The Bishop of Cottontown Part 55

"Oh," said Ozzie B., "that's it, is it?"

"Yes, of course; if a man don't look out for his own hide, whose goin' to do it for him? Come now, ole man."

Ozzie B. was silent. His brother saw the narrow forehead wrinkling in indecision. He knew the different habits--not principles--of his nature were at work for mastery. Finally the hypocrite habit prevailed, when he said piously: "We have sowed the wind, Archie B.--we'll hafter reap the whirlwind, like paw says."

"Go!" shouted his brother. "Go!" and he helped him along with a kick--"Go, since I can't save you. You'll reap the whirlwind, but I won't if my brains can save me."

He sat down on a log and watched his brother go down the path, sobbing as usual, when he felt that he was a martyr. He sat long and thought.

"It's bad," he sighed--"a man cu'd do so much mo' in life if he didn't hafter waste so much time arguin' with fools. Well, I'm here fur the day an' I'll learn somethin'. Now, I wanter know if one squirrel er two squirrels stays in the same hole in winter. Then there's the wild-duck. I wanter kno' when the mallards go south."

In a few minutes he had hid himself behind a tree in a clump of brush. He was silent for ten minutes, so silent that only the falling leaves could be heard. Then very cautiously he imitated the call of the gray squirrel--once, twice, and still again. He had not long to wait. In a hole high up in a hickory a little gray head popped out--then a squirrel came out cautiously--first its head, then half of its body, and each time it moved looking and listening, with its cunning, bright eyes, taking in everything. Then it frisked out with a flirt of its tail, and sat on a limb nearby. It was followed by another and another. Archie B. watched them for a half hour, a satisfied smile playing around his lips. He was studying squirrel. He saw them run into the hole again and bring out each a nut and sit on a nearby limb and eat it.

"That settles that," he said to himself. "I thought they kept their nuts in the same hole."

There was the sound of voices behind him and the squirrels vanished.

Archie B. stood up and saw an old man and some children gathering nuts.

"It's the Bishop an' the little mill-mites. I'll bet they've brought their dinner."

This was the one thing Archie B. needed to make his day in the woods complete.

"h.e.l.lo," he shouted, coming up to them.

"Why, it's Archie B.," said s.h.i.+loh, delighted.

"Why, it is," said her grandfather. "What you doin', Archie B.?"

"Studyin' squirrels right now. What you all doin'?"

"I've tuck the kids out of the mill an' I'm givin' 'em their fus' day in the woods. s.h.i.+loh, there, has been mighty sick and is weak yet, so we're goin' slow. Mighty glad to run upon you, Archie B. Can't you sho' s.h.i.+loh the squirrels? She's never seed one yet, have you, pet?"

"No," said s.h.i.+loh thoughtfully. "Is they like them little jorees that say _Wake-up, pet! Wake-up, pet?_ Oh, do sho' me the squirrel!

Mattox, ain't this jes' fine, bein' out of the mill?"

Archie B.'s keen glance took in the well-filled lunch basket. At once he became brilliantly entertaining. In a few minutes he had s.h.i.+loh enraptured at the wood-lore he told her,--even Bull Run and Seven Days, Atlanta and Appomattox were listening in amazement, so interesting becomes nature's story when it finds a reader.

And so all the morning Archie B. went with them, and never had they seen so much and enjoyed a day as they had this one.

And the lunch--how good it tasted! It was a new life to them.

s.h.i.+loh's color came in the healthful exercise, and even Bull Run began to look out keenly from his dull eyes.

After lunch s.h.i.+loh went to sleep on a soft carpet of Bermuda gra.s.s with the old man's coat for a blanket, while the other children waded in the branch, and gathered nuts till time to go back home.

It was nearly sun-down when they reached the gate of the little hut on the mountain.

"We must do this often, Archie B.," said the Bishop, as the children went in, tired and hungry, leaving him and Archie B. at the gate.

"I've never seed the little 'uns have sech a time, an' it mighty nigh made me young ag'in."

All afternoon Archie B. had been thinking. All day he had felt the lumpy, solid thing in the innermost depths of his jeans pocket, which told him one hundred dollars in gold lay there, and that it would need an explanation when he reached home or he was in for the worst whipping he ever had. Knowing this, he had not been thinking all the afternoon for nothing. The old man bade him good-night, but still Archie B. lingered, hesitated, hung around the gate.

"Won't you come in, Archie B.?"

"No-o--thank you, Bishop, but I'd--I'd like to, really tho', jes' to git a little spirt'ul g'idance"--a phrase he had heard his father use so often.

"Why, what's the matter, Archie B.?"

Archie B. rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I'm--I'm--thinkin' of j'inin' the church, Bishop."

"Bless yo' h'art--that's right. I know'd you'd quit yo' mischeev'us ways an' come in--an' I honor you fur it, Archie B.--praise the Lord!"

Archie B. still stood pensive and sobered:

"But a thing happened to-day, Bishop, an' it's worryin' me very much.

It makes me think, perhaps--I--ain't--ain't worthy of--the bestowal of--the grace--you know, the kind I heard you speak of?"

"Tell me, Archie B., lad--an' I'll try to enlighten you in my po'

way."

"Well, now; it's this--jes' suppose you wus goin' along now--say to school, an' seed a dorg, say his name was Bonaparte, wantin' to eat up a little monkey; an' a lot of fellers, say like Jud Carpenter an'

Billy Buch, a-bettin' he cu'd do it in ten minutes an' a-sickin' him on the po' little monkey--this big savage dorg. An' suppose now you feel sorry for the monkey an' somethin'--you can't tell what--but somethin' mighty plain tells you the Lord wus on the monkey's side--so plain you cu'd read it--like it told David--an' the dorg wus as mean an' bostful as Goliath wus--"

"Archie B., my son, I'd a been fur the monkey, I sho' would," said the Bishop impressively.

Archie B. smiled: "Bishop, you've called my hand--I _wus_ for that monkey."

The old man smiled approvingly: "Good--good--Archie B."

"Now, what happened? I'm mighty inter'sted--oh, that is good. I'm bettin' the monkey downed him, the Lord bein' on his side."

"But, s'pose furst," went on Archie B. argumentatively, "that you wanted to give some money fur a little church that you wanted to j'ine--up on the mountain side, a little po'-fo'k church, that depended on charity--"

"I understan's, I understan's, Archie B., that wus the Lord's doin's,--ten to one on the monkey, Archie--ten to one!"

"An' that you had ten dollars in gold around yo' neck in a little bag, given you by your ole Granny when she died--an' knowin' how the Lord wus for the monkey, an' it bein' a dead cinch, an' all that--an'

these fellers blowin' an' offerin' to bet ten to one--an' seein' you c'ud pick it up in the road--all for the little church, mind you, Bishop--"

"Archie B.," exclaimed the old man excitedly, "them bein' the facts an' the thing at stake, with that ole dorg an' Jud Carpenter at the bottom of it, I'd a put it up on the monkey, son--fur charity, you know, an' fur the principle of it,--I'd a put it up, Archie B., if I'd lost ever' cent!"

"Exactly, Bishop, an' I did--at ten to one--think of the odds! Ten to one, mighty nigh as great as wus ag'in David."

"An' you won, of course, Archie B., you won in a walk?" said the old man breathlessly. "G.o.d was fur you an' the monkey."

Archie B. smiled triumphantly and pulled out his handful of gold. The old man sat down on a log, dazed.

"Archie B., sho'ly, sho'ly, not all that? An' licked the dorg, an'

that gang, an' cleaned 'em up?"