He held up some of the court cards.

"Take note of these misshaped and deformed figures, heathenishly
attired, and with no middle parts or legs, but with two heads turned
diverse ways. These are not similitudes of man, who was made in the
image of his Maker, but doubtless of fiends, revealed by Satan to the
artificers who do his work in the fabrication of these instruments of
sin. Mark these figures of diamonds and hearts, and these others,
which I am told do signify spades and clubs. How plainly do they
typify ill-gotten riches and bleeding hearts, violence and the grave.
Wretched youths, which of ye tempted the other to this sin?"

"Je assed me to dew it," whimpered Zedekiah.

"Kiah, he assed me fust," averred Jerubbabel.

"No doubt ye are both right," said the minister sternly. "When two sin
together, Satan is divided in twain, and the one half tempteth the
other. See to it that ye sin not again on this wise, lest a worse
thing come upon you."

Scarcely had the parson turned away, when a shout from some boys who
had gone to the corner to watch for the coming of the Squire,
announced his approach, and presently he appeared at the corner,
riding a fine gray horse, and came on at an easy canter across the
green. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, finely-proportioned man of
about forty, with a refined face, frank and open, but rather haughty
in expression, with piercing black eyes; a man in whose every gesture
lay conscious power and obvious superiority. As he rode by the silent