“Tell me about it, Archie,” said Abel, drawing off his overcoat and sitting down to his supper.  “I passed Jonathan Gay in the road and he asked me to bind up his horse’s sprain.”

“He’d be damned befo’ I’d bind up a sprain for him!” burst out Archie, with violence.  “Met me with a string of partridges this morning and jumped on me, blast him, as if he’d caught me in the act of stealing.  I’d like to know if we hadn’t hunted on that land before he or his rotten old uncle were ever thought of?”

“Ah, those were merry days, those were!” piped grandfather.  “Used to go huntin’ myself when I was young, with Mr. Jordan, an’ brought home any day as many fine birds as I could carry.  Trained his dogs for him, too.”

“Thar was al’ays time for him to go huntin’,” whimpered grandmother.

“What are you goin’ to do about it, Abel?” asked Sarah, turning upon him with the smoking skillet in her hand.

At the question Blossom Revercomb, who was seated at work under the lamp, raised her head and waited with an anxious, expectant look for the answer.  She was embroidering a pair of velvet slippers for Mr. Mullen—­a task begun with passion and now ending with weariness.  While she listened for Abel’s response, her long embroidery needle remained suspended over the toe of the slipper, where it gleamed in the lamp light.

“I don’t know,” replied Abel, and Blossom drew a repressed sigh of relief; “I’ve just ordered him to keep clear of our land, if that’s what you’re hintin’ at.”

“If you had the sperit of yo’ grandpa you’d have knocked him down in the road,” said Sarah angrily.

“Yes, yes, I’d have knocked him down in the road,” chimed in the old man, with the eagerness of a child.

“You can’t knock a man down when he asks to borrow your lantern,” returned Abel, doggedly, on the defensive.

“Oh, you can’t, can’t you?” jeered Sarah.  “All you’re good for, I reckon, is to shuck corn or peel potatoes!”

For a minute Abel stared at her in silence.  “I declare, mother, I don’t believe you’re any better than a heathen,” he remarked sadly at last.

“Well, I’m not the kind of Christian you are, anyway,” retorted Sarah, “I’d like to know whar you’ll find anything in Scripture about not knockin’ a man down because he asks you for a lantern.  I thought I knew my Bible—­but I reckon you are better acquainted with it—­you an’ yo’ Mr. Mullen.”

“Of course, you know your Bible.  I wasn’t meanin’ that.”

“Then if readin’ yo’ Bible ain’t bein’ a Christian, I suppose it’s havin’ curly hair, an’ gittin’ up in the pulpit an’ mincin’.  Who are those slippers for, Keren-happuch?”

“Mr. Mullen, grandma.”

“Well, if I was goin’ to embroider slippers for a minister,” taunted Sarah, “I’d take care to choose one that could repeat his Scripture when he was called on.”