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that we are nearer God than you—by several yards.”
    “Good for you, Miss Dolly. I call that a good answer.” The man who had spoken was Judge Cool; he clapped his hands together and chuckled appreciatively. “Of course they are nearer God,” he said, unfazed by the disapproving, sober faces around him. “They’re in a tree, and we’re on the ground.”
    Mrs. Buster whirled on him. “I’d thought you were a Christian, Charlie Cool. My ideas of a Christian do not include laughing at and encouraging a poor mad woman.”
    “Mind who you name as mad, Thelma,” said the Judge. “That isn’t especially Christian either.”
    The Reverend Buster opened fire. “Answer me this, Judge. Why did you come with us if it wasn’t to do the Lord’s will in a spirit of mercy?”
    “The Lord’s will?” said the Judge incredulously. “You don’t know what that is any more than I do. Perhaps the Lord told these people to go live in a tree; you’ll admit, at least, that He never told you to drag them out—unless, of course, Verena Talbo is the Lord, a theory several of you give credence to, eh Sheriff? No, sir, I did not come along to do anyone’s will but my own: which merely means that I felt like taking a walk—thewoods are very handsome at this time of year.” He picked some brown violets and put them in his buttonhole.
    “To hell with all that,” began the Sheriff, and was again interrupted by Mrs. Buster, who said that under no circumstances would she tolerate swearing: Will we, Reverend? and the Reverend, backing her up, said he’d be damned if they would. “I’m in charge here,” the Sheriff informed them, thrusting his bully-boy jaw. “This is a matter for the law.”
    “Whose law, Junius?” inquired Judge Cool quietly. “Remember that I sat in the courthouse twenty-seven years, rather a longer time than you’ve lived. Take care. We have no legal right whatever to interfere with Miss Dolly.”
    Undaunted, the Sheriff hoisted himself a little into the tree. “Let’s don’t have any more trouble,” he said coaxingly, and we could see his curved dog-teeth. “Come on down from there, the pack of you.” As we continued to sit like three nesting birds he showed more of his teeth and, as though he were trying to shake us out, angrily swayed a branch.
    “Miss Dolly, you’ve always been a peaceful person,” said Mrs. Macy Wheeler. “Please come on home with us; you don’t want to miss your dinner.” Dolly replied matter-of-factly that we were not hungry: were they? “There’s a drumstick for anybody that would like it.”
    Sheriff Candle said, “You make it hard on me, ma’am,” and pulled himself nearer. A branch, cracking under his weight, sent through the tree a sad cruel thunder.
    “If he lays a hand on any one of you, kick him in the head,” advised Judge Cool. “Or I will,” he said with sudden gallant pugnacity: like an inspired frog he hopped and caught hold to one of the Sheriff’s dangling boots. The Sheriff, in turn, grabbed my ankles, and Catherine had to hold me around the middle. We were sliding, that we should all fall seemed inevitable, the strain was immense. Meanwhile, Dolly started pouring what was leftof our orangeade down the Sheriff’s neck, and abruptly, shouting an obscenity, he let go of me. They crashed to the ground, the Sheriff on top of the Judge and the Reverend Buster crushed beneath them both. Mrs. Macy Wheeler and Mrs. Buster, augmenting the disaster, fell upon them with crow-like cries of distress.
    Appalled by what had happened, and the part she herself had played, Dolly became so confused that she dropped the empty orangeade jar: it hit Mrs. Buster on the head with a ripe thud. “Beg pardon,” she apologized, though in the furor no one heard her.
    When the tangle below unraveled, those concerned stood apart from each other embarrassedly, gingerly feeling of themselves. The Reverend looked rather flattened out, but no broken bones were discovered, and