Trumps | Page 9

the summer night, then plunging
silently into the black water. When it was fairly light he hurried on his
clothes, and passing quietly along the hall, knocked at the door of
Number Seven.
"Who's there?" cried a voice within.
"It's only me."
"Who's me?"
"Gabriel Bennet."
"Come in, then."
It was Abel Newt who spoke; and as Gabriel stepped in, Newt asked,
abruptly,
"What do you want?"
"I want to speak to Jim Greenidge."
"Well, there he is," replied Newt, pointing to another bed. "Jim! Jim!"
Greenidge roused himself.
"What's the matter?" said his cheery voice, as he rose upon his elbow
and looked at Gabriel with his kind eyes. "Come here, Gabriel. What is
it?"
Gabriel hesitated, for Abel Newt was looking sharply at him. But in a

moment he went to Greenidge's bedside, and said, shyly, in a low
voice,
"Shall I black your boots for you?"
"Black my boots! Why, Gabriel, what on earth do you mean? No, of
course you shall not."
And the strong youth looked pleasantly on the boy who stood by his
bedside, and then put out his hand to him.
"Can't I brush your clothes then, or do any thing for you?" persisted
Gabriel, softly.
"Certainly not. Why do you want to?" replied Greenidge.
"Oh! I only thought it would be pleasant if I could do something--that's
all," said Gabriel, as he moved slowly away. "I'm sorry to have waked
you."
He closed the door gently as he went out. Jim Greenidge lay for some
time resting upon his elbow, wondering why a boy who had scarcely
ever spoken a word to him before should suddenly want to be his
servant. He could make nothing of it, and, tired with the excitement of
the previous evening, he lay down again for a morning nap.

CHAPTER V.
PEEWEE PREACHING.
Upon the following Sunday the Rev. Amos Peewee, D.D., made a
suitable improvement of the melancholy event of the week. He
enlarged upon the uncertainty of life. He said that in the midst of life
we are in death. He said that we are shadows and pursue shades. He
added that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow.
During the long prayer before the sermon a violent thunder-gust swept

from the west and dashed against the old wooden church. As the Doctor
poured forth his petitions he made the most extraordinary movements
with his right hand. He waved it up and down rapidly. He opened his
eyes for an instant as if to find somebody. He seemed to be closing
imaginary windows--and so he was. It leaked out the next day at Mr.
Gray's that Dr. Peewee was telegraphing the sexton at random--for he
did not know where to look for him--to close the windows. Nobody
better understood the danger of draughts from windows, during
thunder-storms, than the Doctor; nobody knew better than he that the
lightning-rod upon the spire was no protection at all, but that the iron
staples with which it was clamped to the building would serve, in case
of a bolt's striking the church, to drive its whole force into the building.
As a loud crash burst over the village in the midst of his sermon, and
showed how frightfully near the storm was, his voice broke into a shrill
quaver, as he faltered out, "Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all
circumstances, and Death will have no terrors."
The Rev. Amos Peewee had been settled in the village of Delafield
since a long period before the Revolution, according to the boys. But
the parish register carried the date only to the beginning of this century.
He wore a silken gown in summer, and a woolen gown in winter, and
black worsted gloves, always with the middle finger of the right-hand
glove slit, that he might more conveniently turn the leaves of the Bible,
and the hymn-book, and his own sermons.
The pews of the old meeting-house were high, and many of them
square. The heads of the people of consideration in the congregation
were mostly bald, as beseems respectable age, and as the smooth, shiny
line of pates appeared above the wooden line of the pews they
somehow sympathetically blended into one gleaming surface of worn
wood and skull, until it seemed as if the Doctor's theological battles
were all fought upon the heads of his people.
But the Doctor was by no means altogether polemical. After defeating
and utterly confounding the fathers who fired their last shot a thousand
years ago, and who had not a word to say against his remaining master
of the field, he was wont to unbend his mind and recreate his fancy by

practical discourses. His sermons upon lying were celebrated all
through the village. He gave the insidious vice no quarter. He