“Ain't you goin' to have anything to eat, Mr. Braile?” his wife demanded, with plaintive severity. Braile pulled at his cob-pipe which muttered responsively, “Not so long as I've got anything to smoke. Gets up,” he explained to Reverdy, “and jerks it out of my mouth, when we haven't got company.” “I reckon Abel knows how much to believe of that,” Mrs. Braile commented, and Reverdy gave the pleased chuckle of a social inferior raised above his level by amiable condescension. But as if he thought it safest to refuse any share in this intimacy, he ended his adulations with the opinion, “I should say that if these here two rooms was th'owed together they'd make half as much as the Temple.” Braile stopped in his walk and bent his frown on Reverdy, but not in anger. “This _is_ the Temple: Temple of Justice--Justice of the Peace. Do you people think there's only one kind of temple in Leatherwood?” Reverdy gave his chuckle again. “Well, Squire, I ought to know, anyway, all the log-rollin' I done for you last 'lection time. I didn't hardly believe you'd git in, because they said you was a infidel.” “Well, you couldn't deny it, could you?” Braile asked, with increasing friendliness in his frown. “No, I couldn't deny it, Squire. But the way I told 'em to look at it was, Mis' Braile was Christian enough for the whole family. Said _you_ knowed more law and _she_ knowed more gospel than all the rest of Leatherwood put together.” “And that was what elected the family, was it?” Braile asked. “Well, I hope Mrs. Braile won't refuse to serve,” he said, and he began his walk again. “Tell her about that horse that broke into the meetin' last night, and tried to play man.” Reverdy laughed, shaking his head over his plate of bacon and reaching for the corn-pone which Mrs. Braile passed him. “You do beat all, Squire, the way you take the shine off of religious experience. Why,” he addressed himself to Mrs. Braile, “it wasn't much, as fur as anybody could make out. It was just the queerness of the whole thing.” Reverdy went over the facts again, beginning with deprecation for the Squire but gathering respect for them in the interest they seemed to have for Mrs. Braile. She listened silently, and then she asked, “And what became of him?” “Well, that's where you got me, Mrs. Braile. Don't anybody know what become of him. Just kind of went out like a fire, when the Power was workun' the hardest, and wasn't there next time you looked where he been. Kind o' th'owed cold water on the meetun' and folks begun goun' home, and breakun' up and turnun' in; well it was pretty nigh sun-up, anyway, by that time. I don't know! Made me feel all-overish. Seemed like I'd been dreamun' and that man was a Vision.” Reverdy had lifted an enraptured face, but at sight of Braile pausing in sarcastic pleasure, he dropped his head with a snicker. “I know the Squire'll laugh. But that's the way it was.”