One everything he ought not to have done. The good God himself
was the only being that had the approval of old Riley Brooke. It was curious--that turning of his
tongue from the slander of men to the praise of God. And of the goodne ss of the Almighty he was quite
as sure as of the badness of men. Assurance of his own salvation had come to him one day when he was shearing sheep, and when, as he related often, finding
himself on his knees to shear, he remained
to pray. Sundays and every Wednesday evening he wore a stove-pipe hat and a long frock coat of antique and rusty aspect. On his
way to church--with
hospitality even for the like of him, thank God!--he walked slowly with head bent until, remembering his great agility and strength, he began to run, giving a varied exhibition of skips and jumps terminating

in a sort of gallop. Once in the sacred house he
looked to right and left accusingly, and aloft with encouraging applause. His God was
one of wrath, vengeance, and destruction; his hell the destination

of his enemies. They who resented the screw of
his avarice, and pulled their thumbs away; th