You'd a thought Hank would of broke out cussing
agin at being took unexpected that-a-way, fur he
hadn't really agreed to nothing but signing the
pledge. But nary a cuss. He jest says: "Now,
you get that ladder."

They got it, and he clumb up into the kitchen,
dripping and shivering.

"You went and baptized me in that water?"
he asts the preacher. The preacher says he has.

"Then," says Hank, "you done a low-down trick
on me. You knowed I has made my brags I never
jined no church nor never would jine. You knowed
I was proud of that. You knowed that it was my
glory to tell of it, and that I set a heap of store by
it in every way. And now you've went and took
it away from me! You never fought it out fair
and square, neither, man playing to outlast man,
like you done with this here pledge, but you sneaked
it in on me when I wasn't looking."

They was a lot of men in that crowd that thought
the preacher had went too far, and sympathized
with Hank. The way he done about that hurt
Brother Cartwright in our town, and they was a
split in the church, because some said it wasn't
reg'lar and wasn't binding. He lost his job after
a while and become an evangelist. Which it don't