There was not enough originality among the worked-to-death inhabitants of Cottontown to plant their gardens differently; for all of them had the same weedy turnip-patch on one side, straggling tomatoes on another, and half-dried mullein-stalks sentineling the corners. For years these cottages had not been painted, and now each wore the same tinge of sickly yellow paint. It was not difficult to imagine that they had had a long siege of malarial fever in which the village doctor had used abundant plasters of mustard, and the disease had finally run into “yaller ja'ndice,” as they called it in Cottontown.
And thus Cottontown had stood for several years, a new problem in Southern life and industry, and a paying one for the Massachusetts directors.
In the meanwhile another building had been put up—a little cheaply built chapel, of long-leaf yellow pine. It was known as the Bishop's church, and sat on the side of the mountain, half way up among the black-jacks, exposed to the blistering suns of summer and the winds of winter.
It had never been painted: “An' it don't need it,” as the Bishop had said when the question of painting it had been raised by some of the members.
“No, it don't need it, for the hot sun has drawed all the rosin out on its surface, an' pine rosin's as good a paint as any church needs. Jes' let God be, an' He'll fix His things like He wants 'em any way. He put the paint in the pine-tree when He made it. Now man is mighty smart,—he can make paint, but he can't make a pine tree.”
It was Sunday morning, and as the Bishop drove along to church he was still thinking of Jack Bracken and Captain Tom, and the burial of little Jack. When he arose that morning Jack was up, clean-shaved and neatly dressed. As Mrs. Watts, the Bishop's wife, had become used, as she expressed it, to his “fetchin' any old thing, frum an old hoss to an old man home, wharever he finds 'em,”—she did not express any surprise at having a new addition to the family.
The outlaw looked nervous and sorrow-stricken. Several times, when some one came on him unexpectedly, the Bishop saw him feeling nervously for a Colt's revolver which had been put away. Now and then, too, he saw great tears trickling down the rough cheeks, when he thought no one was noticing him.
“Now, Jack,” said the Bishop after breakfast, “you jes' get on John Paul Jones an' hunt for Cap'n Tom. I know you'll not leave no stone unturned to find him. Go by the cave and see if him an' Eph ain't gone back. I'm not af'eard—I know Eph will take care of him, but we want to fin' him. After meetin' if you haven't found him I'll join in the hunt myself—for we must find Cap'n Tom, Jack, befo' the sun goes down. I'd ruther see him than any livin' man. Cap'n Tom—Cap'n Tom—him that's been as dead all these years! Fetch him home when you find him—fetch him home to me. He shall never want while I live. An', Jack, remember—don't forget yo'se'f and hold up anybody. I'll expec' you to jine the church nex' Sunday.”
“I ain't been in a church for fifteen years,” said the other.
“High time you are going, then. You've put yo' hands to the plough—turn not back an' God'll straighten out everything.”