“Go on reading—­please read to us,” pleaded Mary.

“Yes, do read to us,” I echoed, for the position was a new one to me, and at best I am awkward and slow-witted where women are concerned.  I could not adroitly turn the old man’s wandering speculation into a general laugh as Weston would have done.  My best was to break in rudely.

“Well—­if I must,” Luther said, opening the great book across his knees.

A long silence followed.  I heard the solemn ticking of the clock on the mantel behind me; I heard Mary laughing softly in her retreat beyond the table; I heard Luther, now bending over his book, mumbling to himself a few words of the text.

“It is about the faymine in Injy,” he said at last, holding his place on the page with a long, thin forefinger, and looking up at me.  “There are three volumes, and this is the second.  The third is yit to come.  I pay a dollar a year and every year I gits a new volume.  It’s a grand book, too, Mark.  It was wrote by one of our brethren, Brother Matthias Pennel, who went to Injy in charge of a shipload of grain gathered by our people for the sufferin’ heathen.  The first volume tells all about the gittin’ up of the subscription and the sailin’ of the wessel.  Brother Matthias is a grand writer, and he tells all about Injy and the heathen, and how the wessel reached the main place there—­what’s the place, Mary?—­you’re allus good on geography!”

“Calcutta,” prompted Mary.

“Yes, I mind now—­Calcutty.  Well, from there Brother Matthias went up into the country called—­I can’t just mind the exact name—­oh, here it is—­B-a-l-l-e-r-r-a-d Ballerrad—­e-r-a-d—­Ballerraderad.”

Luther paused and sighed.  “Them names—­them names!” he exclaimed.  “If there is one thing that convinces me that the story of the Tower of Babel is true, it is the names of the towns in Injy.”

It seemed to me that perhaps from the viewpoint of the East Indian, the same thing might be said of our “villes” and “burgs,” and I was about to raise my voice in behalf of the maligned heathen, when my host resumed his discourse.

“When you come in, I was readin’ about a poor missionary woman in Baller—­Baller—­Ballerraderad—­whose Sunday-school had been largely eat up by taggers.  Her name was Flora Martin, Brother Matthias says, and she was one of the saintliest women he ever seen.  He tells how the month before he come to Baller—­Baller—­Baller-daddad—­an extry large tagger had been sneakin’ around the mission-house, a-watchin’ for scholars, and how one day, when, according to Brother Matthias, this here Flora Martin, armed only with a rifle and girded about with the heavenly sperrit—­how this here Flora——­”

There was a ponderous knock on the door, and then the knob began to rattle violently.  The bolt had been shot, so Luther had to rise in haste to admit the new-comer, leaving Flora Martin with nothing but the rifle and the heavenly spirit.