother ’Zekiel Johns always tuk every chance ter gin a dab at the ‘Brumsaidge brethren,’ ez he say it.” Mrs. Donnard drawled her mimicry in good clerical fashion. Even the placid Jube was touched by this prophecy of the rejoicing of the opposite religious faction. He shifted his position as he sat on the step, and frowned in perplexed discomfiture, looking even more like his father with these solemn corrugations. It seemed to him at the moment worth while saving one’s soul to spite the folks in Piomingo Cove.