“That was very fine of your son to stand up for his father like that.  You can’t say that your foes were those of your own household.  In such cases, young people must do one of two things, despise their parents or despise the preacher; and, when the parents go to church, the children, unless they are young hypocrites, uniformly despise such preachers.”

“Yes, and to think I had never told Rufus a word about the ’Gospel Sonnets of the Sesayders!’ It’s a great pleasure, sir, to an old man like me to smoke a pipe with a gentleman like yourself.”

Coristine replied that it afforded him equal satisfaction, and they puffed away with occasional remarks on the surrounding scenery.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson was striving to draw out the somewhat offended mistress.

“Your husband tells me, Mrs. Hill, that you are of German parentage,” he remarked blandly.

“Yes,” she replied; “my people were what they call Pennsylvania Dutch.  Do you know German, sir?”

“I have a book acquaintance with it,” remarked the dominie.

“Do you recognize this?

Yo een fayter in der ayvig-eye,
Yo een fayter in der ayvig-eye,
Meen fayter rue mee, Ee moos gay

                  Tsoo lowwen in der ayvig-eye.”

“No; I distinctly do not, although it has a Swabian sound.”

“That is the Pennsylvania Dutch for ’I have a Father in the Promised Land,’ a Sunday School hymn.”

“Were you brought up on hymns like that?”

“Oh, no; I can still remember some good German ones sung at our assemblies, like:—­

Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit, das ist mein Schmuck und Ehrenkleid, damit will ich vor Gott besteh’n, wenn ich in Himmel werd ’eingeh’n.

Do you know that?” asked the old lady, proud of her correct recitation.

“Yes; that is Count Zinzendorff’s hymn, which Wesley translated:—­

     Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
     My beauty are, my glorious dress;
     Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
     With joy shall I lift up my head.

The translation is wonderfully free, and takes unpardonable liberties with the original.”

“Graf Zinzendorff revived our Brethren when persecution had almost destroyed them.  He was in America, too, and had his life saved by a rattlesnake.  The Indians were going to kill him, when they saw him sleeping with the snake by his side, and thought it was his Manitou.”

“I hope that is not a snake-story, Mrs. Hill.  I had a boy once in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man.  The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man.  Then the man came out and killed it.  That was a snake story.”