The Leatherwood God | Page 5

and praised the details of the
furnishing with a reference to the effect of each at home. In this he
satisfied that obscure fealty of the husband who feels that such a
connection of the absent wife with some actual experience of his is
equivalent to their joint presence. It was not so much to praise Mrs.
Braile's belongings to her as to propitiate the idea of Mrs. Reverdy that
he continued his flatteries. In the meantime Braile, who came in behind
him, stood easing himself from one foot to the other, with an ironical
eye slanted at Reverdy from under his shaggy brows; he dropped his
head now, and began walking up and down the room while he listened
in a sort of sarcastic patience.
"Ain't you goin' to have anything to eat, Mr. Braile?" his wife
demanded, with plaintive severity.
Braile pulled at his cob-pipe which muttered responsively, "Not so long
as I've got anything to smoke. Gets up," he explained to Reverdy, "and
jerks it out of my mouth, when we haven't got company."
"I reckon Abel knows how much to believe of that," Mrs. Braile
commented, and Reverdy gave the pleased chuckle of a social inferior
raised above his level by amiable condescension. But as if he thought it
safest to refuse any share in this intimacy, he ended his adulations with
the opinion, "I should say that if these here two rooms was th'owed
together they'd make half as much as the Temple."
Braile stopped in his walk and bent his frown on Reverdy, but not in
anger. "This is the Temple: Temple of Justice--Justice of the Peace. Do
you people think there's only one kind of temple in Leatherwood?"

Reverdy gave his chuckle again. "Well, Squire, I ought to know,
anyway, all the log-rollin' I done for you last 'lection time. I didn't
hardly believe you'd git in, because they said you was a infidel."
"Well, you couldn't deny it, could you?" Braile asked, with increasing
friendliness in his frown.
"No, I couldn't deny it, Squire. But the way I told 'em to look at it was,
Mis' Braile was Christian enough for the whole family. Said you
knowed more law and she knowed more gospel than all the rest of
Leatherwood put together."
"And that was what elected the family, was it?" Braile asked. "Well, I
hope Mrs. Braile won't refuse to serve," he said, and he began his walk
again. "Tell her about that horse that broke into the meetin' last night,
and tried to play man."
Reverdy laughed, shaking his head over his plate of bacon and reaching
for the corn-pone which Mrs. Braile passed him. "You do beat all,
Squire, the way you take the shine off of religious experience. Why,"
he addressed himself to Mrs. Braile, "it wasn't much, as fur as anybody
could make out. It was just the queerness of the whole thing." Reverdy
went over the facts again, beginning with deprecation for the Squire but
gathering respect for them in the interest they seemed to have for Mrs.
Braile.
She listened silently, and then she asked, "And what became of him?"
"Well, that's where you got me, Mrs. Braile. Don't anybody know what
become of him. Just kind of went out like a fire, when the Power was
workun' the hardest, and wasn't there next time you looked where he
been. Kind o' th'owed cold water on the meetun' and folks begun goun'
home, and breakun' up and turnun' in; well it was pretty nigh sun-up,
anyway, by that time. I don't know! Made me feel all-overish. Seemed
like I'd been dreamun' and that man was a Vision." Reverdy had lifted
an enraptured face, but at sight of Braile pausing in sarcastic pleasure,
he dropped his head with a snicker. "I know the Squire'll laugh. But
that's the way it was."
"He'll laugh the other side of his mouth, some day, if he keeps on," Mrs.
Braile said with apparent reproof and latent pride. "Was Sally at the
meetin' with you?"
"Well, no, she wasn't," Reverdy began, and Braile asked:
"And did you wake her up and tell her about it?"

"Well, no, I didn't, Squire, that's a fact. She woke me up. I just crep' in
quiet and felt out the soft side of a puncheon for a nap, and the firs'
thing I know was Sally havin' me by the shoulder, and wantun' to know
about gittun' that corn groun' for breakfas'. My! I don't know what she'll
say, when I do git back." Reverdy laughed a fearful pleasure, but his
gaiety was clouded by a shadow projected from the cabin door.
"Well, I mought 'a' knowed it!" a voice at once fond and threatening
called to Reverdy's quailing figure. The owner of the voice was