unexpected Beulah's point of view always was.

Deacon Todd now came out cautiously.

"I've got it on him, mother, tho' he's terrible unresigned to it; an'
I've given him a stiff dose o' Jamaica Ginger. We can tell pretty soon
whether he can take his part."

"Here's Dick Larrabee come back, Isaac, just when we thought he had
given up Beulah for good an' all!" said Mrs. Todd.

The Deacon stood on the top step, his gaunt, grizzled face peering
above the collar of his great coat; not a man to eat his words very
often, Deacon Isaac Todd.

"Well, young man," he said, "you've found your way home, have you?
It's about time, if you want to see your father alive!"

"If it hadn't been for you and others like you, men who had forgotten
what it was to be young, I should never have gone away," said Dick
hotly. "What had I done worse than a dozen others, only that I
happened to be the minister's son?"

"That's just it; you were bringin' trouble on the parish, makin' talk
that reflected on your father. Folks said if he couldn't control his
own son, he wa'n't fit to manage a church. You played cards, you
danced, you drove a fast horse."

"I never did a thing I'm ashamed of but one,"--and Dick's voice was
firm. "My misdeeds were nothing but boyish nonsense, but the village