But the amazing presence of Scattergood in church was as nothing to the epochal fact that, after the prayer and hymn, he was seen slowly to get to his feet.  Scattergood Baines was going to lift up his voice in meeting!

“Folks,” he said, “I’ve knowed Coldriver for quite a spell.  I’ve knowed its good and its bad, but the good outweighs the bad by a darn sight.”  The congregation gasped.

“I run on to a case to-day,” he said, and then paused, apparently thinking better of what he was going to say and taking another course.  “They’s one great way to reach folks’s hearts and that’s through their sympathy.  All of you give up to furrin missions to rescue naked fellers with rings in their noses.  That’s sympathy, hain’t it?  Mebby they hain’t needin’ sympathy and cast-off pants, but that’s neither here nor there.  You think they do....  Coldriver’s great on sympathy, and it’s a doggone upstandin’ quality.”  Again the audience sucked in its breath at this approach to the language of everyday life.

“If I was wantin’ to stir up your sympathy, I’d tell you about a leetle feller I seen yestiddy.  Mebby I will.  He wa’n’t no naked heathen, and he didn’t have no ring into his nose.  He was jest a boy.  Uh-huh!  Calculate he might ‘a’ been ten year old.  Couldn’t walk a step.  Suthin’ ailed his laigs, and he had to lay around in a chair in one of these here kind of cheap horspittles.  Alone he was.  Didn’t have no pa nor ma....  But he had to be looked after by somebody, didn’t he?  Somebody had to pay them bills.”

Scattergood blew his nose gustily.  “Mebby he could ‘a’ been cured if they was money to pay for costly doctorin’, but they wa’n’t.  It took all that could be got jest to pay for his food and keep....  Patient leetle feller, too, and gentlelike and cheerful.  Kind of took to him, I did.”

He paused, turned slowly, and surveyed the congregation, and frowned at the door of the church.  He coughed.  He waited.  The congregation turned, following his eyes, and saw Mandy, Scattergood’s ample-bosomed wife, enter, bearing in her arms the form of a child.  She walked to Scattergood’s pew and handed the boy to him.  Scattergood held the child high, so all could see.

He was a red-haired little fellow, white and thin of face, with pipe-stem legs that dangled pitifully.

“I fetched him along,” said Scattergood.  “I wisht you’d look him over.”

The audience craned its neck, exclaiming, dropping tears.  The heart of Coldriver was well protected, it fancied, by an exterior of harshness and suspicion, but Coldriver was wrong.  Its heart lay near the surface, easy of access, warm, tender, sympathetic.  “This is him,” said Scattergood.

He turned his face to the child.  “Sonny,” he said, kindly, “you hain’t got no pa nor ma?” “No, sir,” said the little fellow.

“And you live in one of them horspittles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It costs money?”