to deef people.  But then he never did go when he did have his sound hearin’.  Many’s the time he sayed to me, he sayed, ‘I don’t believe in the churches,’ he sayed, ’and blamed if it don’t keep me busy believin’ in a Gawd!’ he sayed.  So you see, he wasn’t just what you might call a pillar of the church.  One time he had such a cough and he come to me and sayed whether I could do somepin.  ‘You’re to leave tobacco be,’ I sayed.  Ole Adam he looked serious.  ‘If you sayed it was caused by goin’ to church,’ he answered to me, ’I might mebbe break off.  But tobacco—­that’s some serious,’ he says.  Adam he used to have some notions about the Bible and religion that I did think, now, was damned unushal.  Here one day when he was first took sick, before he got so deef yet, I went to see him, and the Evangelical preacher was there, readin’ to him that there piece of Scripture where, you know, them that worked a short time was paid the same as them that worked all day.  The preacher he sayed he thought that par’ble might fetch him ’round oncet to a death-bed conwersion.  But I’m swanged if Adam didn’t just up and say, when the preacher got through, he says, ‘That wasn’t a square deal accordin’ to my way of lookin’ at things.’  Yes, that’s the way that there feller talked.  Why, here oncet—­” the doctor paused to chuckle at the recollection—­“when I got there, Reverend was wrestlin’ with Adam to get hisself conwerted, and it was one of Adam’s days when he was at his deefest.  Reverend he shouted in his ear, ’You must experience religion—­and get a change of heart—­and be conwerted before you die!’ ‘What d’ you say?’ Adam he ast.  Then Reverend, he seen that wouldn’t work, so he cut it short, and he says wery loud, ‘Trust the Lord!’ Now, ole Adam Oberholzer in his business dealin’s and speculatin’ was always darned particular who he trusted, still, so he looked up at Reverend, and he says, ’Is he a reliable party?’ Well, by gum, I bu’st right out laughin’!  I hadn’t ought to—­seein’ it was Adam’s death-bed—­and Reverend him just sweatin’ with tryin’ to work in his job to get him conwerted till he passed away a’ready.  But I’m swanged if I could keep in!  I just hollered!”

The doctor threw back his head and shouted with fresh appreciation of his story, and Fairchilds joined in sympathetically.

“Well, did he die unconverted?” he asked the doctor.

“You bet!  Reverend he sayed afterwards, that in all his practice of his sacred calling he never had knew such a carnal death-bed.  Now you see,” concluded the doctor, “I tended ole Adam fur near two months, and that’s where I have a hold on his son the school-directer.”

He laughed as he rose and stretched himself.

“It will be no end of sport foiling Jake Getz!” Fairchilds said, with but a vague idea of what the doctor’s scheme involved.  “Well, doctor, you are our mascot—­Tillie’s and mine!” he added, as he, too, rose.

“What’s that?”