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to be wiped out an' started over on a diff'runt plan in fourteen months."

"What in the worl' do you mean by that?" asked the teamster in amazement.

The Squire began explaining the end of Time to Mr. Beavers. It was the one topic on which the old hillman was eloquent and convincing. Again as he talked it seemed to Abner that the hot kitchen, the house, the earth, and the very people about him took on a queer insubstantiality. All life became a mere temporary arrangement awaiting the end of Time which was due in a few months. Just what the rearrangement would be, Abner could not imagine; nor did it occur to him to try to imagine. He simply knew that it would be something infinitely better than the world he saw before him.

The teamster was astounded. "Well, I declare, jest think of that! Dividin' the goats frum the sheep . . ." He stood in the door of the kitchen, scratching his greasy head, and presently observed frankly, "Well, that bein' the case, I guess I better tell you folks good-bye, for I guess I shore am bound fer hell an' won't see you no more." He came back holding out his hand with the greatest simplicity.

The implication that the teamster, a soul bound for hell, was bidding good-bye to a family who would be caught up to a happier event held a certain drama.

"I'll pray fer ye, Brother Beavers," said the Squire. The wife promised the same thing, and when the girl put her hand in the mule driver's, she murmured a barely audible, "An' me, too."

Abner, who had no certain destination for his soul, was not told good-bye, but was entirely overlooked. He simply followed Mr. Beavers out of the house and out of the gate.

The teamster unhitched his mules and set out driving them down the road and the boy went by his side.

They had gone hardly two hundred yards when they reached the top of a hill and Irontown lay in their view.