e farthest were first on the ground; and by the time
twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike,
had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling
of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily
in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood
knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds--the
present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region
round-about.
"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?"
asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.
"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o'
grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's
a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n--honest and
even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for
soap-kittles. But ho-
t 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit,
and ye cayn't change _him_."
"That's about right," said a third. "It looks to me like Caleb done sot
his stakes where he's goin' to run the furrow. If livin' a dozen years
and mo' with such a sancterfied woman as Martha Gordon won't make out to
toll a man up to the pearly gates, I allow the' ain't no preacher goin'
to do it."
"Well, now; maybe that's the reason," drawled Japheth Pettigrass, the
only unmarried man in the small circle of listeners; but he was promptly
put down by the tall mountaineer.
"Hold on thar, Japhe Pettigrass! I allow the' ain't no dyed-in-the-wool
hawss-trader like you goin' to stand up and say anything ag'inst Marthy
Gordon while I'm a-listenin'. I'm recollectin' right now the time when
she sot up day and night for more'n a week with my Malviny--and me
a-smashin' the whisky jug acrost the wagon tire to he'p God to forgit
how no-'count and-