Brother Cartwright, he steps up to the hole in
the floor when he first comes in and he says, gentle-
like and soothing, like a undertaker when he tells
you where to set at a home funeral:

"Brother Walters."

"Brother!" Hank yells out, "don't ye brother
me, you sniffling, psalm-singing, yaller-faced,
pigeon-toed hippercrit, you! Get me a ladder,
gol dern you, and I'll come out'n here and learn
you to brother me, I will." Only that wasn't
nothing to what Hank really said to that preacher;
no more like it than a little yaller, fluffy canary is
like a buzzard.

"Brother Walters," says the preacher, ca'am but
firm, "we have all decided that you ain't going to
come out of that cistern till you sign the pledge."

And Hank tells him what he thinks of pledges and
him and church doings, and it wasn't purty. And
he says if he was as deep in eternal fire as what he
now is in rain-water, and every fish that nibbles
at his toes was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork
a-jabbing at him, they could jab till the hull here-
after turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a
man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign. Hank
was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes