The deacon took a few papers from his pocket, looked them over, his face changing from grave to puzzled and from puzzled to angry and back again through a whole gamut of facial expressions.  Finally, he thrust the entire collection back into his pocket, and said to himself,—­

“If he keeps on at that work, I may have as much trouble as he let on that I would.  I don’t see how some of these things are going to be settled unless I have him to help me; and if he’s going to be as particular as he makes out, or as he did make out the other day, there’s going to be trouble, just as sure as both of us are alive.  Of course, the more prominent he is before the public, the less he’ll want to be in any case in court that takes hard fighting, particularly when he don’t think he’s on the popular side.  And there’s that Mrs. Poynter that’s been bothering me to death about the interest on her mortgage:  I keep hearing that she’s at the meetings every night, and that she never lets an evening pass without speaking to Bartram.  Maybe all she’s talking about is some sinner or other that she wants to have saved; but if she acts with him as she does with me, I’m awfully afraid that she’s consulting him about that interest.

“I didn’t think it was the right time of the year to start special meetings, anyhow; and I don’t know what our minister did it for without consulting the deacons.  He never did such a thing in his life before.  It does seem to me that once in a while everything goes crosswise, and it all happens just when I need most of all to have things go along straight and smooth.  Gracious! if some of these papers in my pocket don’t work the way they ought to, I don’t know how things are going to come out.”

The deacon had almost reached the business street as this soliloquy went on, but he seemed inclined to carry on his conversation with himself:  so he deliberately turned about and slowly paced the way backward towards his home.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said he, after a few moments of silence, in which his mind seemed busily occupied,—­“I shouldn’t wonder if that was the best way out, after all.  I do believe I’ll do it.  Yes, I will do it.  I’ll go and buy out that shoe-shop of Larry Highgetty’s, and I’ll let Sam Kimper have it at just what it costs, and trust him for all the purchase-money.  I don’t believe the good-will of the place and all the stock that is in it will cost over a couple of hundred dollars; and Larry would take my note at six months almost as quick as he’d take anybody else’s money.  If things go right I can pay the note, and if they don’t he can get the property back.  But in the meantime folks won’t be able to say anything against me.  They can’t say then that I’m down on Sam, like some of them say now, and if anybody talks about Bartram and the upper-crust folks that have been helping the meetings along, I can just remind them that talk is cheap and that it’s money that tells.  I’ll do it, as sure as my name’s Quickset; and the quicker I do it the better it will be for me, if I’m not mistaken.”