He knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still uptilted chair, as he talked. “One fool like Abel I can stand, and I was just going to come in when Sally came in sight; and then I knew that two fools like Abel would make me sick. So I waited till the Creator of heaven and earth could get a minute off and help me out. But He seemed pretty busy with the solar system this morning, and I had about given up when He sent that Gillespie girl in sight. I knew that would fetch Sally; but it was an inspiration of my own to suggest Abel's chance to him; I don't want to put that on your Maker, Martha.” “It was your inspiration to get him to stay in the first place,” Mrs. Braile said within. “No, Martha; that was my unfailing obedience to the sacred laws of hospitality; I _didn't_ expect to fall under their condemnation a second time, though.” Mrs. Braile did not answer, and by the familiar scent from within, Braile knew that his coffee must be nearly ready. As he dropped his chair forward, he heard a sound of frying, and “Pshaw, Martha!” he called. “You're not getting me some fresh bacon?” “Did you suppose there'd be some left?” she demanded, while she stepped to and fro at her labors. Her steps ceased and she called, “Well, come in now, Matthew, if you don't want _every_thing to get cold, like the pone is.” Braile obeyed, saying, “Oh, I can stand cold _pone_,” and at sight of the table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked tenderly, “Now just to reward you, Martha, I've got half a mind to go with you to the next meeting in the Temple.” “I don't know as I'm goin' myself,” she said, pouring the coffee. “I wish you would, just to please me,” he teased. II No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger went home from the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie and his girl. Many had come forward with hospitable offers, and the stranger had been affable with all; but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had parried the invitations made him. Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and his shy daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their claims; yet the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and spent all the next day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn fields in. Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl when she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin. The girl seemed still under the spell that had fallen upon many at the meeting, and it appeared to Sally that she did not want to talk; at any rate she did not talk to any satisfactory end. A squirrel hunter believed he had caught a glimpse of the stranger in the chestnut woods behind the Gillespie spring-house, but he was not a man whose oath was acceptable in the community and his belief was not generally shared. It was thought that the stranger would reappear at the last night of the camp-meeting, but the Gillespies came without him, and reported that they had expected he would come by himself.