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Bard philosophically chewed on the idea as he peered at the lamp through his narrow eyes.

“There is just two kinds of people,” he asserted at length. “The fools and the damned fools. Now there’s a boy who’s got every chance of inheriting his old man’s farm. And I’m tellin’ you, Bill, it’s a purty good piece o’ land.”

“You bet.”

“Just about as good as is bein’ cultivated this side of Lockwood. There ain’t a stone left in the fields, but what’s piled up in the fences. William Henry has slaved this here thirty years—got the mortgage cleaned up—and that barn o’ his, Bill, why you couldn’t build it to-day for five thousand!”

“No, nor six, Dad.”

“Then look at the machinery the old man’s got. I’m tellin’ yuh Dave ain’t goin’ to drop into nothing like that, agin. William Henry must be seventy!”

“May be seventy-one, Dad.”

“Anyhow he ain’t goin’ to last a great while longer. If I was Dave I’d forget this religion business. ’Taint goin’ to get him nowhere. Ain’t that right, Snowball?”

The hired man, having finished supper, was sitting back drowsily, but at the sound of his name he winked his eyes cautiously.