Filmore got up and laid his clay pipe on the counter and kicked back his chair with his foot.
“The fust indications I noticed,” he began, in a raised voice, as if he were speaking to some one outside, “wuz the day Liz Wambush died. Bud Thorn come in while I wuz weighing up a side o’ bacon fur Ab, an’ ‘lowed that Liz couldn’t live through the night. I axed ’im ef she had made her peace, and he ‘lowed she had, entirely, that she wuz jest a-lyin’ thar shoutin’ Glory ever’ breath she drawed, an’ that they all wuz glad to see her reconciled, fer you know she wuz a hard case speritually. Well, it wuz right back thar at the fireplace while Ab wuz warmin’ hisse’f to start home that he ‘lowed that he hadn’t a word to say agin Liz’s marvelous faith, nur her sudden speritual spurt, but that in his opinion the doctrine o’ salvation through faith without actual deeds of the flesh to give it backbone wuz all shucks, an’ a dangerous doctrine to teach to a risin’ gineration. Them wuz his words as well as I can remember, an’ he cited a good many cases to demonstrate that the members o’ Big Cabin wuzn’t any more ready to help a needy neighbor than a equal number outside the church. He wuz mad kase last summer when his wheat wuz spilin’ everybody that come to he’p wuz uv some other denomination, an’ the whole lot o’ Big Cabin folks made some excuse ur other. He ‘lowed that you—”
Filmore hesitated, and the tall man opposite him changed countenance.
“Neil, hain’t you got a bit o’ sense?” put in Mrs. Filmore, sharply.
“What did he say ag’in’ me—the scamp?” asked Odell, firing up.
Filmore turned his back to his scowling wife, and took an egg from a basket on the counter and looked at it closely, as he rolled it over and over in his fingers.
“Lots that he ortn’t to, I reckon,” he said, evasively.
“Well, what wuz some of it? I hain’t a-keerin’ what he says about me.”
“He ‘lowed, fer one thing, that yore strict adheerance to doctrine had hardened you some, wharas religious conviction, ef thar wuz any divine intention in it, ort, in reason, to have a contrary effect. He ‘lowed you wuz money-lovin’ an’ uncharitable an’ unfergivin’ an’, a heap o’ times, un-Christian in yore persecution o’ the weak an’ helpless—them that has no food an’ raiment—when yore crib an’ smokehouse is always full. Ab is a powerful talker, an’—”
“It’s the devil in ’im a-talkin’,” interrupted Odell, angrily, “an’ it’s plain enough that he ort to be churched. Brother Sanders, you intimated that you’d have a word to say; let us have it.”