The Leatherwood God Part 26

"Who? Joey? Oh, yes. He married Benny Hingston's sister. Benny's wife died, and he lives with them."

"And there ain't a better man in the whole of Leatherwood than Joey Billin's, as we always call him," Mrs. Braile put in. "He was the best boy anywhere, and he's the best man."

"Well, it's likely to come out that way, sometimes," the Squire said with tender irony.

"And you can't say," Mrs. Braile continued with a certain note of indignation as for unjust neglect of the pair, "but what James Redfield and Jane has got along very well together."

"Oh, yes, they've got along," the Squire a.s.sented. "He's got along with her, and she's got along with the children--plenty of them. I reckon she's what _he_ wanted, and they're what _she_ did."

The stranger looked a little puzzled.

"That instinct of maternity," the Squire explained. "You may have noticed it in women--some of them."

"Oh! Oh, yes," Mr. Mandeville a.s.sented. He did not seem greatly interested.

"She's always been just crazy about 'em," Mrs. Braile explained.

"Beginnin' with Nancy Billin's's little girl. Well!"

"Yes," the Squire amplified. "It was the best thing, or at least the strongest thing in Jane. I don't say anything against it, mother," he said tenderly to his wife. "Jane was a good girl, especially after she got over her faith in Dylks, and she's a good woman. At least, Jim thinks so."

Mrs. Braile contented herself as she could with his ironical concession.

The stranger looked at his watch; he jumped to his feet. "Nine o'clock!

Mrs. Braile, I'm ashamed. But you must blame your husband, partly. Good night, ma'am; good--Why, look here, Squire Braile!" he arrested himself in offering his hand. "How about the obscurity of the scene where Joe Smith founded his superst.i.tion, which bids fair to live right along with the other false religions? Was Leatherwood, Ohio, a narrower stage than Manchester, New York? And in point of time the two cults were only four years apart."

"Well, that's a thing that's occurred to me since we've been talking.

Suppose we look into it to-morrow? Come round to breakfast--about six o'clock. One point, though: Joe Smith only claimed to be a prophet, and Dylks claimed to be a G.o.d. That made it harder, maybe for his superst.i.tion."

THE END