The holy hilarity which Father Baguss enjoyed on his way home, after having assisted in bringing Harry Wainright back, did not depart with the shades of night. The old man was out of bed at his usual hour, and he took his spiritual songs to the barn with him, to the astonishment of his mild-eyed cows and quick-eared horses; and when his drove of porkers demanded their morning meal with the vocal power peculiar to a chorus of swine, the old man defiantly jumped an occasional octave, and made the spiritual songs dominate over the physical. He seemed so happy that his single hired man could not resist the temptation of asking for an increase of pay; but the sobriety to which this interruption and its consequent refusal reduced Father Baguss was of only temporary duration, and the broken strain was resumed with renewed energy. The ecstasy lasted into and through the old man’s matutinal repast, and manifested itself by an occasional hum through the good man’s nose, which did the duty ordinarily performed by a mouth which was now busied about other things; it caused Father Baguss to read a glorious psalm as he officiated at the family altar after breakfast; it made itself felt half way through the set prayer which the old farmer had delivered every morning for forty years; but it seemed suddenly to depart as its whilom possessor uttered the petition, “May we impart to others of the grace with which thou hast visited us so abundantly.” For the Tappelmines had come suddenly into Father Baguss’s mind, and as that receptacle was never particularly crowded, the Tappelmines made themselves very much at home there. The prayer having ended, the old man loitered about the house instead of going directly to the “clearing,” in which he had been getting out some oak fence-rails; he stared out of the window, walked up and down the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, lit a pipe, relit it half a dozen times at two minute intervals, sighed, groaned, and at length strode across the room like a bandit coming upon the boards of a theater, seized his hat, and started for the Tappelmine domicile.
As he plodded along over the rough road, he had two very distinct ideas in his mind: one was, that he hadn’t the slightest notion of what to say to Tappelmine; the other, and stronger, was, that it would be a relief to him to discover that Tappelmine was away from home, or even sick in bed—yes, or even drunk. But this hope was of very short duration, for soon the old man heard the Tappelmine axe, and, as he rounded the corner of the miserable house, he saw Tappelmine himself—a tall, gaunt figure in faded homespun, torn straw hat, and a tangled thicket of muddy-gray hair. The face which Tappelmine turned, as he heard the approaching footsteps, was not one to warm the heart of a man inspired only by an unwelcome sense of duty; it was thin, full of vagrant wrinkles; the nose had apparently started in different directions, and each time failed to return to its original line; the eyes were watery and colorless, and the lips were thin and drawn into the form of a jagged volcano crater.
“The idee of doin’ anything for such!” exclaimed Father Baguss under his breath. “O Lord! you put me up to this here job—unless it was all Crupp’s work; now see me through!” Then he said,
“How are you, neighbor?”
“Oh! off an’ on, ’bout as usual,” said Tappelmine, with a look which seemed to indicate that his usual condition was not one upon which he was particularly to be felicitated.
“How’d your crop turn out?” asked Father Baguss, well knowing that “crop” was a terribly sarcastic word to apply to the acre or two of badly cultivated corn which Tappelmine had planted, but yet feeling a frantic need of talking against time.
“Well, not over’n above good,” said Tappelmine, as impervious to the innocent sarcasm as he would have been to anything but a bullet or a glass of whiskey. “I dunno what would have ’come of us ef I hadn’t knocked over a couple of deer last week.”
“You might have given a hint to your neighbors, if worst had come to worst,” suggested Father Baguss, perceiving a gleam of light, but not so delighted over it as a moment or two before he had expected to be. “Nobody’d have stood by an’ seen you starve.”