Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening. The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon, called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's." And then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry out, "Laws-a-massy! You don't say! A Methodis'? One of the shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches! What will the Captin' do? They do say he does hate the Methodis' worse nor copperhead snakes, now. Some old quarrel, liker'n not. Well, I'm agoin', jist to see how redikl'us them Methodis' does do!"
The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the neighborhood. It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.
"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in! We'll have to see about that. A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to be lynched. But I'll match the Methodists. Where's Patty? Patty! O, Patty! Bob, run and find Miss Patty."
And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty! O' Miss Patty! Whah is ye?"
He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn, shouting, "Miss Patty! O! Miss Patty!"
Where was Patty?
CHAPTER X.
PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain the milk.
Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a spring-house is? A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold from beneath the hill. The little cabin-like spring-house sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.