“—­Stop!  Stop before it is too late, before death takes you in the wallow of your sins!  Repent and gain salvation—­”

Hopalong felt relieved, but his face retained its expression of childlike innocence even after he realized that he was not being personally addressed; and he glanced around.  It took him ninety-seven seconds to see everything there was to be seen, and his eyes were drawn irresistibly back to the stranger’s kerchief.  “Awful!  Awful thing for a drinking man to wear, or run up against unexpectedly!” he muttered, blinking.  “Worse than snakes,” he added thoughtfully.

“Look ahere, you—­” began the owner of the offensive decoration, if it might be called such, but the evangelist drowned his voice in another flight of eloquence.

“—­Peace! Peace is the message of the Lord to His children,” roared the voice from the upturned soap box, and when the speaker turned and looked in the direction of the two men-with-a-difference he found them sitting up very straight and apparently drinking in his words with great relish; whereupon he felt that he was making gratifying progress toward the salvation of their spotted souls.  He was very glad, indeed, that he had been so grievously misinformed about the personal attributes of one Hopalong Cassidy,—­glad and thankful.

“Death cometh as a thief in the night,” the voice went on.  “Think of the friends who have gone before; who were well one minute and gone the next!  And it must come to all of us, to all of us, to me and to you—­”

The man with the afflicted neck started rocking the bench.

“Something is coming to somebody purty soon,” murmured Hopalong.  He began to sidle over towards his neighbor, his near hand doubled up into a huge knot of protuberant knuckles and white-streaked fingers; but as he was about to deliver his hint that he was greatly displeased at the antics of the bench, a sob came to his ears.  Turning his head swiftly, he caught sight of the stranger’s face, and sorrow was marked so strongly upon it that the sight made Hopalong gape.  His hand opened slowly and he cautiously sidled back again, disgruntled, puzzled, and vexed at himself for having strayed into a game where he was so hopelessly at sea.  He thought it all over carefully and then gave it up as being too deep for him to solve.  But he determined one thing:  He was not going to leave before the other man did, anyhow.

“An’ if I catch that howling kerchief outside,” he muttered, smacking his lips with satisfaction at what was in store for it.  His visit to Wallace was not very important, anyway, and it could wait on more important events.

“There sits a sinner!” thundered out the exhorter, and Hopalong looked stealthily around for a sight of a villain.  “God only has the right to punish.  ‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord, and whosoever takes the law into his own hands, whosoever takes human life, defies the Creator.  There sits a man who has killed his fellow-men, his brothers!  Are you not a sinner, Cassidy?”