“Not unless English Sam meddles with my business, you won’t,” replied the deacon, quickly.  “I’ve got enough to do fightin’ speretual foes.”

“Oh,” said Boston Ben, “we’ll manage it so the church folks needn’t think ‘twas a set-up job.  We’ll put Sam up to botherin’ yer, and yer can tackle him at sight.  Then—­”

“Excuse me, Boston,” interrupted Tom Dosser, “but yer don’t hit the mark.  I’m from Vermont myself, an’ deacons there don’t fight for the fun of it, whatever they may do in the village you hail from.”  Then, turning to the old man, Tom asked:  “What part uv the old State be ye from, deacon, an’ what fetched ye out?”

“From nigh Rutland,” replied the deacon, “I hed a nice little place thar, an’ wuz doin’ well.  But the young one’s eyes is bad.  None uv the doctors thereabouts could do anythin’ fur ’em.  Took her to Boston; nobody thar could do anythin’—­said some of the European doctors were the only ones that could do the job safely.  Costs money goin’ to Europe an’ payin’ doctors—­I couldn’t make it to hum in twenty year; so I come here.”

“Only child?” inquired Tom Dosser, while the boys crowded about the two Vermonters, and got up a low buzz of sympathetic conversation.

The old man heard it all, and to his lonesome and homesick soul it was so sweet and comforting, that it melted his natural reserve, and made him anxious to unbosom himself to some one.  So he answered Tom: 

“Only child of my only darter.”

“Father dead?” inquired Tom Dosser.

“Better be,” replied the deacon, bitterly.  “He left her soon after they were married.”

“Mean skunk!” said Tom, sympathetically.

“I want to judge as I’d be judged,” replied the deacon; “but I feel ez ef I couldn’t call that man bad enough names.  Hesby was ez good a gal ez ever lived, but she went to visit some uv our folks at Burlington, an’ fust thing I know’d she writ me she’d met this chap, and they’d been married, an’ wanted us to forgive her; but he was so good, an’ she loved him so dearly.”

“Good for the gal,” said Tom, and a murmur of approbation ran through the crowd.

“Of course, we forgave her.  We’d hev done it ef she married Satan himself,” continued the deacon.  “But we begged her to bring her husband up home, an’ let us look at him.  Whatever was good enough for her to love was good enough for us, and we meant to try to love Hesby’s husband.”

“Done yer credit, deacon, too,” declared Tom, and again the crowd uttered a confirmatory murmur.  “Ef some folks—­deacons, too—­wuz ez good—­But go ahead, deac’n.”

“Next thing we heard from her, he had gone to the place he was raised in; but a friend of his, who went with him, came back, an’ let out he’d got tight, an’ been arrested.  She writ him right off, beggin’ him to come home, and go with her up to our place, where he could be out of temptation an’ where she’d love him dearer than ever.”