An old man and his wife appeared at the door; both of them shoved back their spectacles until they rested on the tops of their heads, and scanned him searchingly. The old woman had a law-book in her hand, and the old man a quill pen. She had evidently been reading to him, and he copying.
The old man called out to him imperiously:
"Heah, stranger, who air yo'? An' what d'yo' want?"
The tone was so harsh and repellant that the Deacon thought that he would disarm hostility by announcing himself a plain citizen, like themselves. So he replied:
"I'm a farmer, and a citizen from Injianny, and I want to buy some chickens for my son, who's sick in the hospital at Chattanoogy."
"Injianny!" sneered the old man. "Meanest people in the world live in Injianny. Settled by scalawags that we'uns run outen Tennessee bekase they'uns wuz too onery to live heah."
"Citizen!" echoed the woman. "They'uns heap sight wuss'n the soldjers. Teamsters, gamblers, camp-followers, thieves, that'll steal the coppers off en a dead man's eyes. I had a sister that married a man that beat her, and then run off to Injianny, leavin' her with six children to support. All the mean men go to Injianny. Cl'ar out. We don't want nobody 'round heah, and specially no Injiannians. They'uns is a pizun lot."
"Yes, cl'ar out immejitly," commanded the old man. "I'm a Jestice of the Peace, and ef you don't go to wunst I'll find a way to make yo'. We've a law agin able-bodied vagrants. Cl'ar out, now."
"Come, have a little sense," said the Deacon, not a little roiled at the abuse of his State. "I'm just as respectable a man as you dare be. I never stole anything. I've bin all my life a regler member o' the Baptist Church strict, close-communion, total-immersion Baptists. All I want o' you is to buy some o' them chickens there, and I'll give you a fair price for 'em. No use o' your flaring up over a little matter o' bizniss."
"I don't believe a word of hit," said the woman, who yet showed that she was touched by the allusion to the Baptist Church, as the Deacon had calculated, for most of the people of that section professed to be of that denomination. "What'll yo' gi' me for them chickens?"