But the stage line was not to be acquired, because
Deacon Pettybone and Elder Hooper, who owned it in partnership, had not
been on speaking terms for twenty years. So bitter was the feud that
either would have borne cheerfully a loss to prevent the other from
making a profit. The stage line was a worry and an annoyance to both of
them, but neither of them would sell, because he was afraid his enemy
might derive some advantage.
As Scattergood well knew, the feud had its inception in religion as
religion is practiced in that community. Deacon Pettybone had been born
a Congregationalist. Elder Hooper was the sturdiest pillar of the
Congregationalist church. They had grown up together from boyhood, as
chums, and later as business partners, but at the mature age of forty
Deacon Pettybone had attended a revival service in the Baptist church.
When he came out of that service the mischief was done--he had been
converted to the tenets of immersion and straightway withdrew from the
church of his birth to enter the fold of its bitterest rival in
Coldriver, if it were possible for the Baptists to be bitterer rivals of
the Congregationalist than the Methodists and Universalists were.
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