“Who owns the place?” asked Barnaby. “A one-eyed crank named Wycliff.” “Do you own that place? Well, we shan’t have any trouble about the price, if you think I can fill the bill.” “Yes, yes, Uncle Jerry. Come around in the morning and we will make a bargain in five minutes. Then we will drive off and buy stock and tools.” “Very well. I must get home and tell Pet and her mother. We are willing to shake the dust of Papyrus off our feet any day.” CHAPTER X. Eva Baldwin was the most independent, the most democratic, and the most religious member of the Baldwin family. I use the word religious in its most practical sense. The Baldwins were all religious; they were all church-members; they all had the outside, the husk, the wrapper, of religion. With them, a costly house of worship, a silver-tongued preacher, the repetition of some high-sounding passages from God’s Word and the payment of a certain amount of money for church expenses--these things constituted religion. The Baldwins, when it came to religion, were like a certain boy, who went chestnutting. He had never seen a chestnut, and he eagerly filled his basket with the great prickly burs, which the frost had opened, but never noticed the nuts themselves, which lay hidden under the leaves. The Baldwins were very religious,--but if the Christ had come into Papyrus, the town which belonged to them, they would have given Him twenty-four hours notice to get out. He was a disturber in the vales of Judea, and He would have been too radical for the Lords of the Berkshire Hills. It would have become the painful duty of the round and sleek Deacon Surface, and the gaunt and spectral Sheriff Burse, on notice from the Baldwins, to order Him out. But Eva--black-eyed Eva--differed from her kindred. She was not satisfied with the husk of Christianity. She was a constant thorn in the side of her brother, Zechariah, and in a less degree of her brother, David, the Congressman. Even between these two there was a great gulf. The Congressman believed in equal rights, except at home, and for his own workmen. None of the devices, some of them of almost Satanic ingenuity, by which the mill-hands of Papyrus were prevented from enjoying their just share in town-government, none of these devices, I say, could have succeeded, without Congressman Baldwin’s approval, through his confidential agent, the hundred-faced, oily-tongued Deacon Surface. None of these devices for stealing the workman’s vote won Eva Baldwin’s approval.