“A harum-scarum good-for-nothing—­no harm in him.  A great talker—­make you think black is white if you listen.  Don’t stay here much—­in and out, no one knows where to.  Says the Center is slow.  What do you think of that?  I guess we’re fast enough for most folks.”

“What about his father?” said the stock-breeding Sharon.  “Know anything about who he was?”

“Lord, yes!  Everybody round here used to know old Matthew Cowan.  Lived up in Geneseo, where Dave was born, but used to come round here preaching.  Queer old customer with a big head.  He wasn’t a regular preacher; he just took it up, being a carpenter by trade—­like our Lord Jesus, he used to say in his preaching.  He had some outlandish kind of religion that didn’t take much.  He said the world was coming to an end on a certain day, and folks had better prepare for it, but it didn’t end when he said it would; and he went back to carpentering week-days and preaching on the Lord’s Day; and one time he fell off a roof and hit on his head, and after that he was outlandisher than ever, and they had to look after him.  He never did get right again.  They said he died writing a telegram to our Lord on the wall of his room.  This Dave Cowan, he argued about religion with the Reverend Mallet right up in the post office one day.  He’ll argue about anything!  He’s audacious!”

“But the father was all right till he had the fall?” asked Harvey D.  “I mean he was healthy and all that?”

“Oh, healthy enough—­big, strong old codger.  He used to say he could cradle four acres of grain in a day when he was a boy on a farm, or split and lay up three hundred and fifty rails.  Strong enough.”

“And this David Cowan, his son—­he married someone from here?”

“Her that was Effie Freeman and her mother was a Penniman, cousin to old Judge Penniman.  A sweet, lovely little thing, Effie was, too, just as nice as you’d want to meet, and so—­”

“Healthy?” demanded Sharon.

“Healthy enough till she had them twins.  Always puny after that.  Took to her bed and passed on when they was four.  Dropped off the tree of life like an overfruited branch, you might say.  Winona and Mis’ Penniman been mothers to the twins ever since.”

“The record seems to be fairly clear,” said Gideon.

“If he hasn’t inherited that queer streak for religion,” said Harvey D., foreseeing a possible inharmony with what Rapp, Senior, would have called the interests.

“Thank you, Sarah—­we were just asking,” said Gideon.

“You’re welcome,” said Sarah, withdrawing.  She threw them a last bit over her shoulder.  “That Dave Cowan’s an awful reader—­reads library books and everything.  Some say he knows more than the editor of the Advance himself.”

They waited until they heard a door swing to upon Sarah.

“Other has the gumption,” said Sharon.  But this was going in a circle.  Gideon and Harvey D. ignored it as having already been answered.