The old bell had it all its own way up in the steeple.  It was the licensed noise of the day.  In a long shed behind the church stood a score and half-score of wagons and chaises and carryalls,—­the horses already beginning the forenoon’s work of stamping and whisking the flies.  More were coming.  Hiram Beers had “hitched up,” and brought two loads with his new hack; and now, having secured the team, he stood with a few admiring young fellows about him, remarking on the people as they came up.

“There’s Trowbridge—­he’ll git asleep afore the first prayer’s over.  I don’t b’lieve he’s heerd a sermon in ten years.  I’ve seen him sleep standin’ up in singin’.

“Here comes Deacon Marble,—­smart old feller, ain’t he?—­wouldn’t think it, jest to look at him!  Face looks like an ear of last summer’s sweet corn, all dried up; but I tell ye he’s got the juice in him yit!  Aunt Polly’s gittin’ old, ain’t she?  They say she can’t walk half the time—­lost the use of her limbs; but it’s all gone to her tongue.  That’s as good as a razor, and a sight better ’n mine, for it never needs sharpenin’.

“Stand away, boys, there’s ’Biah Cathcart.  Good horses—­not fast, but mighty strong, just like the owner.”

And with that Hiram touched his new Sunday hat to Mrs. Cathcart and Alice; and as he took the horses by the bits, he dropped his head and gave the Cathcart boys a look of such awful solemnity, all except one eye, that they lost their sobriety.  Barton alone remained sober as a judge.

“Here comes ‘Dot-and-Go-One’ and his wife.  They’re my kind o’ Christians.  She is a saint, at any rate.”

“How is it with you, Tommy Taft?”

“Fair to middlin’, thank’e.  Such weather would make a hand-spike blossom, Hiram.”

“Don’t you think that’s a leetle strong, Tommy, for Sunday?  P’raps you mean afore it’s cut?”

“Sartin; that’s what I mean.  But you mustn’t stop me, Hiram.  Parson Buell ‘ll be lookin’ for me.  He never begins till I git there.”

“You mean you always git there ’fore he begins.”

Next, Hiram’s prying eyes saw Mr. Turfmould, the sexton and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive meditation upon all the dead that he had ever buried.  He looked upon men in a mild and pitying manner, as if he forgave them for being in good health.  You could not help feeling that he gazed upon you with a professional eye, and saw just how you would look in the condition which was to him the most interesting period of a man’s earthly state.  He walked with a soft tread, as if he was always at a funeral; and when he shook your hand, his left hand half followed his right, as if he were about beginning to lay you out.  He was one of the few men absorbed by his business, and who unconsciously measured all things from its standpoint.

“Good-morning, Mr. Turfmould!  How’s your health?  How is business with you?”

“Good—­the Lord be praised!  I’ve no reason to complain.”