What do you suppose, when we got to Atterberry, there was Willie Wallace in charge of a freight train which had side-tracked for the passenger goin' to Havaner. You can't imagine how funny it seemed to see him talkin' to the conductor and everything; and how funny it seemed that I knowed him so well, since I had seen him plow and drive a team and all that on the farm. "How do you like it?" says I to Willie. "No more farm for me," says Willie. "Ain't you afeard? Ain't it dangerous?" "Yes, it's dangerous," says he. "But look at the pay. And then look at the fun. One night it's Springfield, the next night Peoria--always somethin' new." Just then the passenger train whistled, and Willie got up and began to motion to the engineer on his train. I went back to the platform and said good-by to pa. And then we drove back to the farm. CHAPTER XVI When we got back to the farm, who do you suppose was there? My ma and Myrtle. She said she was just tired stayin' alone all the time--that pa was always away; and now that Little Billie was dead, she couldn't stand it. She said she never seed such a town as Petersburg was, that she had half a mind to go back to Boston where she was born and raised. That she didn't believe there was such characters in the whole world as Doc Lyon and dozens of others in Petersburg, Joe Pink, and the hoodlums and roughs, and she was afeard all the time some of 'em would kill pa for bein' States Attorney. That it was just one murder after another, that even she'd lost confidence in Mrs. Rainey, who had been her friend, and couldn't understand the talk about Joe Rainey having a pistol when there was no pistol. Then she said that's one part of the town; and the other part was narrow as a knife blade, that they were talkin' of churchin' Mr. Miller and drivin' him out of the pulpit and for nothin' except sayin' that God was in everything, and that there wasn't room enough in the world for anything but God. Sometimes Mr. Miller when he was preachin', got to dreamin' and would wander way off. He had done this when talkin' about God and give hisself away--that's what they said. And what was he goin' to do with so many children and nothin' saved because he never made nothin', and nothin' to do if he couldn't preach? Grandpa said, "Well, where does that doctrine put old Satan?" And ma says, "Of course it puts him out of the world, which I don't believe; there's too much sin in the world to believe that; but anyway a man has a right to his opinions without bein' persecuted for 'em."