The deacon’s ecstatic expression instantly vanished into thin air, and he asked, with a face full of misery,
“And the horses ran away?”
“No,” said the boy. “They’re all right.”
Dr. White sprang up, seized his cane, and asked, “Where is he?”
“That’s so,” asked the deacon, still more sorrowful of countenance, as he continued, “just as corn’s beginnin’ to come in, too, an’ needin’ to be measured an’ sacked; that’s just the way things go in this wicked world!”
Lawyer Bottom, who did not believe much in God, and believed still less in the deacon, asked,
“Well, deacon, then you wouldn’t advise me to take somebody on my hands for the sake of the spiritual payment I’ll be likely to get out of the operation?”
The deacon rallied himself by a tremendous effort, but his countenance did not indicate that the answer he was about to make would be of that softness that turns away wrath; he was saved from disgracing himself, however, by still another boy, who came flying through the main street on horseback, shouting,
“Fire! fire! The woolen mill! Fire!”