"I wouldn't take it to heart about his fiery talk. He can't hurt God with his spittin' and sputterin', and so long as God's all right the rest of us needn't worry," Lincoln said, before answering the request asked. "As to punishin' a 'Moon--faced pole cat,' I'd plug him up in some tight corner, poke sin out of him--and he'd punish hisself gentlemen--punish hisself." Abe Lincoln got the book and went away. After he had gone, the Clary boys put their heads together, and before they had separated for the night, the tar and feathers plan had been temporarily abandoned. CHAPTER VII "SIC 'EM, KITTY" The afternoon following his rather unwelcome visit to Clary Grove, Abe Lincoln was invited by Kit Parsons to attend religious services that night. From the manner of the invitation, the storekeeper gathered that there might be something interesting on foot, and he decided to go. Some changes had been made in the meeting-place since the gathering of the year before. At the former time Satan had moved the dogs, so the elder explained, to crowd under the exhorter's stand and engage in riotous disagreement. In an endeavor to chew each others ears and gnaw holes in each others hides, they had bumped their backs onto the rude floor underneath the preacher's feet, and in other ways raised a disturbance. To prevent a repetition of this disorderly conduct on the part of the dogs, the hiding-place under the stand had been made proof against all intruders by the use of stobs driven so close that not even a shadow could creep between. It was in this long-time rendezvous of dogs that a couple of the Clary Grove gang seemed interested, as between services they strolled several times past the pulpit end of the arbor. That evening, in the shadowy gloom cast by the arbor roof, a couple of men might have been seen, had the dark been closely scrutinized, moving softly about. Just what they were doing was not apparent. They seemed to have a barrel close by and a long trough of some kind. But nobody paid any attention to these quiet two. All interest was centered in Windy Batts, who in a trumpet voice was giving out the words of a song which all who knew him were certain would be sung with great unction and fervor. He was reading the lines from a hymn-book. At the end of every second line he gave the pitch, whereupon all sang in many keys, but with united fervor. Into a world of ruffians sent, I walk on hostile ground; While human bears, on slaughter bent, And raving wolves surround. Between each two lines he shouted, "God have mercy on them Clary Grove sinners! Them ravening wolves! Strike them human bears down!" Then the hymn went on: The lion seeks my soul to slay, In some unguarded hour; And waits to tear his sleeping prey, And watches to devour. "God save us from them Clary Grove lions that seek to devour."