"I was jest in time. Now we kin send for that spare leg and you kin git
to the meetin'. Lucky you had that spare leg."
The deacon sat on the floor, speechless now, staring down at all that
remained to him of his timber leg. Scattergood, with great show of
solicitude, dispatched a youngster to the deacon's house for his extra
limb. He returned empty-handed.
"This here boy says the leg hain't in the harness room. Sure you left it
there?"
Again the deacon found his voice, and his words were to the general
effect that the blame swizzled, ornery, ill-sired, and regrettably
reared pew-gags had, in defiance of law and order, stolen and made away
with his leg--and what was he to do?
"Deacon, you can't go like that. If this story got into the meetin' it
would do fer you. You'd git laughed out. Them Congregationalists 'u'd
win. You got to have a sound leg to travel on, and I don't see but one
way to git it."
"How's that?"
"Call in young Parson Hooper and make him force them adherents of hisn
to give it up."
Scattergood did not wait for the permission he surmised would not be
given, but sent word for Jason Hooper, who came, saw, and was most
remarkably astonished.
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