"If you get scared, you'll miss, sure's you live. Now, Port, we've just got to beat 'em."
Vosh and his cutter came up at that moment, and Mrs. Stebbins stepped out with the remark,—
"Deacon, you must make room for me. I'll swop with Susie. I want a talk with Judith and Sarah."
"Come, Susie," said Vosh. "I've been teaching my colt to spell."
There was no spare room in the big sleigh, for the farmhouse was left in charge of Ponto and the hired man.
Mrs. Farnham and aunt Judith would not for any thing have missed hearing for themselves how Penelope and Coriolanus, and Susie and Porter, managed their long words at Cobbleville.
The red cutter was jingling away down the road before the black span was in motion, but somehow the two sets of passengers reached Cobbleville at about the same time. Eight miles of excellent sleighing does not last long before fast horses, and there was to be no such thing as being late.
"This is Cobbleville, Susie."
"It's not so much bigger than Benton. I don't believe we shall be beaten."
Something like that same suggestion cheered up Porter Hudson a little, as the deacon drove into the village; but the faces of Pen and Corry were very serious. There was a great trial before them, and they knew it,—a very great trial; for the tall-steepled, white-painted meeting-house in the middle of the village-green was hardly large enough to hold the crowd which was now pouring into it. The people had come from miles and miles all over the country; and those of the Cobbleville district were not only the more numerous, but seemed to be in a sort of exultation over a victory they were sure to win.