Kitabı oku: «The Story of Waitstill Baxter», sayfa 9
There were other reasons why she did not want to ask Waitstill’s advice. Not only did she shrink from the loving scrutiny of her sister’s eyes, and the gentle probing of her questions, which would fix her own motives on a pin-point and hold them up unbecomingly to the light; but she had a foolish, generous loyalty that urged her to keep Waitstill quite aloof from her own little private perplexities.
“She will only worry herself sick,” thought Patty. “She won’t let me marry without asking father’s permission, and she’d think she ought not to aid me in deceiving him, and the tempest would be twice as dreadful if it fell upon us both! Now, if anything happens, I can tell father that I did it all myself and that Waitstill knew nothing about it whatever. Then, oh, joy! if father is too terrible, I shall be a married woman and I can always say: ‘I will not permit such cruelty! Waitstill is dependent upon you no longer, she shall come at once to my husband and me!’”
This latter phrase almost intoxicated Patty, so that there were moments when she could have run up to Milliken’s Mills and purchased herself a husband at any cost, had her slender savings permitted the best in the market; and the more impersonal the husband the more delightedly Patty rolled the phrase under her tongue.
“I can never be ‘published’ in church,” she thought, “and perhaps nobody will ever care enough about me to brave father’s displeasure and insist on running away with me. I do wish somebody would care ‘frightfully’ about me, enough for that; enough to help me make up my mind; so that I could just drive up to father’s store some day and say: ‘Good afternoon, father! I knew you’d never let me marry—‘” (there was always a dash here, in Patty’s imaginary discourses, a dash that could be filled in with any Christian name according to her mood of the moment) ‘so I just married him anyway; and you needn’t be angry with my sister, for she knew nothing about it. My husband and I are sorry if you are displeased, but there’s no help for it; and my husband’s home will always be open to Waitstill, whatever happens.’”
Patty, with all her latent love of finery and ease, did not weigh the worldly circumstances of the two men, though the reflection that she would have more amusement with Mark than with Philip may have crossed her mind. She trusted Philip, and respected his steady-going, serious view of life; it pleased her vanity, too, to feel how her nonsense and fun lightened his temperamental gravity, playing in and out and over it like a butterfly in a smoke bush. She would be safe with Philip always, but safety had no special charm for one of her age, who had never been in peril. Mark’s superior knowledge of the world, moreover, his careless, buoyant manner of carrying himself, his gay, boyish audacity, all had a very distinct charm for her;—and yet—
But there would be no “and yet” a little later. Patty’s heart would blaze quickly enough when sufficient heat was applied to it, and Mark was falling more and more deeply in love every day. As Patty vacillated, his purpose strengthened; the more she weighed, the more he ceased to weigh, the difficulties of the situation; the more she unfolded herself to him, the more he loved and the more he respected her. She began by delighting his senses; she ended by winning all that there was in him, and creating continually the qualities he lacked, after the manner of true women even when they are very young and foolish.
XVIII. A STATE O’ MAINE PROPHET
SUMMER was dying hard, for although it had passed, by the calendar, Mother Nature was still keeping up her customary attitude.
There had been a soft rain in the night and every spear of grass was brilliantly green and tipped with crystal. The smoke bushes in the garden plot, and the asparagus bed beyond them, looked misty as the sun rose higher, drying the soaked earth and dripping branches. Spiders’ webs, marvels of lace, dotted the short grass under the apple trees. Every flower that had a fragrance was pouring it gratefully into the air; every bird with a joyous note in its voice gave it more joyously from a bursting throat; and the river laughed and rippled in the distance at the foot of Town House Hill. Then dawn grew into full morning and streams of blue smoke rose here and there from the Edgewood chimneys. The world was alive, and so beautiful that Waitstill felt like going down on her knees in gratitude for having been born into it and given a chance of serving it in any humble way whatsoever.
Wherever there was a barn, in Riverboro or Edgewood, one could have heard the three-legged stools being lifted from the pegs, and then would begin the music of the milk-pails; first the resonant sound of the stream on the bottom of the tin pail, then the soft delicious purring of the cascade into the full bucket, while the cows serenely chewed their cuds and whisked away the flies with swinging tails. Deacon Baxter was taking his cows to a pasture far over the hill, the feed having grown too short in his own fields. Patty was washing dishes in the kitchen and Waitstill was in the dairy-house at the butter-making, one of her chief delights. She worked with speed and with beautiful sureness, patting, squeezing, rolling the golden mass, like the true artist she was, then turning the sweet-scented waxen balls out of the mould on to the big stone-china platter that stood waiting. She had been up early and for the last hour she had toiled with devouring eagerness that she might have a little time to herself. It was hers now, for Patty would be busy with the beds after she finished the dishes, so she drew a folded paper from her pocket, the first communication she had ever received in Ivory’s handwriting, and sat down to read it.
MY DEAR WAITSTILL:—
Rodman will take this packet and leave it with you when he finds opportunity. It is not in any real sense a letter, so I am in no danger of incurring your father’s displeasure. You will probably have heard new rumors concerning my father during the past few days, for Peter Morrill has been to Enfield, New Hampshire, where he says letters have been received stating that my father died in Cortland, Ohio, more than five years ago. I shall do what I can to substantiate this fresh report as I have always done with all the previous ones, but I have little hope of securing reliable information at this distance, and after this length of time. I do not know when I can ever start on a personal quest myself, for even had I the money I could not leave home until Rodman is much older, and fitted for greater responsibility. Oh! Waitstill, how you have helped my poor, dear mother! Would that I were free to tell you how I value your friendship! It is something more than mere friendship! What you are doing is like throwing a life-line to a sinking human being. Two or three times, of late, mother has forgotten to set out the supper things for my father. Her ten years’ incessant waiting for him seems to have subsided a little, and in its place she watches for you. [Ivory had written “watches for her daughter” but carefully erased the last two words.] You come but seldom, but her heart feeds on the sight of you. What she needed, it seems, was the magical touch of youth and health and strength and sympathy, the qualities you possess in such great measure.
If I had proof of my father’s death I think now, perhaps, that I might try to break it gently to my mother, as if it were fresh news, and see if possibly I might thus remove her principal hallucination. You see now, do you not, how sane she is in many, indeed in most ways,—how sweet and lovable, even how sensible?
To help you better to understand the influence that has robbed me of both father and mother and made me and mine the subject of town and tavern gossip for years past, I have written for you just a sketch of the “Cochrane craze”; the romantic story of a man who swayed the wills of his fellow-creatures in a truly marvellous manner. Some local historian of his time will doubtless give him more space; my wish is to have you know something more of the circumstances that have made me a prisoner in life instead of a free man; but prisoner as I am at the moment, I am sustained just now by a new courage. I read in my copy of Ovid last night: “The best of weapons is the undaunted heart.” This will help you, too, in your hard life, for yours is the most undaunted heart in all the world.
IVORY BOYNTON
The chronicle of Jacob Cochrane’s career in the little villages near the Saco River has no such interest for the general reader as it had for Waitstill Baxter. She hung upon every word that Ivory had written and realized more clearly than ever before the shadow that had followed him since early boyhood; the same shadow that had fallen across his mother’s mind and left, continual twilight there.
No one really knew, it seemed, why or from whence Jacob Cochrane had come to Edgewood. He simply appeared at the old tavern, a stranger, with satchel in hand, to seek entertainment. Uncle Bart had often described this scene to Waitstill, for he was one of those sitting about the great open fire at the time. The man easily slipped into the group and soon took the lead in conversation, delighting all with his agreeable personality, his nimble tongue and graceful speech. At supper-time the hostess and the rest of the family took their places at the long table, as was the custom, and he astonished them by his knowledge not only of town history, but of village matters they had supposed unknown to any one.
When the stranger had finished his supper and returned to the bar-room, he had to pass through a long entry, and the landlady, whispering to her daughter, said:—
“Betsy, you go up to the chamber closet and get the silver and bring it down. This man is going to sleep there and I am afraid of him. He must be a fortune-teller, and the Lord only knows what else!”
In going to the chamber the daughter had to pass through the bar-room. As she was moving quietly through, hoping to escape the notice of the newcomer, he turned in his chair, and looking her full in the face, suddenly said:—
“Madam, you needn’t touch your silver. I don’t want it. I am a gentleman.”
Whereupon the bewildered Betsy scuttled back to her mother and told her the strange guest was indeed a fortune-teller.
Of Cochrane’s initial appearance as a preacher Ivory had told Waitstill in their talk in the churchyard early in the summer. It was at a child’s funeral that the new prophet created his first sensation and there, too, that Aaron and Lois Boynton first came under his spell. The whole countryside had been just then wrought up to a state of religious excitement by revival meetings and Cochrane gained the benefit of this definite preparation for his work. He claimed that all his sayings were from divine inspiration and that those who embraced his doctrine received direct communication from the Almighty. He disdained formal creeds and all manner of church organizations, declaring sectarian names to be marks of the beast and all church members to be in Babylon. He introduced re-baptism as a symbolic cleansing from sectarian stains, and after some months advanced a proposition that his flock hold all things in common. He put a sudden end to the solemn “deaconing-out” and droning of psalm tunes and grafted on to his form of worship lively singing and marching accompanied by clapping of hands and whirling in circles; during the progress of which the most hysterical converts, or the most fully “Cochranized,” would swoon upon the floor; or, in obeying their leader’s instructions to “become as little children,” would sometimes go through the most extraordinary and unmeaning antics.
It was not until he had converted hundreds to the new faith that he added more startling revelations to his gospel. He was in turn bold, mystical, eloquent, audacious, persuasive, autocratic; and even when his self-styled communications from the “Almighty” controverted all that his hearers had formerly held to be right, he still magnetized or hypnotized them into an unwilling assent to his beliefs. There was finally a proclamation to the effect that marriage vows were to be annulled when advisable and that complete spiritual liberty was to follow; a liberty in which a new affinity might be sought, and a spiritual union begun upon earth, a union as nearly approximate to God’s standards as faulty human beings could manage to attain.
Some of the faithful fell away at this time, being unable to accept the full doctrine, but retained their faith in Cochrane’s original power to convert sinners and save them from the wrath of God. Storm-clouds began to gather in the sky however, as the delusion spread, month by month and local ministers everywhere sought to minimize the influence of the dangerous orator, who rose superior to every attack and carried himself like some magnificent martyr-at-will among the crowds that now criticized him here or there in private and in public.
“What a picture of splendid audacity he must have been,” wrote Ivory, “when he entered the orthodox meeting-house at a huge gathering where he knew that the speakers were to denounce his teachings. Old Parson Buzzell gave out his text from the high pulpit: Mark XIII, 37, ‘AND WHAT I SAY UNTO YOU I SAY UNTO ALL, WATCH!’ Just here Cochrane stepped in at the open door of the church and heard the warning, meant, he knew, for himself, and seizing the moment of silence following the reading of the text, he cried in his splendid sonorous voice, without so much as stirring from his place within the door-frame: “‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice I will come in to him and will sup with him,—I come to preach the everlasting gospel to every one that heareth, and all that I want here is my bigness on the floor.’”
“I cannot find,” continued Ivory on another page, “that my father or mother ever engaged in any of the foolish and childish practices which disgraced the meetings of some of Cochrane’s most fanatical followers and converts. By my mother’s conversations (some of which I have repeated to you, but which may be full of errors, because of her confusion of mind), I believe she must have had a difference of opinion with my father on some of these views, but I have no means of knowing this to a certainty; nor do I know that the question of choosing spiritual consorts’ ever came between or divided them. This part of the delusion always fills me with such unspeakable disgust that I have never liked to seek additional light from any of the older men and women who might revel in giving it. That my mother did not sympathize with my father’s going out to preach Cochrane’s gospel through the country, this I know, and she was so truly religious, so burning with zeal, that had she fully believed in my father’s mission she would have spurred him on, instead of endeavoring to detain him.”
“You know the retribution that overtook Cochrane at last,” wrote Ivory again, when he had shown the man’s early victories and his enormous influence. “There began to be indignant protests against his doctrines by lawyers and doctors, as well as by ministers; not from all sides however; for remember, in extenuation of my father’s and my mother’s espousal of this strange belief, that many of the strongest and wisest men, as well as the purest and finest women in York county came under this man’s spell for a time and believed in him implicitly, some of them even unto the end.
“Finally there was Cochrane’s arrest and examination, the order for him to appear at the Supreme Court, his failure to do so, his recapture and trial, and his sentence of four years imprisonment on several counts, in all of which he was proved guilty. Cochrane had all along said that the Anointed of the Lord would never be allowed to remain in jail, but he was mistaken, for he stayed in the State’s Prison at Charlestown, Massachusetts, for the full duration of his sentence. Here (I am again trying to plead the cause of my father and mother), here he received much sympathy and some few visitors, one of whom walked all the way from Edgewood to Boston, a hundred and fifteen miles, with a petition for pardon, a petition which was delivered, and refused, at the Boston State House. Cochrane issued from prison a broken and humiliated man, but if report says true, is still living, far out of sight and knowledge, somewhere in New Hampshire. He once sent my father an epitaph of his own selection, asking him to have it carved upon his gravestone should he die suddenly when away from his friends. My mother often repeats it, not realizing how far from the point it sounds to us who never knew him in his glory, but only in his downfall.
“‘He spread his arms full wide abroad
His works are ever before his God,
His name on earth shall long remain,
Through envious sinners fret in vain.’”
“We are certain,” concluded Ivory, “that my father preached with Cochrane in Limington, Limerick, and Parsonsfield; he also wrote from Enfield and Effingham in New Hampshire; after that, all is silence. Various reports place him in Boston, in New York, even as far west as Ohio, whether as Cochranite evangelist or what not, alas! we can never know. I despair of ever tracing his steps. I only hope that he died before he wandered too widely, either from his belief in God or his fidelity to my mother’s long-suffering love.”
Waitstill read the letter twice through and replaced it in her dress to read again at night. It seemed the only tangible evidence of Ivory’s love that she had ever received and she warmed her heart with what she felt that he had put between the lines.
“Would that I were free to tell you how I value your friendship!” “My mother’s heart feeds on the sight of you!” “I want you to know something of the circumstances that have made me a prisoner in life, instead of a free man.” “Yours is the most undaunted heart in all the world!” These sentences Waitstill rehearsed again and again and they rang in her ears like music, converting all the tasks of her long day into a deep and silent joy.
XIX. AT THE BRICK STORE
THERE were two grand places for gossip in the community; the old tavern on the Edgewood side of the bridge and the brick store in Riverboro. The company at the Edgewood Tavern would be a trifle different in character, more picturesque, imposing, and eclectic because of the transient guests that gave it change and variety. Here might be found a judge or lawyer on his way to court; a sheriff with a handcuffed prisoner; a farmer or two, stopping on the road to market with a cartful of produce; and an occasional teamster, peddler, and stage-driver. On winter nights champion story-tellers like Jed Morrill and Rish Bixby would drop in there and hang their woollen neck-comforters on the pegs along the wall-side, where there were already hats, topcoats, and fur mufflers, as well as stacks of whips, canes, and ox-goads standing in the corners. They would then enter the room, rubbing their hands genially, and, nodding to Companion Pike, Cephas Cole, Phil Perry and others, ensconce themselves snugly in the group by the great open fireplace. The landlord was always glad to see them enter, for their stories, though old to him, were new to many of the assembled company and had a remarkable greet on the consumption of liquid refreshment.
On summer evenings gossip was languid in the village, and if any occurred at all it would be on the loafer’s bench at one or the other side of the bridge. When cooler weather came the group of local wits gathered in Riverboro, either at Uncle Bart’s joiner’s shop or at the brick store, according to fancy. The latter place was perhaps the favorite for Riverboro talkers. It was a large, two-story, square, brick building with a big-mouthed chimney and an open fire. When every house in the two villages had six feet of snow around it, roads would always be broken to the brick store, and a crowd of ten or fifteen men would be gathered there talking, listening, betting, smoking, chewing, bragging, playing checkers, singing, and “swapping stories.”
Some of the men had been through the War of 1812 and could display wounds received on the field of valor; others were still prouder of scars won in encounters with the Indians, and there was one old codger, a Revolutionary veteran, Bill Dunham by name, who would add bloody tales of his encounters with the “Husshons.” His courage had been so extraordinary and his slaughter so colossal that his hearers marvelled that there was a Hessian left to tell his side of the story, and Bill himself doubted if such were the case.
“‘T is an awful sin to have on your soul,” Bill would say from his place in a dark corner, where he would sit with his hat pulled down over his eyes till the psychological moment came for the “Husshons” to be trotted out. “‘T is an awful sin to have on your soul,—the extummination of a race o’ men; even if they wa’n’t nothin’ more ‘n so many ignorant cockroaches. Them was the great days for fightin’! The Husshons was the biggest men I ever seen on the field, most of ‘em standin’ six feet eight in their stockin’s,—but Lord! how we walloped ‘em! Once we had a cannon mounted an’ loaded for ‘em that was so large we had to draw the ball into it with a yoke of oxen!”
Bill paused from force of habit, just as he had paused for the last twenty years. There had been times when roars of incredulous laughter had greeted this boast, but most of this particular group had heard the yarn more than once and let it pass with a smile and a wink, remembering the night that Abel Day had asked old Bill how they got the oxen out of the cannon on that most memorable occasion.
“Oh!” said Bill, “that was easy enough; we jest unyoked ‘em an’ turned ‘em out o’ the primin’-hole!”
It was only early October, but there had been a killing frost, and Ezra Simms, who kept the brick store, flung some shavings and small wood on the hearth and lighted a blaze, just to induce a little trade and start conversation on what threatened to be a dull evening. Peter Morrill, Jed’s eldest brother, had lately returned from a long trip through the state and into New Hampshire, and his adventures by field and flood were always worth listening to. He went about the country mending clocks, and many an old time-piece still bears his name, with the date of repairing, written in pencil on the inside of its door.
There was never any lack of subjects at the brick store, the idiosyncrasies of the neighbors being the most prolific source of anecdote and comment. Of scandal about women there was little, though there would be occasional harmless pleasantries concerning village love affairs; prophecies of what couple would be next “published” in the black-walnut frame up at the meeting-house; a genial comment on the number and chances of Patience Baxter’s various beaux; and whenever all else failed, the latest story of Deacon Baxter’s parsimony, in which the village traced the influence of heredity.
“He can’t hardly help it, inheritin’ it on both sides,” was Abel Day’s opinion. “The Baxters was allers snug, from time ‘memorial, and Foxy’s the snuggest of ‘em. When I look at his ugly mug an’ hear his snarlin’ voice, I thinks to myself, he’s goin’ the same way his father did. When old Levi Baxter was left a widder-man in that house o’ his’n up river, he grew wuss an’ wuss, if you remember, till he wa’n’t hardly human at the last; and I don’t believe Foxy even went up to his own father’s funeral.”
“‘T would ‘a’ served old Levi right if nobody else had gone,” said Rish Bixby. “When his wife died he refused to come into the house till the last minute. He stayed to work in the barn until all the folks had assembled, and even the men were all settin’ down on benches in the kitchen. The parson sent me out for him, and I’m blest if the old skunk didn’t come in through the crowd with his sleeves rolled up,—went to the sink and washed, and then set down in the room where the coffin was, as cool as a cowcumber.”
“I remember that funeral well,” corroborated Abel Day. “An’ Mis’ Day heerd Levi say to his daughter, as soon as they’d put poor old Mrs. Baxter int’ the grave: ‘Come on, Marthy; there ‘s no use cryin’ over spilt milk; we’d better go home an’ husk out the rest o’ that corn.’ Old Foxy could have inherited plenty o’ meanness from his father, that’s certain, an’ he’s added to his inheritance right along, like the thrifty man he is. I hate to think o’ them two fine girls wearin’ their fingers to the bone for his benefit.”
“Oh, well! ‘t won’t last forever,” said Rish Bixby. “They’re the handsomest couple o’ girls on the river an’ they’ll get husbands afore many years. Patience’ll have one pretty soon, by the looks. She never budges an inch but Mark Wilson or Phil Perry are follerin’ behind, with Cephas Cole watchin’ his chance right along, too. Waitstill don’t seem to have no beaux; what with flyin’ around to keep up with the Deacon, an’ bein’ a mother to Patience, her hands is full, I guess.”
“If things was a little mite dif’rent all round, I could prognosticate who Waitstill could keep house for,” was Peter Morrill’s opinion.
“You mean Ivory Boynton? Well, if the Deacon was asked he’d never give his consent, that’s certain; an’ Ivory ain’t in no position to keep a wife anyways. What was it you heerd ‘bout Aaron Boynton up to New Hampshire, Peter?” asked Abel Day.
“Consid’able, one way an’ another; an’ none of it would ‘a’ been any comfort to Ivory. I guess Aaron ‘n’ Jake Cochrane was both of ‘em more interested in savin’ the sisters’ souls than the brothers’! Aaron was a fine-appearin’ man, and so was Jake for that matter, ‘n’ they both had the gift o’ gab. There’s nothin’ like a limber tongue if you want to please the women-folks! If report says true, Aaron died of a fever out in Ohio somewheres; Cortland’s the place, I b’lieve. Seems’s if he hid his trail all the way from New Hampshire somehow, for as a usual thing, a man o’ book-larnin’ like him would be remembered wherever he went. Wouldn’t you call Aaron Boynton a turrible larned man, Timothy?”
Timothy Grant, the parish clerk, had just entered the store on an errand, but being directly addressed, and judging that the subject under discussion was a discreet one, and that it was too early in the evening for drinking to begin, he joined the group by the fireside. He had preached in Vermont for several years as an itinerant Methodist minister before settling down to farming in Edgewood, only giving up his profession because his quiver was so full of little Grants that a wandering life was difficult and undesirable. When Uncle Bart Cole had remarked that Mis’ Grant had a little of everything in the way of baby-stock now,—black, red, an’ yaller-haired, dark and light complected, fat an’ lean, tall an’ short, twins an’ singles,—Jed Morrill had observed dryly: “Yes, Mis’ Grant kind o’ reminds me of charity.”
“How’s that?” inquired Uncle Bart.
“She beareth all things,” chuckled Jed.
“Aaron Boynton was, indeed, a man of most adhesive larnin’,” agreed Timothy, who had the reputation of the largest and most unusual vocabulary in Edgewood. “Next to Jacob Cochrane I should say Aaron had more grandeloquence as an orator than any man we’ve ever had in these parts. It don’t seem’s if Ivory was goin’ to take after his father that way. The little feller, now, is smart’s a whip, an’ could talk the tail off a brass monkey.”
“Yes, but Rodman ain’t no kin to the Boyntons,” Abel reminded him. “He inhails from the other side o’ the house.”
“That’s so; well, Ivory does, for certain, an’ takes after his mother, right enough, for she hain’t spoken a dozen words in as many years, I guess. Ivory’s got a sight o’ book-knowledge, though, an’ they do say he could talk Greek an’ Latin both, if we had any of ‘em in the community to converse with. I’ve never paid no intention to the dead languages, bein’ so ocker-pied with other studies.”
“Why do they call ‘em the dead languages, Tim?” asked Rish Bixby.
“Because all them that ever spoke ‘em has perished off the face o’ the land,” Timothy answered oracularly. “Dead an’ gone they be, lock, stock, an’ barrel; yet there was a time when Latins an’ Crustaceans an’ Hebrews an’ Prooshians an’ Australians an’ Simesians was chatterin’ away in their own tongues, an’ so pow’ful that they was wallopin’ the whole earth, you might say.”
“I bet yer they never tried to wallop these here United States,” interpolated Bill Dunham from the dark corner by the molasses hogs-head.
“Is Ivory in here?” The door opened and Rodman Boynton appeared on the threshold.
“No, sonny, Ivory ain’t been in this evening,” replied Ezra Simms. “I hope there ain’t nothin’ the matter over to your house?”
“No, nothing particular,” the boy answered hesitatingly; “only Aunt Boynton don’t seem so well as common and I can’t find Ivory anywhere.”
“Come along with me; I’ll help you look for him an’ then I’ll go as fur as the lane with yer if we don’t find him.” And kindly Rish Bixby took the boy’s hand and left the store.
“Mis’ Boynton had a spell, I guess!” suggested the storekeeper, peering through the door into the darkness. “‘T ain’t like Ivory to be out nights and leave her to Rod.”
“She don’t have no spells,” said Abel Day. “Uncle Bart sees consid’able of Ivory an’ he says his mother is as quiet as a lamb.—Couldn’t you git no kind of a certif’cate of Aaron’s death out o’ that Enfield feller, Peter? Seems’s if that poor woman’d oughter be stopped watchin’ for a dead man; tuckerin’ herself all out, an’ keepin’ Ivory an’ the boy all nerved up.”
“I’ve told Ivory everything I could gether up in the way of information, and give him the names of the folks in Ohio that had writ back to New Hampshire. I didn’t dialate on Aaron’s goin’s-on in Effingham an’ Portsmouth, cause I dassay ‘t was nothin’ but scandal. Them as hates the Cochranites’ll never allow there’s any good in ‘em, whereas I’ve met some as is servin’ the Lord good an’ constant, an’ indulgin’ in no kind of foolishness an’ deviltry whatsoever.”
