“You've got no right to say that, Matthew. And if you go round talking that way you'll make yourself more unpopular than you are already.”
“Oh, I'll be careful, Martha. I'll just think it, and perhaps put two or three of the leading intellects like Abe and Sally on their guard. But come, come, Martha! You know as well as I do, he's a rascal. Don't you believe it?”
“I believe in giving everybody a chance. Don't your own law books say a man's innocent till he's proved guilty?”
“Something like that. And I'm not trying Brother Dylks in open court at present. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt if he's ever brought before my judgment seat. But you've got to allow that his long hair and black broadcloth and his snort and shout are against him.”
“I don't believe in them any more than you do,” she owned. “But don't you persecute him because he's religious, Matthew.”
“Oh, I don't object to him because he's religious, though I think there's more religion in Leatherwood already than any ten towns would know what to do with. He's got to do more than preach his brand of religion before I'd want to trouble him.”
They were at the hewn log which formed the step to the porch between the rooms of their cabin. A lank hound rose from the floor, and pulled himself back from his forward-planted paws, and whimpered a welcome to them; a captive coon rattled his chain from his corner under the porch roof.
“Why don't you let that poor thing go, Matthew?” Mrs. Braile asked.
“Well, I will, some day. But the little chap that brought it to me was like our—”
He stopped; both were thinking the same thing and knew they were. “I saw the likeness from the first, too,” the wife said.