"The town was so quiet in them days, child, that you could lay down in the court-house yard and go to sleep, and so little that if you put your head out o' the winder and hollered for John Smith, you'd be pretty certain to git John Smith. If he didn't hear you, some of his neighbors would, and they'd hunt him up for you. Things wasn't as well kept then as they are now. I ricollect the jimson-weeds growin' in the court-house yard, and one year the dog-fennel was so plentiful that Uncle Jim Matthews says to me, says he, 'It looks to me like the Smiths and the Joneses and the dog-fennel are about to take the town.'" She laughed gaily and handed the reins to me. "And now, child, we've got to make tracks for home, unless we want to be out after sundown." As we passed out of the square, our faces turned homeward, I noticed an old Gothic church on the corner of the street leading to the court-house. "There's another thing that ain't changed much," said Aunt Jane, with great satisfaction in her voice. "The inside's all new, and there's a new congregation, for all the old congregation's lyin' out in the new cemetery or the old graveyard. But there's the same walls standin' and lookin' jest like they did when I used to come to town with father and mother. Makes me think of a body with a new soul in it. Wonder if the old bell's still up yonder in the steeple. "Speakin' o' that bell reminds me o' Martin Luther Wilson and the time he kept it from ringin'. Now, wait till we're fairly outside o'town, and I'll tell you about it." When all signs of town were fully half a mile behind us the story began. "That church you saw back yonder, honey," she said, "was built when the Rev. Samuel Wilson was the pastor, and as soon as it was done and the bell put up in the belfry, Brother Wilson said that bell had to ring every Saturday mornin' to call the children of the congregation together in the basement o' the church to receive religious instruction. He'd been visitin' amongst the church-members, and he'd found out that some o' the children didn't know the Ten Commandments or the Shorter Catechism or the Lord's Prayer, and when he asked one child what a foreign missionary was, the little thing thought a minute and says she, 'Why, it's a rabbit, ain't it? 'Well, of course Brother Wilson was clean scandalized, and says he, 'Such a state of things is a disgrace to a civilized community. And,' says he, 'if the parents of the church haven't got time to instruct their children, I'll do it myself, for it's part of my pastoral duty to feed the lambs of this flock as well as the sheep.'