“George, what is to be the sinner’s doom?”

“I dunno,” replied George, his wrath still warm; “’pears to me you’ve left that bizness till pretty late in life, Deac’n!”

“Don’t trifle with sacrid subjec’s, George,” said the Deacon, still very solemn, and with a suspicion of annoyance in his voice.  “The wicked shall be cast into hell, with—­”

“They can’t kerry their cow-sheds with ’em, neither,” interrupted George, consolingly.

“Come, George,” said the good Deacon, in an appealing tone, “remember the apostle says, ‘Suffer the word of exhortation.’”

“‘Xcuse me, Deac’n, but one sufferin’ at a time; I ain’t through sufferin’ at bein’ beaten down yet.  How about deac’ns not being ’given to filthy lucre?’”

The good Deacon was pained, and he was almost out of patience with the apostle for writing things which came so handy to the lips of the unregenerate.  He commenced an industrious search for a text which should completely annihilate the impious carpenter, when that individual interrupted him with: 

“Out with it, Deac’n—­ye had a meetin’ las’ night to see what was to be done with the impenitent.  I was there—­that is, I sot on a stool jest outside the door, an’ I heerd all ’twas said.  Ye didn’t agree on nothin’—­mebbe ye’v fixed it up sence.  Any how, ye’v sot me down fur one of the impenitent, an’ yer goin’ fur me.  Well—­”

“Go on nailin’,” interrupted the economical Deacon, a little testily; “the noise don’t disturb me; I can hear ye.”

“Well, what way am I so much wickeder ‘n you be—­you an’ t’other folks at the meetin’-house?” asked Hay.

“George, I never saw ye in God’s house in my life,” replied the Deacon.

“Well, s’pose ye hevn’t—­is God so small He can’t be nowheres ’xcept in your little meetin’-house?  How about His seein’ folks in their closets?”

“George,” said the Deacon, “ef yer a prayin’ man, why don’t ye jine yerself unto the Lord’s people?”

“Why?  ’Cos the Lord’s people, as you call ’em, don’t want me.  S’pose I was to come to the meetin’-house in these clothes—­the only ones I’ve got—­d’ye s’pose any of the Lord’s people ‘d open a pew-door to me?  An’ spose my wife an’ children, dressed no better ’n I be, but as good ’s I can afford, was with me, how d’ye s’pose I’d feel?”

“Pride goeth before a fall, an’ a haughty sperit before,” groaned the Deacon, when the carpenter again interrupted.

“I’d feel as ef the people of God was a gang of insultin’ hypocrites, an’ ez ef I didn’t ever want to see ’em again.  Ef that kind o’ pride’s sinful, the devil’s a saint.  Ef there’s any thin’ wrong about a man’s feelin’ so about himself and them God give him, God’s to blame for it himself; but seein’ it’s the same feelin’ that makes folks keep ‘emselves strait in all other matters, I’ll keep on thinkin’ it’s right.”

“But the preveleges of the Gospel, George,” remonstrated the Deacon.