And so all the morning Archie B. went with them, and never had they seen so much and enjoyed a day as they had this one.
And the lunch—how good it tasted! It was a new life to them. Shiloh's color came in the healthful exercise, and even Bull Run began to look out keenly from his dull eyes.
After lunch Shiloh went to sleep on a soft carpet of Bermuda grass with the old man's coat for a blanket, while the other children waded in the branch, and gathered nuts till time to go back home.
It was nearly sun-down when they reached the gate of the little hut on the mountain.
“We must do this often, Archie B.,” said the Bishop, as the children went in, tired and hungry, leaving him and Archie B. at the gate. “I've never seed the little 'uns have sech a time, an' it mighty nigh made me young ag'in.”
All afternoon Archie B. had been thinking. All day he had felt the lumpy, solid thing in the innermost depths of his jeans pocket, which told him one hundred dollars in gold lay there, and that it would need an explanation when he reached home or he was in for the worst whipping he ever had. Knowing this, he had not been thinking all the afternoon for nothing. The old man bade him good-night, but still Archie B. lingered, hesitated, hung around the gate.
“Won't you come in, Archie B.?”
“No-o—thank you, Bishop, but I'd—I'd like to, really tho', jes' to git a little spirt'ul g'idance”—a phrase he had heard his father use so often.
“Why, what's the matter, Archie B.?”
Archie B. rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I'm—I'm—thinkin' of j'inin' the church, Bishop.”