"D'yuh know what I spied Gus Dibble a-doin' the other day?" said Joe in a tone of infinite disgust. "I seen him a-stealin' a log chain out o' these here fixin's. What d'yuh think of a feller'd steal a log chain, hey?"
Joe himself had for many years eked out his small means by doing jobs of lumber hauling and was hence amply provided with log chains.
"I dunno," mused Marsh. "Mebbe he needed the log chain. I know I need a new shovel awful bad, an' they've riz up awful high in price since the war come on. That there long-handled one over there is jes the kind I was a-wantin'."
"Oh, well, of course a shovel's diff'rent," Joe hastened to assure him. "If I wanted the shovel I'd take it along 'f I'z you. The dod gasted road comp'ny kin buy more. 'Tain't like takin' anythin' off'n a neighbor."
"That's so," agreed Marsh, taking loving hold upon the handle of the shovel.
"The young uns lost my last pair o' pliers yestiddy," confided Joe. "I made the little buggers look everywhere fer 'em, but o' course they didn't find 'em. Hardware's awful high these days. I never knowed hardware to be so high. I reckon I'll jes slip this pair into my pocket, an' nobody'll know where they went to 'cep you an' me, hey, Marsh?"
"Sure," agreed Marsh heartily, as he shouldered the shovel. "You might's well have 'em as any other night walker. Durn careless of 'em to leave these small things lyin' about anyway. Serve 'em right if they hain't here when they come back."
When Judith crept into bed beside Jerry and closed her eyes inviting sleep, she saw the burning eyes of the evangelist looking at her out of the darkness.
A few weeks before the arrival of the Evangelists, Hat had sent away a dime and a two cent stamp to certain parties who had advertised in the "Farm Wife's Friend" that for that sum they would teach you how to develop your personal magnetism and to exert it in such a way that you could control the people with whom you came in contact and make them do whatever you willed that they should do. She received in answer a typewritten letter informing her that hers had been one of the very few letters received by them which indicated beyond a doubt that the writer was a person possessed of a tremendous amount of latent magnetism, a mighty force with untold possibilities of being turned to the owner's advantage. For ordinary people the fee for further instruction was ten dollars. But for her, with her intensely interesting personality and wonderful latent power, they would make the exceptionally low rate of three dollars. For this trifling sum her special case would be taken up and studied in the minutest detail by the greatest specialists of the world, all of them congregated for this important purpose in Toledo, Ohio.