J.W.’s farmer was quite ready to talk about the new barn equipment and how it was working, and he had remarkably few complaints, these more for form’s sake than anything else.  That business was soon out of the way.

But Farmer Bellamy was interested in other things besides ventilators and horse-forks.

“So you’re a friend of our preacher,” he said, in the questioning affirmative of the deliberate country.  “Well, he’s quite a go-ahead young fellow; you never get up early enough to find him working in a cold collar.  Maybe he’s a mite ambitious, but I don’t know.”

J.W., as always, came promptly to Marty’s defense.  “He’s not ambitious for himself, Mr. Bellamy; I’ll vouch for that.  But I shouldn’t wonder he is ambitious about his work, and maybe that’s not a bad thing for a country preacher in these days.”

“That’s so,” Mr. Bellamy assented.  “But I doubt we keep him.  He’ll be getting a church in town before long.”

Now J.W. had no instructions from Marty, but he thought he might venture.  And he had been introduced to a few ideas that he had never met in the days when he objected to Marty’s taking a country circuit.

“I’ll tell you something, Mr. Bellamy,” he said.  “Marty is a farmer’s boy who loves the country.  If he has the right sort of backing, I shouldn’t wonder he stayed here a good long time.  He’s got enough plans ahead for this circuit of his.”

Mr. Bellamy laughed.  “He has that; if he waits to get ’em all going we’re sure of him for a while.  Why, he wants to make the church the most important business in the whole neighborhood; and, what’s more, he’s getting some of us to see it that way too.”

“Yes, I guess that’s his dream,” J.W. said.  “And it’s so much better than the reality up around where I used to live that I wouldn’t head him off if I were you.”

“Head him off!” Mr. Bellamy laughed again.  “Why, do you know what he did in the fall, when some of us told him we couldn’t do much for missions?  He phoned all over the neighborhood the day before he set out with a ton-and-a-half truck he had hired for the job.  Told us to put into the truck anything we could spare.  And what do you think?  Before night he drove into Hill City with a big overload, even for that truck, of wheat, corn, butter, eggs, chickens, sausage, apples, potatoes, and dear knows what.  Sold the lot for sixty-nine dollars.  He paid nine dollars for the truck—­got a rate on it—­and turned in for missions sixty dollars.  We’ve never given more than twenty, in cash.”

“But that wasn’t all.  Next Sunday he reported, and before any of us could say ‘Praise the Lord!’ says he, ’Don’t think the Lord’s giving any of us much credit for that stuff.  We owe him a good deal more than a few eggs that we’ll never miss.  I just wanted to show you that when we country people really start paying our tithe to the Almighty our missionary and other offerings will make that truckload look like