When he got to Dunstan, says he, 'For the Lord's sake,
what kind of a village is that I've just went through?
Be they _all_ fools there?'
"Hogshead was scairt to death whenever he come to see Lovice.
One night, when he 'd been there once, and she 'd hid, as she
always done, he come back a second time, and she went to the door,
not mistrusting it was him. 'Did you forget anything?'
says she, sparkling out at him through a little crack.
He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered out,
'Yes, I forgot my han'k'chief; but it don't make no odds,
for I didn't pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago,
and I don't make no use of it 'ceptins to wipe my nose on.'
How we did laugh over that! Well, he had a conviction of sin
pretty soon afterwards, and p'r'aps it helped his head some;
at any rate he quit farming, and become a Bullockite preacher.
"It seems odd, when Lovice wa'n't a perfessor herself,
she should have drawed the most pious young men in the village,
but she did: she had good Orthodox beaux, Free and Close Baptists,
Millerites and Adventists, all on her string together;
she even had one Cochranite, though the sect had mostly died out.
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