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He would have given it up most heartily if his conscience had permitted.

The banker came on until he was well within the circle of players. He nodded at those whom he knew with his conciliatory smile.

"Boys," he began in the voice of an elder speaking to children, "do you think it is quite right to be playing ball here on the Lord's day?" This phrase, "Lord's day," produced a clear-cut distaste in his hearers, whose mental associations with it were uniformly monotonous and disagreeable.

"Don't you think if He gives you six days to enjoy yourselves you might set apart one day to worship Him?"

Every man in the crowd took an antagonistic point of view at once. Somebody said, "What's the use in not playing ball? We ain't goin' to church noway."

It was characteristic of Northcutt that he could never brook the slightest opposition. Now he said in a sharper tone, "At least you won't be desecrating the Sabbath with your whoopings and shoutings!"

"Don't God like to hear folks have a good time?"

"He tells you how to have a good time! He doesn't say 'Play ball,' He says retire to your closets and seek Him in prayer. If you men would do that—eat the secret bread of life on your knees in your closets!" the banker's face lighted with eremitic zeal.

Another voice put in, "Well, Sunday ain't the Sabbath anyway, it's Sattidy. Do you keep Sattidy holy? Wasn't you doin' business at yore bank yestiddy?"

"Look here," cried the banker, irritated at this ancient thrust at the date of Sunday, "when Christ came to this earth, you know the old dispensation was finished and a new one began. They changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday. . . ."

The banker had launched one of those futile Biblical arguments characteristic of the hill people. That the banker