"Oh, not with a preacher an' all these good-lookin' women," replied Jasper. "Whoa hawr, come here, Buck. Come here, Bright." The old wagon creaked, groaned, shuddered and away they went down the hill. Lou and Mrs. Mayfield "bursting into song," Jim and Tom laughing. The dawn had been red and the early morning was still pink, with here and there a mist-veil floating up from the creek. In the air were sudden joys, the indescribable and indefinable glees of a lightsome day, the very childhood of time; and back to the north the migratory bird was singing his way, mimicked and laughed at by the native mocking songster, jongleur of the feathered world. In all this blythe land it did not seem that there was an ache or a pain, of the body or of the heart; the light, the air, the music, all combined to form a wordless sermon on the mount. "Mr. Reverend, you are silent again," said Mrs. Mayfield, and the preacher replied: "I didn't know that, ma'm. I thought I was singing." "I'm not singin'," Margaret spoke up, grasping Jasper's arm. "I haven't been so jolted since the mules ran away with me." "Margaret," said Jasper, "you'd be jolted in the garden of Eden. Jolted out, I gad," he roared. "I wouldn't, no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Lou, air you shore you put everything in the basket." "Yes'm." "The pickels, and the chickens? I jest know you forgot the coffee, as if I could go all day without it. I never seed the like. Folks air gittin' mo' an' mo' keerless every day. Of co'se you could put in the pickels--had to do that to leave the coffee out. Now what prompted you to do that?" "Do what, mother?" "Why, leave that coffee out?" "It's in the basket." "Then why did you tell me you didn't fetch it? What do you want to torment a body fur? Now, Jasper, whut air you a settin' up here fur, a shakin' like a lump o' calf-foot jelly? You give me the fidgits." "Wall, thar won't be nobody a laughin' now putty soon," said Jasper. "I kin see right now that these steers air goin' to run off inter the creek." "They ain't a goin' to do no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Miz Mayfield, did you ever see sich carryin's-on?" "I have never experienced a more delightful drive, Mrs. Starbuck. We read of the beautiful past, and it seems to me that to-day I have been permitted to live a hundred years ago. A hundred! Five hundred, and should not be surprised to see a troop of knights come galloping down the glen, with armor flashing and with poetic war-cries on their lips. Were you thinking of that, Mr. Reverend?" "No, ma'm. I was thinking of the men, clothed in skins and with shepherd's crooks in their hands, carrying the gospel to the barbarians of old." "And I was thinking," said Tom, "of old Daniel Boone, with his flint-lock rifle, going to Kentucky. And what were your thoughts, Miss Lou?"