“Well, no, thank you, Squire,” the man said, and at the same time he roused the claybank from an instant repose, and pushed her to the cabin steps. “I'm just on my way down to Brother Hingston's mill, and I reckon Sally don't want me to have any breakfast till I bring back the meal for her to git it with; anyway that's what she said when I left.” Braile answered nothing, and the rider of the claybank added, with a certain uneasiness as if for the effect of what he was going to say, “I was up putty late last night, and I reckon I overslep',” he parleyed. Then, as Braile remained silent, he went on briskly, “I was wonderin' if you hearn about the curious doun's last night at the camp-meetun'.” Braile, said, without ceasing to smoke, “You're the first one I've seen this morning, except my wife. She wasn't at the camp-meeting.” His aquiline profile, which met close at the lips from the loss of his teeth, compressed itself further in leaving the whole burden of the affair to the man on the claybank, and his narrowed eyes were a line of mocking under the thick gray brows that stuck out like feathers above them. “Well, sir, it was great doun's,” the other said, wincing a little under the old man's indifference. Braile relented so far as to ask, “Who was at the bellows?” The other answered with a certain inward deprecation of the grin that spread over his face, and the responsive levity of his phrase, “There was a change of hands, but the one that kep' the fire goun' the hardes' and the hottes' was Elder Grove.” Braile made “Hoonck!” in the scornful guttural which no English spelling can represent. “Yes, sir,” the man on the claybank went on, carried forward by his own interest, but helpless to deny himself the guilty pleasure of falling in with Braile's humor, “he had 'em goun' lively, about midnight, now I tell you: whoopun' and yellun', and rippun' and stavun', and fallun' down with the jerks, and pullun' and haulun' at the sinners, to git 'em up to the mourners' bench, and hurrahun' over 'em, as fast as they was knocked down and drug out. I never seen the beat of it in all _my_ born days.” “You don't make out anything very strange, Abel Reverdy,” Braile said, putting his pipe back into his mouth and beginning to smoke it again into a lost activity. “Well, I hain't come to it yit,” Reverdy apologized. “I reckon there never was a bigger meetun' in Leatherwood Bottom, anywhere. Folks there from twenty mile round, just slathers; I reckon there was a thousand if there was one.” “Hoonch!” Braile would not trouble to take out his pipe in making the sound now; the smoke got into his lungs, and he coughed.