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Bard pounded the table.

“Here, sit down, Maun,” he commanded and then turned with a faint smile toward his elder son. “Bill, eat your victuals and be quiet. O’ course,” he added presently, “there ain’t no doubt but what Dave is a damned fool, and he’s goin’ to wake up one o’ these days and find it out, too. But now he’s gone away I don’t see what the old man’s goin’ to do. I advised him to sell out the farm and go up to Beulah an’ take it easy. There ain’t no good o’ William Henry stayin’ down here no longer. He’ll have to get a hired man now, and with wages where they is he wouldn’t clean up nothin’.”

After a short silence, William chuckled softly as he raised his saucer of hot, clear tea to his lips.

“I was just thinkin’ about the Orange Walk down to Lockwood last year,” he explained. “There was Dave, with a few drinks in him, struttin’ around the park, darin’ everybody to a scrap. Gosh, it’s funny to think o’ him bein’ a preacher. I mind that night—we didn’t get home till seven o’clock the next mornin’ an’ I pitched in the harvest field all that day.”