Redwing stopped, and dropped his head to one side, as if expecting more; Flipp stopped; everybody did. Arkansas Bill, whose good habits had been laid aside late Saturday afternoon, exclaimed:
"Well, I'll be blowed!"
Bill didn't mean anything of the sort, but the tone in which he said it expressed precisely the feeling of the crowd. The voice was again heard:
"Oh, that our thoughts and thanks may rise,
As grateful incense to the skies;
And draw from heaven that sweet repose
Which none but he that feels it knows."
"Oh, that our thoughts and thanks may rise,
As grateful incense to the skies;
And draw from heaven that sweet repose
Which none but he that feels it knows."
Redwing turned abruptly on his heel.
"Keep the ounces," said he. "Ther's an old woman to hum that thinks a sight o' me—I reckon, myself, I'm good fur somethin' besides fillin' a hole in the ground."
That night Sim Ripson complained that it had been the poorest Sunday he had ever had at Tough Case; the boys drank, but it was a sort of nerveless, unbusinesslike way that Sim Ripson greatly regretted; and very few bets were settled in Sim Ripson's principal stock in trade.
When Sim finally learned the cause of his trouble, he promptly announced his intention of converting Mrs. Blizzer to common sense, and as he had argued Uncle Ben, first into a perfect frenzy and then into silence, the crowd considered Mrs. Blizzer's faith doomed.
Monday morning, bright and early, as men with aching heads were taking their morning bitters, Mrs. Blizzer appeared at Sim Ripson's store, and purchased a bar of soap.