This pleasantry encouraged one of them to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great laughter and disturbance.

The preacher stopped.

His cool, penetrating voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said: "There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me.

If they don't keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." At this point a green crab-apple bounded up the aisle.

"I'm not to be bulldozed." He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying: "I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves." Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character, or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place.