Then they shook hands and Bud went out.  Ralph sat looking into the fire.  There was no conscientious difficulty now in the way of his claiming Hannah.  The dry forestick lying on the rude stone andirons burst into a blaze.  The smoldering hope In the heart of Ralph Hartsook did the same.  He could have Hannah If he could win her.  But there came slowly back the recollection of his lost standing in Flat Creek.  There was circumstantial evidence against him.  It was evident that Hannah believed something of this.  What other stones Small might have put in circulation he did not know.  Would Small try to win Hannah’s love to throw it away again, as he had done with others?  At least he would not spare any pains to turn the heart of the bound girl against Ralph.

The bright flame on the forestick, which Ralph had been watching, flickered and burned low.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CHURCH OF THE BEST LICKS.

Just as the flame on the forestick, which Ralph had watched so intensely, flickered and burned low, and just as Ralph with a heavy but not quite hopeless heart rose to leave, the latch lifted and Bud re-entered.

“I wanted to say something,” he stammered, “but you know it’s hard to say it.  I ha’n’t no book-larnin to speak of, and some things is hard to say when a man ha’n’t got book-words to say ’em with.  And they’s some things a man can’t hardly ever say anyhow to anybody.”

Here Bud stopped.  But Ralph spoke in such a matter-of-course way in reply that he felt encouraged to go on.

“You gin up Hanner kase you thought she belonged to me.  That’s more’n I’d a done by a long shot.  Now, arter I left here jest now, I says to myself, a man what can gin up his gal on account of sech a feeling fer the rights of a Flat Cricker like me, why, dog-on it, says I, sech a man is the man as can help me do better.  I don’t know whether you’re a Hardshell or a Saftshell, or a Methodist, or a Campbellite, or a New Light, or a United Brother, or a Millerite, or what-not.  But I says, the man what can do the clean thing by a ugly feller like me, and stick to it, when I was jest ready to eat him up, is a kind of a man to tie to.”

Here Bud stopped in fright at his own volubility, for he had run his words off like a piece learned by heart, as though afraid that if he stopped he would not have courage to go on.

Ralph said that he did not belong to any church, and he was afraid he couldn’t do Bud much good.  But his tone was full of sympathy, and, what is better than sympathy, a yearning for sympathy.

“You see,” said Bud, “I wanted to git out of this low-lived, Flat Crick way of livin’.  We’re a hard set down here, Mr. Hartsook.  And I’m gittin’ to be one of the hardest of ’em.  But I never could git no good out of Bosaw with his whisky and meanness.  And I went to the Mount Tabor church concert.  I heard a man discussin’ baptism, and regeneration, and