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“Well,” he addressed him, “I hope to God you didn’t get it.”

“Get what?” asked Mauney, surprised at being noticed, and irked by his father’s abrupt manner.

“You wasn’t in a place where you’d be likely to get a bottle of whiskey, was you?” Bard quickly responded.

“Oh—you mean religion, Dad?”

Without further acknowledgment of Mauney’s presence than a sarcastic motion of his head, Bard addressed his neighbor.

“I guess that’s about all he’d get up to Beulah church, ain’t it, William Henry?”

“Yes, sir, that’s about the size of it, Seth!” admitted McBratney, smacking the arm of the chair with his bony palm, as if one would naturally expect to get a variety of commodities at Beulah church. He possessed an evil, circular face, with gray hair falling untidily over a low forehead. His long, thin legs seemed largest at the knee-joints as he sat with difficulty in the low rocking-chair, and his long, brown neck, with its prominent Adam’s apple, gave his small, ball-like head an unreal appearance of detachment. When he spoke, in his high-pitched, rasping voice, his Adam’s apple shifted up and down his throat as if it were a concealed bucket bringing the words up from his body.