"Yonder comes Reuben Merryweather's wagon now, laden with fodder. Is
thar anybody settin' on it, young Adam? My eyes is too po' to make out."

"Molly Merryweather, who else?" responded the younger.

The wagon approached slowly, piled high with fodder and drawn by a pair
of old oxen. In the centre of the load a girl was sitting, with a pink
sunbonnet on her shoulders, and the light wind, which drove in gusts
from the river, blowing the bunch of clustering brown curls on her neck.
She was a small vivid creature, with a sunburned colour and changeable
blue eyes that shone almost green in the sunlight.

"Terr'ble light minded as you can tell to look at her," said Solomon
Hatch, "she's soft enough, so my wife says, where sick folks an'
children an' animals are consarned, but she acts as if men war
born without common feelin's of natur an' didn't come inside the
Commandments. It's beyond me how a kind-hearted woman can be so
unmerciful to an entire sex."

"Had it been otherwise 'twould have been downright disproof of God's
providence and the bond of matrimony," responded old Adam.

"True, true, Mr. Doolittle," admitted Solomon, somewhat abashed. "Thar
ain't any in these parts as can equal you on the Scriptures, as I've
said over an' over agin. It's good luck for the Almighty that He has got
you on His side, so to speak, to help Him confound His enemies."

"Thar're two sides to that, I reckon, seein' I confound not only His
enemies, but His sarvents. Sech is the shot an' shell of my logic that
the righteous fall before it as fast as the wicked--faster even I might