Of the several pillars of the Church at Pawkin Centre, Deacon Barker was by all odds the strongest. His orthodoxy was the admiration of the entire congregation, and the terror of all the ministers within easy driving distance of the Deacon\'s native village. He it was who had argued the late pastor of the Pawkin Centre Church into that state of disquietude which had carried him, through a few days of delirious fever, into the Church triumphant; and it was also Deacon Barker whose questions at the examination of seekers for the ex-pastor\'s shoes had cast such consternation into divinity-schools, far and near, that soon it was very hard to find a candidate for ministerial honors at Pawkin Centre.

Nor was his faith made manifest by words alone. Be the weather what it might, the Deacon was always in his pew, both morning and evening, in time to join in the first hymn, and on every Thursday night, at a quarter past seven in winter, and a quarter before eight in summer, the good Deacon\'s cane and shoes could be heard coming solemnly down the aisle, bringing to the prayer-meeting the champion of orthodoxy. Nor did the holy air of the prayer-meeting even one single evening fail to vibrate to the voice of the Deacon, as he made, in scriptural language, humble confessions and tearful pleadings before the throne, or—still strictly scriptural in expression—he warned and exhorted the impenitent. The contribution-box always received his sixpence as long as specie payment lasted, and the smallest fractional currency note thereafter; and to each of the regular annual offerings to the missionary cause, the Bible cause, and kindred Christian enterprises, the Deacon regularly contributed his dollar and his prayers.

The Deacon could quote scripture in a manner which put Biblical professors to the blush, and every principle of his creed so bristled with texts, confirmatory, sustentive and aggressive, that doubters were rebuked and free-thinkers were speedily reduced to speechless humility or rage. But the unregenerate, and even some who professed righteousness, declared that more fondly than to any other scriptural passage did the good Deacon cling to the injunction, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." Meekly insisting that he was only a steward of the Lord, he put out his Lord\'s money that he might receive it again with usury, and so successful had he been that almost all mortgages held on property near Pawkin Centre were in the hands of the good Deacon, and few were the foreclosure sales in which he was not the seller.

The new pastor at Pawkin Centre, like good pastors everywhere, had tortured himself into many a headache over the perplexing question, "How are we to reach the impenitent in our midst!" The said impenitent were, with but few exceptions, industrious, honest, respectable, law-abiding people, and the worthy pastor, as fully impregnated with Yankee-thrift as with piety, shuddered to think of the waste of souls that was constantly threatening. At length, like many another pastor, he called a meeting of the brethren, to prayerfully consider this momentous question. The Deacon came, of course, and so did all the other pillars, and many of them presented their views. Brother Grave thought the final doom of the impenitent should be more forcibly presented; Deacon Struggs had an abiding conviction that it was the Man of Sin holding dominion in their hearts that kept these people away from the means of grace; Deacon Ponder mildly suggested that the object might perhaps be attained if those within the fold maintained a more godly walk and conversation, but he was promptly though covertly rebuked by the good Deacon Barker, who reminded the brethren that "it is the Spirit that quickeneth"; Brother Flite, who hadn\'t any money, thought the Church ought to build a "working-man\'s chapel," but this idea was promptly and vigorously combated by all men of property in the congregation. By this time the usual closing hour had arrived, and after a benediction the faithful dispersed, each with about the ideas he brought to the meeting.

Early next morning the good Deacon Barker, with his mind half full of the state of the unconverted, and half of his unfinished cow-shed, took his stick and hobbled about the village in search of a carpenter to finish the incomplete structure. There was Moggs, but Moggs had been busy all the season, and it would be just like him to want full price for a day\'s work. Stubb was idle, but Stubb was slow. Augur—Augur used liquor, and the Deacon had long ago firmly resolved that not a cent of his money, if he could help it, should ever go for the accursed stuff. But there was Hay—he hadn\'t seen him at work for a long time—perhaps he would be anxious enough for work to do it cheaply.

The Deacon knocked at Hay\'s door, and Hay himself shouted:

"Come in."

"How are ye, George," said the Deacon, looking hastily about the room, and delightfully determining, from the patient face of sad-eyed Mrs. Hay and the scanty furnishing of the yet uncleared breakfast-table, that he had been providentially guided to the right spot. "How\'s times with ye?"

"Not very good, Deac\'n," replied Hay. "Nothin\' much doin\' in town."

"Money\'s awful sceerce," groaned the Deacon.

"Dreadful," responded George, devoutly thanking the Lord that he owed the Deacon nothing.

"Got much to do this winter?" asked the Deacon.

"Not by a d—day\'s job—not a single day," sorrowfully replied Hay.

The Deacon\'s pious ear had been shocked by the young man\'s imperfectly concealed profanity, and for an instant he thought of administering a rebuke, but the charms of prospective cheap labor lured the good man from the path of rectitude.

"I\'m fixin\' my cow-shed—might p\'raps give ye a job on\'t. \'Spose ye\'d do it cheap, seein\' how dull ev\'ry thin\' is?"

The sad eyes of Mrs. Hay grew bright in an instant. Her husband\'s heart jumped up, but he knew to whom he was talking, so he said, as calmly as possible:

"Three dollars is reg\'lar pay."

The Deacon immediately straightened up as if to go.

"Too much," said he; "I\'d better hire a common lab\'rer at a dollar \'n a half, an\' boss him myself. It\'s only a cow-shed, ye know."

"Guess, though, ye won\'t want the nails druv no less p\'ticler, will ye, Deac\'n?" inquired Hay. "But I tell yer what I\'ll do—I\'ll throw off fifty cents a day."

"Two dollars ort to be enough, George," resumed the Deacon. "Carpenterin\'s pooty work, an\' takes a sight of headpiece sometimes, but there\'s no intellec\' required to work on a cow-shed. Say two dollars, an\' come along."

The carpenter thought bitterly of what a little way the usual three dollars went, and of how much would have to be done with what he could get out of the cow-shed, but the idea of losing even that was too horrible to be endured, so he hastily replied:

"Two an\' a quarter, an\' I\'m your man."

"Well," said the Deacon, "it\'s a powerful price to pay for work on a cow-shed, but I s\'pose I mus\' stan\' it. Hurry up; thar\'s the mill-whistle blowin\' seven."

Hay snatched his tools, kissed a couple of thankful tears, out of his wife\'s eyes, and was soon busy on the cow-shed, with the Deacon looking on.

"George," said the Deacon suddenly, causing the carpenter to stop his hammer in mid-air, "think it over agen, an\' say two dollars."

Hay gave the good Deacon a withering glance, and for a few moments the force of suppressed profanity caused his hammer to bang with unusual vigor, while the owner of the cow-shed rubbed his hands in ecstasy at the industry of his employe.

The air was bracing, the Winter sun shone brilliantly, the Deacon\'s breakfast was digesting fairly, and his mind had not yet freed itself from the influences of the Sabbath. Besides, he had secured a good workman at a low price, and all these influences combined to put the Deacon in a pleasant frame of mind. He rambled through his mind for a text which would piously express his condition, and texts brought back Sunday, and Sunday reminded him of the meeting of the night before. And here was one of those very men before him—a good man in many respects, though he was higher-priced than he should be. How was the cause of the Master to be prospered if His servants made no effort? Then there came to the Deacon\'s mind the passage, "—he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." What particular sins of his own needed hiding the Deacon did not find it convenient to remember just then, but he meekly admitted to himself and the Lord that he had them, in a general way. Then, with that directness and grace which were characteristic of him, the Deacon solemnly said:

"George, what is to be the sinner\'s doom?"

"I dunno," replied George, his wrath still warm; "\'pears to me you\'ve left that bizness till pretty late in life, Deac\'n!"

"Don\'t trifle with sacrid subjec\'s, George," said the Deacon, still very solemn, and with a suspicion of annoyance in his voice. "The wicked shall be cast into hell, with—"

"They can\'t kerry their cow-sheds with \'em, neither," interrupted George, consolingly.

"Come, George," said the good Deacon, in an appealing tone, "remember the apostle says, \'Suffer the word of exhortation.\'"

"\'Xcuse me, Deac\'n, but one sufferin\' at a time; I ain\'t through sufferin\' at bein\' beaten down yet. How about deac\'ns not being \'given to filthy lucre?\'"

The good Deacon was pained, and he was almost out of patience with the apostle for writing things which came so handy to the lips of the unregenerate. He commenced an industrious search for a text which should completely annihilate the impious carpenter, when that individual interrupted him with:

"Out with it, Deac\'n—ye had a meetin\' las\' night to see what was to be done with the impenitent. I was there—that is, I sot on a stool jest outside the door, an\' I heerd all \'twas said. Ye didn\'t agree on nothin\'—mebbe ye\'v fixed it up sence. Any how, ye\'v sot me down fur one of the impenitent, an\' yer goin\' fur me. Well—"

"Go on nailin\'," interrupted the economical Deacon, a little testily; "the noise don\'t disturb me; I can hear ye."

"Well, what way am I so much wickeder \'n you be—you an\' t\'other folks at the meetin\'-house?" asked Hay.

"George, I never saw ye in God\'s house in my life," replied the Deacon.

"Well, s\'pose ye hevn\'t—is God so small He can\'t be nowheres \'xcept in your little meetin\'-house? How about His seein\' folks in their closets?"

"George," said the Deacon, "ef yer a prayin\' man, why don\'t ye jine yerself unto the Lord\'s people?"

"Why? \'Cos the Lord\'s people, as you call \'em, don\'t want me. S\'pose I was to come to the meetin\'-house in these clothes—the only ones I\'ve got—d\'ye s\'pose any of the Lord\'s people \'d open a pew-door to me? An\' spose my wife an\' children, dressed no better \'n I be, but as good \'s I can afford, was with me, how d\'ye s\'pose I\'d feel?"

"Pride goeth before a fall, an\' a haughty sperit before," groaned the Deacon, when the carpenter again interrupted.

"I\'d feel as ef the people of God was a gang of insultin\' hypocrites, an\' ez ef I didn\'t ever want to see \'em again. Ef that kind o\' pride\'s sinful, the devil\'s a saint. Ef there\'s any thin\' wrong about a man\'s feelin\' so about himself and them God give him, God\'s to blame for it himself; but seein\' it\'s the same feelin\' that makes folks keep \'emselves strait in all other matters, I\'ll keep on thinkin\' it\'s right."

"But the preveleges of the Gospel, George," remonstrated the Deacon.

"Don\'t you s\'pose I know what they\'re wuth?" continued the carpenter. "Haven\'t I hung around in front of the meetin\'-house Summer nights, when the winders was open, jest to listen to the singin\' and what else I could hear? Hezn\'t my wife ben with me there many a time, and hevn\'t both of us prayed an\' groaned an\' cried in our hearts, not only \'cos we couldn\'t join in it all ourselves, but \'cos we couldn\'t send the children either, without their learnin\' to hate religion \'fore they fairly know\'d what \'twas? Haven\'t I sneaked in to the vestibule Winter nights, an\' sot just where I did last night, an\' heard what I\'d \'a liked my wife............