"Well, getting back to that woman; I married her four months after my first wife died, and took her to live in the same house. We got along less than three weeks in peace. Then things began to warm up. She was a devil, if there ever was one on top of the earth, but I persisted faithfully." His appearance was now very pious. "The first big row we had was on Sunday. It was in the morning, and I, with my Bible under my arm, was starting to church. She didn't want to go that day, and had tried to keep me from going; but I always led the prayer, and preached during the pastor's absence, so, as I was saying, I was starting for church. When I passed a room in which she had enclosed herself to pout, she suddenly opened it, and hit me in the side with a big rock. If it had not struck the Bible, I think I would have been hurt seriously; but it hit the book and my arm, and rolled upon the floor.
"Well, after that, the devil was to pay. She kept me in Hell and hot water, and we got along like a cat and a dog. Each day, from sunrise until long after it had set, I asked Jesus whether I could hold out to the end. I had declared to his Holy Name, that I had taken that woman to live with for better or for worse; but surely I was getting the worst of it. And then, at last, it came to the point when it was beyond human endurance. She took to shooting at me for the fun of it."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Wyeth. "You don't mean to say that she shot at you!"
"No," he replied calmly, "she didn't shoot at me; she shot at me, and not once, but any old time she felt like it, which was more than once, by many, many times," he soliloquized, grimly.
"Yes; she shot at me as though it were no more than throwing hot water on a bunch of rats."
"Save me Jesus!"
"Then one day I shot at her."
"Hush!"
"Yes, I shot at her and tried to hit, but I am thankful the good Lord was with us both against ourselves, I missed. I think I was too much excited."