The Miller of Old Church | Page 3

can't be
trusted to keep his hands off the women?"
"I ain't sayin' all that, Solomon Hatch," responded old Adam, in a
charitable tone, "seein' that I've never made up my own mind quite
clear on those two p'ints--but I do say, be he immersed or sprinkled,
that the man who took down them bars without puttin' 'em up ain't a
man to be trusted."
"'Twarn't a man, 'twas a gal," put in young Adam, "I seed Molly
Merryweather goin' toward the low grounds as I come up."
"Then it's most likely to have been she," commented Solomon, "for she
is a light-minded one, as is proper an' becomin' in a child of sin."

The stranger looked up with a laugh from the moss-grown cattle trough
beside which he was standing, and his eyes--of a peculiar dark
blue--glanced merrily into the bleared ones of old Adam.
"I ain't so blind yet as not to know a Gay when I see one," said the
labourer, with a sly chuckle. "If I hadn't closed the eyes of old Mr.
Jonathan when he was found dead over yonder by the Poplar Spring, I'd
as soon as not take my Bible oath that he'd come young agin an' was
ridin' along back to Jordan's Journey."
"Do you believe down here that my uncle killed himself?" asked the
young man, with a furtive displeasure in his voice, as if he alluded to a
disagreeable subject in response to some pressure of duty.
"'Tis as it may be, suh, I can't answer for that. To this day if you get
Solomon Hatch or Betsey Bottom, (axin' her pardon for puttin' her last),
started on the subject they'll contend till they're blue in the face that
'twas naught done but pure murder. However, I'm too old at my time of
life to take up with any opinion that ain't pleasant to think on, an', when
all's said an' done, pure murder ain't a peaceable, comfortable kind of
thing to believe in when thar's only one Justice of the Peace an' he
bed-ridden since Christmas. When you ax me to pin my faith on any
p'int, be it for this world or the next, my first question consarnin' it is
whether that particular p'int happens to be pleasant. 'Tis that little small
argyment of mine that has confounded Mr. Mullen more than once,
when he meets me on equal ground outside the pulpit. 'Mebbe 'tis an'
mebbe 'tisn't,' as I remarked sociably to him about the matter of eternal
damnation, 'but you can't deny, can you, suh, bein' outside the pulpit an'
bound to speak the truth like the rest of us, that you sleep a long sight
easier in yo' bed when you say to yo'self that mebbe 'tisn't?'"
"You see pa's old, an' he won't harbour any belief at his time of life that
don't let him rest comfortable," remarked young Adam, in an
apologetic aside. "It's that weakness of his that keeps him from bein' a
thorough goin' good Christian."
"That strange young clergyman has stirred us all up about the
doctrines," said Solomon Hatch. "He's opened Old Church agin, an' he

works terrible hard to make us feel that we'd rather be sprinkled on the
head than go under all over. A nice-mannered man he is, with a pretty
face, an' some folks hold it to be a pity that we can't change our ideas
about baptism and become Episcopals in our hearts, jest to oblige him.
The women have, mostly, bein' an accommodatin' sex in the main, with
the exception of Mrs. Mallory, the blacksmith's mother, who declars
she'd rather give up eternal damnation any day than immersion."
"I ain't goin' so fur as that," rejoined old Adam, "an' mo'over, when it
comes to the p'int, I've never found any uncommon comfort in either
conviction in time of trouble. I go to Mr. Mullen's church regular every
Sunday, seein' the Baptist one is ten miles off an' the road heavy, but in
my opinion he's a bit too zealous to turn over the notions of the
prophets an' set up his own. He's at the age when a man knows
everything on earth an' generally knows it wrong."
"You see pa had been settin' on the anxious bench for forty years,"
explained young Adam, "an' when Mr. Mullen came, he took it away
from under him, so to speak, while he was still settin' on it."
"'Twas my proper place," said old Adam resentfully, "when it comes to
crops or the weather I am firm fixed enough in my belief, but in matters
of religion I hold with the onsartain."
"Only his powerful belief in the Devil an' all his works keeps him from
bein' a heathen," observed young Adam in awe-stricken pride. "Even
Mr.