their hunger to know more. She remained hard and cold, almost dumb; it
seemed to them that she was not worthy to have had him under her father's
roof. As for her father, they had no patience with him for not putting in
a word to claim the stranger while the others were pressing him to come
home with them. In spite of the indifference of Gillespie and his girl,
Dylks elected to remain with them, and when he could pull himself from the
crowd he went away into the night between them.

When Matthew Braile made his escape with his wife from the crowd and
began to walk home through the dim, hot night, he said, "Is Jane Gillespie
any particular hand at fried chicken?"

"Now you stop, Matthew!" his wife said.

"Because that would account for it. I reckon it was fried chicken the
ravens brought to Elijah. All men of God are fond of fried chicken."

His wife would not dispute directly with his perversity; she knew that in
this mood of his it would be useless trying to make him partake the wonder
she shared with her neighbors that the stranger had chosen David Gillespie
again for his host out of the many leading men who had pressed their
hospitality upon him, and that he should have preferred his apathy to
their eagerness.

"I wish he had worn his yellow beaver hat in the pulpit," Braile went on.
"It must have been a disappointment to Abe Reverdy, but perhaps he
consoled himself with a full sight of the fellow's long hair. He ought to
part it in the middle, like Thomas Jefferson, and do it up in a knot like
a woman. Well, we can't have everything, even in a man of God; but maybe
he isn't really a man of God. That would account for a good many things.