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-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***

-

-

-

-

-

-

-[Frontispiece: SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  _See page 56._]

-

-

-

-

-  THE

-  CIRCUIT RIDER

-

-  A Tale of the Heroic Age,

-

-  BY

-

-  EDWARD EGGLESTON,

-

-  _Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the

-  World," etc._

-

-

-

-  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness."--_Isaiah._

-

-  "----Beginners of a better time,

-  And glorying in their vows."--_Tennyson._

-

-

-

-  NEW YORK:

-  J. B. FORD & COMPANY

-  1874.

-

-

-

-

-  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by

-  J. B. FORD & COMPANY,

-  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.

-

-

-

-

-  TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,

-

-  THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE

-  HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,

-

-  THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.

-

-

-

-

-  CONTENTS.

-

-

-  CHAPTER

-

-  I.--The Corn Shucking

-  II.--The Frolic

-  III.--Going to Meeting

-  IV.--A Battle

-  V.--A Crisis

-  VI.--The Fall Hunt

-  VII.--Treeing a Preacher

-  VIII.--A Lesson in Syntax

-  IX.--The Coming of the Circuit Rider

-  X.--Patty in the Spring-House

-  XI.--The Voice in the Wilderness

-  XII.--Mr. Brady Prophesies

-  XIII.--Two to One

-  XIV.--Kike's Sermon

-  XV.--Morton's Retreat

-  XVI.--Short Shrift

-  XVII.--Deliverance

-  XVIII.--The Prodigal Returns

-  XIX.--Patty

-  XX.--The Conference at Hickory Ridge

-  XXI.--Convalescence

-  XXII.--The Decision

-  XXIII.--Russell Bigelow's Sermon

-  XXIV.--Drawing the Latch-String in

-  XXV.--Ann Eliza

-  XXVI.--Engagement

-  XXVII.--The Camp-Meeting

-  XXVIII.--Patty and her Patient

-  XXIX.--Patty's Journey

-  XXX.--The Schoolmaster and the Widow

-  XXXI.--Kike

-  XXXII.--Pinkey's Discovery

-  XXXIII.--The Alabaster Box Broken

-  XXXIV.--The Brother

-  XXXV.--Plnkey and Ann Eliza

-  XXXVI.--Getting the Answer

-

-

-

-

-  ILLUSTRATIONS.

-

-

-  1. Spinning-wheel and Rifle ... Frontispiece

-  2. Captain Lumsden

-  3. Mort Goodwin

-  4. Homely S'manthy

-  5. Patty and Jemima

-  6. Little Gabe's Discomfiture

-  7. In the Stable

-  8. Mort, Dolly and Kike

-  9. Good Bye!

-  10. The Altercation

-  11. The Irish Schoolmaster

-  12. Electioneering

-  13. Patty in her Chamber

-  14. Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard

-  15. Patty in the Spring-House

-  16. Job Goodwin

-  17. Two to One

-  18. Gambling

-  19. A Last Hope

-  20. The Choice

-  21. Going to Conference

-  22. Convalescence

-  23. The Connecticut Peddler

-  24. Ann Eliza

-  25. Facing a Mob

-  26. "Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"

-  27. The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge

-  28. The Reunion

-  29. The Brothers

-  30. An Accusing Memory

-  31. At the Spring-House Again

-

-

-

-

-PREFACE.

-

-Whatever is incredible in this story is true.  The tale I have to

-tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of

-the West at the beginning of this century.  These sharp contrasts of

-corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild

-revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this _mélange_

-of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of

-abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those

-who know the country now.  But the books of biography and

-reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify

-what is marvelous in these pages.

-

-Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my

-grandfather--brave old Indian-fighter!--had defended his family in a

-block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up

-familiar with this strange wild life.  At the age when other children

-hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with

-traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen.  Instead of

-imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers;

-instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of

-Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring

-adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts

-on the very road we traveled to school.  In many households the old

-customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut

-and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,

-apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.

-

-In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is

-the center-piece, but the circuit-rider.  More than any one else, the

-early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos.  In no other

-class was the real heroic element so finely displayed.  How do I

-remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers,

-whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure--who had

-survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious

-fevers!  How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude

-experience--how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of

-their hair-breadth escapes!  How was my heart set afire by their

-contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I

-bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the

-heavy burden of emulating their toils!  Surely I have a right to

-celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.

-

-It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without

-enthusiasm.  But nothing has been further from my mind than the

-glorifying of a sect.  If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should

-not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it.  There

-are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have

-frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism.

-I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell

-the truth.  Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak

-entirely on one side.  But no man is worthy to be called a novelist

-who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form

-of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately

-of those forms of life that come within his scope.

-

-

-* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in _The

-Christian Union_.

-

-

-Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not

-treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the

-most cordial sympathy and admiration.  And yet this is not a

-"religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they

-can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be.  I

-have not even asked myself what may be the "moral."  The story of any

-true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply,

-keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.

-

-Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by

-confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last,

-this is a love-story.  But it is not my fault.  It is God who made

-love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where

-love is left out.

-

-E. E.

-

-BROOKLYN, _March_, 1874.

-

-

-

-

-"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."

-

-

-

-

-THE CIRCUIT RIDER

-

-A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER I._

-

-THE CORN-SHUCKING.

-

-Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the book.  Fifty or sixty

-years off the date at the head of your letter is easy enough to the

-"organ of number," but a severe strain on the imagination.  It is

-hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother talks

-about--that golden age when people were not roasted alive in a

-sleeping coach, but gently tipped over a toppling cliff by a drunken

-stage-driver.

-

-Grand old times were those in which boys politely took off their hats

-to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing their fresh young hearts

-afterward by making mouths at the back of his great-coat.  Blessed

-days! in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked with

-starched dignity, and yet were not too good to drink peach-brandy and

-cherry-bounce with folks; when Congressmen were so honorable that

-they scorned bribes, and were only kept from killing one another by

-the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms.  It was in those old times of

-the beginning of the reign of Madison, that the people of the

-Hissawachee settlement, in Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the

-corn-shuckin' down at Cap'n Lumsden's."

-

-There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment that opens the

-gayeties of the season.  The shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage

-of being set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and

-quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that were to

-follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and simple--parties

-alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.

-

-Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown ridge five or

-six feet high.  The Captain was not insensible to considerations of

-economy.  He knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long run

-to have it husked by his own farm hands; the expense of an

-entertainment in whiskey and other needful provisions, and the

-wasteful handling of the corn, not to mention the obligation to send

-a hand to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the gratuitous

-labor.  But who can resist the public sentiment that requires a man

-to be a gentleman according to the standard of his neighbors?

-Captain Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which were

-oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his own corn would have

-been to forfeit his respectability entirely.  It would have placed

-him on the Pariah level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who

-had bought a place farther up the creek, and who dared to husk his

-own corn, practise certain forbidden economies, and even take pay for

-such trifles as butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf

-which he had killed.  The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee had been

-a matter of serious debate.  A man "as tight as the bark on a beech

-tree," and a Yankee besides, was next door to a horse-thief.

-

-So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's.  The "women-folks"

-turned the festive occasion into farther use by stretching a quilt on

-the frames, and having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in

-quilting and gossiping--the younger women blushing inwardly, and

-sometimes outwardly, with hope and fear, as the names of certain

-young men were mentioned.  Who could tell what disclosures the

-evening frolic might produce?  For, though "circumstances alter

-cases," they have no power to change human nature; and the natural

-history of the delightful creature which we call a young woman was

-essentially the same in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago,

-that it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern times.

-Difference enough of manner and costume--linsey-woolsey, with a rare

-calico now and then for Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite

-young girls--but these things are only outward.  The dainty girl that

-turns away from my story with disgust, because "the people are so

-rough," little suspects how entirely of the cuticle is her

-refinement--how, after all, there is a touch of nature that makes

-Polly Ann and Sary Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and

-Blanche, and Mabel.

-

-It was just dark--the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire

-among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek--when the

-shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn.

-The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at

-the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck

-out."  Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size,

-welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves.  That is

-to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but

-brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a

-something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his

-enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain

-Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became

-an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be

-questioned for a moment.  He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,

-Bill?"  "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello,

-Bob, I thought you had the shakes--got out at last, did you?"  Under

-this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious

-superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself

-appreciated.

-

-[Illustration: CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.]

-

-Let us understand ourselves.  When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an

-old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint.  In his

-native state his hereditary rank was low--his father was an

-"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made

-money by doubtful means.  But such is the advantage of emigration

-that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole

-Virginny" was credential enough.  Was not the Old Dominion the mother

-of presidents, and of gentlemen?  And so Captain Lumsden was

-accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while

-he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the

-Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn

-Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to

-that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while

-it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the

-"Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro."  Nothing smacks more

-of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and

-pronouncing.  In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this

-shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his

-wife.  For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a _prima facie_ lie.

-But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal--little acorns

-of fact grew to great oaks of fable.

-

-How quickly a crowd gathers!  While I have been introducing you to

-Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a

-cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as

-if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out,

-"Ho, Tom!  Howdy, Stevens?  Hello, Johnson! is that you?  Did come

-after all, eh?"

-

-When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide

-the heap.  To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield,

-a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he

-said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who

-also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked

-glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing.  Butterfield looked at the

-corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap.  Then he

-shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of

-the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge,

-measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides

-as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut,

-while the young lads stared at him with awe.  Jake Sniger strode away

-from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to

-examine anything minutely.  He pointed to the left, and remarked to

-his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the

-left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,

-and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint,

-hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins."  He

-"'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in.

-It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own

-part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be

-divided in the middle of the pile."  Strange to say, Butterfield,

-after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the

-same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence

-served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the

-two judges.

-

-So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle.

-A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary

-between the territories of the two parties.  The next thing to be

-done was to select the captains.  Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring

-an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing

-his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves,

-boys, choose for yourselves."

-

-Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker.  He

-wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected

-that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's

-shuckin."

-

-"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick

-me.  I'd like to lay him out wunst."

-

-"He ain't yer."

-

-"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake

-Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly

-through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail

-fence, and cleared it at a bound.

-

-"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of

-Captain Lumsden.  "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so

-clean."

-

-"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his

-wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead.  "We thought you

-wuzn't a comin'.  Here, you and Conkey choose up."

-

-[Illustration: MORT GOODWIN.]

-

-"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up

-such a distinction to others.

-

-"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.

-

-"Not a bit of it," said Mort.  "You don't appreciate kindness;

-where's your stick?"

-

-By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand

-of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill

-McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the

-first choice of corn.  The shuckers were thus all divided into two

-parts.  Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side.

-Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a

-desp'rate sight of nubbins."  Then, at a signal, all hands went to

-work.

-

-The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of

-fence-rails.

-

-"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden, as he started the

-whiskey bottle on its encouraging travels along the line of shuckers.

-

-"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey.  "Pull away, my sweats! work like

-dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em all to thunder, er bust a biler, by

-jimminy!  Peel 'em off!  Thunder and blazes!  Hurrah!"

-

-This loud hallooing may have cheered his own men, but it certainly

-stimulated those on the other side.  Morton was more prudent; he

-husked with all his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,

-"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the breath he spends in

-noise we'll spend in gittin' the corn peeled.  Here, you! don't you

-shove that corn back in the shucks!  No cheats allowed on this side!"

-

-Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his own men, where he

-could overlook them and husk, without intermission, himself; knowing

-that his own dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of two

-men.  When one or two boys on his side began to run over to see how

-the others were getting along, he ordered them back with great

-firmness.  "Let them alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work

-hard at first, everybody will work hard at the last."

-

-For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping husks with

-unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked corn had grown smaller,

-the crib was nearly full of the white and yellow ears, and a great

-billow of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.

-

-"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who sat next to Morton.

-

-"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden," said Ben North,

-with a chuckle.

-

-Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never knew how near he came to

-getting a whipping.

-

-It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers.  McConkey had drunk

-rather freely, and his "Pull away, sweats!" became louder than ever.

-Morton found it necessary to run up and down his line once or twice,

-and hearten his men by telling them that they were "sure to beat if

-they only stuck to it well."

-

-The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the side led by Goodwin

-would have given it up once if it had not been for his cheers; the

-others were so near to victory that they began to shout in advance,

-and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the battle,--for

-Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work in a way that set them wild

-by contagion, and for the last minute they made almost superhuman

-exertions, sending a perfect hail of white corn into the crib, and

-licking up the last ear in time to rush with a shout into the

-territory of the other party, and seize on one or two dozen ears, all

-that were left, to show that Morton had clearly gained the victory.

-Then there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general

-expression of good feeling.  But Bill McConkey vowed that he "knowed

-what the other side done with their corn," pointing to the husk pile.

-

-"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can find more corn in

-your shucks than you kin in mine."  But Bill did not accept the wager.

-

-After husking the corn that remained under the rails, the whole party

-adjourned to the house, washing their hands and faces in the woodshed

-as they passed into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the

-other half block-house fortification.

-

-The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial supper was set in

-the apartment which was commonly used for parlor and sitting room,

-and which was now pressed into service for a dining room.  The ladies

-stood around against the wall with a self-conscious air of modesty,

-debating, no doubt, the effect of their linsey-woolsey dresses.  For

-what is the use of carding and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting

-and sewing to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER II._

-

-THE FROLIC.

-

-The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers eating with awkward

-embarrassment, as frontiermen always do in company,--even in the

-company of each other.  To eat with decency and composure is the

-final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of Hissawachee Bottom

-got through with the disagreeable performance as hurriedly as

-possible, the more so that their exciting strife had given them

-vigorous relish for Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and

-batter-cakes, and "punkin-pies."  The quilters had taken their supper

-an hour before, the table not affording room for both parties.  When

-supper was over the "things" were quickly put away, the table folded

-up and removed to the kitchen--and the company were then ready to

-enjoy themselves.  There was much gawky timidity on the part of the

-young men, and not a little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of

-the young women; but the most courageous presently got some of the

-rude, country plays a-going.  The pawns were sold over the head of

-the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as the wit of the company, devised

-all manner of penalties for the owners.  Susan Tomkins had to stand

-up in the corner, and say,

-

-  "Here I stand all ragged and dirty,

-  Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."

-

-

-These lines were supposed to rhyme.  When Aleck Tilley essayed to

-comply with her request, she tried to run like a turkey, but was

-stopped in time.

-

-The good taste of people who enjoy society novels will decide at once

-that these boisterous, unrefined sports are not a promising

-beginning.  It is easy enough to imagine heroism, generosity and

-courage in people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great heroes,

-the world's demigods, grew in just such rough social states as that

-of Ohio in the early part of this century.  There is nothing more

-important for an over-refined generation than to understand that it

-has not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity, and that it

-must not only tolerate rude folk, but sometimes admire in them traits

-that have grown scarce as refinement has increased.  So that I may

-not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took the place of

-another until the excitement and merriment reached a pitch which

-would be thought not consonant with propriety by the society that

-loves round-dances with _roués_, and "the German"

-untranslated--though, for that matter, there are people old-fashioned

-enough to think that refined deviltry is not much better than rude

-freedom, after all.

-

-Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of his time of life

-into the boisterous sport; but there was one drawback to his

-pleasure--Patty Lumsden would not play.  He was glad, indeed, that

-she did not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his companions.

-But, then, did Patty like the part he was taking in the rustic revel?

-He inly rejoiced that his position as the blindfold Justice, meting

-out punishment to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some

-extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of kissing.  True,

-it was quite possible that the severest prescription he should make

-might fall on his own head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he

-was saved by his good luck and the penetration which enabled him to

-guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the seller, when the offered

-pawn was his own.

-

-At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull for the growing

-mirth of the company.  They ranged themselves round the room on

-benches and chairs, and began to sing the old song:

-

-  "Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--

-  Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--

-  You nor I, but the farmers, know

-  Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.

-

-  "Thus the farmer sows his seed,

-  Thus he stands and takes his ease,

-  Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,

-  And whirls around and views his lands.

-

-  "Sure as grass grows in the field,

-  Down on this carpet you must kneel,

-  Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,

-  And rise again upon your feet."

-

-

-It is not very different from the little children's play--an old

-rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed in England from

-immemorial time.  McConkey took the handkerchief first, and, while

-the company were singing, he pretended to be looking around and

-puzzling himself to decide whom he would favor with his affection.

-But the girls nudged one another, and looked significantly at Jemima

-Huddlestone.  Of course, everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima.

-That was fore-ordained.  Everybody knew it except Bill and Jemima!

-Bill fancied that he was standing in entire indecision, and

-Jemima--radiant peony!--turned her large, red-cheeked face away from

-Bill, and studied meditatively a knot in a floor-board.  But her

-averted gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and the

-significant titter of the company deepened the hue and widened the

-area of red in her cheeks.  Attempts to seem unconscious generally

-result disastrously.  But the tittering, and nudging, and looking

-toward Jemima, did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now

-the singers have reached the line which prescribes the kneeling.

-Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and with a sudden effort

-recovers from his vacant and wandering stare, wheels about, spreads

-the "handkercher" at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently

-kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance with the order

-of the play, and with reluctance only apparent, also drops upon her

-knees on the handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her

-red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it awakens laughter

-and applause.  Bill now arises with the air of a man who has done his

-whole duty under difficult circumstances.  Jemima lifts the

-handkerchief, and, while the song repeats itself, selects some

-gentleman before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss in the same

-fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to spread before some new

-divinity.

-

-[Illustration: HOMELY S'MANTHY.]

-

-This alternation had gone on for some time.  Poor, sanguine, homely

-Samantha Britton had looked smilingly and expectantly at each

-successive gentleman who bore the handkerchief; but in vain.

-"S'manthy" could never understand why her seductive smiles were so

-unavailing.  Presently, Betty Harsha was chosen by somebody--Betty

-had a pretty, round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be chosen,

-sooner or later.  Everybody knew whom she would choose.  Morton

-Goodwin was the desire of her heart.  She dressed to win him; she

-fixed her eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in his way;

-she compelled him to escort her home against his will; and now that

-she held the handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin.  Morton, for

-his part, was too young to be insensible to the charms of the little

-round, impulsive face, the twinkling eyes, the red, pouting lips; and

-he was not averse to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright,

-linsey frock, single him but for her admiration.  But just at this

-moment he wished she might choose some one else.  For Patty Lumsden,

-now that all her guests were interested in the play, was relieved

-from her cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the

-exciting amusement.  She stood behind Jemima Huddleston, and never

-was there finer contrast than between the large, healthful,

-high-colored Jemima, a typical country belle, and the slight,

-intelligent, fair-skinned Patty, whose black hair and eyes made her

-complexion seem whiter, and whose resolute lips and proud carriage

-heightened the refinement of her face.  Patty, as folks said,

-"favored" her mother, a woman of considerable pride and much

-refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude customs of

-the neighborhood, had about as bad a reputation as one can have in a

-frontier community.  She was regarded as excessively "stuck up."

-This stigma of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain.  His

-family was part of himself, and he liked to believe them better than

-anybody's else.  But he heartily wished that Patty would sacrifice

-her dignity, at this juncture, to further his political aspirations.

-

-[Illustration: PATTY AND JEMIMA.]

-

-Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her bright new

-calico--an extraordinary bit of finery in those days--Goodwin wished

-that Betty would attack somebody else, for once.  But Betty Harsha

-bore down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness, did not

-wait for the appropriate line to come--she did not give the farmer

-time to "stomp" his foot, and clap his hands, much less to whirl

-around and view his lands--but plumped down upon the handkerchief

-before Morton, who took his own time to kneel.  But draw it out as he

-would, he presently found himself, after having been kissed by Betty,

-standing foolishly, handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended

-for Betty were not yet finished.  Betty's precipitancy, and her

-inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set all the players

-laughing, and the laugh seemed to Goodwin to be partly at himself.

-For, indeed, he was perplexed.  To choose any other woman for his

-"true love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more than he

-could do; to offer to kneel before her was more than he dared to do.

-He hesitated a moment; he feared to offend Patty; he must select some

-one.  Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face of

-S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had been to the others,

-with an anxious smile.  Morton saw a way out.  Patty could not be

-jealous of S'manthy.  He spread the handkerchief before the delighted

-girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the right to choose a

-partner.

-

-The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to say, Gabriel

-Powers, junior.  His father was "Old Gabe," the most miserly farmer

-of the neighborhood.  But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and

-had been over the mountains, had made some money, nobody could tell

-how, and had invested his entire capital in "store clothes."  He wore

-a mustache, too, which, being an unheard-of innovation in those

-primitive times, marked him as a man who had seen the world.

-Everybody laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired him.

-None of the girls had yet dared to select Little Gabe.  To bring

-their linsey near to store-cloth--to venture to salute his divine

-mustache--who could be guilty of such profanity?  But S'manthy was

-morally certain that she would not soon again have a chance to select

-a "true love," and she determined to strike high.  The players did

-not laugh when she spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little

-Gabe.  They were appalled.  But Gabe dropped on one knee,

-condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the handkerchief with

-a delicate flourish of the hand which wore a ring with a large jewel,

-avouched by Little Gabe to be a diamond--a jewel that was at least

-transparent.

-

-Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once a question of solemn

-import to every young woman of the company; for even girls in linsey

-are not free from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies

-better dressed.  In her heart nearly every young woman wished that

-Gabe would choose herself.  But Gabe was one of those men who, having

-done many things by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing

-can be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be sufficiently

-transcendent.  He knew that Miss Lumsden held herself aloof from the

-kissing-plays, and he knew equally that she looked favorably on

-Morton Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he had already

-marked out his own line of action.  He stood in quiet repose while

-the first two stanzas were sung.  As the third began, he stepped

-quickly round the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood

-before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath.  Patty's cheeks

-did not grow red, but pale, she turned suddenly and called out toward

-the kitchen:

-

-"What do you want?  I am coming," and then walked quietly out, as if

-unconscious of Little Gabe's presence or purpose.  But poor Little

-Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far to recover

-himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got up immediately, but not in

-time to escape the general chorus of laughter and jeers.  He sneered

-at the departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could make her

-run."  But he could not conceal his discomfiture.

-

-[Illustration: LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.]

-

-When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed to have a word with

-Patty.  He found her standing in the deserted kitchen, and his heart

-beat quick with the thought that she might be waiting for him.  The

-ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place made the logs

-of the kitchen walls bright, and gave a tint to Patty's white face.

-But just as Morton was about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky

-tread sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his aggravating

-metallic little laugh, and saying, "Morton, where's your manners?

-There's nobody to go home with Betty Harsha."

-

-"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not loud enough for the

-Captain to hear.  And he escorted Betty home.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER III._

-

-GOING TO MEETING.

-

-Every history has one quality in common with eternity.  Begin where

-you will, there is always a beginning back of the beginning.  And,

-for that matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the ending.

-Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the

-foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere

-into the interlaced web of human histories--of loves and marriages,

-of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and

-disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings.

-Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the

-beginning, something that needs to be told.

-

-I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from

-childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden.  When

-the long spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its

-numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative standing,

-Patty was always "one," and Morton "two."  On one memorable occasion,

-when the all but infallible Patty misspelled a word, the all but

-infallible Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and

-went down with her.  When she afterward regained her place, he took

-pains to stand always "next to head."  Bulwer calls first love a

-great "purifier of youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting,

-horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that were

-prevalent among the young men of that day, Morton was kept from worse

-vices by his devotion to Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.

-

-Had he worshiped her less, he might long since have proposed to her,

-and thus have ended his suspense; but he had an awful sense of

-Patty's nobility?  and of his own unworthiness.  Moreover, there was

-a lion in the way.  Morton trembled before the face of Captain

-Lumsden.

-

-Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was by far the largest

-land-owner in the settlement.  In that day of long credit, he had

-managed to place himself in such a way that he could make his power

-felt, directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within twenty miles

-of him.  The very judges on the bench were in debt to him.  On those

-rare occasions when he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck

-so ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or consequences,

-that he had become a terror to everybody.  Two or three families had

-been compelled to leave the settlement by his vindictive

-persecutions, so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal

-authority.  Morton Goodwin's father was but a small farmer on the

-hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had lost the greater part of a

-considerable patrimony.  How could Morton, therefore, make direct

-advances to so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of

-refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her father?

-Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but disillusion--Morton

-preferred to cherish his hopeless hope, living in vain expectation of

-some improbable change that should place him at better advantage in

-his addresses to Patty.

-

-At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in regard to his own

-disposition in the matter.  He had frowned upon Goodwin's advances by

-treating him with that sort of repellant patronage which is so

-aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for knocking down

-the author of the insult.  But of late, having observed the growing

-force and independence of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over

-the men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the necessity of

-attaching such a person to himself, particularly for the election

-which was to take place in the autumn.  Not that he had any intention

-of suffering Patty to marry Morton.  He only meant to play fast and

-loose a while.  Had he even intended to give his approval to the

-marriage at last, he would have played fast and loose all the same,

-for the sake of making Patty and her lover feel his power as long as

-possible.  At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope to

-bind the ardent young man to his interest.  Morton, on his part,

-reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness should continue to increase in

-the future as it had in the three weeks past, it would become even

-cordial, after a while.  To young men in love, all good things are

-progressive.

-

-On the Sunday morning following the shucking, Morton rose early, and

-went to the stable.  Did you ever have the happiness to see a quiet

-autumn Sunday in the backwoods?  Did you ever observe the stillness,

-the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the gentleness of wind, the

-chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks of blackbirds getting ready for

-migration, the lazy cawing of crows, softened by distance, the

-half-laughing bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped

-beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at you the while,

-as if to say, "Don't you wish you might guess?"

-

-Not that Morton saw aught of these things.  He never heard voices, or

-saw sights, out of the common, and that very October Sunday had been

-set apart for a horse-race down at "The Forks."  The one piece of

-property which our young friend had acquired during his minority was

-a thorough-bred filley, and he felt certain that she--being a horse

-of the first families--would be able to "lay out" anything that could

-be brought against her.  He was very anxious about the race, and

-therefore rose early, and went out into the morning light that he

-might look at his mare, and feel of her perfect legs, to make sure

-that she was in good condition.

-

-"All right, Dolly?" he said--"all right this morning, old lady? eh?

-You'll beat all the scrubs; won't you?"

-

-In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation, Morton came to

-breakfast, only to have his breath taken away.  His mother asked him

-to ride to meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny her as

-it was to give up the race at "The Forks."

-

-Rough associations had made young Goodwin a rough man.  His was a

-nature buoyant, generous, and complaisant, very likely to take the

-color of his surroundings.  The catalogue of his bad habits is

-sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of

-Sunday-school morality.  He often swore in a way that might have

-edified the army in Flanders.  He spent his Sundays in hunting,

-fishing, and riding horse-races, except when he was needed to escort

-his mother to meeting.  He bet on cards, and I am afraid he drank to

-intoxication sometimes.  Though he was too proud and manly to lie,

-and too pure to be unchaste, he was not a promising young man.  The

-chances that he would make a fairly successful trip through life did

-not preponderate over the chances that he would wreck himself by

-intemperance and gambling.  But his roughness was strangely veined by

-nobleness.  This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow had a

-chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held him always ready to

-devote himself in any way to her service.

-

-On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of reverence.  Her

-father had been one of those fine old Irish gentlemen, with grand

-manners, extravagant habits, generous impulses, brilliant wit, a

-ruddy nose, and final bankruptcy.  His daughter, Jane Morton, had

-married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the Revolution--a man who

-was "a poor manager."  He lost his patrimony, and, what is worse,

-lost heart.  Upon his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens.

-But her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when anchored back to

-a great tuck-comb, showed an errant, Irish tendency to curl.

-Morton's hung in waves about his neck, and he cherished his curls,

-proud of the resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very

-queen, to be served right royally.

-

-But it was hard--when he had been training the filley from a

-colt--when he had looked forward for months to this race as a time of

-triumph--to have so severe a strain put upon his devotion to his

-mother.  When she made the request, he did not reply.  He went to the

-barn and stroked the filley's legs--how perfect they were!--and gave

-vent to some very old and wicked oaths.  He was just making up his

-mind to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks, when his

-decision was curiously turned by a word from his brother Henry, a lad

-of twelve, who had followed Morton to the stable, and now stood in

-the door.

-

-"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you.  I wouldn't stand it.

-You go and run Doll, and lick Bill Conkey's bay fer him.  He'll think

-you're afeard, ef you don't.  The old lady hain't got no right to

-make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a purty day as this."

-

-"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up from the meditative

-scratching of Dolly's fetlocks, "don't you talk that away about

-mother.  She's every inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's

-had to foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin' and

-Lew's bad end--and you and me not promisin' much better.  It's mighty

-little I kin do to make things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to

-meetin' every day in the week, ef she says so."

-

-[Illustration: IN THE STABLE.]

-

-"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see ef she don't."

-

-"Nary Presbyterian.  They's no Presbyterian in me.  I'm a hard nut.

-I would like to be a elder, or a minister, if it was in me, though,

-just to see the smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think

-about it.  Looky here, Hen!  I'll tell you something.  Mother's about

-forty times too good for us.  When I had the scarlet fever, and was

-cross, she used to set on the side of the bed, and tell me stories,

-about knights and such like, that she'd read about in grandfather's

-books when she was a girl--jam up good stories, too, you better

-believe.  I liked the knights, because they rode fine horses, and was

-always ready to fight anything that come along, but always fair and

-square, you know.  And she told me how the knights fit fer their

-religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody that had got tromped down

-by somebody else.  I wished I'd been a knight myself.  I 'lowed it

-would be some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin' good.

-But then it seemed as if I couldn't find nothin' worth the fightin'

-fer.  One day I lay a-thinkin', and a-lookin' at mother's white lady

-hands, and face fit fer a queen's.  And in them days she let her hair

-hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was bright like as if

-they had a light _inside_ of 'em, you know.  She was a queen, _I_

-tell you!  And all at wunst it come right acrost me, like a flash,

-that I mout as well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and

-I've been at it ever since.  I 'low I've give her a sight of trouble,

-with my plaguey wild ways, and I come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this

-mornin', dogged ef I didn't.  But here goes."

-

-And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless Dolly, while Henry

-put the side-saddle on old Blaze, saying, as he drew the surcingle

-tight, "For my part, I don't want to fight for nobody.  I want to do

-as I dog-on please."  He was meditating the fun he would have

-catching a certain ground-hog, when once his mother should be safely

-off to meeting.

-

-Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount,

-gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long

-riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare.  Dolly sprang forward

-prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly

-pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull

-affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her

-master.  The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been

-preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away.

-Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual.  There

-still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the

-controversy between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians, that

-dated its origin before the Revolution.  Parson Donaldson belonged to

-the Old side.  With square, combative face, and hard, combative

-voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the

-grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the

-exciting meetings of the Methodists.  The great Cane Ridge

-Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the

-hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian

-ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set

-agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists.  He said

-that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were

-led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of

-them out.  As for Methodists, they denied "the Decrees."  What was

-that but a denial of salvation by grace?  And this involved the

-overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith.

-This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself

-at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers.  In

-preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the

-decrees logically involved the rest.  He translated his conclusions

-into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy,

-illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to

-Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching

-salvation by the merit of works.  There were many divines, on both

-sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any

-amount of unfairness.  (But all that is past!)

-

-Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and

-when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he

-assured his mother that he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often,

-rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every

-time.  He thought it wouldn't be hard to be good, if a body could

-only have something bad to fight.  "Don't you remember, mother, how

-you used to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress," and show

-me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn't

-hold shucks?  If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn't mind

-being a Christian."

-

-Morton felt especially pleased with the minister to-day, for Mr.

-Donaldson delighted to have the young men come so far to meeting; and

-imagining that he might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had

-hospitably urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment

-before starting on their homeward journey.  It is barely possible

-that the stimulus of the good parson's cherry-bounce had quite as

-much to do with Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of

-his discourse.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER IV._

-

-A BATTLE.

-

-The fight so much desired by Morton came soon enough.

-

-As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut," little traveled,

-Morton found time to master Dolly's fiery spirit and yet to scan the

-woods with the habitual searching glance of a hunter.  He observed on

-one of the trees a notice posted.  A notice put up in this

-out-of-the-way place surprised him.  He endeavored to make his

-restless steed approach the tree, that he might read, but her wild

-Arabian temper took fright at something--a blooded horse is apt to

-see visions--and she would not stand near the tree.  Time after time

-Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied away.  At last, Mrs.

-Goodwin begged him to give over the attempt and come on; but Morton's

-love of mastery was now excited, and he said,

-

-"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question between Dolly and me

-will have to be discussed and settled right here.  Either she will

-stand still by this sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or

-t'other lays down to rest."

-

-The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze browse by the

-road-side, and with shaping her thoughts into a formal regret that

-Morton should spend the holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her

-maternal heart she admired his will and courage.  He was so like her

-own father, she thought--such a gentleman!  And she could not but

-hope that he was one of God's elect.  If so, what a fine Christian he

-would be when he should be converted!  And, quiet as she was without,

-her heart was in a moment filled with agony and prayer and

-questionings.  How could she live in heaven without Morton?  Her

-eldest son had already died a violent death in prodigal wanderings

-from home.  But Morton would surely be saved!

-

-Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less for anything in

-heaven than he did to master the rebellious Dolly.  He rode her all

-round the tree; he circled that maple, first in one direction, then

-in another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly see.  Then

-he held her while he read the notice, saying with exultation, "Now,

-my lady, do you think you can stand still?"

-

-Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity, Morton had not cared to

-know the contents of the paper.  Even curiosity had been forgotten in

-his combat with Dolly.  But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch

-Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased,"

-he forgot his victory over his horse in his interest in the document

-itself.  It was therein set forth that, by order of the probate court

-in and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden,

-administrator, would sell at public auction all that parcel of land

-belonging to the estate of the said Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known

-and described as follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.

-

-"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode away (I am afraid

-he swore by thunder instead of by something else, out of a filial

-regard for his mother).  "By thunder! if that ain't too devilish

-mean!  I s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat little

-Kike--he has gone to robbing him.  He means to buy that land himself;

-or, what's the same thing, git somebody to do it for him.  That's

-what he put that notice in this holler fer.  The judge is afraid of

-him; and so's everybody else.  Poor Kike won't have a dollar when

-he's a man."

-

-"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin.  "It's a

-shame for a whole settlement to be cowards, and to let one man rule

-them.  It's worse than having a king."

-

-Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain Lumsden; and this

-appeal to the anti-monarchic feeling of the time moved him.  He could

-not bear that his mother, of all, should think him cowardly.  His

-pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension, and his

-provoking way of keeping Patty and himself apart.  Why should he not

-break with him, and have done with it, rather than stand by and see

-Kike robbed?  But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put Patty

-Lumsden farther away from him.  He was a knight who had suddenly come

-in sight of his long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied.

-And so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely spoke a

-word to his mother all the rest of his ride.  For here were his

-friendship for little Kike, his innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden,

-and his strong sense of justice, on one side; his love for

-Patty--stronger than all the rest--on the other.  In the stories of

-chivalry which his mother had told, the love of woman had always been

-a motive to valiant deeds for the right.  And how often had he

-dreamed of doing some brave thing while Patty applauded!  Now, when

-the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side.  This

-unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him, as such

-embarrassment always does a person disposed to act impulsively and in

-right lines.  And so it happened that he rode on in moody silence,

-while the mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the son,

-mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain endeavor to recall

-some passages that might have "found a lodgment in his mind."

-

-Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton, he might even then

-have chosen Patty, letting the interests of his friends take care of

-themselves.  But he did not decide it squarely.  He began by excusing

-himself to himself:--What could he do for Kike?  He had no influence

-with the judge; he had no money to buy the land, and he had no

-influential friends.  He might agitate the question and sacrifice his

-own hope, and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike.  No doubt all

-these considerations of futility had their weight with him;

-nevertheless he had an angry consciousness that he was not acting

-bravely in the matter.  That he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed

-that he would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his eyes to

-Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of one day getting his

-consent to marry his daughter!  It was this anger with himself that

-made Morton restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks

-that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or three times, in

-spite of his good resolution not to drink more than once.  It was

-this restlessness that carried him at last to the cabin of the widow

-Lumsden, that evening, to see her son Kike.

-

-[Illustration: MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.]

-

-Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys with straight

-black hair that one sees so often in southern latitudes.  He was

-called "Little Kike" only to distinguish him from his father, who had

-also borne the name of Hezekiah.  Delicate in health and quiet in

-manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his emotions were not

-only profound but persistent.  Dressed in buck-skin breeches and

-homespun cotton overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came

-up.  The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face relaxed a little, as

-with a smile deeper than it was broad he lifted himself up and said,

-

-"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"

-

-But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came round and stroked

-her fine neck, and expressed his regret that she hadn't run at the

-Forks and beat Bill McConkey's bay horse.  He wished he owned such "a

-beast."

-

-"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little stronger, I will

-open that crick bottom, and then I shall make some money and be able

-to buy a blooded horse like Dolly.  Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's;

-who knows?"  And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness at the vision of

-his impending prosperity.  But Morton could not smile, nor could he

-bear to tell Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that

-very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike had built upon

-it.  Morton had made up his mind not to tell Kike.  Why should he?

-Kike would hear of his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his

-part would only destroy his own hopes without doing anything for

-Kike.  But if Morton meant to be prudent and keep silence, why had he

-not staid at home?  Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender

-frame was a constant provocation to speech?  Was there a self

-contending against a self?

-

-"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.

-

-"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly.  "I was nearly

-well when I went down to Uncle Enoch's to work; and he made me work

-in the rain.  'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and

-throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain.  It'll do you

-good.  Your mother has ruined you, keeping you over the fire.  You

-want hardening.  Rain is good for you, water makes you grow; you're a

-perfect baby.'  I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a finishment

-to me, though."

-

-Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks had not increased his

-prudence.  As usual in such cases, the prudent Morton and the

-impulsive Morton stood the one over against the other; and, as always

-the imprudent self is prone to spring up without warning, and take

-the other by surprise, so now the young man suddenly threw prudence

-and Patty behind, and broke out with--

-

-"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some maledictions for emphasis.

-

-That was not exactly telling what he had resolved not to tell, but it

-rendered it much more difficult to keep the secret; for Kike grew a

-little red in the face, and was silent a minute.  He himself was fond

-of roundly denouncing his uncle.  But abusing one's relations is a

-luxury which is labeled "strictly private," and this savage outburst

-from his friend touched Kike's family pride a little.

-

-"I know that as well as you do," was all he said, however.

-

-"He would swindle his own children," said Morton, spurred to greater

-vehemence by Kike's evident disrelish of his invective.  "He will

-chisel you out of everything you've got before you're of age, and

-then make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake your head."

-And Morton looked off down the road.

-

-"What's the matter, Mort?  What set you off on Uncle Nuck to-night?

-He's bad enough, Lord knows; but something must have gone wrong with

-you.  Did he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"

-

-"No, he didn't," said Morton.  And now that Patty was recalled to his

-mind, he was vexed to think that he had gone so far in the matter.

-His tone provoked Kike in turn.

-

-"Mort, you've been drinking!  What brought you down here?"

-

-Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand again.  Patty and

-prudence were out of sight at once, and the young man swore between

-his teeth.

-

-"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said Kike, alarmed.

-"What's up?"

-

-"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly.  "Nothing, only your

-affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in Jackson's holler--on the

-side of the tree furthest from the road--advertising your crick

-bottom for sale.  That's all.  Old Virginia gentleman!  Old Virginia

-_devil_!  Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?"  And then he added

-something about hell and damnation.  These two last words had no

-grammatical relation with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of

-Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with Captain Lumsden

-and the subject under discussion.  Nobody is quite a Universalist in

-moments of indignation.  Every man keeps a private and select

-perdition for the objects of his wrath.

-

-When Morton had thus let out the secret he had meant to retain, Kike

-trembled and grew white about the lips.  "I'll never forgive him," he

-said, huskily.  "I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I

-ain't!"  He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless air that

-belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.

-

-"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.

-

-"Can you ride her?  Where are you going?" Morton was loth to commit

-himself by lending his horse.

-

-"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that sale; and I've

-got a right to choose a gardeen.  I mean to take one that will make

-Uncle Enoch open his eyes.  I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he

-hates Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done.  As for ridin' Dolly,

-you know I can back any critter with four legs."

-

-"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton, reluctantly.  He

-knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the Captain would hear of it; and then,

-farewell to Patty!  But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and

-wrath, he could not quite refuse.  Dolly went home at a tremendous

-pace, and Morton, commonly full of good nature, was, for once,

-insufferably cross at supper-time.

-

-"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry, provokingly.

-"You're cross as a coon when it's cornered."

-

-"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin.  The fond

-mother still hoped that the struggle in his mind was the great battle

-of Armageddon that should be the beginning of a better life.

-

-Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a contempt for

-himself.  He tried in vain to acquit himself of cowardice--the

-quality which a border man considers the most criminal.  Early in the

-morning he fed Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came.

-After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on the other side

-of the creek.  Could it be Kike?  Was he going to walk to Jonesville,

-twenty miles away?  And with his ague-shaken body?  How roundly

-Morton cursed himself for the fear that made him half refuse the

-horse!  For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a half refusal was

-equivalent to the most positive denial.  It was not too late.  Morton

-threw the saddle and bridle on Dolly, and mounted.  Dolly sprang

-forward, throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen

-minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.

-

-"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way!  Take Dolly."

-

-"No, I won't, Morton.  I oughtn't to have axed you to let me have

-her.  I know how you feel about Patty."

-

-"Confound--no, I won't say confound Patty--but confound me, if I'm

-mean enough to let you walk to Jonesville.  I was a devlish coward

-yesterday.  Here, take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you,"

-and Morton laughed.

-

-"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm goin' to walk."

-

-"Yes, you look like it!  You'll die before you git half-way, you

-blamed little fool you!  If you won't take Dolly, then I'll go along

-to bury your bones.  They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such

-bones, though."

-

-Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable for his servility

-to Lumsden.

-

-"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.

-

-"No ways jest now," said Morton.

-

-"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?" asked Sniger,

-smiling.

-

-"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place," said Morton.

-

-When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now Kike, the fat's all in the

-fire.  When the Captain finds out what you've done, Sniger is sure to

-tell that he see us together.  I've got to fight it out now anyhow,

-and you've got to take Dolly."

-

-"No, Morton, I can't."

-

-If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness of his knees would

-have persuaded him to relent.

-

-[Illustration: GOOD-BYE!]

-

-"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said Morton, dismounting.

-As soon as Kike had obligingly taken hold of the bridle, Morton

-started toward home, singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of

-his rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till he had

-finished the song, and reached the summit of the hill.  Then he had

-the satisfaction of seeing Kike in the saddle, laughing to think how

-his friend had outwitted him.  Morton waved his hat heartily, and

-Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she plunged forward,

-carrying him out of sight in a few minutes.  Morton's mother was

-disappointed, when he came in late to breakfast, to see that his brow

-was clear.  She feared that the good impressions of the day before

-had worn away.  How little does one know of the real nature of the

-struggle between God and the devil, in the heart of another!  But

-long before Kike had brought Dolly back to her stall, the

-exhilaration of self-sacrifice in the mind of Morton had worn away,

-and the possible consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER V._

-

-A CRISIS.

-

-Work, Morton could not.  After his noonday dinner he lifted his

-flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was

-laid, and set out to seek for deer,--rather to seek forgetfulness of

-the anxiety that preyed upon him.  Excitement was almost a necessity

-with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for

-his depression.  But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot

-everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it

-impossible to absorb himself in hunting.  For when a frontierman

-loves, he loves with his whole nature.  The interests of his life are

-few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.

-After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a

-deer, but did not see at in time to shoot.  He had tramped through

-the brush without caution or vigilance.  He now saw that it would be

-of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting.  He was seized with

-an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the

-door should be closed against him.  He might strike the trail, and

-reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the

-Captain was away from the house.  His only chance was to see her in

-the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some

-interruption if he were present.

-

-So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half

-accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild

-turkeys.  They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not

-until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy

-young gobblers.  Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw

-bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his

-shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite

-empty-handed.

-

-As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is

-such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made,

-broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose

-litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away

-somewhere for an emergency.  His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging;

-he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness,

-timidity, nor craftiness in his gait.  The legs are as much a test of

-character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness.

-His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair,

-and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his

-Scotch-Irish mother.  His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the

-look of a hunter.  The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his

-buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.

-

-The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but,

-like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect

-his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the

-gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance.

-The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old

-fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed

-tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if

-Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.

-

-Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion

-of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room.  The monotonous

-rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder

-and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking,

-then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax--this cadenced

-hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run

-back across the room after each climax of sound.  He knows the quick,

-elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the

-house, and passes round to the kitchen door.  It is Patty, as he

-thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very

-act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it

-roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of

-it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her

-left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is

-somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the

-wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door.  She

-changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right

-with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."

-

-"Yes, one for you and one for mother."

-

-"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."

-

-"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his

-coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief.

-"Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."

-

-"Well, I will.  I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day.  I've been at

-it since five o'clock."

-

-Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin.  He was, in his present

-perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken

-talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the

-spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.

-

-Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old

-spinning-wheel.  Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or

-pads, or paniers--her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left

-hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile

-figure in lithe action.  If plastic art were not an impossibility to

-us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like

-school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and

-counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey

-Washingtons on stage-horses;--they would by this time have found out

-that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in

-mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists.  But I do not

-believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the

-October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of

-unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day.  He did not

-know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm

-half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a

-statue.  He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues

-except in the talk of the old schoolmaster.  How should her think to

-call her statuesque?  Or how should he know that the wide old

-log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein

-sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on

-which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending--the old kitchen, with

-its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned

-strings of drying pumpkins--how should Morton Goodwin know that this

-wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,

-fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts

-of yarn in a day, would make a _genre_ piece, the subject of which

-would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters?  He could not

-know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading

-swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face,

-ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a

-whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible--he did know that Patty

-Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he

-remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be

-shut out from her father's house.

-

-It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of

-sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain

-Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his

-boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the

-kitchen door.

-

-"Hello, Morton! here, eh?  Been hunting?  This don't pay.  A young

-man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the

-sunshine talking to the girls.  Leave that for nights and Sundays.

-I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late.  Eh?"

-And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.

-

-Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he

-rose to go.  He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door,

-took up the other, and was about to leave.  Meantime the captain had

-lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.

-

-"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his

-sips of water--and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of

-Kike.  "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare.  You oughtn't to

-let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet.  Here comes Kike

-himself.  I wonder where he's been to?"

-

-Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate,

-evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking

-for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat

-him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.

-

-"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch

-faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that

-filley to-day?  I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you

-ride that she-devil.  She'll break your blamed neck some day, and

-then there'll be one fool less."  And the captain chuckled

-triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing.  "Don't kick

-the dog!  What an ill-natured ground-hog you air!  If I had the

-training of you, I'd take some of that out."

-

-"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."

-

-Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.

-

-"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.

-

-"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his

-slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an

-ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"

-

-"Tut! tut!  Kike, you're crazy, you little brute.  What's up?"

-

-"You know what's up.  You want to cheat me out of that bottom land;

-you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's

-holler, without consulting mother or me.  I have been over to

-Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my

-gardeen."

-

-"Colonel Wheeler?  Why, that's an insult to me!"  And the captain

-ceased to laugh, and grew red.

-

-"I hope it is.  I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for

-the sale of the land; he's afeard of you.  But now let me tell you

-something, Enoch Lumsden!  If you sell my land by that order of the

-court, you'll lose more'n you'll make.  I ain't afeard of the devil

-nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest.

-It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and

-sheep than what you make will pay for.  You cheated pappy, but you

-shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike.  I'll turn Ingin, and take

-Ingin law onto you, you old thief and--"

-

-[Illustration: THE ALTERCATION.]

-

-Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide.  "I'll

-teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"

-

-Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot.  "Hit me if

-you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then.  You

-hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year.  You

-or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."

-

-Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a

-day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton.  Morton advanced

-and took hold of Kike.

-

-"Come, Kike!  Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.

-

-"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose.  "I've

-got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with

-a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us.  We'll settle with

-blood then."

-

-"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain.  "I

-know well enough who put Kike up to this.  I'll settle with both of

-you, some day."  Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house,

-while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring

-to look at Patty.

-

-What Morton dreaded most had come upon him.  As for Kike, when once

-they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame

-was terrible.  He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.

-

-"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.

-

-And Morton did not reply.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER VI._

-

-THE FALL HUNT.

-

-Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's

-house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a

-broken chair by the fire-place.  His father, a hypochondriac, hard of

-hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a

-moment, and then said:

-

-"Sick, Mort?  Goin' to have a chill?"

-

-"No, sir."

-

-"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe

-full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on

-the other side of the fire-place.  "I feel a kind of all-overishness

-myself.  I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year.  Hey?"

-

-"I don't know, sir."

-

-"What?"

-

-"I said I didn't know."  Morton found it hard to answer his father

-with decency.  The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's

-last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he

-devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful

-consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to

-have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee

-bottom.  Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence

-of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to

-hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect.

-Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his

-mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the

-election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling

-that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen.

-She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin

-corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a

-griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place

-before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the

-milk, and arranging the plates--white, with blue edges--and the

-yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that

-Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of

-the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.

-

-The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the

-fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her

-son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break

-with Captain Lumsden--all three set agoing primarily by one

-cause--were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of

-the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.

-

-"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.

-

-"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."

-

-"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father.  "Well, the captain's feeling

-clever, I 'low."

-

-"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss

-Patty's somethin' or other--couplements, Bob called 'em."

-

-"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling.  "Well,

-you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to

-send a turkey?"  The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he

-did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty.

-Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself

-and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible.  Of

-course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey

-was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.

-

-"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after

-supper.  "Quarreled with Lumsden!  He'll drive us off.  We'll all

-take the fever"--for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of

-immediately became inevitable, in his imagination--"we'll all take

-the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time."  Saying

-this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his

-knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination

-to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from

-this new and improved stand-point of despair.

-

-But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock

-had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into

-a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the

-best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement

-until the captain should have time to cool off.

-

-"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate.  We

-want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd

-better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.

-

-Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in

-some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his

-mother.  He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had

-little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager

-desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer.  He

-seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the

-house of Kike's mother.  Soon after Morton went, his father woke up,

-and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed,

-that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that

-away at night."

-

-[Illustration: THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.]

-

-Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion--pale, angry, and sick.

-Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received

-most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best

-to divert Kike from his revengeful mood.  It is a singular fact in

-the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first

-school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.

-

-"Ha!  Moirton, is it you?" said Brady.  "I'm roight glad to see ye.

-Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a

-toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip.  An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi

-hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered

-him with baich switches.  I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay

-wuz, sure.  Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd

-a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the

-bayginnin'.  Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A

-wusn't B."

-

-It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old

-fellow's banter.  Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of

-his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and

-Morton in scholarship though much younger.

-

-Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to

-see him in so dangerous a passion.  "I wish he was leetle-er, ur

-bigger," she said.

-

-"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the

-Irishman.

-

-"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen

-him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool.  Boys is allers

-powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween--nary man

-nor boy.  They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to

-be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all

-sich like.  Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid

-acrost your lap, and larnt what's what.  Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's

-been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a

-oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and

-he's one of them you can't turn.  An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I

-_would_ be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like

-Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden.  Nobody but God

-A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort

-to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day.  Nothin' does my heart

-so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle

-_then_, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in

-_his_ face.  It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment,

-akordin' to my thinkin'.  I mean to call his attention to some things

-then.  He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families

-thar, I 'low."

-

-Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's;

-and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting

-things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.

-

-Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should

-leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt.  Kike felt the first

-dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand

-with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the

-opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and

-killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as

-shooting his uncle.

-

-"I don't want to run away from him.  He'll think I've backed out," he

-said, hesitatingly.

-

-"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git

-some bear's ile for your noice black hair.  If the cap'n makes so

-bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile

-ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back.

-The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit.  It'll burn a dale

-better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad.  An', as for the shootin' part,

-practice on the bears fust!  'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the

-captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know.  He'll keep till ye

-come back.  If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist

-spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own

-affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin'

-blood kin, sure."

-

-Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the

-matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go.  She'd

-bundle him off in the early morning.  And long before daylight, the

-two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with

-guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a

-pack-horse.  Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted

-in business so grave.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER VII._

-

-TREEING A PREACHER.

-

-Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of

-those gentle titles now in vogue, as "The Wild Hunters of the Far

-West," or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and

-Sunday-school literature--milk for babes--is now made attractive, as,

-for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter."  I might here have

-entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of

-Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of

-the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.

-

-After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found

-that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for

-a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their

-stock of ammunition.  Wilkins' store, which was the center of a

-settlement, was a double log-building.  In one end the proprietor

-kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and

-artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery,

-a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks

-of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for

-"chawing," a little "store-tea"--so called in contra-distinction to

-the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use--with a

-plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy.  The other end of

-this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying

-pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small

-window with four lights of glass.  In this room, which contained

-three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and

-kept a first-class hotel.

-

-In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus.  Our

-young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not

-because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get

-lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic

-in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home,

-they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games

-at cards, and other social enjoyments.

-

-Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined store and tavern at ten

-o'clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers.  The

-new-comers "took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the

-foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the

-target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon

-accepted as clever fellows.  A frontierman could bestow no higher

-praise--to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at

-cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be

-always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks for the crowd,"

-and to be able to hit a three-inch "mark" at two hundred paces

-without bragging.

-

-Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there

-walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of

-his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain

-backwoodsman.  He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an

-acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had

-been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes.  There were

-traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a

-certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good

-intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was

-written in his countenance.

-

-[Illustration: ELECTIONEERING.]

-

-"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of Morton's

-companions.

-

-The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as

-though he had known him always.  He proposed "the drinks" as the

-surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger

-paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.

-

-"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously, "you're mighty

-clever, by hokey.  What are you running fer?"

-

-"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time.  I 'low to run for

-sheriff next heat," said the stranger, who affected dialect for the

-sake of popularity.

-

-"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.

-

-"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home.  I live at Jenkinsville.

-I sot out in life a poor boy.  I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that

-my shoes hurts my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand most

-of the time."

-

-Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with

-perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard

-that speech so well done before.  We're all goin' to vote for you,

-without t'other man happens to do it up slicker'n you do.  I don't

-believe he can, though.  That was got off very nice."

-

-Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally

-produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader

-of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.

-

-Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening

-drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of

-funny anecdotes--little stories that had been aired in the same order

-at every other tavern and store in the county.  From sheer _ennui_ it

-was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house

-two miles away.  They could at least get some fun out of it.

-Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself.  He wished he

-might enjoy the sport, but he must push on.  And "push on" he did.

-In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be

-thrown away.

-

-Morton and Kike relished the expedition.  They had heard that the

-Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst

-practices under an appearance of piety.  Mr. Donaldson had often

-fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure

-that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable

-enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.

-

-The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type.  His speech

-was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases.  His

-illustrations were exceedingly uncouth.  It by no means followed that

-he was not an effective preacher.  All these defects were rather to

-his advantage,--the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the

-backwoods audience.  But the party from the tavern were in no mood to

-be moved by anything.  They came for amusement, and set themselves

-diligently to seek it.  Morton was ambitious to lead among his new

-friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his

-rarest gift.  The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up"

-with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the

-right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence,

-when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the

-diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's

-school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the

-while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the

-discourse.  The women were startled and the grave brethren turned

-their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men.

-In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping

-of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room.

-Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that

-the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the

-sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.

-

-"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even

-when they walk on two legs instid of four."

-

-This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to

-the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good

-opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers

-with whom he had come.  He kept silence now, until the preacher again

-approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice

-to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem

-sufficiently terrible to his hearers.  At last, when he got to the

-terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these

-awful sounds I hear?"  At this point he made a pause, which would

-have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.

-

-"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow.

-

-"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and

-breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom."

-

-"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere

-in particular.  Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward

-the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending

-to deal out summary justice to some one.  He was a man of immense

-strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole

-party.  But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met

-the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence.  Mr. Mellen

-was perplexed.  A disembodied voice wandering about the room would

-have been too much for Hercules himself.  When the baffled orator

-turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an

-aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's

-inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"

-

-And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was

-already fleeing through the door.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER VIII._

-

-A LESSON IN SYNTAX.

-

-The young men were gone until the latter part of November.  Several

-persons longed for their return.  Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to

-feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in

-the woods.  He was also very sure that each succeeding day would

-witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain

-Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger

-of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to

-Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding

-with compound interest to the next day.  He abounded in quotations of

-such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few

-and full of trouble.  The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial

-fountain of misery--he delighted to found his despairing auguries

-upon the superior wisdom of Solomon.  He looked for Morton's return

-with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to

-him than the shooting away of an arm.  Mrs. Goodwin, for her part,

-dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting.  She

-feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried

-away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an

-affray she had never ceased to mourn.

-

-And Patty!  When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered

-the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a

-message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that

-she was.  She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor

-displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking

-for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father.  This air of

-defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired.  It showed her mettle, he

-said to himself.  Patty would almost have finished that two dozen

-cuts of yarn if it had cost her life.  She even managed to sing,

-toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock,

-she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,--drawing a sigh of relief when

-the reel snapped,--and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed

-as blithe as ever.  Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with

-wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's

-achievement.  Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's

-reflection.

-

-[Illustration: PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.]

-

-But Patty?  She did not hurry.  She put everything away carefully.

-She was rather slow about retiring.  But when at last she went aloft

-into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut

-and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high,

-old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the

-little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able

-to keep while the eyes of others were upon her.  She saw weariness,

-disappointment, and dejection.  Her strong will held her up.  She

-undressed herself with habitual quietness.  She even stopped to look

-again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on

-her night-cap.  But when at last she had blown out the candle, and

-carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great,

-high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired

-head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to

-herself what she was crying about.

-

-And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or

-Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found

-in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton.  The more she

-tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the

-existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become.  Whenever

-hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game,

-she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them.  But she never failed, a

-moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and

-to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle.  What were hunters to her?

-

-But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by.  They were

-worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their

-tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,

-peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail

-to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat

-and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at

-Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself.

-That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which

-she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a

-younger brother a minute later.  But when she saw her father gallop

-rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of

-pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.

-

-Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part, to throw off their

-troubles in the excitement of hunting.  But when at last they had

-accumulated all the meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they

-could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home.  And with the

-turning of their steps toward home had come the inevitable turning of

-their thoughts toward old perplexities.  Morton then confided to Kike

-his intention of leaving the settlement and leading the life of a

-hermit in the wilderness in case it should prove to be "all off"

-between him and Patty.  And Kike said that his mind was made up.  If

-he found that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be revenged

-in some way and then run off and live with the Indians.  It is not

-uncommon for boys now-a-days to make stern resolutions in moments of

-wretchedness which they never attempt to carry out.  But the rude

-life of the West developed deep feeling and a hardy persistence in a

-purpose once formed.  Many a young man crossed in love or incited to

-revenge had already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a morose

-hermit or a desperado among the savages.  At the period of life when

-the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny

-often hangs very perilously balanced.  It was at that day a question

-in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a

-class-leader.

-

-When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more

-depressed than ever.  Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house

-and yard in vain for a sight of Patty.  Kike looked sternly ahead of

-him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's

-existence.  And when, five minutes later, they heard horse-hoofs

-behind them, and, looking back, saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping

-after them on his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat

-fast with excitement.  Morton wondered what the Captain could want

-with them, seeing it was not his way to carry on his conflicts by

-direct attack; and Kike contented himself with looking carefully to

-the priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking

-straight forward.

-

-"Hello, boys!  Howdy?  Got a nice passel of furs, eh?  Had a good

-time?"

-

-"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished at the

-greeting, but eager enough to be on good terms again with Patty's

-father.  Kike said not a word, but grew white with speechless anger.

-

-"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain tapped it with his

-cow-hide whip.  "Killed a bar, too; who killed it?"

-

-"Kike," said Morton.

-

-"Purty good fer you, Kike!  Got over your pout about that land yet?"

-

-Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could not.

-

-"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss about nothing!  I

-didn't sell it, of course, when you didn't want me to, but you ought

-to have a little manners in your way of speaking.  Come to me next

-time, and don't go running to the judge and old Wheeler.  If you

-won't be a fool, you'll find your own kin your best friends.  Come

-over and see me to-morry, Mort.  I've got some business with you.

-Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.

-

-Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty looked at his face

-to see what had been the nature of his interview with the boys.  With

-a characteristic love of exerting power over the moods of another, he

-said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest little brute I

-ever did see."

-

-And Patty spent most of her time during the night in trying to guess

-what this saying indicated.  It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.

-

-Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the Captain's cordiality

-might signify.  Kike was pleased that his land had not been sold, but

-he was not in the least mollified by that fact.  He was glad of his

-victory and hated his uncle all the more.

-

-After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly enjoyed the warm

-hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the milk and butter, that he got at his

-mother's table.  His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and

-sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them all before

-Christmas or Noo Years.  Morton told of his meeting with the Captain

-in some elation, but Job Goodwin shook his head.  He "knowed what

-that meant," he said.  "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep.  He'd hit

-sometime when you didn't know whar the lick come from.  And he'd hit

-powerful hard when he _did_ hit, you be shore."

-

-Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady.  He had

-heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to

-say him agin.  Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all

-the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and

-disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he

-filled the place of a local newspaper.  He was a man of much reading,

-but with no mental discipline.  He had treasured all the strange and

-delightful things he had ever heard or read--the bloody murders, the

-sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups

-and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous

-stories.  He had so many of these at command that it was often

-surmised that he manufactured them.  He "boarded 'round" during

-school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a

-man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in

-amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices.

-Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements

-than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing of

-_ennui_, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his

-keep,"--an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided.

-For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's

-reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition

-toward the guest.

-

-Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and

-Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures.  The story of Kike's

-first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton

-told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily.

-Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache

-afore hay could parse."  Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed,

-had more influence on his parsing than on his speech.

-

-At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all

-his adventures--the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told

-it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun.  By the time

-the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more

-about it than he affected to.

-

-"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something

-about this thing.  What made the coon come down so easy?"

-

-"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is

-to bay) a coun.  Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this

-toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer

-supayriors.  An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."

-

-Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a

-sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on

-Morton.

-

-"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady.  How did you

-fetch the Captain round?  For I think you did it."

-

-"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under his eyebrows with

-his face all a-twinkle with fun.  "I jist parsed the sintince in sich

-a way as to put the Captin in the nominative case.  He loikes to be

-put in the nominative case, does the Captin.  If iver yer goin' to

-win the devoine craycher that calls him father ye'll hev to larn to

-parse with Captin Lumsden for the nominative."  Here Brady gave the

-whole party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his head

-reflectively upon his bosom.

-

-"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of parsing.  You left

-that rule of syntax out last winter." said Morton, seeking to draw

-out the master by humoring his fancy.  "How did you parse the

-sentence with him, while Kike and I were gone?"

-

-"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs the varb, and

-thin the varb governs 'most all the rist of the sintince."

-

-"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the same time the

-pompous air and authoritative voice with which Brady was accustomed

-to make such a demand of a pupil.

-

-"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton.  But ye must all be quiet about

-it.  I wint to say the Captin soon afther yerself and Koike carried

-yer two impty skulls into the woods.  An' I looked koind of

-confidintial-loike at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to

-riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."

-

-"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.

-

-"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,' siz I, 'till the

-folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz I; 'ye've got more

-interest in the county,' siz I, 'than the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've

-got the brains to exart an anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I.  Will,

-ye see, Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,'

-siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he.  An' I saw I had

-'im.  I'd jist put 'im in the nominative case governin' the varb.

-And I was the varb.  An' I mint to govern, the rist."  Here Brady

-stopped to smile complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.

-

-"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I, 'ye must be

-moighty keerful not to give the inimy any handle onto ye,' siz I.

-An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll be keerful,' siz he.  An' I siz,

-'Captin, be pertik'ler keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may

-make so bowld,' siz I.  'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere.  They're

-a-talkin' about it now.'  An' the Captin siz, 'Will, Brady, I say I

-kin thrust ye,' siz he.  An' I siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye

-kin thrust the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I.  'Brady,' siz

-he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me, since the little

-brat's gone and brought ole Whayler into it,' siz he.  'Ye bitter

-belave it is, Captin,' siz I.  'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he.

-'Spoike the guns, Captin,' siz I.  'How?' siz he.  'Make it all

-roight with Koike and Moirton,' siz I.  'As fer Moirton,' siz I,

-'he's the smartest _young_ man,' siz I (puttin' imphasis on

-'_young_,' you say), he's the smartest young man,' siz I, 'in the

-bottoms; and if ye kin make an alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got

-the smartest old man managin' the smartest young man.  An' if ye kin

-make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi at 'im, 'atwixt

-that devoine young craycher, yer charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and

-Moirton, ye've got him tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,'

-siz I.  An' he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all.

-I'll think about it,' siz he.  An' that's how I made Captin Lumsden

-the nominative case governin' the varb--that's myself--and thin the

-varb rigilates the rist.  But I must go and say Koike, or the little

-black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid the

-captin.  Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin, it's meself as has

-got a hard sum in the rule of thray.  This toime I hope the answer'll

-come out all roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on the

-shoulder and went out.  Then he put his head into the door again to

-say that the answer set down in the book was: "Misthress Patty

-Goodwin."

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER IX._

-

-THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.

-

-Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the flag of independence

-in the Hissawachee bottom.  He had been a Captain in the Revolution;

-but Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to grow during the

-quarter of a century that followed the close of the war.  An

-ex-officer's neighbors carried him forward with his advancing age; a

-sort of ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of military

-titles as the Revolution passed into history and heroes became

-scarcer.  And emigration always advanced a man several degrees--new

-neighbors, in their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give

-him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as possible the

-lustre which the new-comer conferred upon the settlement.  Thus

-Captain Wheeler in Maryland was Major Wheeler in Western

-Pennsylvania, and a full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his

-second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek.  And yet I may

-be wrong.  Perhaps it was not the transplanting that did it.  Even

-had he remained on the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through

-a process of canonization as he advanced in life that would have

-brought him to a colonelcy: other men did.  For what is a Colonel but

-a Captain gone to seed?

-

-"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression; and, as a

-conscientious writer, far be it from me to use slang.  And I take

-great credit to myself for avoiding it just now, since nothing could

-more perfectly describe Wheeler.  His hair was grizzling, his

-shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded in an

-expression of perpetual resistance, and his prominent chin and brow

-seemed to have been jammed together; the space between was too small.

-He had an air of defense; his nature was always in a

-"guard-against-cavalry" attitude.  He had entered into the spirit of

-colonial resistance from childhood; he was born in antagonism to

-kings and all that are in authority; it was a family tradition that

-he had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the

-face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.

-

-When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of course looked about

-for the power that was to be resisted, and was not long in finding it

-in his neighbor, Captain Lumsden.  He was the one opponent whom

-Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure.  To Wheeler

-this fight against Lumsden was the one delightful element of life in

-the Bottoms.  He had now the comfortable prospect of spending his

-declining years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful foe,

-whose encroachments on the rights and privileges of his neighbors

-would afford him an inexhaustible theme for denunciation, and a

-delightful incitement to the exercise of his powers of resistance.

-And thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better relish

-because of his contest with Lumsden.  Mordecai could not have had

-half so much pleasure in staring stiffly at the wicked Haman as

-Isaiah Wheeler found in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without

-so much as a nod of recognition.  And Haman's feelings were not more

-deeply wounded than Lumsden's.

-

-Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married; for at home he could

-find no encroachments to resist.  The perfect temper of his wife

-disarmed even his opposition.  He had begun his married life by

-fighting his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the Hissawachee

-and found Methodism unpopular, he took up arms in its defense.

-

-Such was the man whom Kike had selected as guardian--a man who, with

-all his disagreeableness, was possessed of honesty, a virtue not

-inconsistent with oppugnancy.  But Kike's chief motive in choosing

-him was that he knew that the choice would be a stab to his uncle's

-pride.  Moreover, Wheeler was the only man who would care to brave

-Lumsden's anger by taking the trust.

-

-Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and to this house, on

-the day after the return of Morton and Kike, there rode a stranger.

-He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five,

-with a serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white hat, a

-coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted and buttoned to the

-chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey" leggings tied about his legs below

-the knees.  He rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of

-saddlebags.

-

-Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double cabin, he shouted,

-after the Western fashion, "Hello!  Hello the house!"

-

-[Illustration: COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.]

-

-At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous barking, ranging in

-key all the way from the contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice"

-to the deep baying of a huge bull-dog.

-

-"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.

-

-"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler, opening the door, and

-shouting to the dogs, "You, Bull, come here!  Git out, pup!  Clear

-out, all of you!"  And he accompanied this command by threateningly

-lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs scampered away, and a third

-sneakingly retreated; but the bull-dog turned with reluctance, and,

-without smoothing his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the

-house, protesting with surly growls against this authoritative

-interruption.

-

-"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler, advancing with

-caution, but without much cordiality.  He would not commit himself to

-a welcome too rashly; strangers needed inspection.  "'Light, won't

-you?" he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to dismount,

-while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who came out at that moment

-to "put up the stranger's horse, and give him some fodder and corn."

-Then turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment, and said: "A

-preacher, I reckon, sir?"

-

-"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard that your wife was a

-member of the Methodist Church, and that you were very friendly; so I

-came round this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for

-preaching.  I have one or two vacant days on my round, and thought

-maybe I might as well take Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I

-didn't find anything to prevent."

-

-By this time the colonel and his guest had reached the door, and the

-former only said, "Well, sir, let's go in, and see what the old woman

-says.  I don't agree with you Methodists about everything, but I do

-think that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody to say

-anything against circuit riders without taking it up."

-

-Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly religious face--a

-countenance in which scruples are balanced by evenness of

-temperament--was at the moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue

-dye that stood in a great iron kettle by the fire.  She made haste to

-wash and dry her hands, that she might have a "good, old-fashioned

-Methodist shake-hands" with Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist

-preacher she had seen since she left Pittsburg."

-

-Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder should preach in

-his house.  Methodists had just the same rights in a free country

-that other people had.  He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement

-didn't belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of England

-in his time, and was jist as ready to fight aginst the King of

-Hissawachee Bottom."  The Colonel almost relaxed his stubborn lips

-into a smile when he said this.  Besides, he proceeded, his wife was

-a Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose.  He was

-friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a professor.  If his

-wife didn't want to wear rings or artificials, it was money in his

-pocket, and nobody had a right to object.  Colonel Wheeler plumed

-himself before the new preacher upon his general friendliness toward

-religion, and really thought it might be set down on the credit side

-of that account in which he imagined some angelic book-keeper entered

-all his transactions.  He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain," as

-he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin' for he got from

-_such_ a wife as his, and his own gineral friendliness to the

-preachers and the Methodis' meetings, he would be saved at the last,

-_somehow or nother_."  It was not in the man to reflect that his

-"gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin in a gineral

-spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.

-

-Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform

-everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening.

-The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of

-loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon,

-called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation

-from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they

-had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's."  And

-then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry

-out, "Laws-a-massy!  You don't say!  A Methodis'?  One of the

-shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches!  What will

-the Captin' do?  They do say he _does_ hate the Methodis' worse nor

-copperhead snakes, now.  Some old quarrel, liker'n not.  Well, I'm

-agoin', jist to see how _red_ikl'us them Methodis' _does_ do!"

-

-The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the

-winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the

-neighborhood.  It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.

-

-"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing

-chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in!  We'll have to see

-about that.  A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to

-be lynched.  But I'll match the Methodists.  Where's Patty?  Patty!

-O, Patty!  Bob, run and find Miss Patty."

-

-And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty!  O' Miss Patty!

-Whah is ye?"

-

-He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn,

-shouting, "Miss Patty!  O!  Miss Patty!"

-

-Where was Patty?

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER X._

-

-PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.

-

-Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain

-the milk.

-

-Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a

-spring-house is?  A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide,

-without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and

-icy cold from beneath the hill.  The little cabin-like spring-house

-sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the

-roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you

-see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the

-new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle,

-you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on

-its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up

-eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold

-waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and

-the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel

-whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.

-

-It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden had hidden

-herself.

-

-She brought clean crocks--earthenware milk pans--from the shelf

-outside, where they had been airing to keep them sweet; she held the

-strainer in her left hand and poured the milk through it until each

-crock was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places among the

-stones, so that they stood half immersed in the cold current of

-spring water; she laid the smooth pine cover on each crock, and put a

-clean stone atop that to secure it.

-

-While she was thus putting away the milk her mind was on Morton.  She

-wondered what her father had said to him yesterday.  In the heart of

-her heart she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry him

-in the face of her father's displeasure.  She had never rebelled

-against the iron rule, but she felt herself full of power and full of

-endurance.  She could go off into the wilderness with Morton; they

-would build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with puncheon

-floor and stick chimney; they would sleep, like other poor settlers,

-on beds of dry leaves, and they would subsist upon the food which

-Morton's unerring rifle would bring them from the forest.  These were

-the humble cabin castles she was building.  All girls weave a

-tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes

-and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of

-the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a

-lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a

-cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane

-in a great fire-place.  I know it sounds old-fashioned and

-sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to a heart

-like Patty's what may be the scenery on the tapestry, if love be the

-warp and faith the woof?

-

-[Illustration: PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.]

-

-Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring to plan his own

-and Patty's partnership future, but he drew a more cheerful picture

-than she did, for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain

-Lumsden's displeasure.  He was at the moment going to meet the

-Captain, walking down the foot-path through the woods, kicking the

-dry beech leaves into billows before him and singing a Scotch

-love-song of Burns's which he had learned from his mother.

-

-He planned one future, she another; and in after years they might

-have laughed to think how far wrong were both guesses.  The path

-which Morton followed led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on

-the stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone voice as he

-approached, singing tender words that made her heart stand still:

-

-  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;

-  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear

-  Nocht of ill shall come thee near,

-        My bonnie dearie."

-

-

-And as he came right by the spring-house, he sang, now in a lower

-tone lest he should be heard at the house, but still more earnestly,

-and so audibly that the listening Patty could hear every word, the

-last stanza:

-

-  "Fair and lovely as thou art,

-  Thou hast stown my very heart;

-  I can die--but cannot part,

-        My bonnie dearie."

-

-

-And even as she listened to the last line, Morton had discovered that

-the spring-house door was ajar, and turned, shading his eyes, to see

-if perchance Patty might not be within.  He saw her and reached out

-his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed to the

-imperfect light did not see how full of blushes was her face--for she

-feared that he might guess all that she had just been dreaming.  But

-she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness than she would

-have shown had it not been for the displeasure which she supposed her

-father had manifested.  And so she covered the last crock and came

-and stood by him at the door of the spring-house, and he talked right

-on in the tender strain of his song.  And she did not protest, but

-answered back timidly and almost as warmly.

-

-And that is how little negro Bob at last found Patty at the

-spring-house and found Morton with her.  "Law's sake!  Miss Patty,

-done look for ye mos' every whah.  Yer paw wants ye."  And with that

-Bob rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips into a

-broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XI._

-

-THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.

-

-"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain.  "You've been

-keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at

-the loom by this time.  In my time young men and women didn't waste

-their mornings.  Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting.

-Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers

-brought into the settlement by Wheeler.  These circuit riders are

-worse than third day fever 'n' ager.  They go against dancing and

-artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other

-amusements.  They give people the jerks wherever they go.  The

-devil's in 'em.  Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance

-to-night, and ask all you can get along with.  Nothing'll make the

-preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a

-good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the

-power and break their necks, maybe."

-

-Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will

-help me send the invitations."

-

-"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he

-had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone.  And he had the

-satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain

-Lumsden.

-

-"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the

-Captain, chuckling interrogatively.  Morton did not like this

-proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about

-election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother.  He evaded an

-answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning

-the guests.

-

-Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night.

-Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness

-of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions

-she was a queen indeed.  She wore the antique earrings that were an

-heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her

-father had bought her.  These and her new dress of English calico

-made her the envy of all the others.  Pretty Betty Harsha was led out

-by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of

-these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.

-

-Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching.  Behold in Hissawachee Bottom

-the world's evils in miniature!  Here are religion and amusement

-divorced--set over the one against the other as hostile camps.

-

-Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went

-to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he

-went along.

-

-"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden.  Me father was a Catholic and me

-mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a

-mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for

-orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school

-taycher in these haythen backwoods.  But it does same to me that the

-Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans

-as we air.  What would a parson from the ould counthry do here?  He

-moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody

-would be the better of it.  What good does me own grammathical

-acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement?  With all me

-grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative

-case before very bad words.  Hey, Koike?  Now, the Mithodists air a

-narry sort of a payple.  But if you want to make a strame strong you

-hev to make it narry.  I've read a good dale of history, and in me

-own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both

-torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks.  The

-Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin'

-songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation.  But it's

-kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the

-worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime

-among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist.  But the brook

-ain't so bad afther all.  Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"

-

-Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was.  It was very good

-for watering stock.

-

-"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a

-laugh.  "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it

-chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at

-than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race.  But I wish these Mithodists

-would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em

-quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin'

-dthrunk.  And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't

-be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles.  Hey, Koike?"

-

-Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they

-were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house.  Despite the dance there

-were present, from near and far, all the house would hold.  For those

-who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to

-meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their

-curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher.  The dance had taken away

-those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out

-did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by

-raising a row.  Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in

-his uncle's house.

-

-Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people.  A

-little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the

-preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd.  He

-had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist

-preacher, the forest.

-

-Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms,

-shaggy brows, and bristling black hair.  He read the hymn, two lines

-at a time, and led the singing himself.  He prayed with the utmost

-sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the

-simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the

-preacher's message.  He prayed as a man talking face to face with the

-Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an

-undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the

-sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers.

-It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for

-immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder

-out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers

-of ingenious apologies.

-

-When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit

-of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their

-hearts.  Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of

-study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew

-what was of vastly more consequence to him--how to read and expound

-the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among

-whom he labored.  He was of their very fibre.

-

-He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain Lumsden's dance, which

-was prompted, he said, by the devil, to keep men out of heaven.  With

-half a dozen quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish

-arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the audience fluttered

-with sensation.  Magruder had a vicarious conscience; but a vicarious

-conscience is good for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.

-Whitefield said that he never preached a sermon to others till he had

-first preached it to George Whitefield; and Magruder's severities had

-all the more effect that his audience could see that they had full

-force upon himself.

-

-If is hard for us to understand the elements that produced such

-incredible excitements as resulted from the early Methodist

-preaching.  How at a camp-meeting, for instance, five hundred people,

-indifferent enough to everything of the sort one hour before, should

-be seized during a sermon with terror--should cry aloud to God for

-mercy, some of them falling in trances and cataleptic

-unconsciousness; and how, out of all this excitement, there should

-come forth, in very many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems

-to us a puzzle beyond solution.  But the early Westerners were as

-inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate, they were swept into

-most of their decisions by contagious excitements.  And never did any

-class of men understand the art of exciting by oratory more perfectly

-than the old Western preachers.  The simple hunters to whom they

-preached had the most absolute faith in the invisible.  The Day of

-Judgment, the doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the

-righteous were as real and substantial in their conception as any

-facts in life.  They could abide no refinements.  The terribleness of

-Indian warfare, the relentlessness of their own revengefulness, the

-sudden lynchings, the abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the

-ruthlessness of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon which

-they founded the most materialistic conception of hell and the most

-literal understanding of the Day of Judgment.  Men like Magruder knew

-how to handle these few positive ideas of a future life so that they

-were indeed terrible weapons.

-

-On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as

-things by which they drove away the Spirit of God.  The audience

-trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.

-Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own

-conscience.  There was excitement throughout the house.  Some were

-angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to "promises made to dying

-friends," "vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their

-children,"--for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such

-appeals to sensibility.

-

-When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike, who had listened

-intently from the first, found himself breathing hard.  The preacher

-showed how the revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had

-already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of

-the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!"

-

-At these words he turned to the part of the room where Kike sat,

-white with feeling.  Magruder, looking always for the effect of his

-arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused.  The house was utterly

-still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul.  The

-people were sitting as if waiting their doom.  Kike already saw in

-his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the

-leaves and scented by hungry wolves.  He waited to hear his own

-sentence.  Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence.  Now, he

-stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken with

-emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O, young

-man, there are stains of blood on your hands!  How dare you hold them

-up before the Judge of all?  You are another Cain, and God sends his

-messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already

-killed in your heart.  _You are a murderer_!  Nothing but God's mercy

-can snatch you from hell!"

-

-No doubt all this is rude in refined ears.  But is it nothing that by

-these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience?  That

-in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and

-trembled?  Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know

-himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he capable

-of?  Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to

-the rebuke of God.  His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as

-it had before shaken with wrath.  "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried

-he, hiding his face in his hands.

-

-"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the

-preacher.  "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy

-Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as

-damned already!"  And with this he turned and appealed yet more

-powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of

-Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the

-house.  Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while

-many fell upon their knees and prayed.

-

-The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some

-consolation.  You would say that his view of the atonement was crude,

-conventional and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in

-Scripture for general and formulated postulates.  But however

-imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known to his hearers

-the mercy of God.  And surely that is the main thing.  The figure of

-speech is but the vessel; the great truth that God is merciful to the

-guilty, what is this but the water of life?--not less refreshing

-because the jar in which it is brought is rude!  The preacher's whole

-manner changed.  Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to

-the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy.  Perhaps Magruder

-exaggerated the change that had taken place in them.  But is it

-nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's

-justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy?

-It is hard for one who has once passed through this experience not to

-date from it a revolution.  There were many who had not much root in

-themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were

-those who, living half a century afterward, counted their better

-living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism

-to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner.  It was not in Kike to

-change quickly.  Smitten with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his

-seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling.  When the preacher had

-finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing,

-to an exquisitely pathetic tune, Watts' hymn:

-

-  "Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,

-  Let a repenting rebel live.

-  Are not thy mercies large and free?

-  May not a sinner trust in thee?"

-

-

-The meeting was held until late.  Kike remained quietly kneeling, the

-tears trickling through his fingers.  He did not utter a word or cry.

-In all the confusion he was still.  What deliberate recounting of his

-own misdoings took place then, no one can know.  Thoughtless readers

-may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble.  But who of us

-would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our

-own souls?  His simple penitent faith did more for him than all our

-philosophy has done for us, maybe.

-

-At last the meeting was dismissed.  Brady, who had been awe-stricken

-at sight of Kike's agony of contrition, now thought it best that he

-and Kike's mother should go home, leaving the young man to follow

-when he chose.  But Kike staid immovable upon his knees.  His sense

-of guilt had become an agony.  All those allowances which we in a

-more intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the defects

-of education, Kike knew nothing about.  He believed all his

-revengefulness to be voluntary; he had a feeling that unless he found

-some assurance of God's mercy then he could not live till morning.

-So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three brethren that had

-come from adjoining settlements staid and prayed and talked with the

-distressed youth until after midnight.  The early Methodists regarded

-this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.

-

-At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked "Sister Wheeler"

-to pray.  There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so

-excellent as the audible prayers of women.  Women oftener than men

-have a genius for prayer.  Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to

-confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence

-fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving

-over.  Then slowly--slowly, as one who waits for another to

-follow--she began to turn toward trustfulness.  Like a little child

-she spoke to God; under the influence of her praying Kike sobbed

-audibly.  Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too,

-looked to God as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful

-child.

-

-The great struggle was over.  Kike was revengeful no longer.  He was

-distrustful and terrified no longer.  He had "crept into the heart of

-God" and found rest.  Call it what you like, when a man passes

-through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life

-that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf.

-

-Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of

-the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher

-and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship.  He said nothing,

-but when Magruder sang

-

-  "Oh! how happy are they

-  Who their Saviour obey,

-      And have laid up their treasure above!

-  Tongue can never express

-  The sweet comfort and peace

-      Of a soul in its earliest love,"

-

-Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went

-home about the time that his friend Morton, flushed and weary with

-dancing and pleasure, laid himself down to rest.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XII._

-

-MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.

-

-The Methodists had actually made a break in the settlement.  Dancing

-had not availed to keep them out.  It was no longer a question of

-getting "shet" of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating

-the contagion.  There would now be a "class" formed, a leader

-appointed, a regular preaching place established; Hissawachee would

-become part of that great wheel called a circuit; there would be

-revivals and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be

-destroyed.  For now one might never again dance at a "hoe-down,"

-drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race "hosses" on Sunday, without a

-lecture from somebody.  It might be your own wife, too.  Once let the

-Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.

-

-Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences.  By his

-opposition, he had unfortunately spoken for the enmity of the

-Methodists in advance.  The preacher had openly defied him.  Kike

-would join the class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his

-ascendancy.  No concession on his part short of absolute surrender

-would avail.  He resolved therefore that the Methodists should find

-out "who they were fighting."

-

-Brady was pleased.  Gossips are always delighted to have something

-happen out of the usual course.  It gives them a theme, something to

-exercise their wits upon.  Let us not be too hard upon gossip.  It is

-one form of communicative intellectual activity.  Brady, under

-different conditions, might have been a journalist, writing relishful

-leaders on "topics of the time."  For what is journalism but elevated

-and organized gossip?  The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way

-neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for good-natured

-gossip.  Such an one averts absolute mental stagnation, diffuses

-intelligence, and keeps alive a healthful public opinion on local

-questions.

-

-Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake."  That

-was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the

-meeting.  He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had

-happened about which he wanted to talk.  But on this evening Job

-Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.

-

-"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all?  These

-Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell.  Hey?  I

-hear dreadful things about 'em.  Oh dear, it seems like as if

-everything come upon folks at once.  Hey?  The fever's spreadin' at

-Chilicothe, they tell me.  And then, if we should git into a war with

-England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd

-be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got

-skelped.  Precious few, _I_ tell you.  Hey?"

-

-Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away,

-and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his

-imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the

-future.  But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than

-Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner,

-heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.

-

-[Illustration: JOB GOODWIN.]

-

-"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side

-ye're afther lookin' at all the toime.  Where's Moirton?  He aint

-been to school yet since this quarter took up."

-

-"Morton?  He's got to stay out, I expect.  My rheumatiz is mighty

-bad, and I'm powerful weak.  I don't think craps'll be good next

-year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all

-have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and

-driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and

-the Indians come on us.  But here's Mort now."

-

-"Ha!  Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight?  Ye heerd fwat a

-toime we had.  Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and

-a few other hardened sinners.  Ye heerd about Koike?  I reckon the

-Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on

-the Captain's skull, maybe.  Fwat would ye do for a crony now,

-Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"

-

-"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's

-"getting religion" was an unpleasant topic.  "It'll all wear off with

-Kike soon enough."

-

-"Don't be too shore, Moirton.  Things wear off with you, sometoimes.

-Ye swear ye'll niver swear no more, and ye're willin' to bet that

-ye'll niver bet agin, and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife;

-but the flesh is ferninst ye.  When Koike's bad, he's bad all over;

-lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it mesilf.  Now he's

-got good, the divil'll have as hard a toime makin' him bad as I had

-makin' him good.  I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his

-school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad.  Got ivery

-lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of the school!  What do

-you say to that, Moirton?  The divil's got his hands full thair.

-Hey, Moirton?"

-

-"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher.  He wants to get rich just to

-spite the Captain."

-

-"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton.  And he'll be a

-praycher yit.  Didn't he give me a talkin' to this mornin', at

-breakfast?  Think of the impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to

-tell his ould masther that he ought to repint of his sins!  He talked

-to his mother, too, till she croid.  He'll make her belave she is a

-great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit, excipt in her grammar, which

-couldn't be worse.  I've talked to her about that mesilf.  Now,

-Moirton, I'll tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the

-Mithodists.  Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a body, you

-needn't be afeard of.  But those that git it bad, and are

-throublesome, and middlesome, and aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out

-praychers.  The lad that'll tackle his masther and his mother at

-breakfast the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's

-yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed, two to

-one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the faild to be a praycher of

-the worst sort; one of the kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."

-

-"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other people alone?  That

-meddling is just what I don't like," growled Morton.

-

-"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel thought about ould

-Elijy!  We don't any of us loike to have our wickedness or laziness

-middled with.  'Twas middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to;

-and if the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he wouldn't

-niver a been crucified."

-

-"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said Mr. Job Goodwin.

-

-"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin.  I'm rale lazy.  This lookin' at the

-state of me moind's insoides, and this chasin' afther me sins up hill

-and down dale all the toime, would niver agray with me frail

-constitootion.  This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery wake

-in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin', aren't for sich

-oidlers as me.  I'm too good-natered to trate mesilf that way, sure.

-Didn't you iver notice that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a

-rale good-nater'd man?"

-

-Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe in front of the fire,

-and found it well browned.  Supper was ready, and the conversation

-drifted to Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden to

-cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers."  Morton's father shook his

-head ominously.  Didn't believe the Captain was in 'arnest.  Ef he

-was, Mort mout git the fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up.

-'Twouldn't do to depend on no sech promises, no way.

-

-But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton did hold to the

-Captain's promise, and to the hope of Patty.  To the Captain's plans

-for mobbing Wheeler he offered a strong resistance.  But he was ready

-enough to engage in making sport of the despised religionists, and

-even organized a party to interrupt Magruder with tin horns when he

-should preach again.  But all this time Morton was uneasy in himself.

-What had become of his dreams of being a hero?  Here was Kike bearing

-all manner of persecution with patience, devoting himself to the

-welfare of others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly

-living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse circumstances.

-One of Morton's temperament must either grow better or worse, and,

-chafing under these embarassments, he played and drank more freely

-than ever.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XIII._

-

-TWO TO ONE.

-

-Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class

-in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a

-Sunday sermon on his next round.  He was accustomed to preach twice

-every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious

-manner of the circuit-rider of his time.  And since he expected to

-leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next

-appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast

-that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in

-order.

-

-When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton,

-with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin

-horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade.  But Lumsden had

-other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.

-

-John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock

-and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer.

-Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,

-reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach.  When he had ridden

-more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of

-hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the

-Hissawachee valley.  The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the

-preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just

-disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks

-over a battle-field before the engagement begins.  Then he

-dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic

-fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil."  When at

-last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its

-first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was

-ablaze.  Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to

-spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the

-woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in

-the presence of such a scene:

-

-  "O sun of righteousness, arise

-    With healing in thy wing;

-  To my diseased, my fainting soul,

-    Life and salvation bring.

-

-  "These clouds of pride and sin dispel,

-    By thy all-piercing beam;

-  Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart

-    With holy hopes inflame."

-

-

-By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that

-he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple,

-and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old

-acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.

-

-"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle:

-"you git down!"

-

-"What for?" said Magruder.

-

-"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick

-your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."

-

-"But I won't promise."

-

-"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."

-

-"You are two to one.  Will you give me time to draw my coat?"

-

-"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."

-

-[Illustration: TWO TO ONE.]

-

-The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a

-beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then

-laid his coat across the saddle.

-

-"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you.  I advise you now

-to let me alone.  As an American citizen, I have a right to go where

-I please.  My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight

-for my rights."

-

-"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher

-from one side, while Bill came up on the other.  Magruder was one of

-those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and

-endurance.  In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his

-victories in several rude encounters.  Never seeking a fight even

-then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from

-afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to

-"give him what he came after."  He had now greatly the advantage of

-the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.

-

-Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary swearing the preacher

-had surprised him by delivering a blow that knocked him down.  But

-Bill had taken advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the

-cheek.  Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's fist, was a

-little slow in coming to time, and the preacher had a chance to give

-Bill a most polemical blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he

-rushed like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous blow

-that fractured two of his ribs and felled him to the earth.  But Bill

-struck Magruder behind, knocked him over, and threw himself upon him

-after the fashion of the Western free fight.  Nothing saved Magruder

-but his immense strength.  He rose right up with Bill upon him, and

-then, by a deft use of his legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled

-him to the ground.  He did not dare take advantage of his fall,

-however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming up on him

-cautiously.  But when Sniger saw Magruder rushing at him again, he

-made a speedy retreat into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it

-out with Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again ready.

-But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating slowly backward and

-calling out, "Come up on him behind, Jake!  Come up behind!"  But the

-demoralized Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the

-preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having as many arms

-as a Hindoo deity.  Bill kept backing until he tripped and fell over

-a bit of brush, and then picked himself up and made off, muttering:

-

-"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone!  He must have the very

-devil into him!"

-

-About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning, the Irish

-school-master, who was now boarding at Goodwin's, and who had just

-made an early visit to the Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An'

-did ye hear the nooze, Moirton?  Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger hev had

-a bit of Sunday morning ricreation.  They throid to thrash the

-praycher as he was a-comin' through North's Holler, this mornin'; but

-they didn't make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's got in

-him.  He larruped 'em both single-handed, and Jake's ribs are

-cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's nose!  Captain must 'a' had some

-proivate intherest in that muss; hey, Moirton?"

-

-"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men on one, and him a

-preacher; and all I've got to say is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."

-

-"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain?  Hey, Moirton?  But

-fwat did I tell ye about Koike?  The praycher's jaw is lamed by a

-lick Bill gave him, and Koike's to exhort in his place.  I tould ye

-he had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."

-

-The manliness in a character like Morton's must react, if depressed

-too far; and he now notified those who were to help him interrupt the

-meeting that if any disturbance were made, he should take it on

-himself to punish the offender.  He would not fight alongside Bill

-McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like seeking a quarrel with

-Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying himself to himself.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XIV._

-

-KIKE'S SERMON.

-

-During the time that had intervened between Kike's conversion and

-Magruder's second visit to the settlement, Kike had developed a very

-considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings.  In that

-day every influence in Methodist association contributed to make a

-preacher of a man of force.  The reverence with which a self-denying

-preacher was regarded by the people was a great compensation for the

-poverty and toil that pertained to the office.  To be a preacher was

-to be canonized during one's lifetime.  The moment a young man showed

-zeal and fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and sisters as

-one whose duty it was to preach the Gospel; he was asked whether he

-did not feel that he had a divine call; he was set upon watching the

-movements within him to see whether or not he ought to be among the

-sons of the prophets.  Oftentimes a man was made to feel, in spite of

-his own better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking from

-duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in the shape of some

-providential disaster.  Kike, indeed, needed none of these urgings to

-impel him toward the ministry.  He was a man of the prophetic

-temperament--one of those men whose beliefs take hold of them more

-strongly than the objects of sense.  The future life, as preached by

-the early Methodists, with all its joys and all its awful torments,

-became the most substantial of realities to him.  He was in constant

-astonishment that people could believe these things theoretically and

-ignore them in practice.  If men were going headlong to perdition,

-and could be saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by

-preaching, then what nobler work could there be than that of saving

-them?  And, let a man take what view he may of a future life, Kike's

-opinion was the right one--no work can be so excellent as that of

-helping men to better living.

-

-Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist biography which he

-had borrowed, and the sublimated life of Fletcher was the only one

-that fulfilled his ideal.  Methodism preached consecration to its

-disciples.  Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler, who was the

-class-leader at Hissawachee settlement, and from Methodist

-literature, that he must "keep all on the altar."  He must be ready

-to do, to suffer, or to perish, for the Master.  The sternest sayings

-of Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating one's own

-life and kindred, he heard often repeated in exhortations.  Most

-people are not harmed by a literal understanding of hyperbolical

-expressions.  Laziness and selfishness are great antidotes to

-fanaticism, and often pass current for common sense.  Kike had no

-such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel with the dry

-literalness of statutory enactments, he was too honest to evade their

-force, too earnest to slacken his obedience.  He was already prepared

-to accept any burden and endure any trial that might be given as a

-test of discipleship.  All his natural ambition, vehemence, and

-persistence, found exercise in his religious life; and the

-simple-hearted brethren, not knowing that the one sort of intensity

-was but the counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation

-as a "beautiful conversion," a standing miracle.  So it was, indeed,

-and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in the direction of

-individuality, not in opposition to it.

-

-It was a grievous disappointment to the little band of Methodists

-that Brother Magruder's face was so swollen, after his encounter, as

-to prevent his preaching.  They had counted much upon the success of

-this day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch the

-victory.  Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended Kike as a

-substitute, and Magruder sent for him in haste.  Kike was gratified

-to hear that the preacher wanted to see him personally.  His sallow

-face flushed with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before

-the messenger of God.

-

-"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you ready to do and to

-suffer for Christ?"

-

-"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the preacher could mean.

-

-"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the Lord's work to-day.

-My lip is swelled, and my jaw so stiff that I can hardly speak.  Are

-you ready to do the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"

-

-Kike trembled from head to foot.  He had often fancied himself

-preaching his first sermon in a strange neighborhood, and he had even

-picked out his text; but to stand up suddenly before his

-school-mates, before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,

-before Morton, was terrible.  And yet, had he not that very morning

-made a solemn vow that he would not shrink from death itself!

-

-"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.

-

-"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three hundred people

-hungry for the bread of life.  The Master has fed you; he offers you

-the bread to distribute among your friends and neighbors.  Now, will

-you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed Lord who has taken

-you out of a horrible pit and set your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"

-

-Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will do whatever you say,

-if you will pray for me."

-

-"I'll do that, my brother.  And now take your Bible, and go into the

-woods and pray.  The Lord will show you the way, if you put your

-whole trust in him."

-

-The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave Kike his subject,

-and he soon gathered a few thoughts which he wrote down on a fly-leaf

-of the Bible, in the shape of a skeleton.  But it occurred to him

-that he had not one word to say on the subject of the bread of life

-beyond the sentences of his skeleton.  The more this became evident

-to him, the greater was his agony of fear.  He knelt on the brown

-leaves by a prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself;

-he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own feelings were

-involved; he reminded the Lord of his promises to be with them he had

-sent; and then there came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For

-it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak."  Taking

-it, after the manner of the early Methodist mysticism, that the text

-had been supernaturally "suggested" to him, he became calm; and

-finding, from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour for

-meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel Wheeler, and was

-appalled at the sight that met his eyes.  All the settlement, and

-many from other settlements, had come.  The house, the yard, the

-fences, were full of people.  Kike was seized with a tremor.  He did

-not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a throng.  He made a

-detour, and crept in at the back door like a criminal.  For

-stage-fright--this fear of human presence--is not a thing to be

-overcome by the will.  Susceptible natures are always liable to it,

-and neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.

-

-A chair had been placed in the front door of the log house, for Kike,

-that he might preach to the congregation indoors and the much larger

-one outdoors.  Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden bench

-just outside.  Kike crept into the empty chair in the doorway with

-the feeling of one who intrudes where he does not belong.  The

-brethren were singing, as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn

-tune of "Kentucky," the hymn which begins:

-

-  "A charge to keep I have,

-    A God to glorify;

-  A never-dying soul to save

-    And fit it for the sky."

-

-

-Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to him, said: "If you

-get confused, tell your own experience."  The early preacher's

-universal refuge was his own experience.  It was a sure key to the

-sympathies of the audience.

-

-Kike got through the opening exercises very well.  He could pray, for

-in praying he shut his eyes and uttered the cry of his trembling soul

-for help.  He had been beating about among two or three texts, either

-of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks he intended to

-make; but now one fixed itself in his mind as he stood appalled by

-his situation in the presence of such a throng.  He rose and read,

-with a tremulous voice:

-

-"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small

-fishes; but what are they among so many?"

-

-The text arrested the attention of all.  Magruder, though unable to

-speak without pain, could not refrain from saying aloud, after the

-free old Methodist fashion: "The Lord multiply the loaves!  Bless and

-break to the multitude!"  "Amen!" responded an old brother from

-another settlement, "and the Lord help the lad!"  But Kike felt that

-the advantage which the text had given him would be of short

-duration.  The novelty of his position bewildered him.  His face

-flushed; his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on the

-audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the few friends in the

-house: the old brethren leaned their heads upon their hands and began

-to pray.  Whatever spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,

-their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible prayers of

-"Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably, and kept the precipice on

-which he stood constantly present to him.  He tried in succession

-each division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the Bible, and

-found little to say on any of them.  At last, he could not see the

-audience distinctly for confusion--there was a dim vision of heads

-swimming before him.  He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him

-to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should kill him.  The

-Philistines meanwhile were laughing at Kike's evident discomfiture.

-

-But Kike had no notion of sitting down.  The laughter awakened his

-combativeness, and his combativeness restored his self-control.

-Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.

-He was through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six minutes.

-The lad's scanty provisions had not been multiplied.  But he felt

-relieved.  The sermon over, there was no longer necessity for trying

-to speak against time, nor for observing the outward manner of a

-preacher.

-

-"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that I cannot preach

-worth a cent.  When David went out to fight, he had the good sense

-not to put on Saul's armor.  I was fool enough to try to wear Brother

-Magruder's.  Now, I'm done with that.  The text and sermon are gone.

-But I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ.  And before I sit down, I am

-going to tell you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like

-me."

-

-Kike told the story with sincere directness.  His recital of his own

-sins was a rebuke to others; with a trembling voice and a simple

-earnestness absolutely electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and

-of the effect of Magruder's preaching on him.  And now that the

-flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation departed, and

-there came instead the fine glow of martial courage.  He could have

-faced the universe.  From his own life the transition to the lives of

-those around him was easy.  He hit right and left.  The excitable

-crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid and vehement

-utterance, he denounced their sins with the particularity of one who

-had been familiar with them all his life.  Magruder forgot to

-respond; he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with open

-eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious excitement was fast

-setting the whole audience ablaze.  Slowly the people pressed forward

-off the fences.  All at once there was a loud bellowing cry from some

-one who had fallen prostrate outside the fence, and who began to cry

-aloud as if the portals of an endless perdition were yawning in his

-face.  Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the fallen man

-was his antagonist of the morning--Bill McConkey!  Bill had concealed

-his bruised nose behind a tree, but had been drawn forth by the

-fascination of Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the

-effect of his own terror.  This outburst of agony from McConkey was

-fuel to the flames, and the excitement now spread to all parts of the

-audience.  Kike went from man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each

-one in particular.  Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary on

-his own life, waddled away when he saw Kike coming; his mother wept

-bitterly under his exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the

-fence listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's public

-recital of his sins.

-

-At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain Lumsden had come on

-purpose to enjoy Morton's proposed interruption.  He listened a

-minute to Kike's exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at

-the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's impudence contended

-within him until he started for his horse and was seized with that

-curious nervous affection which originated in these religious

-excitements and disappeared with them.*  He jerked violently--his

-jerking only adding to his excitement, which in turn increased the

-severity of his contortions.  This nervous affection was doubtless a

-natural physical result of violent excitement; but the people of that

-day imagined that it was produced by some supernatural agency, some

-attributing it to God, others to the devil, and yet others to some

-subtle charm voluntarily exercised by the preachers.  Lumsden went

-home jerking all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly

-than ever.

-

-

-* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing disease"

-which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XV._

-

-MORTON'S RETREAT.

-

-It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which Morton had

-listened to Kike's hot exhortation.  In vain he argued with himself

-that a man need not be a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all

-over the country," in order to be good.  He knew that Kike's life was

-better than his own, and that he had not force enough to break his

-habits and associations unless he did so by putting himself into

-direct antagonism with them.  He inwardly condemned himself for his

-fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for telling him the blunt

-truth about himself.  But ever as there came the impulse to close the

-conflict and be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly on

-the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought of Patty, whose

-aristocratic Virginia pride would regard marriage with a Methodist as

-worse than death.

-

-And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to his emotions so far

-as to compromise himself, he rushed out of the crowd, hurried home,

-took down his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out of the

-excitement.

-

-As he rode away from home he met Captain Lumsden hurrying from the

-meeting with the jerks, and leading his horse--the contortions of his

-body not allowing him to ride.  With every step he took he grew more

-and more furious.  Seeing Morton, he endeavored to vent his passion

-upon him.

-

-"Why didn't--you--blow--why didn't--why didn't you blow your tin

-horns, this----" but at this point the jerks became so violent as to

-throw off his hat and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his

-teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home, leaving Morton

-to gauge the degree of the Captain's wrath by the involuntary

-distortion of his visage.

-

-Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither he went;

-endeavoring only to allay the excitement, of his conscience, and to

-imagine some sort of future in which he might hope to return and win

-Patty in spite of Lumsden's opposition.  Night found him in front of

-the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of Jonesville; and he

-was rejoiced to find there, on some political errand, Mr. Burchard,

-whom he had met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a

-candidate for sheriff.

-

-"How do you do, Mr. Morton?  Howdy do?" said Burchard, cordially,

-having only heard Morton's first name and mistaking it for his last.

-"I'm lucky to meet you in this town.  Do you live over this way?  I

-thought you lived in our county and 'lectioneered you--expecting to

-get your vote."

-

-[Illustration: GAMBLING.]

-

-The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a Sunday evening (or any

-other) meant a game at cards, and as Burchard was the more skillful

-and just now in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents

-of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves to Burchard's,

-the more that Morton in his contending with the religious excitement

-of the morning rushed easily into the opposite excitement of

-gambling.  The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp

-polarity--it has sent many a man headlong to the devil.  When Morton

-had frantically bet and lost all his money, he proceeded to bet his

-rifle, then his grandfather's watch--an ancient time-piece, that

-Burchard examined with much curiosity.  Having lost this, he staked

-his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and offered to put up his boots,

-but Burchard refused them.  The madness of gambling was on the young

-man, however.  He had no difficulty in persuading Burchard to take

-his mare as security for a hundred dollars, which he proceeded to

-gamble away by the easy process of winning once and losing twice.

-

-When the last dollar was gone, his face was very white and calm.  He

-leaned back in the chair and looked at Burchard a moment or two in

-silence.

-

-"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose.  I don't know

-whether I've got any brains or not.  But if you'll lend me the rifle

-you won long enough for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out

-what's inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."

-

-Burchard was not without generous traits, and he was alarmed.  "Come,

-Mr. Morton, don't be desperate.  The luck's against you, but you'll

-have better another time.  Here's your hat and coat, and you're

-welcome.  I've been flat of my back many a time, but I've always

-found a way out.  I'll pay your bill here to-morrow morning.  Don't

-think of doing anything desperate.  There's plenty to live for yet.

-You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself, maybe."

-

-This thrust hurt Morton keenly.  But Burchard was determined to

-divert him from his suicidal impulse.

-

-"Come, old fellow, you're excited.  Come out into the air.  Now,

-don't kill yourself.  You looked troubled when you got here.  I take

-it, there's some trouble at home.  Now, if there is"--here Burchard

-hesitated--"if there is trouble at home, I can put you on the track

-of a band of fellows that have been in trouble themselves.  They help

-one another.  Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but

-they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like you, that's a

-good shot and not afraid."

-

-For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to Morton, so utterly

-had hope died out of his heart.  But only for a moment; then his

-moral sense recoiled.

-

-"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody else.  I can't take

-that road, Mr. Burchard."

-

-"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to laugh.  "I knew

-you wouldn't.  But I wanted to turn your thoughts away from bullets

-and all that.  Now, Mr. Morton----"

-

-"My name's not Morton.  My last name is Goodwin--Morton Goodwin."

-This correction was made as a man always attends to trifles when he

-is trying to decide a momentous question.

-

-"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at him keenly, as the two

-stood together in the moonlight.  Then, after pausing a moment, he

-added: "I had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once.  Devilish

-hard case he was, but good-hearted.  Got killed in a fight in

-Pittsburg."

-

-"He was my brother," said Morton.

-

-"Your brother? thunder!  You don't mean it.  Let's see; he told me

-once his father's name was Moses--no; Job.  Yes, that's it--Job.  Is

-that your father's name?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry hard.  Didn't kill

-'em, did it?"

-

-"No."

-

-"Both alive yet?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing suicide.  You

-ought to think a little of your mother----"

-

-"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely on Burchard; for he

-suddenly saw a vision of the agony his mother must suffer.

-

-"Oh! don't get mad.  I'm going to let you have back your horse and

-gun, only you must give me a bill of sale so that I may be sure you

-won't gamble them away to somebody else.  You must redeem them on

-your honor in six months, with a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

-I'll do that much for the sake of my old friend, Lew Goodwin, who

-stood by me in many a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow

-after all."

-

-Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard left the tavern.

-As it was now past midnight, Goodwin did not go to bed.  At two

-o'clock he gave Dolly corn, and before daylight he rode out of the

-village.  But not toward home.  His gambling and losses would be

-speedily reported at home and to Captain Lumsden.  And moreover, Kike

-would persecute him worse than ever.  He rode out of town in the

-direction opposite to that he would have taken in returning to

-Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was opposite.  He was trying

-what so many other men have tried in vain to do--to run away from

-himself.

-

-But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest lightning

-express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a disagreeable self behind.

-The wise man knows better, and turns round and faces it.

-

-About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure and circuitous trail

-of which he knew nothing, drew near to a low log-house with deer's

-horns over the door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel

-purposes--a place where a stranger might get a little food, a place

-to rest on the floor, and plenty of whiskey.  There were a dozen

-horses hitched to trees about it, and Goodwin got down and went in

-from a spirit of idle curiosity.  Certainly the place was not

-attractive.  The landlord had a cut-throat way of looking closely at

-a guest from under his eye-brows; the guests all wore black beards,

-and Morton soon found reason to suspect that these beards were not

-indigenous.  He was himself the object of much disagreeable scrutiny,

-but he could hardly restrain a mischievous smile at thought of the

-disappointment to which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt

-to rob him in his present penniless condition.  The very worst that

-could happen would be the loss of Dolly and his rifle.  It soon

-occurred to him that this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's

-Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's noted band of

-desperadoes, a place into which few honest men ever ventured.

-

-One of the men presently stepped to the window, rested his foot upon

-the low sill, and taking up a piece of chalk, drew a line from the

-toe to the top of his boot.*  Several others imitated him; and

-Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure, took the

-chalk and marked his right boot in the same way.

-

-

-* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is yet

-told in the neighborhood.  It does not seem that chalking one's boot

-is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of a secret band,

-but I do not suppose that men who follow a highwayman's life are very

-wise people.

-

-

-"Will you drink?" said the man who had first chalked his boot.

-

-Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood near together,

-Morton could plainly discover the falseness of his companion's beard.

-Presently the man fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an

-indifferent tone: "Cut or carry?"

-

-"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning of the lingo, but

-finding himself in a predicament from which there was no escape but

-by drifting with the current.  A few minutes later a bag, which

-seemed to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into his hand,

-and Morton, not knowing what to do with it, thought best to "carry"

-it off.  He mounted his mare and rode away in a direction opposite to

-that in which he had come.  He had not gone more than three miles

-when he met Burchard.

-

-"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"

-

-"Oh, I came by a short cut."

-

-But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in the night, to avoid

-observation.

-

-"Hello!  Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got chalk on your boot!  I

-hope you haven't joined the--"

-

-"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come.  I found the greatest

-set of disguised cut-throats you ever saw, at this little hole back

-here.  You hadn't better go there, if you don't want to be relieved

-of all the money you got last night.  I saw them chalking their

-boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would come of it.  And

-here's what come of it;" and with that, Morton showed his bag of

-money.  "Now," he said, "if I could find the right owner of this

-money, I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some holler,

-without nary coffin or grave-stone.  I 'low to pay you what I owe

-you, and take the rest out to Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use

-it for a nest-egg.  'Finders, keepers,' you know."

-

-Burchard looked at him darkly a moment.  "Look here, Morton--Goodwin,

-I mean.  You'll lose your head, if you fool with chalk that way.  If

-you don't give that money up to the first man that asks for it, you

-are a dead man.  They can't be fooled for long.  They'll be after

-you.  There's no way now but to hold on to it and give it up to the

-first man that asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky.

-I'm going down this trail a way.  I want to see old Brewer.  He's got

-a good deal of political influence.  Good-bye!"

-

-Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a place two miles

-farther on, where another trail joined the one he was traveling.

-Here there stood a man with a huge beard, a blanket over his

-shoulders, holes cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a

-belt with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap.  The stranger

-stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and saying nothing.  Morton

-was only too glad to give up the money.  And he set Dolly off at her

-best pace, seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters

-of the cut-or-carry gang.  He could not but wonder how Burchard

-should seem to know them so well.  He did not much like the thought

-that Burchard's forbearance had bound him to support that gentleman's

-political aspirations when he had opportunity.  This friendly

-relation with thieves was not what he would have liked to see in a

-favorite candidate, but a cursed fatality seemed to be dragging down

-all his high aspirations.  It was like one of those old legends he

-had heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by little bargains

-with the devil, and had presently found themselves involved in evil

-entanglements on every hand.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XVI._

-

-SHORT SHRIFT.

-

-But Morton had no time to busy himself now with nice scruples.  Bread

-and meat are considerations more imperative to a healthy man than

-conscience.  He had no money.  He might turn aside from the trail to

-hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to do when he started.  But

-ever, as he traveled, he had become more and more desirous of getting

-away from himself.  He was now full sixty or seventy miles from home,

-but he could not make up his mind to stop and devote himself to

-hunting.  At four o'clock the valley of the Mustoga lay before him,

-and Morton, still purposeless, rode on.  And now at last the habitual

-thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon him, and he

-began to be hesitant about going on.  After all, his flight seemed

-foolish.  Patty might not yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why

-should he yield to it, unless he chose?

-

-In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and crave a night's

-lodging at the crossing of the river.  He was the more disposed to

-this that Dolly, having been ridden hard all day without food, showed

-unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing.  He would

-give her a night's rest, and then perhaps take the road back to the

-Hissawachee, or go into the wilderness and hunt.

-

-"Hello the house!" he called.  "Hello!"

-

-A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the door, and responded

-with a "Hello!"

-

-"Can I get to stay here all night?"

-

-"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger.  Kinder full to-night.  You mout git

-a place about a mile furder on whar you could hang up for the night,

-mos' likely; but I can't keep you, no ways."

-

-"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep anywhere," plead Morton.

-

-"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed if she don't!

-Whar did you git her?"

-

-"Raised her," said Morton.

-

-"Whar abouts?"

-

-"Hissawachee."

-

-"You don't say!  How far you rid her to-day?"

-

-"From Jonesville."

-

-"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads!  Mighty purty critter,

-that air.  Powerful clean legs.  She's number one.  Is she your'n,

-did you say?"

-

-"Well, not exactly mine.  That is--".  Here Morton hesitated.

-

-"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up here, no ways.  I

-tuck in one of your sort a month ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off

-in the middle of the night.  I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever

-set eyes on him."  And the man had disappeared in the house before

-Morton could reply.

-

-To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant; to be refused a

-lodging and to be mistaken for a horse-thief filled the cup of

-Morton's bitterness.  He reluctantly turned his horse's head toward

-the river.  There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen that he

-must needs swim Dolly across.

-

-He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately, with a

-feeling that she was the only friend he had left.  "Well, Dolly," he

-said, "it's too bad to make you swim, after such a day; but you must.

-If we drown, we'll drown together."

-

-The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek in a dumb trustfulness.

-

-There was a road cut through the steep bank on the other side, so

-that travelers might ride down to the water's edge.  Knowing that he

-would have to come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the

-water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable place.  Then,

-turning the mare's head upward, he started across.  Dolly swam

-bravely enough until she reached the middle of the stream; then,

-finding her strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and under

-the burden of her master, she refused his guidance, and turned her

-head directly toward the road, which offered the only place of exit.

-The rapid current swept horse and rider down the stream; but still

-Dolly fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the road.

-Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged Dolly to greater

-exertions, and the well-bred creature, rousing all the remains of her

-magnificent force, succeeded in reaching the road.  Then the young

-man got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the water,

-wondered why he should have struggled to preserve a life that he was

-not able to regulate, and that promised him nothing but misery and

-embarrassment.

-

-The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton pushed his tired filley

-on another mile.  Again he hallooed.  This time he was welcomed by an

-old woman, who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the mare

-in the stable.  She didn't ginerally keep no travelers, but it was

-too orful a night fer a livin' human bein' to be out in.  Her son

-Jake would be in thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody

-out in sech a night.  'Twuz good ten miles to the next house.

-

-Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her, and to take his

-place by the fire.

-

-Presently the son came in.

-

-"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton suspiciously.  "Is

-that air your mar in the stable?"

-

-"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether he could call

-Dolly his or not, seeing she had been transferred to Burchard.

-

-"Whar did you come from?"

-

-"From Hissawachee."

-

-"Whar you makin' fer?"

-

-"I don't exactly know."

-

-"See here, mister!  Akordin' to my tell, that air's a mighty peart

-sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what don' know, to save his

-gizzard, whar he mout be a travelin'.  We don't keep no sich people

-as them what rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of

-theirselves.  Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up yer mar and

-putt.  It mout gin us trouble to keep you."

-

-"You ain't going to send me out such a night as this, when I've rode

-fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.

-

-"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer?  Yer health, I

-reckon.  Now, stranger, I've jist got one word to say to you, and

-that is this ere: _Putt_!  PUTT THIRECKLY!  Clar out of these 'ere

-diggin's!  That's all.  Jist putt!"

-

-The young man pronounced the vowel in "put" very flat, as it is

-sounded in the first syllable of "putty," and seemed disposed to add

-a great many words to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much

-Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth.  "Putt out, I say!

-I ain't afeard of none of yer gang.  I hain't got nary 'nother word."

-

-"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word--_I won't_!  You

-haven't got any right to turn a stranger out on such a night."

-

-"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten you."

-

-"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew nearer the fire.

-

-The strapping young fellow straightened himself up and looked at

-Morton in wonder, more and more convinced that nobody but an outlaw

-would venture on a move so bold, and less and less inclined to

-attempt to use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate

-character increased.  Goodwin, for his part, was not a little amused;

-the old mischievous love of fun reasserted itself in him as he saw

-the decline of the young man's courage.

-

-"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band, why don't you be

-careful how you treat me?  The band might give you trouble.  Let's

-have something to eat.  I haven't had anything since last night; I am

-starving."

-

-"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'.  He's tuck the house

-and we can't help ourselves."

-

-Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and in his amusement

-at the success of his ruse and in the comfortable enjoyment of food

-after his long fast his good spirits returned.

-

-When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed in the loft, he became

-aware that there were a number of men in the room below, and he could

-gather that they were talking about him.  He dressed quickly and came

-down-stairs.  The first thing he noticed was that the settler who had

-refused him lodging the night before was the centre of the group, the

-next that they had taken possession of his rifle.  This settler had

-roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the creek in a

-flat-boat some miles below and come up the stream determined to

-capture this young horse-thief.  It is a singular tribute to the

-value of the horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples

-horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious than homicide.

-In such a community to steal a man's horse is the grandest of

-larcenies--it is to rob him of the stepping-stone to civilization.

-

-For such philosophical reflections as this last, however, Morton had

-no time.  He was in the hands of an indignant crowd, some of whom had

-lost horses and other property from the depredations of the famous

-band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were bent on exacting the

-forfeit from this indifferently dressed young man who rode a horse

-altogether too good for him.

-

-Morton was conducted three miles down the river to a log tavern, that

-being a public and appropriate place for the rendering of the

-decisions of Judge Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient

-refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might become

-exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf of public justice.  There

-was no formal trial.  The evidence was given in in a disjointed and

-spontaneous fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd, and

-what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting" was gathered from

-the general outcry.  Educated in Indian wars and having been left at

-first without any courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come

-to believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with the enemies of

-peace and order much superior to the prolix method of the lawyers and

-judges.

-

-And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer than that he was one

-of the gang.  The settler who had refused him a lodging first spoke:

-

-"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that that feller didn't

-own the hoss.  He looked kinder sheepish.  Well, I poked a few

-questions at him and I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions

-in this neck of timber.  I axed him whar he come from, and he let it

-out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles.  And I kinder blazed away at

-praisin' his hoss tell I got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst

-to him, I treed him suddently.  I jest axed him ef the hoss was his'n

-and he hemmed and hawed and says, says he: 'Well, not exactly mine.'

-Then I tole him to putt out."

-

-"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?" put in the youth

-whose unwilling hospitality Morton had enjoyed.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's sartain shore.  He

-tole me she wuz.  And when I axed him whar he was agoin', he tole me

-he didn' know.  I suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out;

-and he wouldn'.  Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun and blow his

-brains out; but marm got skeered and didn' want me to, and I 'lowed

-it was better to let him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe

-come over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come along and

-inquire arter that air mar.  Then he ups and says ef the ole woman

-don' give him sompin' to eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band.

-He said as how he was a member of that gang.  An' he said he hadn't

-had nothin' to eat sence the night before, havin' rid fer twenty-four

-hours."

-

-"I didn't say----" began Morton.

-

-"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done.  Haint you got no manners?  I tole

-him as how I didn't keer three continental derns* fer his whole band

-weth Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole woman wuz kinder

-sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a rale hoss-thief and she gin him

-a little sompin' to eat.  And he did gobble it, I tell _you_!"

-

-

-* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness of the

-paper money issued by the Continental Congress.

-

-

-Young rawbones had repeated this statement a dozen times already

-since leaving home with the prisoner.  But he liked to tell it.

-Morton made the best defense he could, and asked them to send to

-Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that this was only a

-ruse to gain time, and that if they delayed his execution long,

-Micajah Harp and his whole band would be upon them.

-

-The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging.  The cry of "Come

-on, boys, let's string him up," was raised several times, and

-"rushes" at him were attempted, but these rushes never went further

-than the incipient stage, for the very good reason that while many

-were anxious to have him hung, none were quite ready to adjust the

-rope.  The law threatened them on one side, and a dread of the

-vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them on the other.

-The predicament in which the crowd found themselves was a very

-embarrassing one, but these administrators of impromptu justice

-consoled themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till night.

-

-And the rawboned young man, who had given such eager testimony that

-he "warn't afeard of the whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the

-top," concluded about noon that he had better go home--the ole woman

-mout git skeered, you know.  She wuz powerful skeery and mout git

-fits liker'n not, you know.

-

-The weary hours of suspense drew on.  However ready Morton may have

-been to commit suicide in a moment of rash despair, life looked very

-attractive to him now that its duration was measured by the

-descending sun.  And what a quickener of conscience is the prospect

-of immediate death!  In these hours the voice of Kike, reproving him

-for his reckless living, rang in his memory ceaselessly.  He saw what

-a distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a chance to

-try it over again.  But unless help should come from some unexpected

-quarter, he saw that his probation was ended.

-

-It is barely possible that the crowd might have become so demoralized

-by waiting as to have let Morton go, or at least to have handed him

-over to the authorities, had there not come along at that moment Mr.

-Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist preacher of whom Morton

-had made so much sport in Wilkins's Settlement.  Having to preach at

-fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat itinerant,

-and was now hastening to a preaching place near by.  One of the

-crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen, suggested that Morton had orter be allowed

-to see a preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died.  Some of the

-others disagreed.  They warn't nothin' in the nex' world too bad fer

-a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes.  They warn't a stringin' men up

-to send 'em to heaven, but to t' other place.

-

-Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the

-ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of

-God.  He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the

-horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying

-thief upon the cross.  In vain Morton protested his innocence.

-Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd

-to hand him over to the sheriff.  But Mellen's additional testimony

-to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being

-given up to the courts.  As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the

-arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite

-shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the

-condemned man.  Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of

-the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end

-of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as

-an impenitent thief.

-

-Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward

-the horizon.  He heard the rude voices of the mob about him.  But he

-thought of Patty and his mother.

-

-While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for

-death, there passed upon the road an elderly man.  He was just going

-out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him.  When

-he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must

-be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had

-so often heard at the Scotch Settlement.  Could it be that thoughts

-of home and mother had suggested Donaldson?  At least, the faintest

-hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair.

-

-"Call him back!" cried Morton.  "Won't somebody call that old man

-back?  He knows me."

-

-[Illustration: A LAST HOPE.]

-

-Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit.  The leaders looked

-knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders.

-

-"If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried

-the despairing Goodwin.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XVII._

-

-DELIVERANCE.

-

-Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a

-thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery

-and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his

-brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals.  In previous years

-Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have

-carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive

-"new-side" brethren.  He considered the doctrines of these zealous

-Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the

-ungrammatical circuit riders.  At the moment of passing the tavern

-where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in

-"laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines

-and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism.  His square head had

-fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of

-godless and noisy men about the tavern.  He could not spare time to

-note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the

-weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at

-Cincinnati.  He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first

-caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one

-would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr.

-Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant

-that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name.  How should

-he hear Morton's cry?  For just at that moment he had reached the

-portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his

-new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were

-of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.

-

-Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.

-

-"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him.  'Pears like as ef

-he's a-lyin' any how.  I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the

-ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't

-won't do no harm to call him back."  Saying which, he mounted his

-gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.

-

-"Hello, stranger!  I say, there!  Mister!  O, mister!  Hello, you ole

-man on horseback!"

-

-This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger

-interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson

-at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over

-his opponents.

-

-"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the

-messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened

-and not at all pleased to be awakened.

-

-"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had

-three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how

-as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it,

-for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."

-

-"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet

-fairly awake to the situation.  "Indeed?  I'm in a great hurry.  What

-does he want?  Wants me to pray with him, I suppose.  Well, it is

-never too late.  God's election is of grace, and often he seems to

-select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and

-get to himself a great name.  I'll go and see him."

-

-And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern, endeavoring to turn

-his thoughts out of the polemical groove in which they had been

-running all day, that he might think of some fitting words to say to

-a malefactor.  But when he stood before the young man he started with

-surprise.

-

-"What!  Morton Goodwin!  Have you taken to stealing horses?  I should

-have thought that the unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut

-short in God's righteousness, would have been a warning to you.  My

-dear young man, how could you bring such disgrace and shame on the

-gray hairs----"

-

-Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a murmur of excitement

-went through the crowd.  They believed that the prisoner's own

-witness had turned against him and that they had a second quasi

-sanction from the clergy for the deed of violence they were

-meditating.  Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the minister with

-some impatience, crying out:

-

-"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged me too quick.  These

-folks are going to hang me without any evidence at all, except that I

-was riding a good horse.  Now, I want you to tell them whose filley

-yon is."

-

-Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared to the crowd that he

-had seen this young man riding that colt for more than a year past,

-and that if they were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing

-that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.

-

-"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was

-a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.

-

-"I don't know.  How did you come here, Morton?"

-

-"Well, I'll tell you a straight story.  I was gambling on Sunday

-night----"

-

-"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.

-

-"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had--horse and gun and

-all--I seemed clean crazy.  I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had,

-and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and

-gun.  Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for

-six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool,

-hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my

-colt with.  That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose

-horse it was, and where I was going."

-

-"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the

-young man go.  You ought to be thankful that God in his good

-providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent

-blood.  He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends

-church with his mother.  I am sorry he has got into bad habits."

-

-"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party;

-and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound

-Morton's arms and let him go.  The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed

-her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man

-from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as

-"his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck."  The horse and gun

-were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse,

-each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate

-attention.  In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to

-some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of

-gambling and Sabbath-breaking.  But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of

-the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped

-easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do

-with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in

-a day.  In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he

-had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.

-Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go

-directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in

-rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man.

-Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech.

-After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be

-drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he

-should become a gambler?  After thinking over it a while, however,

-the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape

-this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a

-religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and

-Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost

-as certainly as a gambler or a thief.

-

-Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present day should be a

-little too severe on our good friend Mr. Donaldson, I must express my

-sympathy for the worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward

-the scene of conflict.  Dear, genteel, and cultivated Methodist

-reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of Methodism, though

-you have so far departed from the standard of the fathers as to wear

-gold and costly apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not

-too hard upon our good friend Donaldson.  Had you, fastidious

-Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs, and refined

-preachers, as you sit in your cushioned pew--had you lived in Ohio

-sixty years ago, would you have belonged to the Methodists, think

-you?  Not at all! your nerves would have been racked by their

-shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by their ditties,

-your grammatical knowledge shocked beyond recovery by their English;

-you could never have worshiped in an excitement that prostrated

-people in religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and obstinate

-sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks.  It is easy to build

-the tombs of the prophets while you reap the harvest they sowed, and

-after they have been already canonized.  It is easy to build the

-tombs of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets of our

-own time, maybe.  Permit me, Methodist brother, to believe that had

-you lived in the days of Parson Donaldson, you would have condemned

-these rude Tishbites as sharply as he did.  But you would have been

-wrong, as he was.  For without them there must have been barbarism,

-worse than that of Arkansas and Texas.  Methodism was to the West all

-that Puritanism was to New England.  Both of them are sublime when

-considered historically; neither of them were very agreeable to live

-with, maybe.

-

-But, alas!  I am growing as theological as Mr. Donaldson himself.

-Meantime Morton has forded the creek at a point more favorable than

-his crossing of the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and

-ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and approaches his

-home, do the embarrassments of his situation become more appalling.

-If he could only be sure of himself in the future, there would be

-hope.  But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action

-possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.

-

-In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a "trace" that led

-him toward home by a much nearer way than he had come.  After riding

-twenty miles, he emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just

-as the sun was sitting.  It happened that the house where he found a

-hospitable supper and lodging was already set apart for Methodist

-preaching that evening.  After supper the shuck-bottom chairs and

-rude benches were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate

-space was left to be filled by seats which should be brought in by

-friendly neighbors.  Morton gathered from the conversation that the

-preacher was none other than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was

-held in such esteem that it was even believed that he had a prophetic

-inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing.  This "class" had been

-founded by his preaching, in the days of his vigor.  He had long

-since given up "traveling," on account of his health.  He was now a

-teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most scholarly of the

-Western itinerants.  He had set out on a journey among the churches

-with whom he had labored, seeking to strengthen the hands of the

-brethren, who were like a few sheep in the wilderness.  The old

-Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome the final visit of

-Paul the Aged than did the backwoods churches this farewell tour of

-Valentine Cook.

-

-Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a Methodist meeting,

-Morton felt no little agitation.  His mother had heard Cook in his

-younger days, in Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame

-as a man and as a preacher.  Morton was not only curious to hear him;

-he entertained a faint hope that the great preacher might lead him

-out of his embarrassment.

-

-After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees trying to collect

-his thoughts; determined at one moment to become a Methodist and end

-his struggles, seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance

-against the sermon that he must hear.  Having walked some distance

-from the house into the bushes, he came suddenly upon the preacher

-himself, kneeling in earnest audible prayer.  So rapt was the old man

-in his devotion that he did not note the approach of Goodwin, until

-the latter, awed at sight of a man talking face to face with God,

-stopped, trembling, where he stood.  Cook then saw him, and, arising,

-reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a voice tremulous

-with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a

-crown of life."  Morton endeavored, in a few stammering words, to

-explain his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed almost

-at once to have forgotten his presence, for he had taken his seat

-upon a log and appeared absorbed in thought.  Morton retreated just

-in time to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full.  The members

-of the church, men and women, as they entered, knelt in silent prayer

-before taking their seats.  Hardly silent either, for the old

-Methodist could do nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in

-what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth, continually in

-audible ejaculations of "Ah--ah!"  "O my Lord, help!"  "Hah!" and

-other groaning expressions of his inward wrestling--groanings easily

-uttered, but entirely without a possible orthography.  With most,

-this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and unreserved nature;

-in later times the ostentatious and hypocritical did not fail to

-cultivate it as an evidence of superior piety.

-

-But now the room is full.  People are crowding the doorways.  The

-good old-class leader has shut his eyes and turned his face

-heavenward.  Presently he strikes up lustily, leading the

-congregation in singing:

-

-  "How tedious and tasteless the hours

-  When Jesus no longer I see!"

-

-

-When he reached the stanza that declares:

-

-  "While blest with a sense of his love

-    A palace a toy would appear;

-  And prisons would palaces prove,

-    If Jesus would dwell with me there."

-

-there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!" and so forth.

-At the last quatrain, which runs,

-

-  "O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!

-    Thy soul-cheering presence restore;

-  Or take me to thee up on high,

-    Where winter and clouds are no more!"

-

-there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must have been spoken

-in a poetic sense.  I cannot believe that any of the excellent

-brethren, even in that moment of exaltation, would really have

-desired translation to the world beyond the clouds.

-

-The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his congregation--a

-very common bit of absent-mindedness with Valentine Cook; and so,

-when this hymn was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated

-soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian Philosopher," that

-inspiring song which begins:

-

-  "Come on, my partners in distress,

-  My comrades in this wilderness,

-    Who still your bodies feel;

-  Awhile forget your griefs and tears,

-  Look forward through this vale of tears

-    To that celestial hill."

-

-

-The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed the preacher,

-having suddenly come to himself, entered hurriedly, and pushed

-forward to the place arranged for him.  The festoons of dried pumpkin

-hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head; a tallow dip,

-sitting in the window, shed a feeble light upon his face as he stood

-there, tall, gaunt, awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,

-hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse black hair

-resisting yet the approach of age, and a _tout ensemble_ unpromising,

-but peculiar.  He began immediately to repeat his hymn:

-

-  "I saw one hanging on a tree

-    In agony and blood;

-  He fixed his languid eye on me,

-    As near the cross I stood."

-

-

-His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have a fascination, and

-the pathos of his voice, quivering with suppressed emotion, was

-indescribable.  Before his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic

-Morton felt that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.

-

-He repeated his text: "_Behold, the day cometh_," and launched at

-once into a strongly impressive introduction about the all-pervading

-presence of God, until the whole house seemed full of God, and Morton

-found himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's presence and

-ineffable holiness.  Then he took up that never-failing theme of the

-pioneer preacher--the sinfulness of sin--and there were suppressed

-cries of anguish over the whole house.  Morton could hardly feel more

-contempt for himself than he had felt for two days past; but when the

-preacher advanced to his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness

-of Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood.  In that

-hour, with God around, above, beneath, without and within--with a

-feeling that since his escape he held his life by a sort of

-reprieve--with the inspiring and persuasive accents of this weird

-prophet ringing in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all

-ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological puzzles, and set

-himself to a self-denying life.  With one final battle he closed his

-conflict about Patty.  He would do right at all hazards.

-

-Morton never had other conversion than this.  He could not tell of

-such a struggle as Kike's.  All he knew was that there had been

-conflict.  When once he decided, there was harmony and peace.  When

-Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting the whole

-house ablaze with feeling, and then proceeded to "open the doors of

-the church" by singing,

-

-  "Am I a soldier of the Cross,

-    A follower of the Lamb,

-  And shall I fear to own his cause,

-    Or blush to speak his name?"

-

-it was with a sort of military exaltation--a defiance of the world,

-the flesh, and the devil--that Morton went forward and took the hand

-of the preacher, as a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among

-those who meant to

-

-  "----conquer though they die."

-

-

-He was accustomed to say in after years, using the Methodist

-phraseology, that "God spoke peace to his soul the moment he made up

-his mind to give up all."  That God does speak to the heart of man in

-its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works with, and not against,

-the laws of mind.  When Morton ceased to contend with his highest

-impulses there was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and

-objective a temperament to have subjective fights with fanciful

-Apollyons.  When peace came he accepted it.  One of the old brethren

-who crowded round him that night and questioned him about his

-experience was "afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion.  They wuzn't

-wras'lin' and strugglin' enough."  But the wise Valentine Cook said,

-when he took Morton's hand to say good-bye, and looked into his clear

-blue eye, "Hold fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XVIII._

-

-THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.

-

-At last the knight was in the saddle.  Much as Morton grieved when he

-thought of Patty, he rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral

-purpose.  Vacillation was over.  He was ready to fight, to sacrifice,

-to die, for a good cause.  It had been the dream of his boyhood; it

-had been the longing of his youth, marred and disfigured by

-irregularities as his youth had been.  In the early twilight of the

-winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle field, and, as

-was his wont in moments of cheerfulness, he sang.  But not now the

-"Highland Mary," or "Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of

-Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night before, some

-stanzas of which had strongly impressed him and accorded exactly with

-his new mood, and his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,

-perhaps, from his religious life:

-

-  "In hope of that immortal crown

-    I now the Cross sustain,

-  And gladly wander up and down,

-    And smile at toil and pain;

-  I suffer on my threescore years,

-    Till my Deliv'rer come

-  And wipe away his servant's tears,

-    And take his exile home.

-

-  * * * * * * * *

-

-  "O, what are all my sufferings here

-    If, Lord, thou count me meet

-  With that enraptured host to appear

-    And worship at thy feet!

-  Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,

-    Take life or friends away,

-  But let me find them all again

-    In that eternal day."

-

-

-Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had ceased to sing.  He was

-painfully endeavoring to imagine how he would be received at home and

-at Captain Lumsden's.

-

-At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter twilight, trying to

-keep her heart from fainting entirely.  The story of Morton's losses

-at cards had quickly reached the settlement--with the easy addition

-that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor, and had

-carried off the horse and gun which another had won from him in

-gambling.  This last, the mother steadily refused to believe.  It

-could not be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses of his

-youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal brother, Lewis.  For

-Morton was such a boy as Lewis had never been, and the thought of his

-deserting his home and falling finally into bad practices, had

-brought to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to heart-break.

-Job Goodwin had abandoned all work and taken to his congenial

-employment of sighing and croaking in the chimney-corner, building

-innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.

-

-Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend.  "I am sure, Mrs.

-Goodwin," she said, "Morton will yet be saved; I have been enabled to

-pray for him with faith."

-

-In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not help thinking that it

-was very inconsistent for an Arminian to believe that God would

-convert a man in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to

-believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he pleased.

-Willing, however, to lay the blame of her misfortune on anybody but

-Morton, she said, half peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had

-never come to the settlement.  Morton had been in a hopeful state of

-mind, and they had driven him to wickedness.  Otherwise he would

-doubtless have been a Christian by this time.

-

-And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought--but did not say--that it

-was most absurd for Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having

-driven Morton away from salvation, since, according to her

-Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he were elected.  It

-is so easy to be inconsistent when we try to reason about God's

-relation to his creatures; and so easy to see absurdity in any creed

-but our own!

-

-The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable now to endure the

-darkness, lit her candle.  Then there was a knock at the door.  Ever

-since Sunday the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had turned

-pale at every sound of footsteps without.  Now she called out, "Come

-in!" in a broken voice, and Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed

-his school.

-

-"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can give comfort.  I'm

-sure to say something not intoirely proper to the occasion, whiniver

-I talk to anybody in throuble--something that jars loike a varb that

-disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I may say.

-But I thought I ought to come and say you, and till you as I don't

-belave Moirton would do anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be

-home afore the wake's out.  I've soiphered it out by the Rule of

-Thray.  As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other throubles--comin' out all

-roight--so is Moirton Goodwin to his present dif_fic_culties.  If the

-first term and the third is the same, then the sicond and the fourth

-has got to be idintical.  Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but you're

-an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you can say that me

-dimonsthration's entoirely corrict.  Moirton'll fetch the answer set

-down in the book ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake.

-Thair's no vulgar fractions about him."

-

-"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin, who had held his hand

-up to his best ear, to hear what Brady was saying.  "No, I don't 'low

-he was fractious, fer the mos' part.  But he's gone now, and he'll

-git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the fever, and then

-they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and the Injuns'll be on us, and it

-'pears like as if they wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'.  Hey?"

-

-At that very moment the latch was jerked up and Henry came bursting

-into the room, gasping from excitement.

-

-"What is it?  Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting to his feet.

-

-But Henry gasped again.

-

-"Spake!" said Brady.  "Out wid it!"

-

-"Mort's--a-puttin'--Dolly--in the stable!" said the breathless boy.

-

-"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job Goodwin, sitting

-down again hopelessly.  "Then somebody--Injuns, robbers, or

-somebody--'s killed Mort, and she's found her way back!"

-

-While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler slipped out of the open

-door, that she might not intrude upon the meeting; but Brady--oral

-newspaper that he was--waited, with the true journalistic spirit, for

-an interview.  Hardly had Job Goodwin finished his doleful speech,

-when Morton himself crossed the threshold and reached out his hand to

-his mother, while she reached out both hands and--did what mothers

-have done for returning prodigals since the world was made.  Her

-husband stood by bewildered, trying to collect his wits enough to

-understand how Morton could have been murdered by robbers or Indians

-and yet stand there.  Not until the mother released him, and Morton

-turned and shook hands with his father, did the father get rid of the

-illusion that his son was certainly dead.

-

-"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the shadow, "I'm roight

-glad to see ye back.  I tould 'em ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe.  I

-soiphered it out by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about

-this toime.  One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin' to run away

-from yersilf, one day for repintance, and the nixt the prodigal son

-falls on his mother's neck and confisses his sins."

-

-Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a safeguard against too

-much of a scene.  And to avoid speaking of subjects more unpleasant,

-he plunged at once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's Hole,

-and of his arrest for stealing his own horse.  Then he told how he

-had escaped by the good offices of Mr. Donaldson.  Mrs. Goodwin was

-secretly delighted at this.  It was a new bond between the young man

-and the minister, and now at last she should see Morton converted.

-The religious experience Morton reserved.  He wanted to break it to

-his mother alone, and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to

-Patty.  And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he supposed,

-a full account of Morton's adventures, and being eager to tell so

-choice and fresh a story, found himself unable to stay longer.  But

-just as he reached the door, it occurred to him that if he did not

-tell Morton at once what had happened in his absence, some one else

-would anticipate him.  He had sole possession of Morton's adventure

-anyhow; so he straightened himself up against the door and said:

-

-"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the whoile ye was gone,

-Moirton?"

-

-"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.

-

-"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to be good, as ye plase.

-Ye know how Koike was bilin' over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went

-away in the fall.  Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met Koike

-in the road, and gives him some hard words fer sayin' what he did to

-him last Sunthay.  An' fwat does Koike do but bowldly begins another

-exhortation, tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go to

-hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about and take the

-other thrack.  An' fwat does the Captin do but up wid the flat of his

-hand and boxes Koike's jaw.  An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him

-as Magruder did Jake Sniger.  But not a bit of it!  He fired up rid,

-and thin got pale immajiately.  Thin he turned round t'other soide of

-his face, and, wid a thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't

-want to slap that chake too?  An' the Captin swore at him fer a

-hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the jerks; an' he's been

-a-lookin' loike a sintince that couldn' be parsed iver sence."

-

-"I wonder Kike bore it.  I don't think I could," said Morton,

-meditatively.

-

-"Av coorse ye couldn't.  Ye're not a convarted Mithodist, But I must

-be goin'.  I'm a-boardin' at the Captin's now."

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XIX._

-

-PATTY.

-

-Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride, and in Patty's

-circumstances pride was conservative; it saved her from possible

-assimilation with the vulgarity about her.  She was a lily among

-hollyhocks.  Her mother had come of an "old family"--in truth, of two

-or three old families.  All of them had considered that attachment to

-the Established Church was part and parcel of their gentility, and

-most of them had been staunch Tories in the Revolution.  Patty had

-inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and a certain lofty

-inflexibility of disposition.  In this congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden

-had planted traditional prejudices.  Patty read her Prayer-book, and

-wished that she might once attend the stately Episcopal service; she

-disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song of the Baptist

-preacher and the rant of the Methodist itinerant were equally

-distasteful.  She had never seen a clergyman in robes, but she tried,

-from her mother's descriptions, to form a mental picture of the

-long-drawn dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country church.

-Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her age; but her ideals

-were ruled by the pride in which she had been cradled.

-

-For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion.  Methodism

-was new, and, like everything new, lacked traditions,

-picturesqueness, mustiness, and all the other essentials of gentility

-in religious matters.  The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the

-preachers were illiterate, and often rough in voice and speech; they

-made war on dancing and jewelry, and dancing and jewelry appertained

-to good-breeding.  Ever since her father had been taken with that

-strange disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the Methodists

-worse than ever.  They had made a direct attack on her pride.

-

-The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached the ears of Patty.

-The thoughtful unkindness of her father could not leave her without

-so delectable a morsel of news.  He felt sure that Patty's pride

-would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he omitted nothing from

-the tale--the loss of horse and gun, the offer to stake his hat and

-coat, the proposal to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited

-horse--such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story.  He told it at

-the table in order to mortify Patty as much as possible in the

-presence of her brothers and sisters and the hired men.  But the

-effect was quite different from his expectations.  With that

-inconsistency characteristic of the most sensible women when they are

-in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes.  She saw him, in her

-imagination, a hapless and homeless wanderer.  She would not abandon

-him in his misfortunes.  He should have one friend at least.  She was

-sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not inconsistent with

-gentlemanliness.  She had often heard that her mother would have

-inherited a plantation if her grandfather had been able to let cards

-alone.  Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous and impulsive

-weakness.  Then, too, she laid the blame on her favorite scape-goat.

-If it had not been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the

-inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's misfortune

-would not have befallen him.  Patty forgave in advance.  Love

-condones all sins except sins against love.

-

-It was with more than his usual enjoyment of gossip that the

-school-master hurried home to the Captain's that evening to tell the

-story of Morton's return, and to boast that he had already soiphered

-it out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would come out

-roight.  The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses,

-slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse

-to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her

-gambling with Burchard.  But Patty inly resolved to show her lover

-more affection than ever.  She would make him feel that her love

-would be constant when the friendship of others failed.  She liked to

-flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her

-love would reform her lover.

-

-Patty knew he would come.  She went about her work next morning,

-humming some trifling air, that she might seem nonchalant.  But after

-awhile she happened to think that her humming was an indication of

-pre-occupation.  So she ceased to hum.  Then she remembered that

-people would certainly interpret silence as indicative of meditation;

-she immediately fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the

-younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so much?"  Upon

-which, Patty ceased to talk and went to work harder than ever; but,

-being afraid that the eagerness with which she worked would betray

-her, she tried to work more slowly until that was observed.  The very

-devices by which we seek to hide mental pre-occupation generally

-reveal it.

-

-At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the loom-room, where she

-could think without having her thoughts guessed at.  Here, too, she

-would be alone when Morton should come.

-

-Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious change, found it

-hard indeed to tell Patty.  But he counted certainly that she would

-censure him for gambling, which would make it so much easier for him

-to explain to her that the only way for him to escape from vice was

-to join the Methodists, and thus give up all to a better life.  He

-shaped some sentences founded upon this supposition.  But after all

-his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to

-"confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to

-bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room,

-his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty

-blushes.  Ah, weak nature!  He was not blushing for his sins, but for

-his repentance!

-

-Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of

-forgiveness love was.  She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she

-generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow,

-a confession.  She extended her hand cordially and beamed upon him,

-and told him how glad she was that he had come back,

-and--and--well--; she couldn't find anything else to say, but she

-urged him to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair, and tried

-for the life of her to think of something to say--the silence was so

-embarrassing.  But talking for talk's sake is always hard.  One talks

-as one breathes--best when volition has nothing to do with it.

-

-The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as

-Patty's talk.  For he had not expected this sort of an opening.  If

-she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road

-would have been plain.  But now that she loved him and forgave him of

-her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face

-by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar

-fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised?

-Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet.  He

-had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage,

-but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion.  He talked

-about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the

-conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his

-gambling.  But she did not.  Could it be that she had not heard of

-it?  Must he then reveal that to her also?

-

-While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that

-he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began

-to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger

-"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all

-this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said.  Morton thought

-it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:

-there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still

-while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud

-praying of the meetings into ridicule.  And Morton became conscious

-that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to

-confess his conversion.  He thought it better to return to his

-gambling for a starting point.

-

-"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"

-

-"Oh! yes.  I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say

-any more about it, Morton.  You're too good for me with all your

-faults, and you won't do it any more."

-

-"But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was

-gone.  I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--"

-

-"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about

-it because it isn't pleasant.  It'll all come out right at last: I'd

-a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard

-Methodist, like Kike, for instance."

-

-"But--"

-

-"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word.  Not one word.  I want you

-to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right."

-

-You think Morton very weak.  But, do you know how exceedingly sweet

-is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and

-suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else?  Poor

-Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so

-much of storm.  It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes

-that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.

-

-At last he rose to go.  He felt himself a Peter.  He had denied the

-Master!

-

-"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not been honest with you.

-I meant to tell you something when I first came, and I didn't.  It is

-hard to have to give up your love.  But I'm afraid you won't care for

-me when I tell you--"

-

-The severity of Morton's penitence only touched Patty the more deeply.

-

-"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done anything naughty, I

-forgive you without knowing it.  But I don't want to hear any more

-about it, I tell you."  And with that the blushing Patty held her

-cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton, trembling with

-conflicting emotions, had kissed her for the first time, she slipped

-away quickly to prevent his making any painful confessions.

-

-For a moment Morton stood charmed with her goodness.  When he

-believed himself to have conquered, he found himself vanquished.

-

-In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part of the distance

-home.  He might write to her about it.  He might let her hear it from

-others.  But he rejected both as unworthy of a man.  The memory of

-the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw away his Methodism

-and rejoice in the love of Patty, now so assured.  But suddenly he

-seemed to himself to be another Judas.  He had not denied the

-Lord--he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!

-

-Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back toward Captain

-Lumsden's.  He entered the loom-room, but it was vacant.  He went

-into the living-room, and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole

-family.  Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered by the opposite

-door.  Patty was carding wool with hand-cards, and she looked up,

-startled at this reappearance of her lover when she thought him

-happily dismissed.

-

-"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into any devil's snare

-by delay, and to atone for his great sin by making his profession as

-public as possible, "Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have

-determined to be a Christian, and I have

-joined--the--Methodist--Church."

-

-Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance an unfortunate

-sound of defiance, and it aroused all Patty's combativeness.  It was

-in fact a death wound to her pride.  She had feared sometimes that

-Morton would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should join the

-despised sect without so much as consulting her was more than she

-could bear.  This, then, was the way in which her forbearance and

-forgiveness were rewarded!  There stood her father, sneering like a

-Mephistopheles.  She would resent the indignity, and at the same time

-show her power over her lover.

-

-"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to see you again," she

-said, with lofty pride, and a solemn awfulness of passion more

-terrible than an oath.

-

-"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton, stretching his hands out

-in eager, despairing entreaty.  But this only gave Patty the greater

-assurance that a little decision on her part would make him give up

-his Methodism.

-

-[Illustration: THE CHOICE.]

-

-"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take it back."  There was a

-sternness in the white face and a fire in the black eyes that left

-Morton no hope.

-

-But he straightened himself up now to his full six feet, and said,

-with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty, since you make me choose, I

-shall not give up the Lord, even for you.  But," he added, with a

-broken voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to bear it."

-

-Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in armor giving up his

-ladye love for the sake of monastic religiousness, how admirable he

-would be!  But even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest

-of sacrifices.  It is not the garb or the age that makes sublime a

-soul's offering of heart and hope to duty.  When Morton was gone

-Lumsden chuckled not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her

-courage; but I have understood that she resented his compliments, and

-poured upon him some severe denunciation, in which the Captain heard

-more truth than even Kike had ventured to utter.  Such are the

-inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is wounded.

-

-It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton and Patty are in

-trouble--but you will want to know about Brady.  He was at Colonel

-Wheeler's that evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from

-lynching, when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that Morton

-had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.

-

-"Mithodist?  He's no Mithodist."

-

-"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother told me so; and

-what's more, she said she was glad of it."  Then, seeing Brady's

-discomfiture, she added: "You didn't get all the news that time, Mr.

-Brady."

-

-"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a family intervoo, it's

-not proper fer me to tell all I heerd.  I didn't know the fact was

-made public yit, and so I had to denoy it.  It's the honor of a

-Oirish gintleman, ye know."

-

-What a journalist he would have made!

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XX._

-

-THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.

-

-More than two years have passed since Morton made his great

-sacrifice.  You may see him now riding up to the Hickory Ridge

-Church--a "hewed-log" country meeting-house.  He is dressed in

-homespun clothes.  At the risk of compromising him forever, I must

-confess that his coat is straight-breasted--shad-bellied as the

-profane call it--and his best hat a white one with a broad brim.  The

-face is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one

-year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and the sickness

-and exposure of another year in the malarious cane-brakes of Western

-Tennessee.  Perils of Indians, perils of floods, perils of

-alligators, perils of bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of

-robbers, perils of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of

-five thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five or six

-hundred preachings in the same time, and the care of numberless

-scattered churches in the wilderness have conspired to give

-sedateness to his countenance.  And yet there is a youthfulness about

-the sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that sort of

-humor which Western people call "mischief" about the eyes, that match

-but grotesquely with white hat and shad-bellied coat.

-

-[Illustration: GOING TO CONFERENCE.]

-

-He has been a preacher almost ever since he became a Methodist.  How

-did he get his theological education?  It used to be said that

-Methodist preachers were educated by the old ones telling the young

-ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction Morton carried

-in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple, solid sermons, Charles

-Wesley's hymns, and a Bible.  Having little of the theory and system

-of theology, he was free to take lessons in the larger school of life

-and practical observation.  For the rest, the free criticism to which

-he was subject from other preachers, and the contact with a few

-families of refinement, had obliterated his dialect.  Naturally a

-gentleman at heart, he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he

-met, quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners.  He is regarded as

-a young man of great promise by the older brethren; his clear voice

-is very charming, his strong and manly speech and his tender feeling

-are very inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported

-extraordinary revivals.  Some of the old men sagely predict that

-"he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such ambitious dreams disturb

-his sleep.  He has not "gone into a decline" on account of Patty.  A

-healthy nature will bear heavy blows.  But there is a pain,

-somewhere--everywhere--in his being, when he thinks of the girl who

-stood just above him in the spelling-class, and who looked so divine

-when she was spinning her two dozen cuts a day.  He does not like

-this regretful feeling.  He prays to be forgiven for it.  He

-acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast that he is too much

-like Lot's wife--he finds his heart prone to look back toward the

-objects he once loved.  Often in riding through the stillness of a

-deep forest--and the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode of

-the Almighty--his noble voice rings out fervently and even

-pathetically with that stanza:

-

-  "The dearest idol I have known,

-    Whate'er that idol be,

-  Help me to tear it from thy throne

-    And worship only Thee!"

-

-

-No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he, and none can tell a

-story more effectively in a generation of preachers who are all good

-story-tellers.  He loves his work; its dangers and difficulties

-satisfy the ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings,

-except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in the

-Hissawachee Bottom.  Then the longing to see Patty has seized him and

-he has been fain to hurry away, praying to be delivered from every

-snare of the enemy.

-

-He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat who is approaching

-the country meeting-house.  It is conference-time, and the greetings

-are hearty and familiar.  Everybody is glad to see everybody, and,

-after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand on ceremony

-with anybody else.  Morton has hardly alighted before half a dozen

-preachers have rushed up to him and taken him by the hand.  A tall

-brother, with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:

-

-"How do you do, Brother Goodwin?  Glad to see the alligators haven't

-finished you!"

-

-To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but suddenly he sees,

-standing back of the rest and waiting his turn, a young man with a

-solemn, sallow face, pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered

-by the straight black hair that falls on each side of it.  He wears

-over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes cut through, and seems to

-be perpetually awaiting an ague-chill.  Seeing him, Morton pushes the

-rest aside, and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a cry:

-"Kike, God bless you!  How are you, dear old fellow?  You look sick."

-

-Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over his shoulder and

-looked in his face.  "I am sick, Mort.  Cast down, but not destroyed,

-you know.  I hope I am ready to be offered up."

-

-"Not a bit of it.  You've got to get better.  Offered up?  Why, you

-aren't fit to offer to an alligator.  Where are you staying?"

-

-"Out there."  Kike pointed to the tents of a camp-meeting barely

-visible through the trees.  The people in the neighborhood of the

-Hickory Ridge Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in

-their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up a camp-meeting.

-It was easier to take care of the preachers out of doors than in.

-Morton shook his head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent

-under which he had been assigned to sleep.  The white spot on the end

-of Kike's nose and the blue lines under his finger-nails told plainly

-of the on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some better

-shelter for him than under this thin sheet.  But this was hard to do.

-The few brethren in the neighborhood had already filled their cabins

-full of guests, mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the

-younger men, renowned only for his piety and his revivals, had not

-been thought of for a place elsewhere than on the camp-ground.

-Finding it impossible to get a more comfortable resting place for his

-friend, Morton turned to seek for a physician.  The only doctor in

-the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister, retired from the

-ministry on account of his impaired health.  To him Morton went to

-ask for medicine for Kike.

-

-"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at the camp-ground," said

-Morton, "and--"

-

-"And you want me to see him," said the doctor, in an alert,

-anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags" and donning his hat.

-

-When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike was lodged they found

-a prayer-meeting of a very exciting kind going on in the tent

-adjoining.  There were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs

-commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced ear of

-Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly doctor.

-

-"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to Morton, with great

-positiveness.

-

-"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've done my best to get

-him out of it, but I cannot.  See how thin this tent-cover is."

-

-"And the malaria of these woods is awful.  Camp-meetings, sir, are

-always bad.  And this fuss is enough to drive a patient crazy."

-

-Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said nothing.  They had

-now reached the corner of the tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet,

-holding his hands to his head.  The noise from the prayer-meeting was

-more than his weary brain would bear.

-

-"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor, promptly proceeding to

-lift Kike without even explaining to him who he was, or where he

-proposed to take him.

-

-Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but the poor fellow was

-shaking so that he could not sit there.  Morton then brought out

-Dolly--she was all his own now--and took the slight form of Kike in

-his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man in the saddle.

-

-"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"

-

-"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own horse and spurring

-off to have a bed made ready for Kike.

-

-As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking Kike roused a

-little and said, "She's the same fine old Dolly, Mort."

-

-"A little more sober.  The long rides in the cane-brakes, and the

-responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy, have given her the

-gravity that belongs to the ministry."

-

-Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house!  After the rude

-bear-skins upon which he had languished in the backwoods cabins,

-after the musty feather-beds in freezing lofts, and the pallets of

-leaves upon which he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and

-musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste of heaven.  But

-Kike was almost too sick to be grateful.  The poor frame had been

-kept up by will so long, that now that he was in a good bed and had

-Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick.  What had been ague

-settled into that wearisome disease called bilious fever.  Morton

-staid by him nearly all of the time, looking into the conference now

-and then to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to a

-grand speech from McKendree, attending on the third day of the

-session, when, with the others who had been preaching two years on

-probation, he was called forward to answer the "Questions" always

-propounded to "Candidates for admission to the conference."  Kike

-only was missing from the list of those who were to have heard the

-bishop's exhortations, full of martial fire, and to have answered his

-questions in regard to their spiritual state.  For above all gifts of

-speech or depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early

-Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was of account for

-the ministry who was not "groaning to be made perfect in this life."

-The question stands in the discipline yet, but very many young men

-who assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city church with

-full galleries.

-

-The strange mystery in which appointments were involved could not but

-pique curiosity.  Morton having had one year of mountains, and one

-year of cane-brakes, had come to wish for one year of a little more

-comfort, and a little better support.  There is a romance about going

-threadbare and tattered in a good cause, but even the romance gets

-threadbare and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a

-little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance, charming

-enough in itself, but dull when it grows monotonous.

-

-The awful hour of appointments came on at last.  The brave-hearted

-men sat down before the bishop, and before God, not knowing what was

-to be their fate.  Morton could not guess where he was going.  A

-miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might be his doom,

-or he might--but no, he would not hope that his lot might fall in

-Ohio.  He was a young man, and a young man must take his chances.

-Morton found himself more anxious about Kike than about himself.

-Where would the bishop send the invalid?  With Kike it might be a

-matter of life and death, and Kike would not hear to being left

-without work.  He meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.

-

-The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their destiny, sang

-fervently that fiery hymn of Charles Wesley's:

-

-  "Jesus, the name high over all,

-    In hell or earth or sky,

-  Angels and men before him fall,

-    And devils fear and fly.

-

-  "O that the world might taste and see,

-    The riches of his grace,

-  The arms of love that compass me

-    Would all mankind embrace."

-

-And when they reached the last stanzas there was the ring of soldiers

-ready for battle in their martial voices.  That some of them would

-die from exposure, malaria, or accident during the next year was

-probable.  Tears came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to

-grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they approached the

-climax of the hymn, which the bishop read impressively, two lines at

-a time, for them to sing:

-

-  "His only righteousness I show,

-    His saving truth proclaim,

-  'Tis all my business here below

-    To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'

-

-  "Happy if with my latest breath

-    I may but gasp his name,

-  Preach him to all and cry in death,

-    'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"

-

-Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and the venerable

-Asbury, with calmness and with a voice faltering with age, made them

-a brief address; tender and sympathetic at first, earnest as he

-proceeded, and full of ardor and courage at the close.

-

-"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted some man to take

-Quebec, they began with the oldest General first, asking him:

-'General, will you go and take Quebec?'  To which he made reply, 'It

-is a very difficult enterprise.'  'You may stand aside,' they said.

-One after another the Generals answered that they would, in some more

-or less indefinite manner, until the youngest man on the list was

-reached.  'General Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?'

-'I'll do it or die,' he replied."  Here the bishop paused, looked

-round about upon them, and added, with a voice full of emotion, "He

-went, and did both.  We send you first to take the country allotted

-to you.  We want only men who are determined to do it or die!  Some

-of you, dear brethren, will do both.  If you fall, let us hear that

-you fell like Methodist preachers at your post, face to the foe, and

-the shout of victory on your lips."

-

-The effect of this speech was beyond description.  There were sobs,

-and cries of "Amen," "God grant it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of

-the old log church.  Every man was ready for the hardest place, if he

-must.  Gravely, as one who trembles at his responsibility, the bishop

-brought out his list.  No man looked any more upon his fellow.  Every

-one kept his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop read the

-appointments, until his own name was reached.  Some showed pleasure

-when their names were called, some could not conceal a look of pain.

-When the reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton heard,

-with a little start, the words slowly enounced as the bishop's eyes

-fell on him:

-

-"Jenkinsville Circuit--Morton Goodwin."

-

-Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio.  But it was in the wickedest

-part of Ohio.  Morton half suspected that he was indebted to his

-muscle, his courage, and his quick wit for the appointment.  The

-rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the alligators of

-Mississippi.  But he was young, hopeful and brave, and rather

-relished a difficult field than otherwise.  He listened now for

-Kike's name.  It came at the bottom of the list:

-

-"Pottawottomie Creek--W. T. Smith, Hezekiah Lumsden."

-

-The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to a man so sick as

-Kike was.  He had, therefore, sent him as "second man" or "junior

-preacher" on a circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.

-

-The last appointment having been announced, a simple benediction

-closed the services, and the brethren who had foregone houses and

-homes and fathers and mothers and wives and children for the kingdom

-of heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at Dr.

-Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to the sick Kike, and

-rode away, each in his own direction, and all with a self-immolation

-to the cause rarely seen since the Middle-Age.

-

-They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with fever, and Morton,

-watching by his side.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXI._

-

-CONVALESCENCE.

-

-At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be spared.  There is

-no longer any reason why the rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should

-pine for the muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to "lick as

-soon as they lay eyes on to him."  Dolly's legs are aching for a

-gallop.  Morton and Dr. Morgan have exhausted their several systems

-of theology in discussion.  So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts

-the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient

-brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit.

-Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover.  The doctor has

-taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward

-with sadness to the time when he will leave.

-

-Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back

-through the veins!  You have no longer any pain; you are not well

-enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no

-obligation resting on you but one--that is rest.  Such perfect

-passivity Kike had never known before.  He could walk but little.  He

-sat the livelong day by the open window, as listless as the grass

-that waved before the wind.  All the sense of dire responsibility,

-all those feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of

-his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability, were in

-abeyance.  To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wake and breathe, to suffer

-as a passive instrument the play of whatever feeling might chance to

-come, was Kike's life.

-

-In this state the severity of his character was laid aside.  He

-listened to the quick and eager conversation of Dr. Morgan with a

-gentle pleasure; he answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan

-with quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane Morgan,

-their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as a far off spectator.

-There were but two things that had a real interest for him.  He felt

-a keen delight in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows as

-they went chattering out from under the eaves--their airy vagabondage

-was so restful.  And he liked to watch the quick, careless tread of

-Henrietta Morgan, the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on

-forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the swallows

-themselves.  Though she was eighteen, there was in her full

-child-like cheeks, in her contagious laugh--a laugh most unprovoked,

-coming of itself--in her playful way of performing even her duties, a

-something that so contrasted with and relieved the habitual austerity

-of Kike's temper, and that so fell in with his present lassitude and

-happy carelessness, that he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a

-pillow, to turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.

-So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came to talk with

-her for the sake of hearing them.  He was not forgetful of the solemn

-injunctions Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young

-ministers in the presence of women.  With Miss Jane he was very

-careful lest he should in any way compromise himself, or awaken her

-affections.  Jane was the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if

-he were to marry.  But Nettie was a child--a cheerful butterfly--as

-refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold water to a

-fever-patient.  When she was out of the room, Kike was impatient;

-when she returned, he was glad.  When she sewed, he drew the large

-chair in which he rested in front of her, and talked in his grave

-fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a hundred fancies.  She

-seemed to shine all about him like sunlight.  Poor Kike could not

-refuse to enjoy a fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's

-reverence for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his sickness,

-grew apace into a love for him.

-

-Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected this, the doctor had

-penetrated it.  Kike's whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed

-the ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion, talking with

-eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave sentences before he was

-half through--seeing and hearing everything while he seemed to note

-nothing.  He was not averse to this attachment between the two.

-Provided always, that Kike should give up traveling.  It was all but

-impossible, indeed, for a man to be a Methodist preacher in that day

-and "lead about a wife."  A very few managed to combine the ministry

-with marriage, but in most cases marriage rendered "location" or

-secularization imperative.

-

-[Illustration: CONVALESCENCE.]

-

-Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way that is

-characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie Morgan as she sewed

-and laughed, when Dr. Morgan came in, put his pill-bags upon the high

-bureau, glanced quickly at the two, and said:

-

-"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother.  The

-double-and-twisting is hard work."

-

-Nettie laid her sewing down.  Kike watched her until she had

-disappeared through the door; then he listened until the more

-vigorous spinning indicated to him that younger hands had taken the

-wheel.  His heart sank a little--it might be hours before Nettie

-could return.

-

-Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy himself, with his

-medicines, but he was observing how the young preacher's eyes

-followed his daughter, how his countenance relapsed into its habitual

-melancholy when she was gone.  He thought he could not be mistaken in

-his diagnosis.

-

-"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know what we shall do when

-you get well.  I can't bear to have you go away."

-

-"You have been too good, doctor.  I am afraid you have spoiled me."

-The thought of going to Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more

-painful to Kike.  He had put all thoughts of the sort out of his

-mind, because the doctor wished him to keep his mind quiet.  Now, for

-some reason, Doctor Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future

-upon him.  Why was it unpleasant?  Why had he lost his relish for his

-work?  Had he indeed backslidden?

-

-While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time

-held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as

-though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was

-instituting an inquiry into his own religious state.  Why did he

-shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit?  He had braved much harder

-toil and greater danger.  On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a

-senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would

-devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with

-the preceding.  On inquiring of himself he found that there was no

-circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind,

-except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house.  At first Kike

-Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do

-under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful

-attachment to the family.  Surely gratitude is a generous quality,

-and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him

-under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge?

-And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as

-though he were a brother?  What could be more commendable than that

-he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good?

-

-But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself.  He had

-always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden.  He could not rest now in this

-subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve.

-So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the

-contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another

-and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose

-loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent

-wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of

-whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to.  The

-consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a

-consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of

-pain.

-

-Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught

-the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon

-the forehead of Lumsden.  Then the physician seemed all at once

-satisfied with his medicines.  The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and

-the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.

-

-At this moment Nettie herself came into the room on some errand.

-Kike had heard her wheel stop--had looked toward the door--had caught

-her glance as she came in, and had, in that moment, become aware that

-he was not the only person in love.  Was it, then, that the doctor

-wished to prevent the attachment going further that he had delicately

-reminded his guest of the approach of the time when he must leave?

-These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude of his slow

-convalescence.  Nettie went back to her wheel, and set it humming

-louder than ever, but Kike heard now in its tones some note of

-anxiety that disturbed him.  The doctor came and sat down by him and

-felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had fever, really to add yet

-another link to the chain of evidence that his surmise was correct.

-

-"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much impaired as yours

-cannot recuperate in a few days."

-

-"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious to get to my

-mother's for a rest there, that I may not burden you any longer,

-and----"

-

-"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you think I want to be rid

-of you.  I wish you would stay with me always; I do indeed."

-

-For a moment Kike looked out of the window.  To stay with the doctor

-always would, it seemed to him, be a heaven upon earth.  But had he

-not renounced all thought of a heaven on earth?  Had he not said

-plainly that here he had no abiding place?  Having put his hand to

-the plow, should he look back?

-

-"But I ought not to give up my work."

-

-It was not in this tone that Kike would have spurned such a

-temptation awhile before.

-

-"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I am useful here.  I

-cannot preach a great deal, but I think that I have never done so

-much good as since I began to practice medicine.  I need somebody to

-help me.  I cannot take care of the farm and my practice too.  You

-could look after the farm, and preach every Sunday in the country

-twenty miles round.  You might even study medicine after awhile, and

-take the practice as I grow older.  You will die, if you go on with

-your circuit-riding.  Come and live with me, and be my----assistant."

-The doctor had almost said "my son."  It was in his mind, and Kike

-divined it.

-

-"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to go, "and remember

-that nobody is obliged to kill himself."

-

-And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and tried to see the right;

-and all day long Nettie found occasion to come in on little errands,

-and as often as she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would

-be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as often as she

-went out did he tremble lest he were about to betray the trust

-committed to him.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXII._

-

-THE DECISION.

-

-The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his

-convalescence.  It was wide awake now.  He sat that evening in his

-room trying to see the right way.  According to old Methodist custom

-he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some

-"impression"--that should guide him.

-

-During the great religious excitement of the early part of this

-century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and

-the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a

-ludicrous extent.  It is related that one man retired to the hills

-and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and

-that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah!

-Immersion!"  Various devices were invented for obtaining divine

-direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs.  Lorenzo Dow used

-to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the

-road.  It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all

-ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute,

-or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not

-enlighten or guide the judgment itself.  The opening of a Bible at

-random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan

-movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to

-utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible

-sortilege."

-

-These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of

-heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as

-Kike's.  Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his

-Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or

-remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable

-names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles.  This

-disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith.  Faith like

-Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment.  He prayed again for

-direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas,

-lovest thou me more than these?"  The marked trait in Kike's piety

-was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ.  This

-question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in

-reproach.  He would hesitate no longer.  Love, and life itself,

-should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him.  Then he prayed

-once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about

-leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake.  It

-came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental

-association.  But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or

-of any other law of mental action?  Wesley's sermons and Benson's

-Life of Fletcher constituted his library.  To him it seemed certain

-that this text of scripture was "suggested."  It was a call from

-Christ to give up all for him.  And in the spirit of the sublimest

-self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"

-

-But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide in the evening

-often ebb before morning.  Kike thought himself strong enough to

-begin again to rise at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those

-"rules for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist preacher even

-yet _promises_ to keep.  Following the same rules, he proceeded to

-set apart the first hour for prayer and meditation.  The night before

-all had seemed clear; but now that morning had come and he must soon

-proceed to execute his stern resolve, he found himself full of doubt

-and irresolution.  Such vacillation was not characteristic of Kike,

-but it marked the depth of his feeling for Nettie.  Doubtless, too,

-the enervation of convalescence had to do with it.  Certainly in that

-raw and foggy dawn the forsaking of the paradise of rest and love in

-which he had lingered seemed to require more courage than he could

-muster.  After all, why should he leave?  Might he not be mistaken in

-regard to his duty?  Was he obliged to sacrifice his life?

-

-He conducted his devotions in a state of great mental distraction.

-Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed Pastor which belonged to Dr.

-Morgan lying on the window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some

-light from its stimulating pages.  He remembered that Wesley spoke

-well of Baxter; but he could not fix his mind upon the book.  He kept

-listlessly turning the leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence

-in Latin.  Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that very

-reason his attention was the more readily attracted by the sentence

-in an unknown tongue.  He read it, "_Nec propter vitam, vivendi

-perdere causas_."  He found written in the margin a free rendering:

-"Let us not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth

-living for."  He knelt down now and gave thanks for what seemed to

-him Divine direction.  He had been delivered from a temptation to

-sacrifice the great end of living for the sake of saving his life.

-

-It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife

-and the excellent Jane.  It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to

-Nettie Morgan.  Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling.  She

-did not venture to come to the door.  Kike found her alone in the

-little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned.

-Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand

-coldly for a moment.  But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched

-him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of

-tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie!  God bless you, and keep you

-forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty

-adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back.  He was

-more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this.

-He could never again trust his treacherous heart.

-

-Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks"

-had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with

-people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the

-Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century.  The cabin in

-which his mother lived was very little different from what it was

-when he left it.  The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude;

-the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one

-side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of

-a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon

-the side of his head to leer at you saucily.  The mother received him

-joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he

-had been.  Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the

-fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat

-suspiciously close together.  Brady had long thought of changing his

-state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike,

-whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.

-"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the

-widdy.  But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of

-loife?  And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am.  Did iver

-anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of

-courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of

-a larnt grammairian loike mesilf?  The misfortin' is that Koike don't

-have no wakenisses himsilf.  I wish he had jist one, and thin I

-wouldn't keer.  If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a

-little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure.

-But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould

-coward that I am."

-

-Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the

-thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very

-shapely, suit of jeans.  It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.

-She did not think him fit to go.  But she did not dare to say so.

-How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering

-heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty?  God had laid

-hands on him--the child was hers no longer.  But still she looked her

-heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her

-standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.

-

-And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to

-give him advice--partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any

-"wakeniss" or not.

-

-"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with

-me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a

-praycher.  Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"

-

-"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.

-

-"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're

-born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse

-ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do

-now."

-

-Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity.  The

-remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present

-weakness were fresh in his mind.  He would not again give place to

-the devil.

-

-"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or

-happiness.  We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves

-to the work of Christ.  And see! your head is already blossoming for

-eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."

-

-Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away,

-and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.

-

-"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately.  "Not a

-wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house,

-took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the

-worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on

-general principles when the master was out of humor.

-

-Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie

-Creek circuit?

-

-Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of

-America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men?  The

-highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but

-from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose.  I doubt not

-the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed

-Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus.  Do you think that he

-envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth?

-Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or

-one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could

-imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?

-For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike

-defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and

-dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot,

-with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"

-

-I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to

-electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian

-duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women

-would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and

-say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a

-young man."  "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet

-he talks about it!  I never heerd the beat in all my born days."

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXIII._

-

-RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.

-

-Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the woman.  If Kike is

-happy in his self-abnegation, Patty is not happy in hers.  Pride has

-no balm in it.  However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor

-food.  And Patty has little but pride to feed upon.  The invalid

-mother has now been dead a year, and Patty is almost without

-companionship, though not without suitors.  Land brings

-lovers--land-lovers, if nothing more--and the estate of Patty's

-father is not her only attraction.  She is a young woman of a certain

-nobility of figure and carriage; she is not large, but her bearing

-makes her seem quite commanding.  Even her father respects her, and

-all the more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds

-opportunity.  Patty is thrifty, and in the early West no attraction

-outweighed this wifely ordering of a household.  But Patty will not

-marry any of the suitors who calculate the infirm health of her

-father and the probable division of his estate, and who mentally

-transfer to their future homes the thrift and orderliness they see in

-Captain Lumsden's.  By refusing them all she has won the name of a

-proud girl.  There are times when out of sight of everybody she

-weeps, hardly knowing why.  And since her mother's death she reads

-the prayer-book more than ever, finding in the severe confessions

-therein framed for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of

-the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.

-

-Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers

-him that she refuses to marry.  His hatred of Methodists has assumed

-the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the

-legislature partly by Methodist opposition.  All his love of power

-has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may

-be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts

-him beyond measure.  He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate

-rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her

-fondness for the prayer-book.  Even the prayer-book's earnestness has

-something Methodistic about it.  But Patty has never yet been in a

-Methodist meeting, and with this fact he comforts himself.  He has

-taken pains to buy her jewelry and "artificials" in abundance, that

-he may, by dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from

-temptations to become a Methodist.  For in that time, when fine

-dressing was not common and country neighborhoods were polarized by

-the advent of Methodism in its most aggressive form, every artificial

-flower and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the new sect;

-a well-dressed woman in a congregation was almost a defiance to the

-preacher.  It seemed to Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had

-prophylactic ornaments enough to save her from Methodism.  And to all

-of these he added covert threats that if any child of his should ever

-join these crazy Methodist loons, he would turn him out of doors and

-never see him again.  This threat was always indirect--a remark

-dropped incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown

-quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine, but Patty did

-not fail to comprehend.

-

-[Illustration: THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.]

-

-One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door that out-cast of New

-England--a tin-peddler.  Western people had never heard of Yale

-College or any other glory of Connecticut or New England.  To them it

-was but a land that bred pestilent peripatetic peddlers of tin-ware

-and wooden clocks.  Western rogues would cheat you out of your horse

-or your farm if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of Yankee

-tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said "noo" for new, and

-talked nasally, would work an hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny

-bit."  The tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in at

-Lumsden's door and "made bold" to _in_quire if he could git a night's

-lodging, which the Captain, like other settlers, granted without

-charge.  Having unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse,

-the Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading questions

-about the family and personal history of the Lumsdens, collectively

-and individually.  Having thus taken the first steps toward

-acquaintance by this display of an aggravating interest in the

-welfare of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate and

-truthful accounts--with variations--of his own recent adventures, to

-the boundless amusement of the younger Lumsdens, who laughed more

-heartily at the Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at his

-stories.  He said, among other things, that he had ben to

-Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis' called a "basket

-meetin'."  But when he had proceeded so far with his narrative, he

-prudently stopped and made bold to _in_quire what the Captain thought

-of these Methodists.  The Captain was not slow to express his

-opinion, and the man of tins, having thus reassured himself by taking

-soundings, proceeded to tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks

-to that meetin'.  And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed went

-forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer.  Didn't do no

-pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye, ye know.  Well, ye see, the

-Methodis' they wanted to _in_courage a seeker, and so they all bought

-some tins.  Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands!  (And here

-the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and then the other at

-Patty.)  Fer they was seen a dreffle lot of folks there.  Come to

-hear a young preacher as is 'mazin' elo'kent--Parson Goodwin by name,

-and he was a _good one_ to preach, sartain.

-

-This startled Patty and the Captain.

-

-"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"

-

-"The identikle," said the peddler.

-

-"Raised only half a mile from here," said Lumsden, "and we don't

-think much of him."

-

-"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his sails to Lumsden's

-breezes.  "I calkilate I could preach e'en a'most as well as he does,

-myself, and I wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother.  But he's got a

-good v'ice fer singin'--sich a ring to't, ye see, and he's got a

-smart way thet comes the sympathies over the women folks and

-weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin' at a desp'ate rate.  Was brought

-up here, was he?  Du tell!  He's powerful pop'lar."  Then, catching

-the Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I mean."

-

-"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said the Captain, with a

-chuckle.

-

-"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler, pleased to

-have some information to give.  Seeing that the Captain and his

-daughter were interested in his communication, the peddler paused a

-moment.  A bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part

-with too quickly.

-

-"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware man.  "I heerd say as

-he was a goin' to splice with a gal that could pray like a angel

-afire.  An' I heerd her pray.  She nearly peeled the shingles off the

-skewl-haouse.  Sich another _ex_citement as she perjuced, I never did

-see.  An' I went up to her after meetin' and axed a interest in her

-prayers.  Don't do no harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own

-side!  An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for preachers

-ginerally marry purty faces.  Preachers is a good deal like other

-folks, ef they do purtend to be better, hey?  Well, naow, that Ann

-Elizer Meacham _is_ purty, sartain.  An' everybody says he's goin' to

-marry her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie 'em up next

-Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe.  Then they'll divide the work in

-the middle and go halves.  She'll pray and he'll preach."  At this

-the peddler broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated

-both the Captain and Patty by his news.  He now proposed to sell some

-tinware, thinking he had worked his audience up to the right state of

-mind.

-

-Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at hearing this bit of

-intelligence from Jenkinsville.  What was Morton Goodwin to her?  She

-went around the house as usual this evening, trying to hide all

-appearance of feeling.  She even persuaded her father to buy

-half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets--she smiled at the

-peddler for calling them _pails_.  She was not willing to gratify the

-Captain by showing him how much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee."

-But when she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had lost

-its power to soothe.  She was mortified, vexed, humiliated on every

-hand.  She felt hard and bitter, above all, toward the sect that had

-first made a division between Morton and herself, and cordially

-blamed the Methodists for all her misfortunes.

-

-It happened that upon the very next Sunday Russell Bigelow was to

-preach.  Far and wide over the West had traveled the fame of this

-great preacher, who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in

-his impassioned manner.  "An orator is to be judged not by his

-printed discourses, but by the memory of the effect he has produced,"

-says a French writer; and if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the

-fame that fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely an

-orator of the highest order.  He is known as the "indescribable."

-The news that he was to preach had set the Hissawachee Settlement

-afire with eager curiosity to hear him.  Even Patty declared her

-intention of going, much to the Captain's regret.  The meeting was

-not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods, and she could go for

-this time without entering the house of her father's foe.  She had no

-other motive than a vague hope of hearing something that would divert

-her; life had grown so heavy that she craved excitement of any kind.

-She would take a back seat and hear the famous Methodist for herself.

-But Patty put on all of her gold and costly apparel.  She was

-determined that nobody should suspect her of any intention of

-"joining the church."  Her mood was one of curiosity on the surface,

-and of proud hatred and quiet defiance below.

-

-No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a meeting held in the

-forest; no forest is so satisfying as a forest of beech; the

-wide-spreading boughs--drooping when they start from the trunk, but

-well sustained at the last--stretch out regularly and with a steady

-horizontalness, the last year's leaves form a carpet like a cushion,

-while the dense foliage shuts out the sun.  To this meeting in the

-beech, woods Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile

-away.*  As she passed through a little cove, she saw a man lying flat

-on his face in prayer.  It was the preacher.  Awe-stricken, Patty

-hurried on to the meeting.  She had fully intended to take a seat in

-the rear of the congregation, but being a little confused and

-absent-minded she did not observe at first where the stand had been

-erected, and that she was entering the congregation at the side

-nearest to the pulpit.  When she discovered her mistake it was too

-late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full of standing

-people; there was nothing for her but to take the only vacant seat in

-sight.  This put her in the very midst of the members, and in this

-position she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other

-settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly dressed, for that

-time, sitting in the very midst of the devout sisters--for the men

-and women sat apart.  All around Patty there was not a single

-"artificial," or piece of jewelry.  Indeed, most of the women wore

-calico sunbonnets.  The Hissawachee people who knew her were

-astounded to see Patty at meeting at all.  They remembered her

-treatment of Morton, and they looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and

-Magog incarnated in one.  This sense of the conspicuousness of her

-position was painful to Patty, but she presently forgot herself in

-listening to the singing.  There never was such a chorus as a

-backwoods Methodist congregation, and here among the trees they sang

-hymn after hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with triumphant

-joy, now with solemn earnestness.  They sang "Children of the

-Heavenly King," and "Come let us anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet,

-blow," and "Arise my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of

-grace!"  While they were singing this last, the celebrated preacher

-entered the pulpit, and there ran through the audience a movement of

-wonder, almost of disappointment.  His clothes were of that sort of

-cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did not fit him.  He

-was rather short, and inexpressibly awkward.  His hair hung unkempt

-over the best portion of his face--the broad projecting forehead.

-His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones and chin large.

-His mouth was wide and with a sorrowful depression at the corners,

-his nostrils thin, his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile.  He

-took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,--"Seeking a bride

-for his master," and, according to the custom of the time, he first

-expounded the incident, and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by

-applying it to the soul's marriage to Christ.  Notwithstanding the

-ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness of his postures, there

-was a gentlemanliness about his address that indicated a man not

-unaccustomed to good society.  His words were well-chosen; his

-pronunciation always correct; his speech grammatical.  In all of

-these regards Patty was disappointed.

-

-

-* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the

-accompanying incident.

-

-

-But the sermon.  Who shall describe "the indescribable"?  As the

-servant, he proceeded to set forth the character of the Master.  What

-struck Patty was not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of

-his argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that every divine

-trait which he described had reflected itself in the life of the

-preacher himself.  For none but the manliest of men can ever speak

-worthily of Jesus Christ.  As Bigelow proceeded he won her famished

-heart to Christ.  For such a Master she could live or die; in such a

-life there was what Patty needed most--a purpose; in such a life

-there was a friend; in such a life she would escape that sense of the

-ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the unworthiness of her own

-pride.  All that he said of Christ's love and condescension filled

-her with a sense of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly.

-There were a hundred others as much affected, but the eyes of all her

-neighbors were upon her.  If Patty should be converted, what a

-victory!

-

-And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy of a soul wedded

-forever to Christ--living nobly after the pattern of His life--Patty

-resolved that she would devote herself to this life and this Saviour,

-and rejoiced in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the

-sermon.  Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage and to

-pride--to pride in its best sense.  Who would be ashamed of such a

-Bridegroom?  And as he depicted the trials that some must pass

-through in accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally

-made the sacrifice.  As he described the glory of renouncing the

-world, she thought of her jewelry and the spirit of defiance in which

-she had put it on.  There, in the midst of that congregation, she

-took out her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet.  We

-may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an over-strained

-literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn renunciation of the

-world--the whole-hearted espousal of herself, for all eternity, to

-Him who stands for all that is noblest in life.  Of course this

-action was visible to most of the congregation--most of all to the

-preacher himself.  To the Methodists it was the greatest of triumphs,

-this public conversion of Captain Lumsden's daughter, and they showed

-their joy in many pious ejaculations.  Patty did not seek

-concealment.  She scorned to creep into the kingdom of heaven.  It

-seemed to her that she owed this publicity.  For a moment all eyes

-were turned away from the orator.  He paused in his discourse until

-Patty had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism.  Then,

-turning with tearful eyes to the audience, the preacher, with

-simple-hearted sincerity and inconceivable effect, burst out with,

-"Hallelujah!  I have found a bride for my Master!"

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXIV_

-

-DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.

-

-Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a spectator--having decided

-to risk a new attack of the jerks that he might stand guard over

-Patty.  But Patty was so far forward that he could not see her,

-except now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep over the

-shoulders of some taller man standing in front.  It was only when

-Bigelow uttered these exulting words that he gathered from the

-whispers about him that Patty was the center of excitement.  He

-instantly began to swear and to push through the crowd, declaring

-that he would take Patty home and teach her to behave herself.  The

-excitement which he produced presently attracted the attention of the

-preacher and of the audience.  But Patty was too much occupied with

-the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give any attention to

-it.

-

-"She is my daughter, and she's _got_ to learn to obey," said Lumsden

-in his quick, rasping voice, pushing energetically toward the heart

-of the dense assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by

-force.  Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at the

-moment when her father had forced his way through the fringe of

-standing people that bordered the densely packed congregation, and

-was essaying, in his headlong anger, to reach her and drag her forth.

-

-The Methodists of that day generally took pains to put themselves

-under the protection of the law in order to avoid disturbance from

-the chronic rowdyism of a portion of the people.  There was a

-magistrate and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in penetrating

-the cordon of standing men, had come directly upon the country

-justice, who, though not a Methodist, had been greatly moved by

-Bigelow's oratory, and who, furthermore, was prone, as country

-justices sometimes are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office.  At

-any rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this great

-orator and this assemblage of people had in some sense put themselves

-under the protection of the Majesty of the Law as represented in his

-own important self.  And for Captain Lumsden to come swearing and

-fuming right against his sacred person was not only a breach of the

-law, it was--what the justice considered much worse--a contempt of

-court.  Hence ensued a dialogue:

-

-_The Court_--Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate.  In interrupting the

-worship of Almighty God by this peaceful assemblage you are violating

-the law.  I do not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if

-you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged to vindicate the

-majesty of the law by ordering the constable to arrest you for a

-breach of the peace, as against this assembly.  (J. P. here draws

-himself up to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the

-dignity of the law.)

-

-_Outraged Father_--Squire, I'll have you know that Patty Lumsden's my

-daughter, and I have a right to control her; and you'd better mind

-your own business.

-

-_Justice of the Peace_ (lowering his voice to a solemn and very

-judicial bass)--Is she under eighteen years of age?

-

-_By-stander_ (who doesn't like Lumsden)--She's twenty.

-

-_Justice_--If your daughter is past eighteen, she is of age.  If you

-lay hands on her I'll have to take you up for a salt and battery.  If

-you carry her off I'll take her back on a writ of replevin.  Now,

-Captain, I could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance;

-and if you don't leave the meeting at once I'll do it.

-

-Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever, but a stalwart

-class-leader from another settlement, provoked by the interruption of

-the eloquent sermon and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid

-off his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting Lumsden,

-neck and heels, on his own account.  At the same moment an old sister

-near at hand began to pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him!

-Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like Saul of Tarsus.  O

-Lord, smite the stiff-necked persecutor by almighty power!"

-

-This last was too much for the Captain.  He might have risked arrest,

-he might have faced the herculean class-leader, but he had already

-felt the jerks and was quite superstitious about them.  This prayer

-agitated him.  He was not ambitious to emulate Paul, and he began to

-believe that if he stood still a minute longer he would surely be

-smitten to the ground at the request of the sister with a relish for

-dramatic conversions.  Casting one terrified glance at the old

-sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven, Lumsden broke

-through the surrounding crowd and started toward home at a most

-undignified pace.

-

-Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted during the remainder

-of the sermon by forebodings.  But she had a will as inflexible as

-her father's, and now that her will was backed by convictions of duty

-it was more firmly set than ever.  Bigelow announced that he would

-"open the door of the church," and the excited congregation made the

-forest ring with that hymn of Watts' which has always been the

-recruiting song of Methodism.  The application to Patty's case

-produced great emotion when the singing reached the stanzas:

-

-  "Must I be carried to the skies

-    On flowery beds of ease,

-  While others fought to win the prize

-    And sailed through bloody seas?

-

-  "Are there no foes for me to face?

-    Must I not stem the flood?

-  Is this vile world a friend to grace

-    To help me on to God?"

-

-

-At this point Patty slowly rose from the place where she had been

-sitting weeping, and marched resolutely through the excited crowd

-until she reached the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in

-token of her desire to become a church-member.  While she came

-forward, the congregation sang with great fervor, and not a little

-sensation:

-

-  "Since I must fight if I would reign,

-    Increase my courage, Lord;

-  I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,

-    Supported by thy word."

-

-

-After many had followed Patty's example the meeting closed.  Every

-Methodist shook hands with the new converts, particularly with Patty,

-uttering words of sympathy and encouragement.  Some offered to go

-home with her to keep her in countenance in the inevitable conflict

-with her father, but, with a true delicacy and filial dutifulness,

-Patty insisted on going alone.  There are battles which are fought

-better without allies.

-

-That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and suspense.  As she came

-up to the house she saw her father sitting on the door-step,

-riding-whip in hand.  Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying

-his raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted--a habit having its

-root in a domineering disposition--she was not without apprehension

-that he would use personal violence.  But he was quiet now, from

-extreme anger.

-

-"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on the spot to give up

-this infernal Methodism, or you can't come in here to bring your

-praying and groaning into my ears.  Are you going to give it up?"

-

-"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty.  "You need me.  I can

-stand it, but what will you do when your rheumatism comes on next

-winter?  Do let me stay and take care of you.  I won't bother you

-about my religion."

-

-"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in my house,"

-screamed the father, frantically.  He would have said more, but he

-choked.  "You've disgraced the family," he gasped, after a minute.

-

-Patty stood still, and said no more.

-

-"Will you give up your nonsense about being religious?"

-

-Patty shook her head.

-

-"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an oath he went into

-the house and pulled the latch-string in.  The latch-string was the

-symbol of hospitality.  To say that "the latch-string was out" was to

-open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the most significant

-and inhospitable act Lumsden could perform.  For when the

-latch-string is in, the door is locked.  The daughter was not only to

-be a daughter no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach the

-latch-string was withdrawn.

-

-Patty was full of natural affection.  She turned away to seek a home.

-Where?  She walked aimlessly down the road at first.  She had but one

-thought as she receded from the old house that had been her home from

-infancy----

-

-The latch-string was drawn in.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXV._

-

-ANN ELIZA.

-

-How shall I make you understand this book, reader of mine, who never

-knew the influences that surrounded a Methodist of the old sort.  Up

-to this point I have walked by faith; I could not see how the present

-generation could be made to comprehend the earnestness of their

-grandfathers.  But I have hoped that, none the less, they might dimly

-perceive the possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in

-the bones.

-

-But now?

-

-You have never been a young Methodist preacher of the olden time.

-You never had over you a presiding elder who held your fate in his

-hands; who, more than that, was the man appointed by the church to be

-your godly counsellor.  In the olden time especially, presiding

-elders were generally leaders of men, the best and greatest men that

-the early Methodist ministry afforded; greatest in the qualities most

-prized in ecclesiastical organization--practical shrewdness,

-executive force, and a piety of unction and lustre.  How shall I make

-you understand the weight which the words of such a man had when he

-thought it needful to counsel or admonish a young preacher?

-

-Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value as an organizer, had

-been made an "elder," and just now he thought it his duty to have a

-solemn conversation with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville

-circuit, upon matters of great delicacy.  Magruder was not a man of

-nice perceptions, and he was dimly conscious of his own unfitness for

-the task before him.  It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting.

-He had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would like to have a

-word with him, and they were walking side by side through the woods.

-Neither of them looked at the other.  The "elder" was trying in vain

-to think of a point at which to begin; the young preacher was

-wondering what the elder would say.

-

-"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother," said Magruder,

-desperately.

-

-When they had sat down there was a pause.

-

-"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother Goodwin?" he broke out

-abruptly at last.

-

-"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly, not disposed to help

-the presiding elder out of his difficulty.  Then he added: "But not

-thinking it a profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my

-thoughts to other things."

-

-"Ahem!  But have you not taken some steps toward matrimony without

-consulting with your brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"

-

-"No, sir."

-

-"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you have done a great wrong

-to a defenceless girl, who is a stranger in a strange land."

-

-"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?" asked Morton, startled by the

-solemnity with which the presiding elder spoke.

-

-"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the matter to guess who the

-person is.  You have encouraged her to think that you meant to marry

-her.  If I am correctly informed, you even advised Holston, who was

-her lover, not to annoy her any more, and you assumed to defend her

-rights in the lawsuit about a piece of land.  Whether you meant to

-marry her or not, you have at least compromised her.  And in such

-circumstances there is but one course open to a Christian or a

-gentleman."  The elder spoke severely.

-

-[Illustration: ANN ELIZA.]

-

-"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth," said Morton,

-rising and speaking with vehemence.  "I have been very much struck

-with the eloquence of Sister Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or

-speaks in love-feast.  I did not mean to marry anybody.  I have

-always defended the poor and the helpless.  She told me her history

-one day, and I felt sorry for her.  I determined to befriend her."

-Here Morton paused in some embarrassment, not knowing just how to

-proceed.

-

-"Befriend a woman!  That is the most imprudent thing in the world for

-a minister to do, my dear brother.  You cannot befriend a woman

-without doing harm."

-

-"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to give it to her.

-She told me that she had refused Bob Holston five times, and that he

-kept troubling her.  I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated with

-him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the country and said that

-I told him I was engaged to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he

-didn't let her alone.  What I did tell him was, that I was Ann

-Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I thought, as a

-gentleman, he ought to take five refusals as sufficient, and not wait

-till he was knocked down by refusals."

-

-"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take up a woman's cause

-that way, you have got to marry her or ruin her and yourself, too.

-If you were not a minister you might have a female friend or two; and

-you might help a woman in distress.  But you are a sheep in the midst

-of--of--wolves.  Half the girls on this circuit would like to marry

-you, and if you were to help one of them over the fence, or hold her

-bridle-rein for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five minutes

-with her about the turnip crop, she would consider herself next thing

-to engaged.  Now, as to Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to

-gossip over the whole circuit."

-

-"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising indignation.

-

-"Why, everybody.  I hadn't more than touched the circuit at Boggs'

-Corners till I heard that you were to be married at this very

-Quarterly Meeting.  And I felt a little grieved that you should go so

-far without any consultation with me.  I stopped at Sister

-Sims's--she's Ann Eliza's aunt I believe--and told her that I

-supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require my aid pretty

-soon, and she burst into tears.  She said that if there had been

-anything between you and Ann Eliza, it must be broken off, for you

-hadn't stopped there at all on your last round.  Now tell me the

-plain truth, brother.  Did you not at one time entertain a thought of

-marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"

-

-"I have thought about it.  She is good-looking and I could not be

-with her without liking her.  Then, too, everybody said that she was

-cut out for a preacher's wife.  But I never paid her any attention

-that could be called courtship.  I stopped going there because

-somebody had bantered me about her.  I was afraid of talk.  I will

-not deny that I was a little taken with her, at first, but when I

-thought of marrying her I found that I did not love her as one ought

-to love a wife--as much as I had once loved somebody else.  And then,

-too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry have to locate

-sooner or later, and I don't want to give up the ministry.  I think

-it's hard if a man cannot help a girl in distress without being

-forced to marry her."

-

-"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter further," said

-the elder, who was more than ever convinced by Morton's admissions

-that he had acted reprehensibly.  "I have confidence in you.  You

-have done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not.  There is only

-one way of making the thing right.  It's a bad thing for a preacher

-to have a broken heart laid at his door.  Now I tell you that I don't

-know anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than Sister

-Meacham.  If the case stands as it does now I may have to object to

-the passage of your character at the next conference."

-

-This last was an awful threat.  In that time when the preachers lived

-far apart, the word of a presiding elder was almost enough to ruin a

-man.  But instead of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly

-stubborn.  If the elder and the conference could be so unjust he

-would bear the consequences, but would never submit.

-

-The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house, and the

-presiding elder accordingly preached in the grove.  All the time of

-his preaching Morton Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the

-zealous Ann Eliza were there.  But no Ann Eliza appeared.  Nothing

-but grief could thus keep her away from the meeting.  The more Morton

-meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel.  He had acted from

-the highest motives.  He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt--the

-weak-looking Sister Sims--had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness

-the appearance of courtship.  How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann

-Eliza of any design?  Old ministers know better than to trust

-implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people.

-There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and

-fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves.

-Intrigue is one of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks--a small

-but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of Mansoul under an

-alias.

-

-A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from other people.  He

-was conscious that Magruder's confidence in him was weakened, and it

-seemed to him that all the brethren and sisters looked at him

-askance.  When he came to make the concluding prayer he had a sense

-of hollowness in his devotions, and he really began to suspect that

-he might be a hypocrite.

-

-In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and in the presence of

-class-leaders, stewards, local preachers and exhorters from different

-parts of the circuit, the once popular preacher felt that he had

-somehow lost caste.  He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which

-the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for three months

-of labor; and small as was the amount, the scrupulous and now morbid

-Morton doubted whether he were fairly entitled to it.  Sometimes he

-thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience by marrying

-Ann Eliza with or without love.  But his whole proud, courageous

-nature rebelled against submitting to marry under compulsion of

-Magruder's threat.

-

-At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and he got on but

-poorly.  He looked in vain for Miss Ann Eliza Meacham.  She was not

-there to go through the audience and with winning voice persuade

-those who were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's bench

-for prayer.  She was not there to pray audibly until every heart

-should be shaken.  Morton was not the only person who missed her.  So

-famous a "working Christian" could not but be a general favorite; and

-the people were not slow to divine the cause of her absence.  Brother

-Goodwin found the faces of his brethren averted, and the grasp of

-their hands less cordial.  But this only made him sulky and stubborn.

-He had never meant to excite Sister Meacham's expectations, and he

-would not be driven to marry her.

-

-The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting saw all the roads

-crowded with people.  Everybody was on horseback, and almost every

-horse carried "double."  At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast

-began in the large school-house.  No one was admitted who did not

-hold a ticket, and even of those who had tickets some were turned

-away on account of their naughty curls, their sinful "artificials,"

-or their wicked ear-rings.  At the moment when the love-feast began

-the door was locked, and no tardy member gained admission.  Plates,

-with bread cut into half-inch cubes, were passed round, and after

-these glasses of water, from which each sipped in turn--this meagre

-provision standing ideally for a feast.  Then the speaking was opened

-by some of the older brethren, who were particularly careful as to

-dates, announcing, for instance, that it would be just thirty-seven

-years ago the twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke

-peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at the mourner's

-bench in Logan's school-house on the banks of the South Fork of the

-Roanoke River in Old Virginny."  This statement the brethren had

-heard for many years, with a proper variation in date as the time

-advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted it again with pious

-ejaculations of thanksgiving.  There was a sameness in the

-perorations of these little speeches.  Most of the old men wound up

-by asking an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their

-"last days might be their best days," and that their "path might grow

-brighter and brighter unto the perfect day."  Soon the elder sisters

-began to speak of their trials and victories, of their "ups and

-downs," their "many crooked paths," and the religion that "happifies

-the soul."  With their pathetic voices the fire spread, until the

-whole meeting was at a white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!"

-"Bless the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the fervor of

-feeling.  Of course, you, sitting out of the atmosphere of it and

-judging coldly, laugh at this indecorous fervor.  Perhaps it is just

-as well to laugh, but for my part I cannot.  I know too well how deep

-and vital were the emotions out of which came these utterances of

-simple and earnest hearts.  I find it hard to get over an early

-prejudice that piety is of more consequence than propriety.

-

-Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza.  If she were present he

-could hardly tell it.  Make the bonnets of women cover their faces

-and make them all alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting

-forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a uniform of

-homespun cotton, and there is not much individuality left.  If Ann

-Eliza Meacham were present she would, according to custom, speak

-early; and all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and

-eloquent utterances.  So when the speaking and singing had gone on

-for an hour, and the voice of Sister Meacham was not heard, Morton

-sadly concluded that she must have remained at home, heart-broken on

-account of disappointment at his neglect.  In this he was wrong.

-Just at that moment a sister rose in the further corner of the room

-and began to speak in a low and plaintive voice.  It was Ann Eliza.

-But how changed!

-

-She proceeded to say that she had passed through many fiery trials in

-her life.  Of late she had been led through deep waters of

-temptation, and the floods of affliction had gone over her soul.

-(Here some of the brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at

-Brother Goodwin.)  The devil had tempted her to stay at home.  He had

-tempted her to sit silent this morning, telling her that her voice

-would only discourage others.  But at last she had got the victory

-and received strength to bear her cross.  With this, her voice rose

-and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph to the end.  Morton was

-greatly affected, not because her affliction was universally laid at

-his door, but because he now began to feel, as he had not felt

-before, that he had indeed wrought her a great injury.  As she stood

-there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved her.  He pitied her;

-and Pity lives on the next floor below Love.

-

-As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader think too meanly of

-her.  She had resolved to "catch" Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment

-she saw him.  But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the

-rights which the highest civilization accords to woman is that of

-"bringing down" the chosen man if she can.  Ann Eliza was not

-consciously hypocritical.  Her deep religious feeling was genuine.

-She had a native genius for devotion--and a genius for devotion is as

-much a natural gift as a genius for poetry.  Notwithstanding her

-eloquence and her rare talent for devotion, her gifts in the

-direction of honesty and truthfulness were few and feeble.  A

-phrenologist would have described such a character as possessing

-"Spirituality and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small."

-You have seen such people, and the world is ever prone to rank them

-at first as saints, afterwards as hypocrites; for the world

-classifies people in gross--it has no nice distinctions.  Ann Eliza,

-like most people of the oratorical temperament, was not

-over-scrupulous in her way of producing effects.  She could sway her

-own mind as easily as she could that of others.  In the case of

-Morton, she managed to believe herself the victim of misplaced

-confidence.  She saw nothing reprehensible either in her own or her

-aunt's manœuvering.  She only knew that she had been bitterly

-disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through whom the

-disappointment had come.

-

-Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards of his time.  Such

-genuine fervor was, in his estimation, evidence of a high state of

-piety.  One "who lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist

-phrase, must be honest and pure and good.  So Morton reasoned.  He

-had wounded such an one.  He owed reparation.  In marrying Ann Eliza

-he would be acting generously, honestly and wisely, according to the

-opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority he knew.  For

-in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get the most saintly of wives, the most

-zealous of Christians, the most useful of women.  So when Mr.

-Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the service to put

-away every sin out of their hearts before they ventured to take the

-communion, Morton, with many tears, resolved to atone for all the

-harm he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, and to

-marry her--if the Lord should open the way.

-

-But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion.  His high spirit

-resented the threat of the presiding elder.  He would not be driven

-into marriage.  In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed the

-night.  But Magruder being a shrewd man, guessed the state of

-Morton's feelings, and perceived his own mistake.  As he mounted his

-horse on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted eyes, ready to bid

-an official farewell to his presiding elder, but not ready to give

-his usual cordial adieu to Brother Magruder.

-

-"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with sincere pity,

-"forgive me; I ought not to have spoken as I did.  I know you will do

-right, and I had no right to threaten you.  Be a man; that is all.

-Live above reproach and act like a Christian.  I am sorry you have

-involved yourself.  It is better not to marry, maybe, though I have

-always maintained that a married man can live in the ministry if he

-is careful and has a good wife.  Besides, Sister Meacham has some

-land."

-

-So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little distance.  Then he

-turned back and said:

-

-"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden to take his place on

-Peterborough circuit till Conference.  I suppose some young exhorter

-can be found to take Lumsden's place as second man on Pottawottomie

-Creek, and Peterborough is too important a place to be left vacant."

-

-"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton, coldly.

-

-"Oh!  I hope he will.  Peterborough isn't much more unhealthy than

-Pottawottomie Creek.  A little more intermittent fever, maybe.  But

-it is the best I can do.  The work is everything.  The men are the

-Lord's.  Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose him,

-though.  He'll stop and see you as he comes through, I suppose.  I

-think I'd better give you the plan of his circuit, which I got the

-other day."  After adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the

-two preachers parted again.

-

-Morton mounted Dolly.  The day was far advanced, and he had an

-appointment to preach that very evening at the Salt Fork

-school-house.  He had never yet failed to suffer from a disturbance

-of some sort when he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and

-having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was sure of a

-perilous encounter.  But now the prospect of fighting with the wild

-beasts of Salt Fork was almost enchanting.  It would divert him from

-graver apprehensions.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXVI._

-

-ENGAGEMENT.

-

-You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of mind as he rides

-toward Salt Fork, weighing considerations of right and wrong, of duty

-and disinclination, in the balance.  He is not an epic hero, for epic

-heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by intuition just what

-is right, or they are like Milton's Satan, unencumbered with a sense

-of duty.  But Morton was neither infallible nor a devil.  A man of

-sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a woman's heart

-without compunction.

-

-When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met by Burchard, now sheriff

-of the county, and warned that he would be attacked.  Burchard begged

-him to turn back.  Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice and

-time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been under such

-obligations to him, and had not been touched by this new evidence of

-his friendship.  But Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his

-life.

-

-"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard," he said, "and I

-will do it or die."

-

-Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could not get rid of his

-love affair.  He was touched to find lying on the desk in the

-school-house a little unsigned billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting,

-uttering a warning similar to that just given by Burchard.

-

-It was with some tremor that he looked round, in the dim light of two

-candles, upon the turbulent faces between him and the door.  His

-prayer and singing were a little faint.  But when once he began to

-preach, his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice rose

-above all the shuffling sounds of disorder.  The interruptions,

-however, soon became so distinct that he dared not any longer ignore

-them.  Then he paused in his discourse and looked at the rioters

-steadily.

-

-"You think you will scare me.  It is my business to rebuke sin.  I

-tell you that you are a set of ungodly ruffians and law breakers.  I

-tell your neighbors here that they are miserable cowards.  They let

-lawless men trample on them.  I say, shame on them!  They ought to

-organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."

-

-Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a horse-pistol.  Morton

-turned pale; but something in his warm, Irish blood impelled him to

-proceed.  "I called you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily.  "Now

-I tell you that you are cut-throats.  If you kill me here to-night, I

-will show your neighbors that it is better to die like a man than to

-live like a coward.  The law will yet be put in force whether you

-kill me or not.  There are some of you that would belong to Micajah

-Harp's gang of robbers if you dared.  But you are afraid; and so you

-only give information and help to those who are no worse, only a

-little braver than you are."

-

-[Illustration: FACING A MOB.]

-

-Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him too far.  He now saw

-that his denunciation had degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt

-had provoked his enemies beyond measure.  He had been foolhardy; for

-what good could it do for him to throw away his life in a row?  There

-was murder in the eyes of the ruffians.  Half-a-dozen pistols were

-cocked in quick succession and he caught the glitter of knives.  A

-hasty consultation was taking place in the back part of the room, and

-the few Methodists near him huddled together like sheep.  If he

-intended to save his life there was no time to spare.  The address

-and presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood did not

-fail him now.  It would not do to seem to quail.  Without lowering

-his fiercely indignant tone, he raised his right hand and demanded

-that honest citizens should rally to his support and put down the

-riot.  His descending hand knocked one of the two candles from the

-pulpit in the most accidental way in the world.  Starting back

-suddenly, he managed to upset, and extinguish the other just at the

-instant when the infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon

-him.  The room was thus made totally dark.  Morton plunged into the

-on-coming crowd.  Twice he was seized and interrogated, but he

-changed his voice and avoided detection.  When at last the crowd gave

-up the search and began to leave the house, he drifted with them into

-the outer darkness and rain.  Once upon Dolly he was safe from any

-pursuit.

-

-When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond danger, Morton was in

-better spirits than at any time since the elder's solemn talk on the

-preceding Saturday.  He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and

-of a sense of triumph.  So bold a speech, and so masterly an escape

-as he had made could not but demoralize men like the Salt Forkers.

-He laughed a little at himself for talking about dying and then

-running away, but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity

-to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression of these

-lawless gangs.  He would himself head a party against them if

-necessary.

-

-This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression as his mind

-reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's writing.  How thoughtful in her

-to send it!  How delicate she was in not signing it!  How forgiving

-must her temper be!  What a stupid wretch he was to attract her

-affection, and now what a perverse soul he was to break her devoted

-heart!

-

-This was the light in which Morton saw the situation.  A more

-suspicious man might have reasoned that Ann Eliza probably knew no

-more of Goodwin's peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the

-neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous thrusting of

-herself on his attention.  A suspicious person would have reasoned

-that her delicacy in not signing the note was only a pretense, since

-Morton had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in the

-affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her.  But Morton was

-not suspicious.  How could he be suspicious of one upon whom the Lord

-had so manifestly poured out his Spirit?  Besides, the suspicious

-view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann Eliza did love

-Morton almost to distraction, and had entertained the liveliest

-apprehensions of hie peril at Salt Fork.

-

-But with however much gratitude he might regard Ann Eliza's action,

-Morton Goodwin could not quite bring himself to decide on marriage.

-He could not help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had

-discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house, nor could he

-help contrasting that strong love with the feebleness of the best

-affection he could muster for the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann

-Eliza Meacham.

-

-But as he proceeded round the circuit it became more and more evident

-to Morton that he had suffered in reputation by his cool treatment of

-Miss Meacham.  Elderly people love romance, and they could not

-forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way they wished.

-They felt that nothing could be so appropriate as the marriage of a

-popular preacher with so zealous a woman.  It was a shock to their

-sense of poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the only

-fitting denouement.  So that between people who were disappointed at

-the come-out, and young men who were jealous of the general

-popularity of the youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had

-visibly declined.  Nevertheless there was quite a party of young

-women who approved of his course.  He had found the minx out at last!

-

-One of the results of the Methodist circuit system, with its great

-quarterly meetings, was the bringing of people scattered over a wide

-region into a sort of organic unity and a community of feeling.  It

-widened the horizon.  It was a curious and, doubtless, also a

-beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of half-civilized

-territory called Jenkinsville circuit there was now a common topic

-for gossip and discussion.  When Morton reached the very northernmost

-of his forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped from the

-excitement.

-

-"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat at breakfast,

-"whatever folks may say, I am sure you had a perfect right to give up

-Sister Meacham.  A man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her

-out.  _I_ don't think it would take a smart man like you long to find

-out that Sister Meacham isn't all she pretends to be.  I have heard

-some things about her standing in Pennsylvania.  I guess you found

-them out."

-

-"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said Morton, as soon as he

-could recover from the shock, and interrupt the stream of Sister

-Sharp's talk.

-

-"Everybody thought you did."

-

-"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding out anything, I can

-tell you that Sister Meacham is, I believe, one of the best and most

-useful Christians in the world."

-

-"That's what everybody thought," replied the other, maliciously,

-"until you quit off going with her so suddenly.  People have thought

-different since."

-

-This shot took effect.  Morton could bear that people should slander

-him.  But, behold! a crop of slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely

-to grow out of his mistake.  In the midst of a most unheroic and, as

-it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and perplexity, he came at

-last to Mount Zion meeting-house.  It was here that Ann Eliza

-belonged, and here he must decide whether he would still leave her to

-suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of his own good name,

-or make a marriage which, to those wiser than he, seemed in every way

-advisable.  Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day.  When once the

-benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved to free himself from

-remorse and obloquy by the only honorable course.  He would ride over

-to Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself to Ann Eliza.

-

-Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister Meacham's true

-character that made him hesitate?  Or was it that a pure-hearted man

-always shrinks from marriage without love?  He reined his horse at

-the road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed the

-hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion class, instead of

-receiving Sister Sims's welcome.  He intended by this means to

-postpone his decision till afternoon.

-

-Out of the frying-pan into the fire!  The leader took Brother Goodwin

-aside and informed him that Sister Ann Eliza was very ill.  She might

-never recover.  It was understood that she was slowly dying of a

-broken heart.

-

-Morton could bear no more.  To have made so faithful a person, who

-had even interfered to save his life, suffer in her spirit was bad

-enough; to have brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her

-outright was ingratitude and murder.  He wondered at his own

-stupidity and wickedness.  He rode in haste to Sister Sims's.  Ann

-Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously ill, and was ill more of a

-malarious fever than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and

-disappointment had much to do with it.  Morton, convinced that he was

-the author of her woes, felt more tenderness to her in her emaciation

-than he had ever felt toward her in her beauty.  He could not profess

-a great deal of love, so he contented himself with expressing his

-gratitude for the Salt Fork warning.  Explanations about the past

-were awkward, but fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk

-much on exciting subjects.  Besides, she did not seem to be very

-exacting.  Morton's offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness

-that annoyed him.  When he rode away to his next appointment, he did

-not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected

-to.  He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty

-would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances,

-and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted.  And yet, one must not

-expect all qualities in one person.  What could be finer than Ann

-Eliza's lustrous piety?  She was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second

-Mrs. Fletcher, maybe.  And how much she must love him to pine away

-thus!  And how forgiving she was!

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXVII._

-

-THE CAMP MEETING.

-

-The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's life did not allow

-Morton much opportunity for the society of the convalescent Ann

-Eliza.  Fortunately.  For when he was with her out of meeting he

-found her rather dull.  To all expression of religious sentiment and

-emotion she responded sincerely and with unction; to Morton's highest

-aspirations for a life of real self-sacrifice she only answered with

-a look of perplexity.  She could not understand him.  He was "so

-queer," she said.

-

-But people whose lives are joined ought to make the best of each

-other.  Ann Eliza loved Morton, and because she loved him she could

-endure what seemed to her an unaccountable eccentricity.  If Goodwin

-found himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the highest

-qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting that all women were

-probably deficient in these regards.  For men generalize about women,

-not from many but from one.  And men, being egotists, suffer a

-woman's love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins.  And then

-Morton took refuge in other people's opinions.  Everybody thought

-that Sister Meacham was just the wife for him.  It is pleasant to

-have the opinion of all the world on your side where your own heart

-is doubtful.

-

-Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted through the mind of

-Morton Goodwin and gave him a moment of fright.  But Patty was one of

-the things of this world which he had solemnly given up.  Of her

-conversion he had not heard.  Mails were few and postage cost a

-silver quarter on every letter; with poor people, correspondence was

-an extravagance not to be thought of except on the occasion of a

-death or wedding.  At farthest, one letter a year was all that might

-be afforded.  As it was, Morton was neither very happy nor very

-miserable as he rode up to the New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant

-midsummer afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.

-

-Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable entertainment.  So earnest and

-gifted a Christian as she was always welcome; and now that she held a

-mortgage on the popular preacher every tent on the ground would have

-been honored by her presence.  Morton found a lodging in the

-preacher's tent, where one bed, larger, transversely, than that of

-the giant Og, was provided for the collective repose of the

-preachers, of whom there were half-a-dozen present.  It was always a

-solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping of sheets,

-blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who made this bed gave a

-cross-wise continuity to the bed-clothing.

-

-This meeting was held just six weeks after the quarterly meeting

-spoken of in the last chapter.  Goodwin's circuit lay on the west

-bank of the Big Wiaki River, and this camp-meeting was held on the

-east bank of that stream.

-

-It was customary for all the neighboring preachers to leave their

-circuits and lend their help in a camp-meeting.  All detached parties

-were drawn in to make ready for a pitched battle.  Morton had, in his

-ringing voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick wit,

-rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and, as the nearest

-preacher, he was, of course, expected to help.

-

-The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to Jonesville circuit

-had gone after the zealous itinerant like "an arrow after a wild

-goose," and he had only received it in season to close his affairs on

-Pottawottomie Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on his way to

-his new work.  His emaciated face smote Morton's heart with terror.

-The old comrade thought that the death which Kike all but longed for

-could not be very far away.  And even now the zealous and austere

-young man was so eager to reach his circuit of Peterborough that he

-would only consent to tarry long enough to preach on the first

-evening.  His voice was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in

-the uproar of a mob that had come determined to make an end of the

-meeting.

-

-So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from Jenkinsville and

-Salt Fork that the brethren were demoralized.  After the close of the

-service they gathered in groups debating whether or not they should

-give up the meeting.  But two invincible men stood in the pulpit

-looking out over the scene.  Without a thought of surrendering,

-Magruder and Morton Goodwin were consulting in regard to police

-arrangements.

-

-"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have the sheriff here in

-the morning.  I am afraid he hasn't got back-bone enough to handle

-these fellows.  Do you know him?"

-

-"Burchard?  Yes; I've known him two or three years."

-

-Morton could not help liking the man who had so generously forgiven

-his gambling debt, but he had reason to believe that a sheriff who

-went to Brewer's Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his

-political alliances.

-

-"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to spare you from

-preaching and exhorting, but you must take charge of the police and

-keep order."

-

-"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.

-

-"Why?"

-

-"If I am in command there'll be a fight.  I don't believe in letting

-rowdies run over you.  If you put me in authority, and give me the

-law to back me, somebody'll be hurt before morning.  The rowdies hate

-me and I am not fond of them.  I've wanted such a chance at these

-Jenkinsville and Salt Fork fellows ever since I've been on the

-circuit."

-

-"I wish you _would_ clean them out," said the sturdy old elder, the

-martial fire shining from under his shaggy brows.

-

-Morton soon had the brethren organized into a police.  Every man was

-to carry a heavy club; some were armed with pistols to be used in an

-emergency.  Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot.

-Goodwin said that his father had fought King George, and he would not

-be ruled by a mob.  By such fannings of the embers of revolutionary

-patriotism he managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.

-

-At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and sent out scouts.

-Platforms of poles, six feet high and covered with earth, stood on

-each side of the stand or pulpit.  On these were bright fires which

-threw their light over the whole space within the circle of tents.

-Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons covered with cotton

-cloth, in which slept people from a distance who had no other

-shelter.  In this outer darkness Morton, as military dictator, had

-ordered other platforms erected, and on these fires were now kindling.

-

-The returning scouts reported at midnight that the ruffians, seeing

-the completeness of the preparations, had left the camp-ground.

-Goodwin was the only man who was indisposed to trust this treacherous

-truce.  He immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away than

-before on every road leading to the ground, with instructions to let

-him know instantly, if any body of men should be seen approaching.

-

-From Morton's previous knowledge of the people, he was convinced that

-in the mob were some men more than suspected of belonging to Micajah

-Harp's gang of thieves.  Others were allies of the gang--of that

-class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and a wholesome

-fear of the law, but whose protection and assistance is the right

-foot upon which every form of brigandage stands.  Besides these there

-were the reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from a love

-of mischief for its own sake; men who were not yet thieves, but from

-whose ranks the bands of thieves were recruited.  With these last

-Morton's history gave him a certain sympathy.  As the classes

-represented by the mob held the balance of power in the politics of

-the county, Morton knew that he had not much to hope from a trimmer

-such as Burchard.

-

-About four o'clock in the morning one of the mounted sentinels who

-had been posted far down the road came riding in at full speed, with

-intelligence that the rowdies were coming in force from the direction

-of Jenkinsville.  Goodwin had anticipated this, and he immediately

-awakened his whole reserve, concentrating the scattered squads and

-setting them in ambush on either side of the wagon track that led to

-the camp-ground.  With a dozen mounted men well armed with clubs, he

-took his own stand at a narrow place where the foliage on either side

-was thickest, prepared to dispute the passage to the camp.  The men

-in ambush had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as soon as the

-fight should begin in front.  It was a simple piece of strategy

-learned of the Indians.

-

-The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders, coming round a

-curve, caught sight of Morton and his right hand man.  Then there was

-a surprised reining up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge

-on the other.  At the first blow Goodwin felled his man, and the

-riderless horse ran backward through the ranks.  The mob was taken by

-surprise, and before the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to

-his men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both flanks.  The

-rowdies fought hard, but from the beginning the victory of the guard

-was assured by the advantage of ambush and surprise.  The only

-question to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had ordered

-the arrest of every man that the guard could bring in.  But so sturdy

-was the fight that only three were taken.  One of the guard received

-a bad flesh wound from a pistol shot.  Goodwin did not give up

-pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash into the river

-opposite Jenkinsville.  He then rode back, and as it was getting

-light threw himself upon one side of the great bunk in the preachers'

-tent, and slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the pulpit

-for the eight o'clock preaching.

-

-When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that day he was evidently

-frightened at the earnestness of Morton's defence.  Burchard was one

-of those politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a

-compromise with a typhoon.  He was in a strait between his fear of

-the animosity of the mob and his anxiety to please the Methodists.

-Goodwin, taking advantage of this latter feeling, got himself

-appointed a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he

-secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those whom he knew to

-be leaders.  Then he summoned his guard as a posse, and, having thus

-put law on his side, he announced that if the ruffians came again the

-guard must follow him until they were entirely subdued.

-

-Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly that such extreme

-measures would cost his life.  Some of these men belonged to Harp's

-band, and he would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of the

-gang.  "Don't throw away your life," entreated Burchard.

-

-"That's what life is for," said Morton.  "If a man's life is too good

-to throw away in fighting the devil, it isn't worth having."  Goodwin

-said this in a way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice.

-But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could not help thinking that

-if Patty were in place of Ann Eliza, Morton might think life good for

-something else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.

-

-As there was every sign of an approaching riot during the evening

-service, and as no man could manage the tempest so well as Brother

-Goodwin, he was appointed to preach.  A young theologian of the

-present day would have drifted helpless on the waves of such a mob.

-When one has a congregation that listens because it ought to listen,

-one can afford to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen

-when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in the world

-for an orator.  It will teach him methods of homiletic arrangement

-which learned writers on Sacred Rhetoric have never dreamed of.

-

-The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's tall figure

-appeared in the stand.  Frontier-men are very susceptible to physical

-effects, and there was a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well

-calculated to impress them.  Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power of

-his mind and body was at its best in the presence of a storm.  He

-knew better than to take a text.  He must surprise the mob into

-curiosity.

-

-"There is a man standing back in the crowd there," he began, pointing

-his finger in a certain direction where there was much disorder, and

-pausing until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny story I

-once heard."  At this point the turbulent sons of Belial, who loved

-nothing so much as a funny story, concluded to postpone their riot

-until they should have their laugh.  Laugh they did, first at one

-funny story, and then at another--stories with no moral in

-particular, except the moral there is in a laugh.  Brother Mellen,

-who sat behind Morton, and who had never more than half forgiven him

-for not coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a meeting,

-was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the pulpit, but Magruder,

-the presiding elder, was delighted.  He laughed at each story, and

-laughed loud enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the senior's

-approval of his drollery.  But somehow--the crowd did not know

-how,--at some time in his discourse--the Salt Fork rowdies did not

-observe when,--Morton managed to cease his drollery without

-detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of

-laughter.  The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping their curiosity

-perpetually excited, Goodwin did not give them time to rally at all.

-Whenever an interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the

-ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so gain the

-sympathy of the rough crowd who were habituated to laugh on the side

-of the winner in all rude tournaments of body or mind.  Knowing

-perfectly well that he would have to fight before the night was over,

-Morton's mind was stimulated to its utmost.  If only he could get the

-religious interest agoing, he might save some of these men instead of

-punishing them.  His soul yearned over the people.  His oratory at

-last swept out triumphant over everything; there was weeping and

-sobbing; some fell in uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in

-terror.  Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton described

-how, step by step, a young man was led from bad to worse, and then

-recited his own experience.  At last there was the utmost excitement.

-As soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the point of

-confusion, the rioters broke the spell of Morton's speech and began

-their disturbance.  Goodwin immediately invited the penitents into

-the enclosed pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space was

-filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and groans made the woods

-resound.  But at the same moment the rioters increased their noisy

-demonstrations, and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell

-them, descended from the pulpit and took command of his camp-meeting

-police.

-

-Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway enough to have

-necessitated the severest measures if it had not been for Mr. Mellen.

-As soon as he detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the

-effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it.  He did not ask

-permission of the presiding elder, as he was in duty bound to do, but

-as soon as there was a pause in the singing he began to exhort.  His

-style was violently aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob.

-He began with the true old Homeric epithets of early Methodism,

-exploding them like bomb-shells.  "You are hair-hung and

-breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.

-

-"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to the infinite

-amusement of the rest.

-

-[Illustration: "HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN."]

-

-For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind of religious aqua

-fortis upon the turbulent crowd, which grew more and more turbulent

-under his inflammatory treatment.  Finding himself likely to be

-defeated, he turned toward Goodwin and demanded that the camp-meeting

-police should enforce order.  But Morton was contemplating a

-master-stroke that should annihilate the disorder in one battle, and

-he was not to be hurried into too precipitate an attack.

-

-Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as small doses of

-nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation, he thought it necessary

-to administer stronger ones.  "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and

-when you get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to roast

-your souls in!"

-

-"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled ruffians, and Brother

-Mellen gave up the fight, reproaching Morton hotly for not

-suppressing the mob.  "I thought you was a man," he said.

-

-"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said Goodwin, savagely.

-"Do you get a club and ride by my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am

-sure you are a man."

-

-Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all the while at

-Morton's tardiness.

-

-"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.

-

-But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt internal

-maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.

-

-Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should report to him the

-first attempt at concentration on the part of the rowdies.  He had

-not been deceived by their feints in different parts of the camp, but

-had drawn his men together.  He knew that there was some directing

-head to the mob, and that the only effectual way to beat it was to

-beat it in solid form.

-

-At last a young man came running to where Goodwin stood, saying:

-"They're tearing down a tent."

-

-"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting deliberately.

-"Catch all you can, boys.  Don't shoot if you can help it.  Keep

-close together.  We have got to ride all night."

-

-He had increased his guard by mustering in every able-bodied man,

-except such as were needed to conduct the meetings.  Most of these

-men were Methodists, but they were all frontiermen who knew that

-peace and civilization have often to be won by breaking heads.  By

-the time this guard started the camp was in extreme confusion; women

-were running in every direction, children were crying and men were

-stoutly denouncing Goodwin for his tardiness.

-

-Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two parts, he sent one

-half round the outside of the camp-ground in one direction, while he

-rode with the other to attack the mob on the other side.  The

-foot-police were sent through the circle to attack them in a third

-direction.

-

-As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw the mob off their

-guard.  They had demolished one tent and, in great exultation, had

-begun on another, when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two

-sides, dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their ironwood and

-hickory clubs.  Then the footmen charged them in front, and the mob

-were forced to scatter and mount their horses as best they could.  As

-Morton had captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback and

-attempted a rescue.  For two or three minutes the fight was a severe

-one.  The roughs made several rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the

-savage blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader from falling

-into their hands.  At last, however, after firing several shots, and

-wounding one of the guard, they retreated, Goodwin vigorously

-persuading his men to continue the charge.  When the rowdies had been

-driven a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform torch,

-the same strangely dressed man who had taken the money from his hand

-that day near Brewer's Hole.  This man, in his disguise of long beard

-and wolf-skin cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp by

-creeping through the bushes.

-

-"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen.  "I know him--he's a

-thief."

-

-No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him, and but for the

-intervening brush-wood, which broke the force of the blow, it might

-have killed him.

-

-"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton to his men; but the

-other side now made a strong rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.

-

-Then they fled, and this time, letting the less guilty rowdies

-escape, Morton pursued the well-known thieves and their allies into

-and through Jenkinsville, and on through the country, until the

-hunted fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods on foot.

-For two days more Morton harried them, arresting one of them now and

-then until he had captured eight or ten.  He chased one of these into

-Brewer's Hole itself.  The shoes had been torn from his feet by

-briers in his rough flight, and he left tracks of blood upon the

-floor.  The orderly citizens of the county were so much heartened by

-this boldness and severity on Morton's part that they combined

-against the roughs and took the work into their own hands, driving

-some of the thieves away and terrifying the rest into a sullen

-submission.  The camp-meeting went on in great triumph.

-

-Burchard had disappeared--how, nobody knew.  Weeks afterward a

-stranger passing through Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such

-a man on a keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi,

-and it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found a home in New

-Orleans, that refuge of broken adventurers.  Why he had fled no one

-could guess.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXVIII._

-

-PATTY AND HER PATIENT.

-

-We left Patty standing irresolute in the road.  The latch-string of

-her father's house was drawn in; she must find another home.  Every

-Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course; Colonel Wheeler

-would be only too glad to receive her.  But Colonel Wheeler and all

-the Methodist people were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy

-forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's foes.  She

-did not want to foreclose every door to a reconciliation.  Mrs.

-Goodwin's was not to be thought of.  There was but one place, and

-that was with Kike's mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative,

-was naturally her first resort in exile.

-

-Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she found the

-schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow, though neither he nor she

-dared think of marriage with Kike's awful displeasure in the

-back-ground.

-

-"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty had received

-permission to stay in the cabin of her aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how

-sthrange things comes to pass, Miss Lumsden.  You turned Moirton off

-yersilf fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits sint

-adrift."  Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish Moirton noo, now

-don't oi?  Revinge is swate, and this sort of revinge would be swater

-on many accounts."

-

-The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady looked out of the

-window and continued, in a sort of soliloquy: "Moirton would be

-_that_ glad.  Ha! ha!  He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better

-thrick than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out.  It'll simplify

-matters fer Moirton.  A sum's aisier to do when its simplified,

-loike.  An' now it'll be as aisy to Moirton when he hears about it,

-as twice one is two--as simple as puttin' two halves togither to make

-a unit."  Here the master rubbed his hands in glee.  He was pleased

-with the success of his illustration.  Then he muttered: "They'll

-agree in ginder, number and parson!"

-

-"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."

-

-"Make fun of ye!  Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint in yer ould

-schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've done yer dooty.  I was

-only throyin' to congratilate ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate

-the whole thing whin he hears about it."

-

-"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up with her old pride,

-"I know there will be those who will say that I joined the church to

-get Morton back, I want you to say that Morton is to be married--was

-probably married to-day--and that I knew of it some days ago."

-

-Brady's countenance fell.  "Things niver come out roight," he said,

-as he absently put on his hat.  "They talk about spicial

-providinces," he soliloquized, as he walked away, "and I thought as I

-had caught one at last.  But it does same sometoimes as if a

-bluntherin' Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better if

-he had aholt of the stairin' oar.  But, psha!  Oi've only got one or

-two pets of me own to look afther.  God has to git husbands fer ivery

-woman ixcipt the old maids.  An' some women has to have two, of which

-I hope is the Widdy Lumsden!  But Mithodism upsets iverything.

-Koike's so religious that he can't love anybody but God, and he don't

-know how to pity thim that does.  And Koike's made us both mortally

-afeard of his goodness.  I wish he'd fall dead in love himself once;

-thin he'd know how it fales!"

-

-Patty soon found that her father could not brook her presence in the

-neighborhood, and that the widow's hospitality to her was resented as

-an act of hostility to him.  She accordingly set herself to find some

-means of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the same time of

-earning her living.

-

-Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder to a quarterly

-meeting on the circuit to which Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing

-of Patty's case, he proposed to get her employment as a teacher.  He

-had heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood of the

-Hickory Ridge church, where the conference had met.  So Patty was

-settled as a teacher.  For ten hours a day she showed children how to

-"do sums," heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them

-droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic" department of

-the old English Reader, and taught them spelling from the "a-b abs"

-to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty" and its octopedal companions.  And

-she boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian ex-minister, when

-he learned that she was Kike's cousin, and a sufferer for her

-religion, insisted that her Sundays should be passed in his house.

-And being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the people, he

-soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors among the poor and the

-sick.  Something of good-breeding and refinement there was in her

-manner that made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans who

-had moved into the hollows, and her kindness was all the more

-grateful on account of her dignity.  She was "a grand lady," they

-declared, and besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in

-her way of tendin' folks what's sick."  They loved to tell how "she

-nussed Bill Turner's wife through the awfulest spell of the yaller

-janders you ever seed; an' toted _Miss_ Cole's baby roun' all night

-the night her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm with his

-own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness.  She's better'n forty doctors,

-root or calomile."

-

-[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.]

-

-One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house door just as the

-long spelling-class had broken up, and Patty was getting ready to

-send the children home.  The doctor sat on his horse while each of

-the boys, with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other, walked

-to the door, and, after the fashion of those good old days, turned

-round and bowed awkwardly at the teacher.  Some bobbed their heads

-forward on their breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more

-respectful, bent their bodies into crescents.  Each seemed alike glad

-when he was through with this abominable bit of ceremony, the only

-bit of ceremony in the whole round of their lives.  The girls, in

-short linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes, came

-after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would have bewildered a

-dancing-master.

-

-"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher appeared, "I am

-sorry to see you so tired.  I want you to go home with me.  I have

-some work for you to do to-morrow."

-

-There were no buggies in that day.  The roads were mostly

-bridle-paths, and those that would admit wagons would have shaken a

-buggy to pieces.  Patty climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor

-rode as close as possible to the fence where she stood.  Then she

-dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two rode off together.

-

-Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange man was lying wounded

-at the house of a family named Barkins, on Higgins's Run.  The man

-refused to give his name, and the family would not tell what they

-knew about him.  As Barkins bore a bad reputation, it was quite

-likely that the stranger belonged to some band of thieves who lived

-by horse-stealing and plundering emigrants.  He seemed to be in great

-mental anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor.  The doctor

-therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at Barkins's, and do what

-she could for the patient.  "It is our business to do the man good,"

-said Doctor Morgan, "not to have him arrested.  Gospel is always

-better than Law."

-

-On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled with a side-saddle

-for Patty, and he and she rode to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky

-glen, where once lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its

-name, and where now resided a man who was suspected of giving much

-indirect assistance to the gangs of thieves that infested the

-country, though he was too lame to be actively engaged in any bold

-enterprises.

-

-Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty as she crossed

-the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a square-shouldered, raw-boned

-woman, looked half inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over

-her door-sill.  Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her frame at

-the thought of staying in such a place all day; but Doctor Morgan had

-an authoritative way with such people.  When called to attend a

-patient, he put the whole house under martial law.

-

-"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better.  He needs a good deal

-done for him to-day, and I brought the school-mistress to help you,

-knowing you had a houseful of children and plenty of work."

-

-"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan, but you had orter

-know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss in to spy out a body's

-housekeepin' 'thout givin' folks half a chance to bresh up a little.

-I 'low she haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth ten

-of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled ole man."  She

-sulkily brushed off a stool with her apron and offered it to Patty.

-But Patty, with quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while

-the doctor went into the only other room of the house to see the

-patient, she seized upon the woman's dish-towel and went to wiping

-the yellow crockery as Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the

-crabbed remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell how

-she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little, and how she had

-upset the table and spilt everything on the floor.  She looked into

-Mrs. Barkins's face with so much friendly confidence, her laugh had

-so much assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the

-square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded to show her

-increasing friendliness by boxing "Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too

-closte to the lady and starrin at her that a-way."

-

-Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and beckoned to Patty.

-

-"I've brought you the only medicine that will do you any good," he

-said, rapidly, to the sick man.  "This is Miss Lumsden, our

-school-mistress, and the best hand in sickness you ever saw.  She

-will stay with you an hour."

-

-The patient turned his wan face over and looked wearily at Patty.  He

-seemed to be a man of forty, but suffering and his unshorn beard had

-given him a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger.  He had

-evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he looked about the room

-for a seat for Patty.  "I'll take care of myself," said Patty,

-cheerfully--seeing his anxious desire to be polite.

-

-"I will write down some directions for you," said Dr. Morgan, taking

-out pencil and paper.  When he handed the directions to Patty they

-read:

-

-"I leave you a lamb among wolves.  But the Shepherd is here!  It is

-the only chance to save the poor fellow's life or his soul.  I will

-send Nettie over in an hour with jelly, and if you want to come home

-with her you can do so.  I will stop at noon."

-

-With that he bade her good-bye and was gone.  Patty put the room in

-order, wiped off the sick man's temples, and he soon fell into a

-sleep.  When he awoke she again wiped his face with cold water.  "My

-mother used to do that," he said.

-

-"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.

-

-"I think not.  I have been a bad man, and it is a wonder that I

-didn't break her heart.  I would like to see her!"

-

-"Where is she?" asked Patty.

-

-The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's the use of bringing

-my disgrace home to her door?" he said.

-

-"But I think she would bear your disgrace and everything else for the

-sake of wiping your face as I do."

-

-"I believe she would," said the wounded man, tremulously.  "I would

-like to go to her, and ever since I came away I have meant to go as

-soon as I could get in the way of doing better.  But I get worse all

-the time.  I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care how soon.  The

-sooner the better;" and he sighed wearily.

-

-Patty had the tact not to contradict him.

-

-"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.

-

-"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and I used to run away to

-keep from hearing it.  I'd give everything to hear her read now."

-

-"Shall I read to you?"

-

-"If you please."

-

-"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?" said Patty.

-

-"How do you know which that is?--I don't!"

-

-"Don't you think one woman knows how another woman feels?" asked

-Patty.  And she sat by the little four-light window and took out her

-pocket Testament and read the three immortal parables in the

-fifteenth of Luke.  The man's curiosity was now wide awake; he

-listened to the story of the sheep lost and found, but when Patty

-glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied; he hearkened to the story of

-the coin that was lost and found, and still he looked at her with

-faint eagerness, as if trying to guess why she should call that his

-mother's favorite chapter.  Then she read slowly, and with sincere

-emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale of the prodigal son and

-his hunger, and his good resolution, and his tattered return, and the

-old father's joy.  And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed

-could not hide his tears.

-

-"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he asked.

-

-"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively.  "And you'll notice

-that this prodigal son didn't wait to make himself better, or even

-until he could get a new suit of clothes."

-

-The sick man said nothing.

-

-The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at that moment and said:

-

-"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."

-

-"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient, anxiously.

-

-"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.

-

-Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks, was standing timidly

-at the outside door.  Patty took the jelly from her hand and sent a

-note to the Doctor:

-

-"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in the safest place in

-the world--doing my duty."

-

-And when the doctor read it he said, in his nervously abrupt fashion:

-"Perfect angel!"

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXIX._

-

-PATTY'S JOURNEY.

-

-Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when the heart is cheered,

-and as Patty, after spending Saturday and Sunday with the patient,

-found time to come in and give him his breakfast every morning before

-she went to school, he grew more and more cheerful, and the doctor

-announced in his sudden style that he'd "get along."  In all her

-interviews Patty was not only a woman but a Methodist.  She read the

-Bible and talked to the man about repentance; and she would not have

-been a Methodist of that day had she neglected to pray with him.  She

-could not penetrate his reserve.  She could not guess whether what

-she said had any influence on him or not.  Once she was startled and

-lost faith in any good result of her labors when she happened, in

-arranging things about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap

-and some heavy false-whiskers.  She had more than suspected all along

-that her patient was a highwayman, but upon seeing the very disguises

-in which his crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked

-herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable of

-theft--perhaps of murder--could ever be any better.  She found

-herself, after that, trying to imagine how the wounded man would look

-in so fierce a mask.  But she soon remembered all that she had

-learned of the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit

-working in the worst of sinners, and she got her testament and read

-aloud to the highwayman the story of the crucified thief.

-

-It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him take his breakfast--he

-was sitting propped up in bed--that he startled her most effectually.

-Lifting his eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare

-that comes of feebleness, he asked:

-

-"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit rider named Goodwin?"

-

-Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret.  She turned away to

-hide her face, and said:

-

-"I used to go to school with him when we were children."

-

-"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said the patient, "that

-made me tremble all over.  He's a great preacher.  I wish I was as

-good as he is."

-

-Patty made some remark about his having been a good boy.

-

-"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used to hear that he had

-been a little hard--swore and drank and gambled, to say nothing of

-dancing and betting on horses.  But they said some girl jilted him in

-that day.  I suppose he got into bad habits because she jilted him,

-or else she jilted him because he was bad.  Do you know anything

-about it?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"

-

-Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it.  She was going to

-defend herself--he must know that she was the person--but how?  Then

-she remembered that he was only repeating what had been a matter of

-common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness led her to answer:

-

-"She acted badly--turned him off because he became a Methodist."

-

-"But there was trouble before that, I thought.  When he gambled away

-his coat and hat one night."

-

-"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty, casting about in her

-own mind how she might change the conversation.

-

-"Is she alive yet?" he asked.

-

-"Yes."

-

-"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet," said the man.

-

-Patty now plead that she must hasten to school.  She omitted reading

-the Bible and prayer with the patient for that morning.  It was just

-as well.  There are states of mind not favorable to any but the most

-private devotions.

-

-On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the cabin a moment, but on

-coming near she saw horses tied in front of it, and her heart failed

-her.  She reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the gang

-and she could not bring herself to plunge into their midst in the

-dusk of the evening.  But on Saturday morning she found the strangers

-not yet gone, and heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey."  "Too

-soft! too soft! altogether," said one.  "We ought to have shipped

-him----"  Here the conversation was broken off.

-

-The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she found very uneasy.

-He was glad to see her, and told her she must stay by him.  He seemed

-anxious for the men to go away, which at last they did.  Then he

-listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became sufficiently

-uproarious to warrant him in talking.

-

-"I want you to save a man's life."

-

-"Whose?"

-

-"Preacher Goodwin's."

-

-Patty turned pale.  She had not the heart to ask a question.

-

-"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll tell you all about

-it."

-

-Patty promised.

-

-"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat Woods on Sunday

-afternoon.  He preaches in Jenkinsville at eleven, and at Salt Fork

-at three.  Between the two he will be killed.  You must go yourself.

-They'll never suspect you of such a ride.  If any man goes out of

-this settlement, and there's a warning given, he'll be shot.  You

-must go through the woods to-night.  If you go in the daytime, you

-and I will both be killed, maybe.  Will you do it?"

-

-Patty had her full share of timidity.  But in a moment she saw a

-vision of Morton Goodwin slain.

-

-"I will go."

-

-"You must not tell the doctor a word about where you're going; you

-must not tell Goodwin how you got the information."

-

-"He may not believe me."

-

-"Anybody would believe you."

-

-"But he will think that I have been deceived, and he cannot bear to

-look like a coward."

-

-"That's true," said Pinkey.  "Give me a piece of paper.  I will write

-a word that will convince him."

-

-He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word and folded it.  "I

-can trust you; you must not open this paper," he said.

-

-"I will not," said Patty.

-

-"And now you must leave and not come back here until Monday or

-Tuesday.  Do not leave the settlement until five o'clock.  Barkins

-will watch you when you leave here.  Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till

-afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion.  Take the east road

-when you start, and then if anybody is watching they will think that

-you are going to the lower settlement.  Turn round at Wright's

-corner.  It will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom, but

-there is only one trail through the woods.  You must ride through

-to-night or you cannot reach Jenkinsville to-morrow.  God will help

-you, I suppose, if He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than

-half believe."

-

-Patty went away bewildered.  The journey did not seem so dreadful as

-the long waiting.  She had to appear unconcerned to the people with

-whom she boarded.  Toward evening she told them she was going away

-until Monday, and at five o'clock she was at the doctor's door,

-trembling lest some mishap should prevent her getting a horse.

-

-"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated face sharply.

-"I didn't find you at Barkins's as I expected when I got there this

-morning.  Sick man did not say much.  Anything wrong?  What scared

-you away?"

-

-"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."

-

-"You shall have anything you ask."

-

-"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and ask me no questions

-and make no objections."

-

-"I will trust you."

-

-"I must have a horse at once for a journey."

-

-"This evening?"

-

-"This evening."

-

-"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to go away so late, unless

-it is a matter of life and death----"

-

-"It is a matter of life and death."

-

-"And you can't trust me?"

-

-"It is not my secret.  I promised not to tell you."

-

-"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask questions.  Are you

-certain you are not deceived?  Mayn't there be some plot?  Mayn't I

-go with you?  Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in

-saving the life of the person you speak of?"

-

-Patty looked a little startled.  "I may be deceived, but I feel so

-sure that I ought to go that I will try to go on foot, if I cannot

-get a horse."

-

-"Patty, I don't like this.  But I can only trust your judgment.  You

-ought not to have been bound not to tell me."

-

-"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go.  It is a matter of

-life and death to another that it shall not be known that I went.  It

-is a matter of life and death to you and me both that you shall not

-go with me."

-

-"Is the life you are going to save worth risking your own for?  Is it

-only the life of a robber?"

-

-"It is a life worth more than mine.  Ask me no more questions, but

-have Bob saddled for me."  Patty spoke as one not to be refused.

-

-The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted, half eagerly and half

-timidly.

-

-"When will you come back?"

-

-"In time for school, Monday."

-

-"Patty, think again before you start," called the doctor.

-

-"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode away.

-

-"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered to himself half a

-hundred times in the next forty-eight hours.

-

-When she had ridden a mile on the road that led to the "lower

-settlement" she turned an acute angle, and came back on the

-hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, if I may speak so

-geometrically.  She thus went more than two miles to strike the main

-trail toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from her

-starting-place.  She reached the woods in Long Bottom just as Pinkey

-told her she would, at dark.  She was appalled at the thought of

-riding sixteen miles through a dense forest of beech trees in the

-night over a bridle-path.  She reined up her horse, folded her hands,

-and offered a fervent prayer for courage and help, and then rode into

-the blackness ahead.

-

-There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very valley in Ohio

-in regard to this dark ride of Patty's.  I know it will be thought

-incredible, but in that day marvelous things were not yet out of

-date.  This legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood of

-the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved herself for her lonely

-and perilous ride by prayer, there came to her, out of the darkness

-of the forest, two beautiful dogs.  One of them started ahead of her

-horse and one of them became her rear-guard.  Protected and comforted

-by her dumb companions, Patty rode all those lonesome hours in that

-wilderness bridle-path.  She came, at midnight, to a settler's house

-on the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found lodging.  The

-dogs lay in the yard.  In the early morning the settler's wife came

-out and spoke to them but they gave her no recognition at all.  Patty

-came a few moments later, when they arose and greeted her with all

-the eloquence of dumb friends, and then, having seen her safely

-through the woods and through the night, the two beautiful dogs,

-wagging a friendly farewell, plunged again into the forest and

-went--no man knows whither.

-

-Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to me well avouched.

-Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all

-away and show how there was only one dog, and that he was not

-beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail.  Or that the

-whole thing is but a "solar myth."  The middle-ages have not a more

-pleasant story than this of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy

-a brave lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest.  At any

-rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians were answers to her

-prayer.  She bade them good-by as they disappeared in the mystery

-whence they came, and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's

-favor to her enterprise.  Sometimes her heart was sorely troubled at

-the thought of Morton's being already the husband of another, and all

-that Sunday morning she took lessons in that hardest part of

-Christian living--the uttering of the little petition which gives all

-the inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the

-accomplishment of His will.

-

-She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven.  Meeting had already

-begun.  She knew the Methodist church by its general air of square

-ugliness, and near it she hitched old Bob.

-

-When she entered the church Morton was preaching.  Her long

-sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise, and she sat upon the back seat

-listening to the voice whose music was once all her own.  Morton was

-preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions to his own

-trials when he became a Christian which deeply touched the audience,

-but which moved none so much as Patty.

-

-The congregation was dismissed but the members remained to "class,"

-which was always led by the preacher when he was present.  Most of

-the members sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had gone

-Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a large space between her

-and the rest.  Morton asked each one to speak, exhorting each in

-turn.  At last, when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where

-Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and thus addressed

-her:

-

-"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with you to-day?  Do

-you feel that you have an interest in the Savior?"

-

-Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of melancholy Patty spoke.

-There was that in her superior diction and in her delicacy of

-expression that won upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the

-brethren and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord bless

-our strange sister," and so on.  But Morton?  From the first word he

-was thrilled with the familiar sound of the voice.  It could not be

-Patty, for why should Patty be in Jenkinsville?  And above all, why

-should she be in class-meeting?  Of her conversion he had not heard.

-But though it seemed to him impossible that it could be Patty, there

-was yet a something in voice and manner and choice of words that had

-almost overcome him; and though he was noted for the freshness of the

-counsels that he gave in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the

-sense of having known the speaker, that he could not think of

-anything to say.  He fell hopelessly into that trite exhortation with

-which the old leaders were wont to cover their inanity.

-

-"Sister," he said, "you know the way--walk in it."

-

-Then the brethren and sisters sang:

-

-  "O brethren will you meet me

-  On Canaan's happy shore?"

-

-

-And the meeting was dismissed.

-

-The members thought themselves bound to speak to the strange sister.

-She evaded their kindly questions as they each shook hands with her,

-only answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin.  The

-preacher was eager and curious to converse with her, but one of the

-old brethren had button-holed him to complain that Brother Hawkins

-had 'tended a barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had

-ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession.  When the old

-brother had finished his complaint and had left the church, Morton

-was glad to see the strange sister lingering at the door.  He offered

-his hand and said:

-

-"A stranger here, I suppose?"

-

-"Not quite a stranger, Morton."

-

-"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed

-

-Patty for her part was pleased and silent.

-

-"Are you a Methodist then?"

-

-"I am."

-

-"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said, greatly agitated.

-

-"To save your life.  I am glad I can make you some amend for the way

-I treated you the last time I saw you."

-

-"To save my life!  How?"

-

-"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this afternoon you

-will be killed on the way."

-

-"How do you know?"

-

-"You must not ask any questions.  I cannot tell you anything more."

-

-"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody who wanted to scare

-me."

-

-Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of paper which Pinkey had

-given her.  She handed it to Morton, saying:

-

-"I don't know what is in this, but the person who sent the message

-said that you would understand."

-

-Morton opened the paper and started.  "Where is he?" he asked.

-

-"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling faintly.

-

-"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to tell me?"

-

-"Not at all.  When I joined the church Father pulled the latch-string

-in.  I am teaching school at Hickory Ridge."

-

-"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner."  Morton led her horse to

-the house of one of the members, introduced her as an old schoolmate,

-who had brought him an important warning, and asked that she receive

-some dinner.

-

-He then asked Patty to let him go back with her or send an escort,

-both of which she firmly refused.  He left the house and in a minute

-sat on his Dolly before the gate.  At sight of Dolly Patty could have

-wept.  He called her to the gate.

-

-"If you won't let me go with you I must go to Salt Fork.  These men

-must understand that I am not afraid.  I shall ride ten miles farther

-round and they will never know how I did it.  Dolly can do it,

-though.  How shall I thank you for risking your life for me?  Patty,

-if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll die for you.  I would

-rather die for you than not."

-

-"Thank you, Morton.  You are married, I hear."

-

-"Not married, but I am to be married."  He spoke half bitterly, but

-Patty was too busy suppressing her own emotion to observe his tone.

-

-"I hope you'll be happy."  She had determined to say so much.

-

-"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till I die.  I am

-marrying one I never chose.  I am utterly miserable.  Why didn't you

-leave me to be waylaid and killed?  My life isn't worth the saving.

-But God bless you, Patty."

-

-So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and was soon gone away

-around the Wolf Creek road--a long hard ride, with no dinner, and a

-sermon to preach at three o'clock.

-

-And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in Jenkinsville, her

-hostess entertained her with accounts of Sister Ann Eliza Meacham,

-whom Brother Goodwin was to marry.  She heard how eloquent was Sister

-Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and what a model

-preacher's wife she would be.  But the good sister added slyly that

-she didn't more than half believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at

-all.  He'd tried his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do

-it.

-

-When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon she did her best,

-as a good Christian, to feel sorry that Morton could not love the one

-he was to marry.  In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in

-her heart she was a woman.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXX._

-

-THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.

-

-When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not

-difficult to forecast his fate.  Everybody saw that he was going into

-a consumption.  One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to

-live, but not longer.  Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself.  He

-rejoiced in it.  He was one of those rare spirits to whom the

-invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious

-duty is a voice never neglected.  That he had sacrificed his own life

-to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets

-except that he had not been more zealous.  What was life if he could

-save even one soul?

-

-"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike.  If you had

-taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."

-

-"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied

-Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health,

-you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might

-live long enough to save many others.  When God puts a soul before me

-I save that one if il costs my life.  When I am gone God will find

-others.  It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful.  What if by

-some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell?  O!  Morton, I am

-oppressed with responsibility!  I will be glad when God shall say, It

-is enough."

-

-Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike.  He was but fulfilling

-the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not

-quite emulate him.  Read the minutes of the old conferences and you

-will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory

-of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing.  Men were

-nothing--the work was everything.  Methodism let the dead bury their

-dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave

-of one of its own heroes.

-

-But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid

-Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months' work.  Two of this

-he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away.  The other

-one had gone for quinine.  Now he had no clothes that would long hold

-together.  He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had

-carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she

-loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers.  He

-could come back in three days.  Two days more would suffice to reach

-Peterborough circuit.  So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his

-appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee.  But he did not

-get back to camp-meeting.  An attack of fever held him at home for

-several weeks.

-

-At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from

-home.  His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to

-return to his home it would only be to die.  And as this was,

-perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him

-of her intention to marry Brady.  While Brady thought to do the

-handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending,

-whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately

-propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage.  It was

-quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate

-at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however.

-But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her

-heart failed her.  He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full

-of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of

-making him understand her feelings.  Once she began by alluding to

-her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust

-in the Lord he would be with her.  What was she to do?  How make a

-rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals?  And

-that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?

-

-The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow

-that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small

-wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.

-

-"Oh, I can't bear to," said she.  "I won't never see him any more and

-I might hurt him, and----"

-

-"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."

-

-"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.

-

-"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden.

-If I do it, it'll same jist loike axin' the b'y's consint to marry

-his mother."

-

-"But I can't noways do it," said the widow.  "If you love me you

-might take that load offen me."

-

-"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady marched into the

-sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was

-resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair.  Brady took a seat

-opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and

-reached up his iron gray hair uneasily.  To his surprise Kike began

-the conversation.

-

-"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very wisely, I think," said

-Kike.

-

-"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.

-

-"To be sure I have."

-

-"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'.  Ye're pecooliar

-loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize with other folks because

-ye're livin' roight up in hiven all the toime."

-

-"Why don't you live more in heaven?"

-

-"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help me," said Brady,

-adroitly.  "But I'm one of the koind that's lonesome, and in doire

-nade of company.  I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd

-niver be a fool agin.  But ye see ye ain't niver been in love in all

-yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"

-

-"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a strange softness

-coming into his voice.

-

-"Did ye iver!  Who'd a thought it?"  And Brady made large eyes at

-him.  "Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others," he added

-with some exultation.

-

-"I do.  That's why I said you and mother were very foolish."

-

-"Fwy, now; there it is agin.  Fwat do ye mane?"

-

-"Why this.  When I was here before I saw that you and mother had

-taken a liking to each other.  I thought by this time you'd have been

-married.  And I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't.  But you're

-as far away as ever.  Here's mother's land that needs somebody to

-take care of it.  I am going away never to come back.  If I could see

-you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could

-die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."

-

-"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes.  "Fwy didn't you

-say that before?  Ye're a prophet and a angel, I belave.  I wish I

-was half as good, or a quarther.  God bliss ye, me boy.  I wish--I

-wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and your

-mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to spake to ye about

-this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased.  Now,

-will ye marry us before ye go?"

-

-"I haven't got any license."

-

-"Here 'tis, in me pocket."

-

-"Where's a witness or two?"

-

-"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other

-room."

-

-"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike.  "I must get away in an hour."

-

-And he married them.  They wept over him, and he made no concealment

-that he was going away for the last time.  He rode out from

-Hissawachee never to come back.  Not sad, but exultant, that he had

-sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life

-everlasting.  For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide

-from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a

-hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and

-children.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXXI._

-

-KIKE.

-

-To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through Morton's great diocese

-of Jenkinsville Circuit.  He could not ride far.  Even so intemperate

-a zealot as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his

-calculations.  He must save his strength in journeying or he could

-not reach his circuit, much less preach when he got there.  At the

-close of his second day he inquired for a Methodist house at which to

-stop, and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located"

-preacher--one who had been a "travelling" preacher, but, having

-married, was under the necessity of entangling himself with the

-things of this world that he might get bread for his children.  As he

-rode up to the house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the

-fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in progress.  He

-was in Morton's circuit; who could tell that he should not meet him

-here?

-

-When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the door between the two

-rooms preaching, with the back of a "split-bottomed" chair for a

-pulpit.  For a moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten

-with death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton never

-spoke better on that favorite theme of the early Methodist

-evangelist--the rest in heaven--than while drawing his inspiration

-from the pallid countenance of his comrade.

-

-"Ah!  Kike!" he said, when the meeting was dismissed, "I wish you had

-my body."

-

-"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for, Mort?  Let God have

-his way," said Kike, smiling contentedly.

-

-But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay awake.  He could not

-let the poor fellow go off alone.  So in the morning he arranged with

-the located brother to take his appointments for awhile and let him

-ride one day with Kike.

-

-"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the ex-preacher.  "The

-corn's laid by and I've got nothing to do, and I'm spoiling for a

-preach."

-

-Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of Hickory Ridge, and

-Morton, persuaded that Kike was unfit to preach, endeavored to induce

-him to turn aside and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his

-road.

-

-"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength left.  I cannot

-spend it better than in trying to save souls.  There's Peterborough

-vacant three months since Brother Jones was first taken sick.  I want

-to make one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the heart I

-have.  Then I'll cease at once to work and live, and who knows but

-that I may slay more in my death than in my life?"

-

-But Morton feared that he would not be able to make one round.  He

-thought he had an overestimate of his strength, and that the final

-break-down might come at any moment.  So, on the morning of the

-second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to return.  He

-would see him safe among the members on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.

-

-Now it happened that they missed the trail and wandered far out of

-their way.  It rained all the afternoon, and Kike got drenched in

-crossing a stream.  Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter.

-He stopped at a cabin.

-

-"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler, as soon as he saw

-them.  "I 'low ye're preachers.  Brother Goodwin I know.  Heerd him

-down at camp-meetin' last fall,--time conference met on the Ridge.

-And this brother looks mis'rable.  Got the shakes, I 'low?  Your

-name, brother, is--"

-

-"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.

-

-"Lumsden?  Wy, that air's the very name of our school-miss, and she's

-stayin' here jes' now.  I kinder recolleck that you was sick up at

-Dr. Morgan's, conference time.  Hey?"

-

-Morton looked bewildered.

-

-"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"

-

-"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low.  Ain't it, Sister

-Lumsden?"  This last to Patty, who at that moment appeared from the

-bedroom, and without answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike

-with a cry of joy.  Patty was "boarding round," and it was her time

-to stay here.

-

-"How did we get here?  We aimed at Lanham's Ferry," said Morton,

-bewildered.

-

-"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low.  You should've gone by

-Hanks's Mills."

-

-[Illustration: THE REUNION.]

-

-Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother, Morton was

-determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's.  Kike was just sick enough

-to be passive, and he suffered himself to be put back into the saddle

-to ride to the doctor's.  Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields and

-gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed away in the bed he

-had occupied before.  Thus do men try to run away from fate, and rush

-into her arms in spite of themselves.

-

-It did not require very great medical skill to understand what must

-be the result of Kike's sickness.

-

-"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked Morton, next morning.

-

-"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the physician, in his

-abrupt manner.  "There's not water enough left in the branch to run

-the mill seven days.  Wasted life, sir, wasted life.  It is a pity

-but you Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."

-

-Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every minute that he might see

-Nettie come in.  But she did not come.  He had wished to avoid her

-father's house for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to be

-thus near her and not see her.  Toward evening he called Patty to him.

-

-"Lean down here!" he said.

-

-Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.

-

-"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.

-

-"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.

-

-"Why don't she come in to see me?"

-

-"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty; "she seems to be

-crying half the time."

-

-Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening.  But Nettie did not

-come.  To have come into Kike's room would have been to have revealed

-her love for one who had never declared his love for her.  The mobile

-face of Nettie disclosed every emotion.  No wonder she was fain to

-keep away.  And yet the desire to see him almost overcame her fear of

-seeing him.

-

-When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast the next morning,

-the patient looked at him wistfully.

-

-"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth.  Will I ever get up?"

-

-"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the physician, huskily.

-

-A smile of relief spread over Kike's face.  At that word the awful

-burden of his morbid sense of responsibility for the world's

-salvation, the awful burden of a self-sacrifice that was terrible and

-that must be life-long, slipped from his weary soul.  There was then

-nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's release.  He

-shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!" and lay for minutes,

-motionless.  As the doctor made a movement to leave him, Kike opened

-his eyes and looked at him eagerly.

-

-"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the straight black hair

-off Kike's forehead, and petting him as though he were a child.

-"What do you want?"

-

-"Doctor----" said Kike, and then closed his eyes again.

-

-"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart, dear boy."  The

-tears were in the doctor's eyes.

-

-"If you think it best--if you think it best, mind--I would like to

-see Nettie."

-

-"Of course it is best.  I am glad you mentioned it.  It will do her

-good, poor soul."

-

-"If you think it best----"

-

-"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated.  "Speak out."

-

-"All alone."

-

-"Yes, you shall see her alone.  That is best."  The doctor's

-utterance was choked as he hastened out.

-

-Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door.  It seemed a long time after

-the doctor went before Nettie came in.  It was only three

-minutes--three minutes in which Nettie vainly strove to wipe away

-tears that flowed faster than she could remove them.  At last her

-hand was on the latch.  She gained a momentary self-control.  But

-when she opened the door and saw his emaciated face, and his black

-eyes looking so eagerly for her, it was too much for the poor little

-heart.  The next moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing

-violently.  And Kike put out his feeble hands and drew the golden

-head up close to his bosom, and spoke tenderer words than he had ever

-heard spoken in his life.  And then he closed his eyes, and for a

-long time nothing was said.  It came about after Nettie's tears were

-spent that they talked of all that they had felt; of the life past

-and of the immortal life to come.  Hours went by and none intruded

-upon this betrothal for eternity.  Patty had waited without,

-expecting to be called to take her place again by her cousin's

-bedside.  But she did not like to remain in conversation with Morton.

-It could bring nothing but pain to them both.  It occurred to her

-that she had not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike

-came.  She started immediately, glad to escape from the regrets

-excited by the presence of Morton, and touched with remorse that she

-had so long neglected a man on whose heart she thought she had been

-able to make some religious impression.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXXII._

-

-PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.

-

-Pinkey was grum.  He didn't like to be neglected, if he was a

-highwayman.  He had gotten out of bed and drawn on his boots.

-

-"So you couldn't come to see me because there was a young preacher

-sick at the doctor's?" he said, when Patty entered.

-

-"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty, "and he is going to

-die."

-

-"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little.  "But Goodwin is

-there, too.  I hope you didn't tell him anything about me?"

-

-"Not a word."

-

-"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."

-

-"He seems to be."

-

-"And people that are grateful are very likely to have other feelings

-after awhile."  There was a significance in Pinkey's manner that

-Patty greatly disliked.

-

-"You should not talk in that way.  Mr. Goodwin is engaged to be

-married."

-

-"Is he?  Do you mind telling me her name?"

-

-"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."

-

-"What?--Who?--To Ann Eliza?  How did it happen that I have never

-heard of that?  To Ann Eliza!  Confound her; what a witch that girl

-is!  I wish I could spoil her game this time.  Goodwin's too good for

-her and she sha'n't have him."  Then he sat still as if in

-meditation.  After a moment he resumed: "Now, Miss Lumsden, you've

-done one good turn for him, you must do another.  I want to send a

-note to this Ann Eliza."

-

-"_I_ cannot take it," said Patty, trembling.

-

-"You saved his life, and now you are unwilling to save him from a

-worse evil.  You ought not to refuse."

-

-"You ought not to ask it.  The circumstances of the case are

-peculiar.  I will not take it."

-

-"Will you take a note to Goodwin?"

-

-"Not on this business."

-

-Pinkey was startled at the emotion she showed, and looked at her

-inquiringly: "You were a schoolmate of Morton's--of Goodwin's, I

-mean--and a body would think that you might be the identical

-sweetheart that sent him adrift for joining the Methodists--and then

-joined the Methodists herself, eh?"

-

-Patty said nothing, but turned away.

-

-"By the holy Moses," said Pinkey, in a half-soliloquy, "if that's the

-case, I'll break the net of that fisherwoman this time or drown

-myself a-trying."

-

-Patty had intended to read the Bible to her patient, but her mind was

-so disturbed that she thought best to say good-morning.  Pinkey

-roused himself from a reverie to call her back.

-

-"Will you answer me one question?" he asked.  "Does Goodwin want to

-marry this girl?  Is he happy about it, do you think?"

-

-"I am sure he isn't," said Patty, reproaching herself in a moment

-that she had said so much.

-

-Patty made some kindly remark to Mrs. Barkins as she went out, walked

-briskly to the fence, halted, looked off over the field a moment,

-turned round and came back.  When she re-entered Pinkey's room he had

-put on his great false-whiskers and wolf-skin cap, and she trembled

-at the transformation.  He started, but said: "Don't be afraid, Miss

-Lumsden, I am not meditating mischief.  I will not hurt you,

-certainly, and you must not betray me.  Now, what is it?"

-

-"Don't do anything wrong in this matter," said Patty.  "Don't do

-anything that'll lie heavy on your soul when you come to die.--I'm

-afraid you'll do something wrong for Mr. Goodwin's sake, or--mine."

-

-"No.  But if I was able to ride I'd do one thunderin' good thing.

-But I am too weak to do anything, plague on it!"

-

-"I wish you would put these deceits in the fire and do right," she

-said, indicating his disguises.  "I am disappointed to see that you

-are going back to your old ways."

-

-He made no reply, but laid off his disguises and lay down on the bed,

-exhausted.  And Patty departed, grieved that all her labors were in

-vain, while Pinkey only muttered to himself, "I'm too weak, confound

-it!"

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXXIII._

-

-THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.

-

-Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any one venture to open the

-door of Kike's room.  He found the patient much better.  But the

-improvement could not be permanent, the sedative of mental rest and

-the tonic of joy had come too late.

-

-"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one more service.  Nettie

-will explain to you what it is."

-

-After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away, leading Kike's

-horse with him.  The doctor thought he could guess what Morton went

-for, but, even in melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children,

-are fond of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that

-which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to themselves.  At ten

-o'clock that night Morton came back without Kike's horse.

-

-"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown visibly weaker.

-

-Morton nodded.

-

-"And you sent the message?"

-

-"Yes."

-

-Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank into a satisfied

-sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate to Doctor Morgan and Patty

-that he had seen in the moonlight a notorious highwayman.  "His

-nickname is Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes from or

-goes to.  He got a hard blow in a fight with the police force of the

-camp meeting.  It's a wonder it didn't break his head.  I searched

-for him everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared.  If I had

-been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him, for he was

-alone."

-

-Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.

-

-"Our patient, Patty."

-

-But Patty did not say a word.

-

-"You must have got that information through him!" said Morton, with

-surprise.

-

-But Patty only kept still.

-

-"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had killed my

-deliverer!  Strange that he should be the bearer of a message to me,

-though.  I should rather expect him to kill me than to save me."

-

-Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away while yet so weak, and

-found in herself the flutterings of a hope for which she knew there

-was no satisfactory ground.

-

-When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking.  "Doctor Morgan," he

-said, "do not leave me long.  Nettie and I want to be married before

-I die."

-

-"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to suspect Kike's

-secret.

-

-"Morton got it the other day.  And I am looking for my mother to-day.

-I don't want to be married till she comes.  Morton took my horse and

-sent for her."

-

-Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived.  On Sunday morning

-he was almost past speaking.  Nettie had gone out of the room, and

-Kike was apparently asleep.

-

-"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to Morton, pointing

-to the dying man.

-

-"Yes, indeed.  What a pity he had no care for himself," answered

-Morton.

-

-"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."

-

-Patty got the Bible.

-

-"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the seventh verse to the

-thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke as if he were announcing a text.

-

-Then, when Patty was about to read, he said: "Stop.  Call Nettie."

-

-When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she read all about the

-alabaster box of ointment, very precious, that was broken over the

-head of Jesus, and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's

-reply.

-

-"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan, with effusion,

-"what is spent for love is never wasted.  It is a very precious box

-of ointment that you have broken upon Christ's head, my son.  The

-Lord will not forget it."

-

-When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the door on Sunday morning,

-the people had already begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the

-expectation that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge church.

-Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous all the country over, was

-dying, they filled Doctor Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad,

-silent groups on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the shade

-of the yard trees.  As the dying preacher's mother passed through,

-the crowd of country people fell back and looked reverently at her.

-

-Kike was already far gone.  He was barely able to greet his mother

-and the good-hearted Brady, whose demonstrative Irish grief knew no

-bounds.  Then Kike and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all.

-This sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than a funeral.

-After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's side, and he rallied for a

-moment and solemnly pronounced a benediction on her.  Then he lifted

-up his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord!  I have kept back nothing.

-Amen."

-

-His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie.  The people had crowded

-into the hall and stood at the windows.  For awhile all thought him

-dead.

-

-A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and lighted upon the bed

-of the dying man.  The early Western people believed in marvels, and

-Kike was to them a saint.  At sight of the snow-white dove pluming

-itself upon his breast they all started back.  Was it a heavenly

-visitant?  Kike opened his eyes and gazed upon the dove a moment.

-Then he looked significantly at Nettie, then at the people.  The dove

-plumed itself a moment longer, looked round on the people out of its

-mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the window again and

-disappeared in the sunlight.  A smile overspread the dying man's

-face, he clasped his hands upon his bosom, and it was a full minute

-before anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of Hezekiah

-Lumsden had gone to its rest.

-

-He had requested that no name should be placed over his grave.  "Let

-God have any glory that may come from my labors, and let everybody

-but Nettie forget me," he said.  But Doctor Morgan had a slab of the

-common blue limestone of the hills--marble was not to be had--cut out

-for a headstone.  The device upon it was a dove, the only

-inscription: "An alabaster box of very precious ointment."

-

-Death is not always matter for grief.  If you have ever beheld a rich

-sunset from the summit of a lofty mountain, you will remember how the

-world was transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent light,

-and how, long after the light had faded from the cloud-drapery, and

-long after the hills had begun to lose themselves in the abyss of

-darkness, there lingered a glory in the western horizon--a joyous

-memory of the splendid pomp of the evening.  Even so the glory of

-Kike's dying made all who saw it feel like those who have witnessed a

-sublime spectacle, which they may never see again.  The memory of it

-lingered with them like the long-lingering glow behind the western

-mountains.  Sorry that the suffering life had ended in peace, one

-could not be; and never did stormy day find more placid sunset than

-his.  Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to her.  When he

-was gone she was as one whom an angel of God had embraced.  She

-regretted his absence, but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and

-she had not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.

-

-The only commemoration his name received was in the conference

-minutes, where, like other such heroes, he was curtly embalmed in the

-usual four lines:

-

-"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely gave up his life for

-his work.  He was tireless in labor, patient in suffering, bold in

-rebuking sin, holy in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."

-

-The early Methodists had no time for eulogies.  A handful of earth, a

-few hurried words of tribute, and the bugle called to the battle.

-The man who died was at rest, the men who staid had the more work to

-do.

-

-

-NOTE.  In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's bed,

-I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.--E.E.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXXIV._

-

-THE BROTHERS.

-

-Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a letter from her father,

-asking her to come home.  Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote

-penitently and asked Patty's forgiveness.  Captain Lumsden never did

-anything otherwise than meanly.  He wrote that he was now bedridden

-with rheumatism, and it seemed hard that he should be forsaken by his

-oldest daughter, who ought to be the stay of his declining years.  He

-did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so religious and yet

-leave him to suffer without the comfort of her presence.  The other

-children were young, and the house was in hopeless confusion.  If the

-Methodists had not quite turned her heart away from her poor

-afflicted father, she would come at once and help him in his

-troubles.  He was ready to forgive the past, and as for her religion,

-if she did not trouble him with it, she could do as she pleased.  He

-did not think much of a religion that set a daughter against her

-father, though.

-

-Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that it set before her

-to feel the sting very keenly.  There was another pain that had grown

-worse with every day she had spent with Morton.  Beside her own

-sorrow she felt for him.  There was a strange restlessness in his

-eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he was doing, that

-indicated how fearfully the tempest raged within.  For Morton's old

-desperation was upon him, and Patty was in terror for the result.

-About the time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul also.

-He had mastered himself, and the restless wildness had given place to

-a look of constraint and suffering that was less alarming but hardly

-less distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding her own

-agony.  But the disappearance of Pinkey had awakened some hope in

-her.  Not one jot of this trembling hopefulness did she dare impart

-to Morton, who for his part had but one consolation--he would throw

-away his life in the battle, as Kike had done before him.

-

-So eager was Patty to leave her school now and hasten to her father,

-that she could not endure to stay the weeks that were necessary to

-complete her term.  She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the

-possibility of getting some one to take her place, and both had

-concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane Morgan being too

-much out of health.  But to their surprise Nettie offered her

-services.  She had not been of much more use in the world than a

-humming-bird, she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would be

-better pleased that she should make herself useful.

-

-Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and Morton, who could

-not reach the distant part of his circuit, upon which his supply was

-now preaching, in time to resume his work at once, concluded to set

-out for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents fared.

-But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who departed in company with

-Brady and his wife.  Morton would not trust himself in her society

-longer.  He therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks to

-Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.

-

-I may not describe the enthusiasm with which Morton was received at

-home.  Scarcely had he kissed his mother and shaken hands with his

-father, who was surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had

-been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting up into

-manhood, when his mother whispered to him that his brother Lewis was

-alive and had come home.

-

-"What!  Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I thought he was killed in

-Pittsburg ten years ago."

-

-"That was a false report.  He had been doing badly, and he did not

-want to return, and so he let us believe him dead.  But now he has

-come back and he is afraid you will not receive him kindly.  I

-suppose he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard on his

-evil ways.  But you won't be too hard, will you?"

-

-"I?  God knows I have been too great a sinner myself for that.  Where

-is Lew?  I can just remember how he used to whittle boats for me when

-I was a little boy.  I remember the morning he ran off, and how after

-that you always wanted to move West.  Poor Lew!  Where has he gone?"

-

-His mother opened the door of the little bed-room and led out the

-brother.

-

-"What!  Burchard?" cried Morton.  "What does this mean?  Are you

-Lewis Goodwin?"

-

-[Illustration: THE BROTHERS.]

-

-"I am!"

-

-"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun when you found out who

-I was.  That's how you saved me that day at Brewer's Hole.  And

-that's why you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other warning.

-Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you anyhow, but I ought to be not

-only glad as a brother, but glad that I can thank you for saving my

-life."

-

-"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."

-

-"What of that?  God forgives, and I am sure that it is not for such a

-sinner as I am to condemn you.  If you knew what desperate thoughts

-have tempted me in the last week you would know how much I am your

-brother."

-

-Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed it open, with a

-"Howdy, Misses Goodwin?  Howdy, Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"

-

-"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady.  We thought he was dead."

-

-"Heigh-ho!  The prodigal's come back agin, eh?  Mrs. Goodwin, I

-congratilate ye."

-

-And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis.  Patty, who stood

-behind, came forward, and Morton said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother

-Lewis."

-

-"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis.  "She knows me already.  If

-it hadn't been for her I might have been dead, and in perdition, I

-suppose.

-

-"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.

-

-"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable of the Prodigal Son,

-and told me that it was my mother's favorite chapter."

-

-"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it every day for years.

-But how did you know that, Patty?"

-

-"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman knew how another woman

-felt.  But you don't know how good Miss Lumsden is.  She did not know

-me as Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different character.

-I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast of it, Mort, at once.  Then

-there'll be no surprises afterward.  And if you hate me when you know

-it all, I can't help it."  With that he stepped into the bedroom and

-came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.

-

-"What!  Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.

-

-"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to knock down, and then

-hunted all over the country to find."

-

-Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery of his brother's

-bad character, Patty added adroitly: "The Pinkey that saved your

-life, Morton."

-

-Morton got up and stood before his brother.  "Give me your hand

-again, Lewis.  I am so glad you came home at last.  God bless you."

-

-Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands.  "I have been a very

-wicked man, Morton, but I never committed a murder.  I am guilty of

-complicity.  I got tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band.  I

-helped them because they had a hold on me, and I was too weak to risk

-the consequences of breaking with them.  That complicity has spoiled

-all my life.  But the crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly

-committed by others.  Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all

-sins were laid."

-

-"I must hurry home," said Patty.  "I only stopped to shake hands,"

-and she rose to go.

-

-"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to destroy these lies.

-You shall have them to do what you like with.  I wish you could take

-my sins, too."

-

-Patty put the disguises into the fire.  "Only God can take your

-sins," she said.

-

-"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis, with bitterness.

-

-Patty went home in anxiety.  Lewis Goodwin seemed to have forgotten

-the resolution he had made as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.

-

-But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of present duty crowd

-out thoughts of possible happiness.  She bore the peculiar paternal

-greetings of her father; she installed herself at once, and began,

-like a good genius, to evolve order out of chaos.  By the time

-evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress again.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XXXV.

-

-PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.

-

-That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother Lewis strolled into

-the woods together.  It was not safe for Lewis to walk about in the

-day time.  The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah

-Harp's band, perhaps, on the other.  But in the twilight he told

-Morton something which interested the latter greatly, and which

-increased his gratitude to Lewis.  That you may understand what this

-communication was, I must go back to an event that happened the week

-before--to the very last adventure that Lewis Goodwin had in his

-character of Pinkey.

-

-Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed.  She had ridden ten miles to

-Mount Tabor Church, one of Morton's principal appointments.  No doubt

-Ann Eliza persuaded herself--she never had any trouble in persuading

-herself--that zeal for religious worship was the motive that impelled

-her to ride so far to church.  But why, then, did she wish she had

-not come, when instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother

-Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located brother who was

-supplying his place in his absence at Kike's bedside?  Why did she

-not go on to the afternoon appointment as she had intended?  Certain

-it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log church--called Mount

-Tabor because it was built in a hollow, perhaps--she felt

-unaccountably depressed.  She considered it a spiritual struggle, a

-veritable hand to hand conflict with Satan.  She told the brethren

-and sisters that she must return home, she even declined to stay to

-dinner.  She led the horse up to a log and sprang into the saddle,

-riding away toward home as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer

-would carry her.  She was vexed that Morton should stay away from his

-appointments on this part of his circuit to see anybody die.  He

-might know that it would be a disappointment to her.  She satisfied

-herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination the

-half-coldness with which she would treat Brother Goodwin when she

-should meet him.  She inly rehearsed the scene.  But with most people

-there is a more secret self, kept secret even from themselves.  And

-in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that she would not dare treat

-Brother Goodwin coolly.  She had a sense of insecurity in her hold

-upon him.

-

-Riding thus through the great forests of beech and maple Ann Eliza

-had reached Cherry Run, only half a mile from her aunt's house, and

-the old horse, scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture

-ahead of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the "run," when

-what should she see ahead but a man in wolf-skin cap and long

-whiskers.  She had heard of Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this

-must be he.  Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the

-highwayman advanced.

-

-"I haven't anything to give you.  What do you want?"

-

-"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do your duty," he said,

-seating himself by the side of the trail on a stump.

-

-[Illustration: AN ACCUSING MEMORY.]

-

-"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened, starting her horse.

-

-"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want to talk to you."

-And he sat down again, holding fast to her bridle-rein.

-

-"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense of helplessness.

-

-"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a canting tone, "that you

-are doing just right?  Is not there something in your life that is

-wrong?  With all your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a

-wicked woman."

-

-Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire.  "Who are you, that talk in

-this way?  You are a robber, and you know it!  If you don't repent

-you will be lost!  Seek religion now.  You will soon sin away your

-day of grace, and what an awful eternity--"

-

-Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein, partly because it

-was habitual with her, and consequently easier in a moment of

-confusion than any other, and partly because it was her forte and she

-thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations were her best

-weapons.  But when she reached the words "awful eternity," Pinkey

-cried out sneeringly:

-

-"Hold up, Ann Eliza!  You don't run over me that way.  I'm bad

-enough, God knows, and I'm afraid I shall find my way to hell some

-day.  But if I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on my

-arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do.  You see I know

-all about you, and it's no use for you to glory-hallelujah me."

-

-Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate to the occasion, and

-so she remained silent.

-

-"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your hooks, now, and that you

-mean to marry him against his will.  Is that so?"

-

-"No, it isn't.  He proposed to me himself."

-

-"O, yes!  I suppose he did.  You made him!"

-

-"I didn't."

-

-"I suppose not.  You never did.  Not even in Pennsylvania.  How about

-young Harlow?  Who made him?"

-

-Ann Eliza changed color.  "Who are you?" she asked.

-

-"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name?  The one you danced

-with down at Stevens's one night."

-

-"What do you bring up all my old sins for?" asked Ann Eliza, weeping.

-"You know I have repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to

-lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my sins and let me see

-the light of his reconciled countenance----"

-

-"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey.  "You sha'n't glory-hallelujah

-me in that style, confound you!  Maybe God has forgiven you for

-driving Harlow to drink himself into tremens and the grave, and for

-sending that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing, you

-know.  You wouldn't like me to mention it.  You've got a very pretty

-face, Ann Eliza,--you know you have.  But Brother Goodwin don't love

-you.  You entangled him; you know you did.  Has God forgiven you for

-that, yet?  Don't you think you'd better go to the mourners' bench

-next time yourself, instead of talking to the mourners as if you were

-an angel?  Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can sing

-glory-hallelujah.  Hey?"

-

-"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.

-

-"Not yet, you angelic creature.  Now that I come to think of it,

-piety suits your style of feature.  Ann Eliza, I want to ask you one

-question before we part, to meet down below, perhaps.  If you are so

-pious, why can't you be honest?  Why can't you tell Preacher Goodwin

-what you left Pennsylvania for?  Why the devil don't you let him know

-beforehand what sort of a horse he's getting when he invests in you?

-Is it pious to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he

-wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth?  Come now, you talk a good

-deal about the 'bar of God,' what do you think will become of such a

-swindle as you are, at the bar of God?"

-

-"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up the sins that I have

-put behind my back.  Why should I talk with--with Brother Goodwin or

-anybody about them?"

-

-For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by reasoning that God's

-forgiveness had made the unpleasant facts of her life as though they

-were not.  It was very unpleasant, when she had put down her memory

-entirely upon certain points, to have it march up to her from

-without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and false whiskers, and speaking

-about the most disagreeable subjects.

-

-"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience, but you don't seem

-to have any.  You are totally depraved, I believe, if you do love to

-sing and shout and pray.  Now, when a preacher cannot get a man to be

-good by talking at his conscience, he talks damnation to him.  But

-you think you have managed to get round on the blind side of God, and

-I don't suppose you are afraid of hell itself.  So, as conscience and

-perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else.  You are going to

-write a note to Preacher Goodwin and let him off.  I am going to

-carry it."

-

-"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"

-

-"You aren't afraid of gunpowder.  You think you'd sail into heaven

-straight, by virtue of your experiences.  I am not going to shoot

-you, but here is a pencil and a piece of paper.  You may write to

-Goodwin, or I shall.  If I write I will put down a truthful history

-of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and I shall be quite particular to

-tell him why you left Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize

-the wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly blue eyes.

-But, if you write, I'll keep still."

-

-"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.

-

-"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious tormentor, leading

-the horse up to the stump.

-

-Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the pencil.  Her ingenious

-mind immediately set itself to devising some way by which she might

-satisfy the man who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and

-yet keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher.  But the man stood

-behind her and said, as she began, "Now write what I say.  I don't

-care how you open.  Call him any sweet name you please.  But you'd

-better say 'Dear Sir.'"

-

-Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."

-

-"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken off.  It is my fault,

-not yours.'"

-

-"I won't write that."

-

-"Yes, you will, my pious friend.  Now, Ann Eliza, you've got a nice

-face; when a man once gets in love with you he can't quite get out.

-I suppose I will feel tender toward you when we meet to part no more,

-down below.  I was in love with you once."

-

-"Who are you?"

-

-"O, that don't matter!  I was going to say that if I hadn't been in

-love with your blue eyes once I wouldn't have taken the trouble to

-come forty miles to get you to write this letter.  I was only a mile

-away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I heard that you had

-victimized him.  I could have sent him a note.  I came over here to

-save you from the ruin you deserve.  I would have told him more than

-the people in Pennsylvania ever knew.  Come, my dear, scribble away

-as I say, or I will tell him and everybody else what will take the

-music out of your love-feast speeches in all this country."

-

-With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting that she could send

-another note after this and tell Brother Goodwin that a highwayman

-who entertained an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot

-and extorted this from her.  She handed the note to Pinkey.

-

-"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive this sin, too.  You

-may pray and shout till you die.  I'll never say anything--unless you

-open communication with preacher Goodwin again.  Do that, and I'll

-blow you sky-high."

-

-"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and--"

-

-"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter names than that, and

-you don't look half so fascinating when you're mad as when you are

-talking heavenly.  Good by, Miss Meacham."  And with that Pinkey went

-into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and rode away, not on

-the road but through the woods.

-

-If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her many lovers this

-might be she would have set about forming some plan for circumventing

-him.  But the mystery was too much for her.  She sincerely loved

-Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others had now come back

-to her own lips.  And with it came a little humility.  She could not

-again forget her early sins so totally.  She looked to see them start

-out of the bushes by the wayside at her.

-

-After this recital it is not necessary that I should tell you what

-Lewis Goodwin told his brother that night as they strolled in the

-woods.

-

-At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not stay longer with

-safety.  The war with Great Britain had broken out and he joined the

-army at Chillicothe under his own name, which was his best disguise.

-He was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that he was trying to

-wipe the stain off his name.  He afterward moved West and led an

-honest life, but the memory of his wild youth never ceased to give

-him pain.  Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed sinner as

-forgetfulness.

-

-

-

-

-_CHAPTER XXXVI._

-

-GETTING THE ANSWER.

-

-When Patty went down to strain the milk on the morning after her

-return, the hope of some deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had

-well-nigh died out.  If he had had anything to communicate, Morton

-would not have delayed so long to come to see her.  But, standing

-there as of old, in the moss-covered spring-house, she was, in spite

-of herself, dreaming dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she

-could have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin, while he was

-yet Pinkey, had dropped.  By the time the first crock was filled with

-milk and adjusted to its place in the cold current, she had recalled

-that morning of nearly three years before, when she had resolved to

-forsake father and mother and cleave to Morton; by the time the

-second crock had been neatly covered with its clean block she thought

-she could almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on that

-morning:

-

-  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,

-  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,

-  Nocht of ill may come thee near,

-  My bonnie dearie."

-

-

-Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance with the Book of

-Discipline, given up "singing those songs that do not tend to the

-glory of God," but she felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again,

-assuring her of his strong protection, as it had on that morning

-three years ago.  Meanwhile, she had filled all the crocks, and now

-turned to pass out of the low door when she saw, standing there as he

-had stood on that other morning, Morton Goodwin.  He was more manly,

-more self-contained, than then.  Years of discipline had ripened them

-both.  He stepped back and let her emerge into the light; he handed

-her that note which Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty

-read:

-

-

-"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:

-

-"Dear Sir--The engagement between us is broken off.  It is my fault

-and not yours.

-

-"ANN E. MEACHAM."

-

-

-"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty, in pity.  Morton

-loved her better for her first unselfish thought.

-

-[Illustration: AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.]

-

-He told her frankly the history of the engagement; and then he and

-Patty sat and talked in a happiness so great that it made them quiet,

-until some one came to call her, when Morton walked up to the house

-to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and mollified Captain

-Lumsden.

-

-"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he came to understand

-how matters stood, "you've got the answer in the book.  It's quare

-enough.  Now, 'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and one

-is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to anybody.  You've got it,

-and I'm glad of it.  May ye niver conjugate the varb 'to love'

-anyways excipt prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural

-number, 'we love.'  I don't keer ef ye add the futur' tinse, and say,

-'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the parfect and say, 'we have

-loved,' but may ye always stick fast to first parson, plural number,

-prisint tinse, indicative mood, active v'ice!"

-

-Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some trepidation.  He

-feared that the old brethren would blame him more than ever.  But

-this time he found himself the object of much sympathy.  Ann Eliza

-had forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement with the very

-willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a great deal to think how he had

-"cut out" the preacher, after all.  And when Brother Magruder came to

-understand that he had not understood Morton's case at all, and to

-understand that he never should be able to understand it, he thought

-to atone for any mistake he might have made by advising the bishop to

-send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included Hissawachee.  And

-Morton liked the appointment better than Magruder had expected.

-Instead of living with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon

-installed himself for the year at the house of Captain Lumsden, in

-the double capacity of general supervisor of the moribund man's

-affairs and son-in-law.

-

-There rise before me, as I write these last lines, visions of

-circuits and stations of which Morton was afterward the

-preacher-in-charge, and of districts of which he came to be presiding

-elder.  Are not all of these written in the Book of the Minutes of

-the Conferences?  But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of Patty and

-her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded nowhere but in the

-Book of God's Remembrance.

-

-

-

-THE END.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***

+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  _See page 56._]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+  A Tale of the Heroic Age,
+
+  BY
+
+  EDWARD EGGLESTON,
+
+  _Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the
+  World," etc._
+
+
+
+  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness."--_Isaiah._
+
+  "----Beginners of a better time,
+  And glorying in their vows."--_Tennyson._
+
+
+
+  NEW YORK:
+  J. B. FORD & COMPANY
+  1874.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
+  J. B. FORD & COMPANY,
+  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
+
+
+
+
+  TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,
+
+  THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE
+  HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,
+
+  THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+  I.--The Corn Shucking
+  II.--The Frolic
+  III.--Going to Meeting
+  IV.--A Battle
+  V.--A Crisis
+  VI.--The Fall Hunt
+  VII.--Treeing a Preacher
+  VIII.--A Lesson in Syntax
+  IX.--The Coming of the Circuit Rider
+  X.--Patty in the Spring-House
+  XI.--The Voice in the Wilderness
+  XII.--Mr. Brady Prophesies
+  XIII.--Two to One
+  XIV.--Kike's Sermon
+  XV.--Morton's Retreat
+  XVI.--Short Shrift
+  XVII.--Deliverance
+  XVIII.--The Prodigal Returns
+  XIX.--Patty
+  XX.--The Conference at Hickory Ridge
+  XXI.--Convalescence
+  XXII.--The Decision
+  XXIII.--Russell Bigelow's Sermon
+  XXIV.--Drawing the Latch-String in
+  XXV.--Ann Eliza
+  XXVI.--Engagement
+  XXVII.--The Camp-Meeting
+  XXVIII.--Patty and her Patient
+  XXIX.--Patty's Journey
+  XXX.--The Schoolmaster and the Widow
+  XXXI.--Kike
+  XXXII.--Pinkey's Discovery
+  XXXIII.--The Alabaster Box Broken
+  XXXIV.--The Brother
+  XXXV.--Plnkey and Ann Eliza
+  XXXVI.--Getting the Answer
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  1. Spinning-wheel and Rifle ... Frontispiece
+  2. Captain Lumsden
+  3. Mort Goodwin
+  4. Homely S'manthy
+  5. Patty and Jemima
+  6. Little Gabe's Discomfiture
+  7. In the Stable
+  8. Mort, Dolly and Kike
+  9. Good Bye!
+  10. The Altercation
+  11. The Irish Schoolmaster
+  12. Electioneering
+  13. Patty in her Chamber
+  14. Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard
+  15. Patty in the Spring-House
+  16. Job Goodwin
+  17. Two to One
+  18. Gambling
+  19. A Last Hope
+  20. The Choice
+  21. Going to Conference
+  22. Convalescence
+  23. The Connecticut Peddler
+  24. Ann Eliza
+  25. Facing a Mob
+  26. "Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"
+  27. The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge
+  28. The Reunion
+  29. The Brothers
+  30. An Accusing Memory
+  31. At the Spring-House Again
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+Whatever is incredible in this story is true.  The tale I have to
+tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of
+the West at the beginning of this century.  These sharp contrasts of
+corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild
+revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this _mélange_
+of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of
+abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those
+who know the country now.  But the books of biography and
+reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify
+what is marvelous in these pages.
+
+Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my
+grandfather--brave old Indian-fighter!--had defended his family in a
+block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up
+familiar with this strange wild life.  At the age when other children
+hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with
+traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen.  Instead of
+imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers;
+instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of
+Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring
+adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts
+on the very road we traveled to school.  In many households the old
+customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut
+and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,
+apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.
+
+In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is
+the center-piece, but the circuit-rider.  More than any one else, the
+early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos.  In no other
+class was the real heroic element so finely displayed.  How do I
+remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers,
+whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure--who had
+survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious
+fevers!  How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude
+experience--how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of
+their hair-breadth escapes!  How was my heart set afire by their
+contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I
+bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the
+heavy burden of emulating their toils!  Surely I have a right to
+celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.
+
+It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without
+enthusiasm.  But nothing has been further from my mind than the
+glorifying of a sect.  If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should
+not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it.  There
+are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have
+frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism.
+I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell
+the truth.  Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak
+entirely on one side.  But no man is worthy to be called a novelist
+who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form
+of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately
+of those forms of life that come within his scope.
+
+
+* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in _The
+Christian Union_.
+
+
+Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not
+treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the
+most cordial sympathy and admiration.  And yet this is not a
+"religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they
+can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be.  I
+have not even asked myself what may be the "moral."  The story of any
+true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply,
+keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.
+
+Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by
+confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last,
+this is a love-story.  But it is not my fault.  It is God who made
+love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where
+love is left out.
+
+E. E.
+
+BROOKLYN, _March_, 1874.
+
+
+
+
+"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."
+
+
+
+
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER I._
+
+THE CORN-SHUCKING.
+
+Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the book.  Fifty or sixty
+years off the date at the head of your letter is easy enough to the
+"organ of number," but a severe strain on the imagination.  It is
+hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother talks
+about--that golden age when people were not roasted alive in a
+sleeping coach, but gently tipped over a toppling cliff by a drunken
+stage-driver.
+
+Grand old times were those in which boys politely took off their hats
+to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing their fresh young hearts
+afterward by making mouths at the back of his great-coat.  Blessed
+days! in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked with
+starched dignity, and yet were not too good to drink peach-brandy and
+cherry-bounce with folks; when Congressmen were so honorable that
+they scorned bribes, and were only kept from killing one another by
+the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms.  It was in those old times of
+the beginning of the reign of Madison, that the people of the
+Hissawachee settlement, in Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the
+corn-shuckin' down at Cap'n Lumsden's."
+
+There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment that opens the
+gayeties of the season.  The shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage
+of being set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and
+quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that were to
+follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and simple--parties
+alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.
+
+Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown ridge five or
+six feet high.  The Captain was not insensible to considerations of
+economy.  He knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long run
+to have it husked by his own farm hands; the expense of an
+entertainment in whiskey and other needful provisions, and the
+wasteful handling of the corn, not to mention the obligation to send
+a hand to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the gratuitous
+labor.  But who can resist the public sentiment that requires a man
+to be a gentleman according to the standard of his neighbors?
+Captain Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which were
+oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his own corn would have
+been to forfeit his respectability entirely.  It would have placed
+him on the Pariah level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who
+had bought a place farther up the creek, and who dared to husk his
+own corn, practise certain forbidden economies, and even take pay for
+such trifles as butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf
+which he had killed.  The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee had been
+a matter of serious debate.  A man "as tight as the bark on a beech
+tree," and a Yankee besides, was next door to a horse-thief.
+
+So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's.  The "women-folks"
+turned the festive occasion into farther use by stretching a quilt on
+the frames, and having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in
+quilting and gossiping--the younger women blushing inwardly, and
+sometimes outwardly, with hope and fear, as the names of certain
+young men were mentioned.  Who could tell what disclosures the
+evening frolic might produce?  For, though "circumstances alter
+cases," they have no power to change human nature; and the natural
+history of the delightful creature which we call a young woman was
+essentially the same in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago,
+that it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern times.
+Difference enough of manner and costume--linsey-woolsey, with a rare
+calico now and then for Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite
+young girls--but these things are only outward.  The dainty girl that
+turns away from my story with disgust, because "the people are so
+rough," little suspects how entirely of the cuticle is her
+refinement--how, after all, there is a touch of nature that makes
+Polly Ann and Sary Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and
+Blanche, and Mabel.
+
+It was just dark--the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire
+among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek--when the
+shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn.
+The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at
+the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck
+out."  Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size,
+welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves.  That is
+to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but
+brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a
+something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his
+enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain
+Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became
+an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be
+questioned for a moment.  He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,
+Bill?"  "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello,
+Bob, I thought you had the shakes--got out at last, did you?"  Under
+this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious
+superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself
+appreciated.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.]
+
+Let us understand ourselves.  When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an
+old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint.  In his
+native state his hereditary rank was low--his father was an
+"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made
+money by doubtful means.  But such is the advantage of emigration
+that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole
+Virginny" was credential enough.  Was not the Old Dominion the mother
+of presidents, and of gentlemen?  And so Captain Lumsden was
+accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while
+he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the
+Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn
+Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to
+that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while
+it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the
+"Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro."  Nothing smacks more
+of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and
+pronouncing.  In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this
+shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his
+wife.  For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a _prima facie_ lie.
+But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal--little acorns
+of fact grew to great oaks of fable.
+
+How quickly a crowd gathers!  While I have been introducing you to
+Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a
+cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as
+if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out,
+"Ho, Tom!  Howdy, Stevens?  Hello, Johnson! is that you?  Did come
+after all, eh?"
+
+When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide
+the heap.  To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield,
+a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he
+said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who
+also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked
+glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing.  Butterfield looked at the
+corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap.  Then he
+shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of
+the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge,
+measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides
+as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut,
+while the young lads stared at him with awe.  Jake Sniger strode away
+from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to
+examine anything minutely.  He pointed to the left, and remarked to
+his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the
+left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,
+and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint,
+hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins."  He
+"'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in.
+It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own
+part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be
+divided in the middle of the pile."  Strange to say, Butterfield,
+after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the
+same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence
+served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the
+two judges.
+
+So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle.
+A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary
+between the territories of the two parties.  The next thing to be
+done was to select the captains.  Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring
+an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing
+his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves,
+boys, choose for yourselves."
+
+Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker.  He
+wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected
+that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's
+shuckin."
+
+"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick
+me.  I'd like to lay him out wunst."
+
+"He ain't yer."
+
+"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake
+Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly
+through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail
+fence, and cleared it at a bound.
+
+"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of
+Captain Lumsden.  "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so
+clean."
+
+"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his
+wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead.  "We thought you
+wuzn't a comin'.  Here, you and Conkey choose up."
+
+[Illustration: MORT GOODWIN.]
+
+"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up
+such a distinction to others.
+
+"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Mort.  "You don't appreciate kindness;
+where's your stick?"
+
+By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand
+of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill
+McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the
+first choice of corn.  The shuckers were thus all divided into two
+parts.  Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side.
+Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a
+desp'rate sight of nubbins."  Then, at a signal, all hands went to
+work.
+
+The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of
+fence-rails.
+
+"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden, as he started the
+whiskey bottle on its encouraging travels along the line of shuckers.
+
+"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey.  "Pull away, my sweats! work like
+dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em all to thunder, er bust a biler, by
+jimminy!  Peel 'em off!  Thunder and blazes!  Hurrah!"
+
+This loud hallooing may have cheered his own men, but it certainly
+stimulated those on the other side.  Morton was more prudent; he
+husked with all his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,
+"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the breath he spends in
+noise we'll spend in gittin' the corn peeled.  Here, you! don't you
+shove that corn back in the shucks!  No cheats allowed on this side!"
+
+Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his own men, where he
+could overlook them and husk, without intermission, himself; knowing
+that his own dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of two
+men.  When one or two boys on his side began to run over to see how
+the others were getting along, he ordered them back with great
+firmness.  "Let them alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work
+hard at first, everybody will work hard at the last."
+
+For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping husks with
+unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked corn had grown smaller,
+the crib was nearly full of the white and yellow ears, and a great
+billow of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.
+
+"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who sat next to Morton.
+
+"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden," said Ben North,
+with a chuckle.
+
+Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never knew how near he came to
+getting a whipping.
+
+It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers.  McConkey had drunk
+rather freely, and his "Pull away, sweats!" became louder than ever.
+Morton found it necessary to run up and down his line once or twice,
+and hearten his men by telling them that they were "sure to beat if
+they only stuck to it well."
+
+The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the side led by Goodwin
+would have given it up once if it had not been for his cheers; the
+others were so near to victory that they began to shout in advance,
+and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the battle,--for
+Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work in a way that set them wild
+by contagion, and for the last minute they made almost superhuman
+exertions, sending a perfect hail of white corn into the crib, and
+licking up the last ear in time to rush with a shout into the
+territory of the other party, and seize on one or two dozen ears, all
+that were left, to show that Morton had clearly gained the victory.
+Then there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general
+expression of good feeling.  But Bill McConkey vowed that he "knowed
+what the other side done with their corn," pointing to the husk pile.
+
+"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can find more corn in
+your shucks than you kin in mine."  But Bill did not accept the wager.
+
+After husking the corn that remained under the rails, the whole party
+adjourned to the house, washing their hands and faces in the woodshed
+as they passed into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the
+other half block-house fortification.
+
+The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial supper was set in
+the apartment which was commonly used for parlor and sitting room,
+and which was now pressed into service for a dining room.  The ladies
+stood around against the wall with a self-conscious air of modesty,
+debating, no doubt, the effect of their linsey-woolsey dresses.  For
+what is the use of carding and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting
+and sewing to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER II._
+
+THE FROLIC.
+
+The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers eating with awkward
+embarrassment, as frontiermen always do in company,--even in the
+company of each other.  To eat with decency and composure is the
+final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of Hissawachee Bottom
+got through with the disagreeable performance as hurriedly as
+possible, the more so that their exciting strife had given them
+vigorous relish for Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and
+batter-cakes, and "punkin-pies."  The quilters had taken their supper
+an hour before, the table not affording room for both parties.  When
+supper was over the "things" were quickly put away, the table folded
+up and removed to the kitchen--and the company were then ready to
+enjoy themselves.  There was much gawky timidity on the part of the
+young men, and not a little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of
+the young women; but the most courageous presently got some of the
+rude, country plays a-going.  The pawns were sold over the head of
+the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as the wit of the company, devised
+all manner of penalties for the owners.  Susan Tomkins had to stand
+up in the corner, and say,
+
+  "Here I stand all ragged and dirty,
+  Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."
+
+
+These lines were supposed to rhyme.  When Aleck Tilley essayed to
+comply with her request, she tried to run like a turkey, but was
+stopped in time.
+
+The good taste of people who enjoy society novels will decide at once
+that these boisterous, unrefined sports are not a promising
+beginning.  It is easy enough to imagine heroism, generosity and
+courage in people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great heroes,
+the world's demigods, grew in just such rough social states as that
+of Ohio in the early part of this century.  There is nothing more
+important for an over-refined generation than to understand that it
+has not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity, and that it
+must not only tolerate rude folk, but sometimes admire in them traits
+that have grown scarce as refinement has increased.  So that I may
+not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took the place of
+another until the excitement and merriment reached a pitch which
+would be thought not consonant with propriety by the society that
+loves round-dances with _roués_, and "the German"
+untranslated--though, for that matter, there are people old-fashioned
+enough to think that refined deviltry is not much better than rude
+freedom, after all.
+
+Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of his time of life
+into the boisterous sport; but there was one drawback to his
+pleasure--Patty Lumsden would not play.  He was glad, indeed, that
+she did not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his companions.
+But, then, did Patty like the part he was taking in the rustic revel?
+He inly rejoiced that his position as the blindfold Justice, meting
+out punishment to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some
+extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of kissing.  True,
+it was quite possible that the severest prescription he should make
+might fall on his own head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he
+was saved by his good luck and the penetration which enabled him to
+guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the seller, when the offered
+pawn was his own.
+
+At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull for the growing
+mirth of the company.  They ranged themselves round the room on
+benches and chairs, and began to sing the old song:
+
+  "Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--
+  Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--
+  You nor I, but the farmers, know
+  Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.
+
+  "Thus the farmer sows his seed,
+  Thus he stands and takes his ease,
+  Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
+  And whirls around and views his lands.
+
+  "Sure as grass grows in the field,
+  Down on this carpet you must kneel,
+  Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,
+  And rise again upon your feet."
+
+
+It is not very different from the little children's play--an old
+rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed in England from
+immemorial time.  McConkey took the handkerchief first, and, while
+the company were singing, he pretended to be looking around and
+puzzling himself to decide whom he would favor with his affection.
+But the girls nudged one another, and looked significantly at Jemima
+Huddlestone.  Of course, everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima.
+That was fore-ordained.  Everybody knew it except Bill and Jemima!
+Bill fancied that he was standing in entire indecision, and
+Jemima--radiant peony!--turned her large, red-cheeked face away from
+Bill, and studied meditatively a knot in a floor-board.  But her
+averted gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and the
+significant titter of the company deepened the hue and widened the
+area of red in her cheeks.  Attempts to seem unconscious generally
+result disastrously.  But the tittering, and nudging, and looking
+toward Jemima, did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now
+the singers have reached the line which prescribes the kneeling.
+Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and with a sudden effort
+recovers from his vacant and wandering stare, wheels about, spreads
+the "handkercher" at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently
+kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance with the order
+of the play, and with reluctance only apparent, also drops upon her
+knees on the handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her
+red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it awakens laughter
+and applause.  Bill now arises with the air of a man who has done his
+whole duty under difficult circumstances.  Jemima lifts the
+handkerchief, and, while the song repeats itself, selects some
+gentleman before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss in the same
+fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to spread before some new
+divinity.
+
+[Illustration: HOMELY S'MANTHY.]
+
+This alternation had gone on for some time.  Poor, sanguine, homely
+Samantha Britton had looked smilingly and expectantly at each
+successive gentleman who bore the handkerchief; but in vain.
+"S'manthy" could never understand why her seductive smiles were so
+unavailing.  Presently, Betty Harsha was chosen by somebody--Betty
+had a pretty, round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be chosen,
+sooner or later.  Everybody knew whom she would choose.  Morton
+Goodwin was the desire of her heart.  She dressed to win him; she
+fixed her eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in his way;
+she compelled him to escort her home against his will; and now that
+she held the handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin.  Morton, for
+his part, was too young to be insensible to the charms of the little
+round, impulsive face, the twinkling eyes, the red, pouting lips; and
+he was not averse to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright,
+linsey frock, single him but for her admiration.  But just at this
+moment he wished she might choose some one else.  For Patty Lumsden,
+now that all her guests were interested in the play, was relieved
+from her cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the
+exciting amusement.  She stood behind Jemima Huddleston, and never
+was there finer contrast than between the large, healthful,
+high-colored Jemima, a typical country belle, and the slight,
+intelligent, fair-skinned Patty, whose black hair and eyes made her
+complexion seem whiter, and whose resolute lips and proud carriage
+heightened the refinement of her face.  Patty, as folks said,
+"favored" her mother, a woman of considerable pride and much
+refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude customs of
+the neighborhood, had about as bad a reputation as one can have in a
+frontier community.  She was regarded as excessively "stuck up."
+This stigma of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain.  His
+family was part of himself, and he liked to believe them better than
+anybody's else.  But he heartily wished that Patty would sacrifice
+her dignity, at this juncture, to further his political aspirations.
+
+[Illustration: PATTY AND JEMIMA.]
+
+Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her bright new
+calico--an extraordinary bit of finery in those days--Goodwin wished
+that Betty would attack somebody else, for once.  But Betty Harsha
+bore down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness, did not
+wait for the appropriate line to come--she did not give the farmer
+time to "stomp" his foot, and clap his hands, much less to whirl
+around and view his lands--but plumped down upon the handkerchief
+before Morton, who took his own time to kneel.  But draw it out as he
+would, he presently found himself, after having been kissed by Betty,
+standing foolishly, handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended
+for Betty were not yet finished.  Betty's precipitancy, and her
+inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set all the players
+laughing, and the laugh seemed to Goodwin to be partly at himself.
+For, indeed, he was perplexed.  To choose any other woman for his
+"true love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more than he
+could do; to offer to kneel before her was more than he dared to do.
+He hesitated a moment; he feared to offend Patty; he must select some
+one.  Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face of
+S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had been to the others,
+with an anxious smile.  Morton saw a way out.  Patty could not be
+jealous of S'manthy.  He spread the handkerchief before the delighted
+girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the right to choose a
+partner.
+
+The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to say, Gabriel
+Powers, junior.  His father was "Old Gabe," the most miserly farmer
+of the neighborhood.  But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and
+had been over the mountains, had made some money, nobody could tell
+how, and had invested his entire capital in "store clothes."  He wore
+a mustache, too, which, being an unheard-of innovation in those
+primitive times, marked him as a man who had seen the world.
+Everybody laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired him.
+None of the girls had yet dared to select Little Gabe.  To bring
+their linsey near to store-cloth--to venture to salute his divine
+mustache--who could be guilty of such profanity?  But S'manthy was
+morally certain that she would not soon again have a chance to select
+a "true love," and she determined to strike high.  The players did
+not laugh when she spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little
+Gabe.  They were appalled.  But Gabe dropped on one knee,
+condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the handkerchief with
+a delicate flourish of the hand which wore a ring with a large jewel,
+avouched by Little Gabe to be a diamond--a jewel that was at least
+transparent.
+
+Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once a question of solemn
+import to every young woman of the company; for even girls in linsey
+are not free from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies
+better dressed.  In her heart nearly every young woman wished that
+Gabe would choose herself.  But Gabe was one of those men who, having
+done many things by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing
+can be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be sufficiently
+transcendent.  He knew that Miss Lumsden held herself aloof from the
+kissing-plays, and he knew equally that she looked favorably on
+Morton Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he had already
+marked out his own line of action.  He stood in quiet repose while
+the first two stanzas were sung.  As the third began, he stepped
+quickly round the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood
+before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath.  Patty's cheeks
+did not grow red, but pale, she turned suddenly and called out toward
+the kitchen:
+
+"What do you want?  I am coming," and then walked quietly out, as if
+unconscious of Little Gabe's presence or purpose.  But poor Little
+Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far to recover
+himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got up immediately, but not in
+time to escape the general chorus of laughter and jeers.  He sneered
+at the departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could make her
+run."  But he could not conceal his discomfiture.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.]
+
+When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed to have a word with
+Patty.  He found her standing in the deserted kitchen, and his heart
+beat quick with the thought that she might be waiting for him.  The
+ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place made the logs
+of the kitchen walls bright, and gave a tint to Patty's white face.
+But just as Morton was about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky
+tread sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his aggravating
+metallic little laugh, and saying, "Morton, where's your manners?
+There's nobody to go home with Betty Harsha."
+
+"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not loud enough for the
+Captain to hear.  And he escorted Betty home.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER III._
+
+GOING TO MEETING.
+
+Every history has one quality in common with eternity.  Begin where
+you will, there is always a beginning back of the beginning.  And,
+for that matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the ending.
+Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the
+foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere
+into the interlaced web of human histories--of loves and marriages,
+of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and
+disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings.
+Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the
+beginning, something that needs to be told.
+
+I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from
+childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden.  When
+the long spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its
+numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative standing,
+Patty was always "one," and Morton "two."  On one memorable occasion,
+when the all but infallible Patty misspelled a word, the all but
+infallible Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and
+went down with her.  When she afterward regained her place, he took
+pains to stand always "next to head."  Bulwer calls first love a
+great "purifier of youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting,
+horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that were
+prevalent among the young men of that day, Morton was kept from worse
+vices by his devotion to Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.
+
+Had he worshiped her less, he might long since have proposed to her,
+and thus have ended his suspense; but he had an awful sense of
+Patty's nobility?  and of his own unworthiness.  Moreover, there was
+a lion in the way.  Morton trembled before the face of Captain
+Lumsden.
+
+Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was by far the largest
+land-owner in the settlement.  In that day of long credit, he had
+managed to place himself in such a way that he could make his power
+felt, directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within twenty miles
+of him.  The very judges on the bench were in debt to him.  On those
+rare occasions when he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck
+so ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or consequences,
+that he had become a terror to everybody.  Two or three families had
+been compelled to leave the settlement by his vindictive
+persecutions, so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal
+authority.  Morton Goodwin's father was but a small farmer on the
+hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had lost the greater part of a
+considerable patrimony.  How could Morton, therefore, make direct
+advances to so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of
+refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her father?
+Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but disillusion--Morton
+preferred to cherish his hopeless hope, living in vain expectation of
+some improbable change that should place him at better advantage in
+his addresses to Patty.
+
+At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in regard to his own
+disposition in the matter.  He had frowned upon Goodwin's advances by
+treating him with that sort of repellant patronage which is so
+aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for knocking down
+the author of the insult.  But of late, having observed the growing
+force and independence of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over
+the men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the necessity of
+attaching such a person to himself, particularly for the election
+which was to take place in the autumn.  Not that he had any intention
+of suffering Patty to marry Morton.  He only meant to play fast and
+loose a while.  Had he even intended to give his approval to the
+marriage at last, he would have played fast and loose all the same,
+for the sake of making Patty and her lover feel his power as long as
+possible.  At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope to
+bind the ardent young man to his interest.  Morton, on his part,
+reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness should continue to increase in
+the future as it had in the three weeks past, it would become even
+cordial, after a while.  To young men in love, all good things are
+progressive.
+
+On the Sunday morning following the shucking, Morton rose early, and
+went to the stable.  Did you ever have the happiness to see a quiet
+autumn Sunday in the backwoods?  Did you ever observe the stillness,
+the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the gentleness of wind, the
+chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks of blackbirds getting ready for
+migration, the lazy cawing of crows, softened by distance, the
+half-laughing bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped
+beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at you the while,
+as if to say, "Don't you wish you might guess?"
+
+Not that Morton saw aught of these things.  He never heard voices, or
+saw sights, out of the common, and that very October Sunday had been
+set apart for a horse-race down at "The Forks."  The one piece of
+property which our young friend had acquired during his minority was
+a thorough-bred filley, and he felt certain that she--being a horse
+of the first families--would be able to "lay out" anything that could
+be brought against her.  He was very anxious about the race, and
+therefore rose early, and went out into the morning light that he
+might look at his mare, and feel of her perfect legs, to make sure
+that she was in good condition.
+
+"All right, Dolly?" he said--"all right this morning, old lady? eh?
+You'll beat all the scrubs; won't you?"
+
+In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation, Morton came to
+breakfast, only to have his breath taken away.  His mother asked him
+to ride to meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny her as
+it was to give up the race at "The Forks."
+
+Rough associations had made young Goodwin a rough man.  His was a
+nature buoyant, generous, and complaisant, very likely to take the
+color of his surroundings.  The catalogue of his bad habits is
+sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of
+Sunday-school morality.  He often swore in a way that might have
+edified the army in Flanders.  He spent his Sundays in hunting,
+fishing, and riding horse-races, except when he was needed to escort
+his mother to meeting.  He bet on cards, and I am afraid he drank to
+intoxication sometimes.  Though he was too proud and manly to lie,
+and too pure to be unchaste, he was not a promising young man.  The
+chances that he would make a fairly successful trip through life did
+not preponderate over the chances that he would wreck himself by
+intemperance and gambling.  But his roughness was strangely veined by
+nobleness.  This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow had a
+chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held him always ready to
+devote himself in any way to her service.
+
+On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of reverence.  Her
+father had been one of those fine old Irish gentlemen, with grand
+manners, extravagant habits, generous impulses, brilliant wit, a
+ruddy nose, and final bankruptcy.  His daughter, Jane Morton, had
+married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the Revolution--a man who
+was "a poor manager."  He lost his patrimony, and, what is worse,
+lost heart.  Upon his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens.
+But her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when anchored back to
+a great tuck-comb, showed an errant, Irish tendency to curl.
+Morton's hung in waves about his neck, and he cherished his curls,
+proud of the resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very
+queen, to be served right royally.
+
+But it was hard--when he had been training the filley from a
+colt--when he had looked forward for months to this race as a time of
+triumph--to have so severe a strain put upon his devotion to his
+mother.  When she made the request, he did not reply.  He went to the
+barn and stroked the filley's legs--how perfect they were!--and gave
+vent to some very old and wicked oaths.  He was just making up his
+mind to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks, when his
+decision was curiously turned by a word from his brother Henry, a lad
+of twelve, who had followed Morton to the stable, and now stood in
+the door.
+
+"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you.  I wouldn't stand it.
+You go and run Doll, and lick Bill Conkey's bay fer him.  He'll think
+you're afeard, ef you don't.  The old lady hain't got no right to
+make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a purty day as this."
+
+"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up from the meditative
+scratching of Dolly's fetlocks, "don't you talk that away about
+mother.  She's every inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's
+had to foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin' and
+Lew's bad end--and you and me not promisin' much better.  It's mighty
+little I kin do to make things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to
+meetin' every day in the week, ef she says so."
+
+[Illustration: IN THE STABLE.]
+
+"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see ef she don't."
+
+"Nary Presbyterian.  They's no Presbyterian in me.  I'm a hard nut.
+I would like to be a elder, or a minister, if it was in me, though,
+just to see the smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think
+about it.  Looky here, Hen!  I'll tell you something.  Mother's about
+forty times too good for us.  When I had the scarlet fever, and was
+cross, she used to set on the side of the bed, and tell me stories,
+about knights and such like, that she'd read about in grandfather's
+books when she was a girl--jam up good stories, too, you better
+believe.  I liked the knights, because they rode fine horses, and was
+always ready to fight anything that come along, but always fair and
+square, you know.  And she told me how the knights fit fer their
+religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody that had got tromped down
+by somebody else.  I wished I'd been a knight myself.  I 'lowed it
+would be some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin' good.
+But then it seemed as if I couldn't find nothin' worth the fightin'
+fer.  One day I lay a-thinkin', and a-lookin' at mother's white lady
+hands, and face fit fer a queen's.  And in them days she let her hair
+hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was bright like as if
+they had a light _inside_ of 'em, you know.  She was a queen, _I_
+tell you!  And all at wunst it come right acrost me, like a flash,
+that I mout as well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and
+I've been at it ever since.  I 'low I've give her a sight of trouble,
+with my plaguey wild ways, and I come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this
+mornin', dogged ef I didn't.  But here goes."
+
+And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless Dolly, while Henry
+put the side-saddle on old Blaze, saying, as he drew the surcingle
+tight, "For my part, I don't want to fight for nobody.  I want to do
+as I dog-on please."  He was meditating the fun he would have
+catching a certain ground-hog, when once his mother should be safely
+off to meeting.
+
+Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount,
+gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long
+riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare.  Dolly sprang forward
+prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly
+pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull
+affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her
+master.  The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been
+preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away.
+Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual.  There
+still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the
+controversy between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians, that
+dated its origin before the Revolution.  Parson Donaldson belonged to
+the Old side.  With square, combative face, and hard, combative
+voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the
+grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the
+exciting meetings of the Methodists.  The great Cane Ridge
+Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the
+hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian
+ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set
+agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists.  He said
+that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were
+led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of
+them out.  As for Methodists, they denied "the Decrees."  What was
+that but a denial of salvation by grace?  And this involved the
+overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith.
+This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself
+at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers.  In
+preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the
+decrees logically involved the rest.  He translated his conclusions
+into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy,
+illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to
+Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching
+salvation by the merit of works.  There were many divines, on both
+sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any
+amount of unfairness.  (But all that is past!)
+
+Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and
+when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he
+assured his mother that he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often,
+rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every
+time.  He thought it wouldn't be hard to be good, if a body could
+only have something bad to fight.  "Don't you remember, mother, how
+you used to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress," and show
+me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn't
+hold shucks?  If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn't mind
+being a Christian."
+
+Morton felt especially pleased with the minister to-day, for Mr.
+Donaldson delighted to have the young men come so far to meeting; and
+imagining that he might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had
+hospitably urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment
+before starting on their homeward journey.  It is barely possible
+that the stimulus of the good parson's cherry-bounce had quite as
+much to do with Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of
+his discourse.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER IV._
+
+A BATTLE.
+
+The fight so much desired by Morton came soon enough.
+
+As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut," little traveled,
+Morton found time to master Dolly's fiery spirit and yet to scan the
+woods with the habitual searching glance of a hunter.  He observed on
+one of the trees a notice posted.  A notice put up in this
+out-of-the-way place surprised him.  He endeavored to make his
+restless steed approach the tree, that he might read, but her wild
+Arabian temper took fright at something--a blooded horse is apt to
+see visions--and she would not stand near the tree.  Time after time
+Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied away.  At last, Mrs.
+Goodwin begged him to give over the attempt and come on; but Morton's
+love of mastery was now excited, and he said,
+
+"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question between Dolly and me
+will have to be discussed and settled right here.  Either she will
+stand still by this sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or
+t'other lays down to rest."
+
+The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze browse by the
+road-side, and with shaping her thoughts into a formal regret that
+Morton should spend the holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her
+maternal heart she admired his will and courage.  He was so like her
+own father, she thought--such a gentleman!  And she could not but
+hope that he was one of God's elect.  If so, what a fine Christian he
+would be when he should be converted!  And, quiet as she was without,
+her heart was in a moment filled with agony and prayer and
+questionings.  How could she live in heaven without Morton?  Her
+eldest son had already died a violent death in prodigal wanderings
+from home.  But Morton would surely be saved!
+
+Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less for anything in
+heaven than he did to master the rebellious Dolly.  He rode her all
+round the tree; he circled that maple, first in one direction, then
+in another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly see.  Then
+he held her while he read the notice, saying with exultation, "Now,
+my lady, do you think you can stand still?"
+
+Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity, Morton had not cared to
+know the contents of the paper.  Even curiosity had been forgotten in
+his combat with Dolly.  But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch
+Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased,"
+he forgot his victory over his horse in his interest in the document
+itself.  It was therein set forth that, by order of the probate court
+in and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden,
+administrator, would sell at public auction all that parcel of land
+belonging to the estate of the said Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known
+and described as follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.
+
+"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode away (I am afraid
+he swore by thunder instead of by something else, out of a filial
+regard for his mother).  "By thunder! if that ain't too devilish
+mean!  I s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat little
+Kike--he has gone to robbing him.  He means to buy that land himself;
+or, what's the same thing, git somebody to do it for him.  That's
+what he put that notice in this holler fer.  The judge is afraid of
+him; and so's everybody else.  Poor Kike won't have a dollar when
+he's a man."
+
+"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin.  "It's a
+shame for a whole settlement to be cowards, and to let one man rule
+them.  It's worse than having a king."
+
+Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain Lumsden; and this
+appeal to the anti-monarchic feeling of the time moved him.  He could
+not bear that his mother, of all, should think him cowardly.  His
+pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension, and his
+provoking way of keeping Patty and himself apart.  Why should he not
+break with him, and have done with it, rather than stand by and see
+Kike robbed?  But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put Patty
+Lumsden farther away from him.  He was a knight who had suddenly come
+in sight of his long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied.
+And so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely spoke a
+word to his mother all the rest of his ride.  For here were his
+friendship for little Kike, his innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden,
+and his strong sense of justice, on one side; his love for
+Patty--stronger than all the rest--on the other.  In the stories of
+chivalry which his mother had told, the love of woman had always been
+a motive to valiant deeds for the right.  And how often had he
+dreamed of doing some brave thing while Patty applauded!  Now, when
+the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side.  This
+unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him, as such
+embarrassment always does a person disposed to act impulsively and in
+right lines.  And so it happened that he rode on in moody silence,
+while the mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the son,
+mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain endeavor to recall
+some passages that might have "found a lodgment in his mind."
+
+Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton, he might even then
+have chosen Patty, letting the interests of his friends take care of
+themselves.  But he did not decide it squarely.  He began by excusing
+himself to himself:--What could he do for Kike?  He had no influence
+with the judge; he had no money to buy the land, and he had no
+influential friends.  He might agitate the question and sacrifice his
+own hope, and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike.  No doubt all
+these considerations of futility had their weight with him;
+nevertheless he had an angry consciousness that he was not acting
+bravely in the matter.  That he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed
+that he would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his eyes to
+Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of one day getting his
+consent to marry his daughter!  It was this anger with himself that
+made Morton restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks
+that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or three times, in
+spite of his good resolution not to drink more than once.  It was
+this restlessness that carried him at last to the cabin of the widow
+Lumsden, that evening, to see her son Kike.
+
+[Illustration: MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.]
+
+Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys with straight
+black hair that one sees so often in southern latitudes.  He was
+called "Little Kike" only to distinguish him from his father, who had
+also borne the name of Hezekiah.  Delicate in health and quiet in
+manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his emotions were not
+only profound but persistent.  Dressed in buck-skin breeches and
+homespun cotton overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came
+up.  The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face relaxed a little, as
+with a smile deeper than it was broad he lifted himself up and said,
+
+"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"
+
+But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came round and stroked
+her fine neck, and expressed his regret that she hadn't run at the
+Forks and beat Bill McConkey's bay horse.  He wished he owned such "a
+beast."
+
+"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little stronger, I will
+open that crick bottom, and then I shall make some money and be able
+to buy a blooded horse like Dolly.  Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's;
+who knows?"  And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness at the vision of
+his impending prosperity.  But Morton could not smile, nor could he
+bear to tell Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that
+very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike had built upon
+it.  Morton had made up his mind not to tell Kike.  Why should he?
+Kike would hear of his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his
+part would only destroy his own hopes without doing anything for
+Kike.  But if Morton meant to be prudent and keep silence, why had he
+not staid at home?  Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender
+frame was a constant provocation to speech?  Was there a self
+contending against a self?
+
+"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.
+
+"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly.  "I was nearly
+well when I went down to Uncle Enoch's to work; and he made me work
+in the rain.  'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and
+throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain.  It'll do you
+good.  Your mother has ruined you, keeping you over the fire.  You
+want hardening.  Rain is good for you, water makes you grow; you're a
+perfect baby.'  I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a finishment
+to me, though."
+
+Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks had not increased his
+prudence.  As usual in such cases, the prudent Morton and the
+impulsive Morton stood the one over against the other; and, as always
+the imprudent self is prone to spring up without warning, and take
+the other by surprise, so now the young man suddenly threw prudence
+and Patty behind, and broke out with--
+
+"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some maledictions for emphasis.
+
+That was not exactly telling what he had resolved not to tell, but it
+rendered it much more difficult to keep the secret; for Kike grew a
+little red in the face, and was silent a minute.  He himself was fond
+of roundly denouncing his uncle.  But abusing one's relations is a
+luxury which is labeled "strictly private," and this savage outburst
+from his friend touched Kike's family pride a little.
+
+"I know that as well as you do," was all he said, however.
+
+"He would swindle his own children," said Morton, spurred to greater
+vehemence by Kike's evident disrelish of his invective.  "He will
+chisel you out of everything you've got before you're of age, and
+then make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake your head."
+And Morton looked off down the road.
+
+"What's the matter, Mort?  What set you off on Uncle Nuck to-night?
+He's bad enough, Lord knows; but something must have gone wrong with
+you.  Did he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"
+
+"No, he didn't," said Morton.  And now that Patty was recalled to his
+mind, he was vexed to think that he had gone so far in the matter.
+His tone provoked Kike in turn.
+
+"Mort, you've been drinking!  What brought you down here?"
+
+Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand again.  Patty and
+prudence were out of sight at once, and the young man swore between
+his teeth.
+
+"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said Kike, alarmed.
+"What's up?"
+
+"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly.  "Nothing, only your
+affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in Jackson's holler--on the
+side of the tree furthest from the road--advertising your crick
+bottom for sale.  That's all.  Old Virginia gentleman!  Old Virginia
+_devil_!  Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?"  And then he added
+something about hell and damnation.  These two last words had no
+grammatical relation with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of
+Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with Captain Lumsden
+and the subject under discussion.  Nobody is quite a Universalist in
+moments of indignation.  Every man keeps a private and select
+perdition for the objects of his wrath.
+
+When Morton had thus let out the secret he had meant to retain, Kike
+trembled and grew white about the lips.  "I'll never forgive him," he
+said, huskily.  "I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I
+ain't!"  He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless air that
+belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.
+
+"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.
+
+"Can you ride her?  Where are you going?" Morton was loth to commit
+himself by lending his horse.
+
+"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that sale; and I've
+got a right to choose a gardeen.  I mean to take one that will make
+Uncle Enoch open his eyes.  I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he
+hates Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done.  As for ridin' Dolly,
+you know I can back any critter with four legs."
+
+"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton, reluctantly.  He
+knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the Captain would hear of it; and then,
+farewell to Patty!  But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and
+wrath, he could not quite refuse.  Dolly went home at a tremendous
+pace, and Morton, commonly full of good nature, was, for once,
+insufferably cross at supper-time.
+
+"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry, provokingly.
+"You're cross as a coon when it's cornered."
+
+"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin.  The fond
+mother still hoped that the struggle in his mind was the great battle
+of Armageddon that should be the beginning of a better life.
+
+Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a contempt for
+himself.  He tried in vain to acquit himself of cowardice--the
+quality which a border man considers the most criminal.  Early in the
+morning he fed Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came.
+After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on the other side
+of the creek.  Could it be Kike?  Was he going to walk to Jonesville,
+twenty miles away?  And with his ague-shaken body?  How roundly
+Morton cursed himself for the fear that made him half refuse the
+horse!  For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a half refusal was
+equivalent to the most positive denial.  It was not too late.  Morton
+threw the saddle and bridle on Dolly, and mounted.  Dolly sprang
+forward, throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen
+minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.
+
+"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way!  Take Dolly."
+
+"No, I won't, Morton.  I oughtn't to have axed you to let me have
+her.  I know how you feel about Patty."
+
+"Confound--no, I won't say confound Patty--but confound me, if I'm
+mean enough to let you walk to Jonesville.  I was a devlish coward
+yesterday.  Here, take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you,"
+and Morton laughed.
+
+"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm goin' to walk."
+
+"Yes, you look like it!  You'll die before you git half-way, you
+blamed little fool you!  If you won't take Dolly, then I'll go along
+to bury your bones.  They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such
+bones, though."
+
+Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable for his servility
+to Lumsden.
+
+"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.
+
+"No ways jest now," said Morton.
+
+"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?" asked Sniger,
+smiling.
+
+"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place," said Morton.
+
+When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now Kike, the fat's all in the
+fire.  When the Captain finds out what you've done, Sniger is sure to
+tell that he see us together.  I've got to fight it out now anyhow,
+and you've got to take Dolly."
+
+"No, Morton, I can't."
+
+If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness of his knees would
+have persuaded him to relent.
+
+[Illustration: GOOD-BYE!]
+
+"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said Morton, dismounting.
+As soon as Kike had obligingly taken hold of the bridle, Morton
+started toward home, singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of
+his rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till he had
+finished the song, and reached the summit of the hill.  Then he had
+the satisfaction of seeing Kike in the saddle, laughing to think how
+his friend had outwitted him.  Morton waved his hat heartily, and
+Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she plunged forward,
+carrying him out of sight in a few minutes.  Morton's mother was
+disappointed, when he came in late to breakfast, to see that his brow
+was clear.  She feared that the good impressions of the day before
+had worn away.  How little does one know of the real nature of the
+struggle between God and the devil, in the heart of another!  But
+long before Kike had brought Dolly back to her stall, the
+exhilaration of self-sacrifice in the mind of Morton had worn away,
+and the possible consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER V._
+
+A CRISIS.
+
+Work, Morton could not.  After his noonday dinner he lifted his
+flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was
+laid, and set out to seek for deer,--rather to seek forgetfulness of
+the anxiety that preyed upon him.  Excitement was almost a necessity
+with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for
+his depression.  But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot
+everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it
+impossible to absorb himself in hunting.  For when a frontierman
+loves, he loves with his whole nature.  The interests of his life are
+few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.
+After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a
+deer, but did not see at in time to shoot.  He had tramped through
+the brush without caution or vigilance.  He now saw that it would be
+of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting.  He was seized with
+an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the
+door should be closed against him.  He might strike the trail, and
+reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the
+Captain was away from the house.  His only chance was to see her in
+the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some
+interruption if he were present.
+
+So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half
+accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild
+turkeys.  They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not
+until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy
+young gobblers.  Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw
+bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his
+shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite
+empty-handed.
+
+As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is
+such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made,
+broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose
+litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away
+somewhere for an emergency.  His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging;
+he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness,
+timidity, nor craftiness in his gait.  The legs are as much a test of
+character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness.
+His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair,
+and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his
+Scotch-Irish mother.  His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the
+look of a hunter.  The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his
+buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.
+
+The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but,
+like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect
+his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the
+gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance.
+The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old
+fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed
+tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if
+Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.
+
+Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion
+of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room.  The monotonous
+rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder
+and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking,
+then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax--this cadenced
+hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run
+back across the room after each climax of sound.  He knows the quick,
+elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the
+house, and passes round to the kitchen door.  It is Patty, as he
+thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very
+act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it
+roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of
+it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her
+left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is
+somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the
+wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door.  She
+changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right
+with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."
+
+"Yes, one for you and one for mother."
+
+"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."
+
+"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his
+coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief.
+"Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."
+
+"Well, I will.  I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day.  I've been at
+it since five o'clock."
+
+Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin.  He was, in his present
+perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken
+talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the
+spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.
+
+Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old
+spinning-wheel.  Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or
+pads, or paniers--her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left
+hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile
+figure in lithe action.  If plastic art were not an impossibility to
+us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like
+school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and
+counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey
+Washingtons on stage-horses;--they would by this time have found out
+that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in
+mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists.  But I do not
+believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the
+October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of
+unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day.  He did not
+know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm
+half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a
+statue.  He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues
+except in the talk of the old schoolmaster.  How should her think to
+call her statuesque?  Or how should he know that the wide old
+log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein
+sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on
+which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending--the old kitchen, with
+its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned
+strings of drying pumpkins--how should Morton Goodwin know that this
+wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,
+fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts
+of yarn in a day, would make a _genre_ piece, the subject of which
+would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters?  He could not
+know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading
+swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face,
+ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a
+whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible--he did know that Patty
+Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he
+remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be
+shut out from her father's house.
+
+It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of
+sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain
+Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his
+boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the
+kitchen door.
+
+"Hello, Morton! here, eh?  Been hunting?  This don't pay.  A young
+man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the
+sunshine talking to the girls.  Leave that for nights and Sundays.
+I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late.  Eh?"
+And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.
+
+Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he
+rose to go.  He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door,
+took up the other, and was about to leave.  Meantime the captain had
+lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.
+
+"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his
+sips of water--and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of
+Kike.  "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare.  You oughtn't to
+let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet.  Here comes Kike
+himself.  I wonder where he's been to?"
+
+Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate,
+evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking
+for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat
+him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.
+
+"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch
+faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that
+filley to-day?  I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you
+ride that she-devil.  She'll break your blamed neck some day, and
+then there'll be one fool less."  And the captain chuckled
+triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing.  "Don't kick
+the dog!  What an ill-natured ground-hog you air!  If I had the
+training of you, I'd take some of that out."
+
+"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."
+
+Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.
+
+"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.
+
+"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his
+slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an
+ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"
+
+"Tut! tut!  Kike, you're crazy, you little brute.  What's up?"
+
+"You know what's up.  You want to cheat me out of that bottom land;
+you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's
+holler, without consulting mother or me.  I have been over to
+Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my
+gardeen."
+
+"Colonel Wheeler?  Why, that's an insult to me!"  And the captain
+ceased to laugh, and grew red.
+
+"I hope it is.  I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for
+the sale of the land; he's afeard of you.  But now let me tell you
+something, Enoch Lumsden!  If you sell my land by that order of the
+court, you'll lose more'n you'll make.  I ain't afeard of the devil
+nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest.
+It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and
+sheep than what you make will pay for.  You cheated pappy, but you
+shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike.  I'll turn Ingin, and take
+Ingin law onto you, you old thief and--"
+
+[Illustration: THE ALTERCATION.]
+
+Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide.  "I'll
+teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"
+
+Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot.  "Hit me if
+you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then.  You
+hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year.  You
+or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."
+
+Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a
+day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton.  Morton advanced
+and took hold of Kike.
+
+"Come, Kike!  Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.
+
+"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose.  "I've
+got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with
+a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us.  We'll settle with
+blood then."
+
+"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain.  "I
+know well enough who put Kike up to this.  I'll settle with both of
+you, some day."  Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house,
+while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring
+to look at Patty.
+
+What Morton dreaded most had come upon him.  As for Kike, when once
+they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame
+was terrible.  He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.
+
+"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.
+
+And Morton did not reply.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER VI._
+
+THE FALL HUNT.
+
+Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's
+house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a
+broken chair by the fire-place.  His father, a hypochondriac, hard of
+hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a
+moment, and then said:
+
+"Sick, Mort?  Goin' to have a chill?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe
+full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on
+the other side of the fire-place.  "I feel a kind of all-overishness
+myself.  I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year.  Hey?"
+
+"I don't know, sir."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I said I didn't know."  Morton found it hard to answer his father
+with decency.  The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's
+last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he
+devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful
+consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to
+have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee
+bottom.  Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence
+of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to
+hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect.
+Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his
+mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the
+election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling
+that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen.
+She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin
+corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a
+griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place
+before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the
+milk, and arranging the plates--white, with blue edges--and the
+yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that
+Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of
+the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.
+
+The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the
+fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her
+son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break
+with Captain Lumsden--all three set agoing primarily by one
+cause--were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of
+the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.
+
+"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.
+
+"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."
+
+"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father.  "Well, the captain's feeling
+clever, I 'low."
+
+"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss
+Patty's somethin' or other--couplements, Bob called 'em."
+
+"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling.  "Well,
+you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to
+send a turkey?"  The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he
+did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty.
+Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself
+and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible.  Of
+course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey
+was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.
+
+"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after
+supper.  "Quarreled with Lumsden!  He'll drive us off.  We'll all
+take the fever"--for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of
+immediately became inevitable, in his imagination--"we'll all take
+the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time."  Saying
+this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his
+knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination
+to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from
+this new and improved stand-point of despair.
+
+But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock
+had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into
+a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the
+best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement
+until the captain should have time to cool off.
+
+"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate.  We
+want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd
+better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.
+
+Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in
+some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his
+mother.  He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had
+little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager
+desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer.  He
+seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the
+house of Kike's mother.  Soon after Morton went, his father woke up,
+and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed,
+that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that
+away at night."
+
+[Illustration: THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.]
+
+Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion--pale, angry, and sick.
+Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received
+most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best
+to divert Kike from his revengeful mood.  It is a singular fact in
+the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first
+school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.
+
+"Ha!  Moirton, is it you?" said Brady.  "I'm roight glad to see ye.
+Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a
+toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip.  An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi
+hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered
+him with baich switches.  I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay
+wuz, sure.  Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd
+a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the
+bayginnin'.  Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A
+wusn't B."
+
+It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old
+fellow's banter.  Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of
+his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and
+Morton in scholarship though much younger.
+
+Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to
+see him in so dangerous a passion.  "I wish he was leetle-er, ur
+bigger," she said.
+
+"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the
+Irishman.
+
+"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen
+him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool.  Boys is allers
+powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween--nary man
+nor boy.  They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to
+be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all
+sich like.  Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid
+acrost your lap, and larnt what's what.  Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's
+been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a
+oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and
+he's one of them you can't turn.  An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I
+_would_ be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like
+Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden.  Nobody but God
+A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort
+to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day.  Nothin' does my heart
+so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle
+_then_, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in
+_his_ face.  It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment,
+akordin' to my thinkin'.  I mean to call his attention to some things
+then.  He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families
+thar, I 'low."
+
+Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's;
+and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting
+things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.
+
+Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should
+leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt.  Kike felt the first
+dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand
+with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the
+opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and
+killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as
+shooting his uncle.
+
+"I don't want to run away from him.  He'll think I've backed out," he
+said, hesitatingly.
+
+"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git
+some bear's ile for your noice black hair.  If the cap'n makes so
+bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile
+ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back.
+The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit.  It'll burn a dale
+better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad.  An', as for the shootin' part,
+practice on the bears fust!  'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the
+captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know.  He'll keep till ye
+come back.  If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist
+spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own
+affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin'
+blood kin, sure."
+
+Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the
+matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go.  She'd
+bundle him off in the early morning.  And long before daylight, the
+two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with
+guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a
+pack-horse.  Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted
+in business so grave.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER VII._
+
+TREEING A PREACHER.
+
+Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of
+those gentle titles now in vogue, as "The Wild Hunters of the Far
+West," or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and
+Sunday-school literature--milk for babes--is now made attractive, as,
+for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter."  I might here have
+entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of
+Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of
+the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.
+
+After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found
+that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for
+a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their
+stock of ammunition.  Wilkins' store, which was the center of a
+settlement, was a double log-building.  In one end the proprietor
+kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and
+artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery,
+a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks
+of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for
+"chawing," a little "store-tea"--so called in contra-distinction to
+the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use--with a
+plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy.  The other end of
+this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying
+pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small
+window with four lights of glass.  In this room, which contained
+three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and
+kept a first-class hotel.
+
+In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus.  Our
+young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not
+because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get
+lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic
+in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home,
+they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games
+at cards, and other social enjoyments.
+
+Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined store and tavern at ten
+o'clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers.  The
+new-comers "took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the
+foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the
+target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon
+accepted as clever fellows.  A frontierman could bestow no higher
+praise--to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at
+cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be
+always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks for the crowd,"
+and to be able to hit a three-inch "mark" at two hundred paces
+without bragging.
+
+Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there
+walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of
+his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain
+backwoodsman.  He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an
+acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had
+been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes.  There were
+traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a
+certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good
+intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was
+written in his countenance.
+
+[Illustration: ELECTIONEERING.]
+
+"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of Morton's
+companions.
+
+The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as
+though he had known him always.  He proposed "the drinks" as the
+surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger
+paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.
+
+"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously, "you're mighty
+clever, by hokey.  What are you running fer?"
+
+"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time.  I 'low to run for
+sheriff next heat," said the stranger, who affected dialect for the
+sake of popularity.
+
+"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.
+
+"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home.  I live at Jenkinsville.
+I sot out in life a poor boy.  I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that
+my shoes hurts my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand most
+of the time."
+
+Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with
+perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard
+that speech so well done before.  We're all goin' to vote for you,
+without t'other man happens to do it up slicker'n you do.  I don't
+believe he can, though.  That was got off very nice."
+
+Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally
+produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader
+of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.
+
+Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening
+drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of
+funny anecdotes--little stories that had been aired in the same order
+at every other tavern and store in the county.  From sheer _ennui_ it
+was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house
+two miles away.  They could at least get some fun out of it.
+Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself.  He wished he
+might enjoy the sport, but he must push on.  And "push on" he did.
+In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be
+thrown away.
+
+Morton and Kike relished the expedition.  They had heard that the
+Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst
+practices under an appearance of piety.  Mr. Donaldson had often
+fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure
+that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable
+enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.
+
+The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type.  His speech
+was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases.  His
+illustrations were exceedingly uncouth.  It by no means followed that
+he was not an effective preacher.  All these defects were rather to
+his advantage,--the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the
+backwoods audience.  But the party from the tavern were in no mood to
+be moved by anything.  They came for amusement, and set themselves
+diligently to seek it.  Morton was ambitious to lead among his new
+friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his
+rarest gift.  The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up"
+with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the
+right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence,
+when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the
+diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's
+school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the
+while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the
+discourse.  The women were startled and the grave brethren turned
+their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men.
+In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping
+of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room.
+Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that
+the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the
+sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.
+
+"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even
+when they walk on two legs instid of four."
+
+This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to
+the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good
+opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers
+with whom he had come.  He kept silence now, until the preacher again
+approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice
+to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem
+sufficiently terrible to his hearers.  At last, when he got to the
+terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these
+awful sounds I hear?"  At this point he made a pause, which would
+have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.
+
+"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow.
+
+"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and
+breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom."
+
+"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere
+in particular.  Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward
+the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending
+to deal out summary justice to some one.  He was a man of immense
+strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole
+party.  But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met
+the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence.  Mr. Mellen
+was perplexed.  A disembodied voice wandering about the room would
+have been too much for Hercules himself.  When the baffled orator
+turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an
+aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's
+inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"
+
+And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was
+already fleeing through the door.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER VIII._
+
+A LESSON IN SYNTAX.
+
+The young men were gone until the latter part of November.  Several
+persons longed for their return.  Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to
+feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in
+the woods.  He was also very sure that each succeeding day would
+witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain
+Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger
+of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to
+Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding
+with compound interest to the next day.  He abounded in quotations of
+such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few
+and full of trouble.  The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial
+fountain of misery--he delighted to found his despairing auguries
+upon the superior wisdom of Solomon.  He looked for Morton's return
+with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to
+him than the shooting away of an arm.  Mrs. Goodwin, for her part,
+dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting.  She
+feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried
+away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an
+affray she had never ceased to mourn.
+
+And Patty!  When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered
+the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a
+message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that
+she was.  She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor
+displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking
+for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father.  This air of
+defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired.  It showed her mettle, he
+said to himself.  Patty would almost have finished that two dozen
+cuts of yarn if it had cost her life.  She even managed to sing,
+toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock,
+she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,--drawing a sigh of relief when
+the reel snapped,--and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed
+as blithe as ever.  Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with
+wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's
+achievement.  Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's
+reflection.
+
+[Illustration: PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.]
+
+But Patty?  She did not hurry.  She put everything away carefully.
+She was rather slow about retiring.  But when at last she went aloft
+into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut
+and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high,
+old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the
+little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able
+to keep while the eyes of others were upon her.  She saw weariness,
+disappointment, and dejection.  Her strong will held her up.  She
+undressed herself with habitual quietness.  She even stopped to look
+again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on
+her night-cap.  But when at last she had blown out the candle, and
+carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great,
+high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired
+head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to
+herself what she was crying about.
+
+And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or
+Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found
+in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton.  The more she
+tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the
+existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become.  Whenever
+hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game,
+she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them.  But she never failed, a
+moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and
+to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle.  What were hunters to her?
+
+But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by.  They were
+worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their
+tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,
+peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail
+to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat
+and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at
+Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself.
+That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which
+she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a
+younger brother a minute later.  But when she saw her father gallop
+rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of
+pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.
+
+Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part, to throw off their
+troubles in the excitement of hunting.  But when at last they had
+accumulated all the meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they
+could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home.  And with the
+turning of their steps toward home had come the inevitable turning of
+their thoughts toward old perplexities.  Morton then confided to Kike
+his intention of leaving the settlement and leading the life of a
+hermit in the wilderness in case it should prove to be "all off"
+between him and Patty.  And Kike said that his mind was made up.  If
+he found that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be revenged
+in some way and then run off and live with the Indians.  It is not
+uncommon for boys now-a-days to make stern resolutions in moments of
+wretchedness which they never attempt to carry out.  But the rude
+life of the West developed deep feeling and a hardy persistence in a
+purpose once formed.  Many a young man crossed in love or incited to
+revenge had already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a morose
+hermit or a desperado among the savages.  At the period of life when
+the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny
+often hangs very perilously balanced.  It was at that day a question
+in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a
+class-leader.
+
+When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more
+depressed than ever.  Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house
+and yard in vain for a sight of Patty.  Kike looked sternly ahead of
+him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's
+existence.  And when, five minutes later, they heard horse-hoofs
+behind them, and, looking back, saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping
+after them on his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat
+fast with excitement.  Morton wondered what the Captain could want
+with them, seeing it was not his way to carry on his conflicts by
+direct attack; and Kike contented himself with looking carefully to
+the priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking
+straight forward.
+
+"Hello, boys!  Howdy?  Got a nice passel of furs, eh?  Had a good
+time?"
+
+"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished at the
+greeting, but eager enough to be on good terms again with Patty's
+father.  Kike said not a word, but grew white with speechless anger.
+
+"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain tapped it with his
+cow-hide whip.  "Killed a bar, too; who killed it?"
+
+"Kike," said Morton.
+
+"Purty good fer you, Kike!  Got over your pout about that land yet?"
+
+Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could not.
+
+"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss about nothing!  I
+didn't sell it, of course, when you didn't want me to, but you ought
+to have a little manners in your way of speaking.  Come to me next
+time, and don't go running to the judge and old Wheeler.  If you
+won't be a fool, you'll find your own kin your best friends.  Come
+over and see me to-morry, Mort.  I've got some business with you.
+Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.
+
+Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty looked at his face
+to see what had been the nature of his interview with the boys.  With
+a characteristic love of exerting power over the moods of another, he
+said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest little brute I
+ever did see."
+
+And Patty spent most of her time during the night in trying to guess
+what this saying indicated.  It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.
+
+Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the Captain's cordiality
+might signify.  Kike was pleased that his land had not been sold, but
+he was not in the least mollified by that fact.  He was glad of his
+victory and hated his uncle all the more.
+
+After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly enjoyed the warm
+hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the milk and butter, that he got at his
+mother's table.  His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and
+sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them all before
+Christmas or Noo Years.  Morton told of his meeting with the Captain
+in some elation, but Job Goodwin shook his head.  He "knowed what
+that meant," he said.  "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep.  He'd hit
+sometime when you didn't know whar the lick come from.  And he'd hit
+powerful hard when he _did_ hit, you be shore."
+
+Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady.  He had
+heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to
+say him agin.  Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all
+the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and
+disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he
+filled the place of a local newspaper.  He was a man of much reading,
+but with no mental discipline.  He had treasured all the strange and
+delightful things he had ever heard or read--the bloody murders, the
+sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups
+and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous
+stories.  He had so many of these at command that it was often
+surmised that he manufactured them.  He "boarded 'round" during
+school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a
+man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in
+amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices.
+Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements
+than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing of
+_ennui_, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his
+keep,"--an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided.
+For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's
+reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition
+toward the guest.
+
+Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and
+Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures.  The story of Kike's
+first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton
+told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily.
+Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache
+afore hay could parse."  Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed,
+had more influence on his parsing than on his speech.
+
+At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all
+his adventures--the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told
+it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun.  By the time
+the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more
+about it than he affected to.
+
+"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something
+about this thing.  What made the coon come down so easy?"
+
+"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is
+to bay) a coun.  Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this
+toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer
+supayriors.  An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."
+
+Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a
+sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on
+Morton.
+
+"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady.  How did you
+fetch the Captain round?  For I think you did it."
+
+"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under his eyebrows with
+his face all a-twinkle with fun.  "I jist parsed the sintince in sich
+a way as to put the Captin in the nominative case.  He loikes to be
+put in the nominative case, does the Captin.  If iver yer goin' to
+win the devoine craycher that calls him father ye'll hev to larn to
+parse with Captin Lumsden for the nominative."  Here Brady gave the
+whole party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his head
+reflectively upon his bosom.
+
+"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of parsing.  You left
+that rule of syntax out last winter." said Morton, seeking to draw
+out the master by humoring his fancy.  "How did you parse the
+sentence with him, while Kike and I were gone?"
+
+"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs the varb, and
+thin the varb governs 'most all the rist of the sintince."
+
+"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the same time the
+pompous air and authoritative voice with which Brady was accustomed
+to make such a demand of a pupil.
+
+"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton.  But ye must all be quiet about
+it.  I wint to say the Captin soon afther yerself and Koike carried
+yer two impty skulls into the woods.  An' I looked koind of
+confidintial-loike at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to
+riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."
+
+"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.
+
+"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,' siz I, 'till the
+folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz I; 'ye've got more
+interest in the county,' siz I, 'than the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've
+got the brains to exart an anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I.  Will,
+ye see, Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,'
+siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he.  An' I saw I had
+'im.  I'd jist put 'im in the nominative case governin' the varb.
+And I was the varb.  An' I mint to govern, the rist."  Here Brady
+stopped to smile complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.
+
+"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I, 'ye must be
+moighty keerful not to give the inimy any handle onto ye,' siz I.
+An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll be keerful,' siz he.  An' I siz,
+'Captin, be pertik'ler keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may
+make so bowld,' siz I.  'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere.  They're
+a-talkin' about it now.'  An' the Captin siz, 'Will, Brady, I say I
+kin thrust ye,' siz he.  An' I siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye
+kin thrust the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I.  'Brady,' siz
+he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me, since the little
+brat's gone and brought ole Whayler into it,' siz he.  'Ye bitter
+belave it is, Captin,' siz I.  'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he.
+'Spoike the guns, Captin,' siz I.  'How?' siz he.  'Make it all
+roight with Koike and Moirton,' siz I.  'As fer Moirton,' siz I,
+'he's the smartest _young_ man,' siz I (puttin' imphasis on
+'_young_,' you say), he's the smartest young man,' siz I, 'in the
+bottoms; and if ye kin make an alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got
+the smartest old man managin' the smartest young man.  An' if ye kin
+make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi at 'im, 'atwixt
+that devoine young craycher, yer charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and
+Moirton, ye've got him tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,'
+siz I.  An' he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all.
+I'll think about it,' siz he.  An' that's how I made Captin Lumsden
+the nominative case governin' the varb--that's myself--and thin the
+varb rigilates the rist.  But I must go and say Koike, or the little
+black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid the
+captin.  Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin, it's meself as has
+got a hard sum in the rule of thray.  This toime I hope the answer'll
+come out all roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on the
+shoulder and went out.  Then he put his head into the door again to
+say that the answer set down in the book was: "Misthress Patty
+Goodwin."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER IX._
+
+THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.
+
+Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the flag of independence
+in the Hissawachee bottom.  He had been a Captain in the Revolution;
+but Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to grow during the
+quarter of a century that followed the close of the war.  An
+ex-officer's neighbors carried him forward with his advancing age; a
+sort of ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of military
+titles as the Revolution passed into history and heroes became
+scarcer.  And emigration always advanced a man several degrees--new
+neighbors, in their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give
+him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as possible the
+lustre which the new-comer conferred upon the settlement.  Thus
+Captain Wheeler in Maryland was Major Wheeler in Western
+Pennsylvania, and a full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his
+second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek.  And yet I may
+be wrong.  Perhaps it was not the transplanting that did it.  Even
+had he remained on the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through
+a process of canonization as he advanced in life that would have
+brought him to a colonelcy: other men did.  For what is a Colonel but
+a Captain gone to seed?
+
+"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression; and, as a
+conscientious writer, far be it from me to use slang.  And I take
+great credit to myself for avoiding it just now, since nothing could
+more perfectly describe Wheeler.  His hair was grizzling, his
+shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded in an
+expression of perpetual resistance, and his prominent chin and brow
+seemed to have been jammed together; the space between was too small.
+He had an air of defense; his nature was always in a
+"guard-against-cavalry" attitude.  He had entered into the spirit of
+colonial resistance from childhood; he was born in antagonism to
+kings and all that are in authority; it was a family tradition that
+he had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the
+face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.
+
+When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of course looked about
+for the power that was to be resisted, and was not long in finding it
+in his neighbor, Captain Lumsden.  He was the one opponent whom
+Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure.  To Wheeler
+this fight against Lumsden was the one delightful element of life in
+the Bottoms.  He had now the comfortable prospect of spending his
+declining years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful foe,
+whose encroachments on the rights and privileges of his neighbors
+would afford him an inexhaustible theme for denunciation, and a
+delightful incitement to the exercise of his powers of resistance.
+And thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better relish
+because of his contest with Lumsden.  Mordecai could not have had
+half so much pleasure in staring stiffly at the wicked Haman as
+Isaiah Wheeler found in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without
+so much as a nod of recognition.  And Haman's feelings were not more
+deeply wounded than Lumsden's.
+
+Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married; for at home he could
+find no encroachments to resist.  The perfect temper of his wife
+disarmed even his opposition.  He had begun his married life by
+fighting his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the Hissawachee
+and found Methodism unpopular, he took up arms in its defense.
+
+Such was the man whom Kike had selected as guardian--a man who, with
+all his disagreeableness, was possessed of honesty, a virtue not
+inconsistent with oppugnancy.  But Kike's chief motive in choosing
+him was that he knew that the choice would be a stab to his uncle's
+pride.  Moreover, Wheeler was the only man who would care to brave
+Lumsden's anger by taking the trust.
+
+Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and to this house, on
+the day after the return of Morton and Kike, there rode a stranger.
+He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five,
+with a serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white hat, a
+coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted and buttoned to the
+chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey" leggings tied about his legs below
+the knees.  He rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of
+saddlebags.
+
+Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double cabin, he shouted,
+after the Western fashion, "Hello!  Hello the house!"
+
+[Illustration: COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.]
+
+At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous barking, ranging in
+key all the way from the contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice"
+to the deep baying of a huge bull-dog.
+
+"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.
+
+"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler, opening the door, and
+shouting to the dogs, "You, Bull, come here!  Git out, pup!  Clear
+out, all of you!"  And he accompanied this command by threateningly
+lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs scampered away, and a third
+sneakingly retreated; but the bull-dog turned with reluctance, and,
+without smoothing his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the
+house, protesting with surly growls against this authoritative
+interruption.
+
+"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler, advancing with
+caution, but without much cordiality.  He would not commit himself to
+a welcome too rashly; strangers needed inspection.  "'Light, won't
+you?" he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to dismount,
+while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who came out at that moment
+to "put up the stranger's horse, and give him some fodder and corn."
+Then turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment, and said: "A
+preacher, I reckon, sir?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard that your wife was a
+member of the Methodist Church, and that you were very friendly; so I
+came round this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for
+preaching.  I have one or two vacant days on my round, and thought
+maybe I might as well take Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I
+didn't find anything to prevent."
+
+By this time the colonel and his guest had reached the door, and the
+former only said, "Well, sir, let's go in, and see what the old woman
+says.  I don't agree with you Methodists about everything, but I do
+think that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody to say
+anything against circuit riders without taking it up."
+
+Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly religious face--a
+countenance in which scruples are balanced by evenness of
+temperament--was at the moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue
+dye that stood in a great iron kettle by the fire.  She made haste to
+wash and dry her hands, that she might have a "good, old-fashioned
+Methodist shake-hands" with Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist
+preacher she had seen since she left Pittsburg."
+
+Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder should preach in
+his house.  Methodists had just the same rights in a free country
+that other people had.  He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement
+didn't belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of England
+in his time, and was jist as ready to fight aginst the King of
+Hissawachee Bottom."  The Colonel almost relaxed his stubborn lips
+into a smile when he said this.  Besides, he proceeded, his wife was
+a Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose.  He was
+friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a professor.  If his
+wife didn't want to wear rings or artificials, it was money in his
+pocket, and nobody had a right to object.  Colonel Wheeler plumed
+himself before the new preacher upon his general friendliness toward
+religion, and really thought it might be set down on the credit side
+of that account in which he imagined some angelic book-keeper entered
+all his transactions.  He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain," as
+he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin' for he got from
+_such_ a wife as his, and his own gineral friendliness to the
+preachers and the Methodis' meetings, he would be saved at the last,
+_somehow or nother_."  It was not in the man to reflect that his
+"gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin in a gineral
+spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.
+
+Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform
+everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening.
+The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of
+loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon,
+called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation
+from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they
+had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's."  And
+then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry
+out, "Laws-a-massy!  You don't say!  A Methodis'?  One of the
+shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches!  What will
+the Captin' do?  They do say he _does_ hate the Methodis' worse nor
+copperhead snakes, now.  Some old quarrel, liker'n not.  Well, I'm
+agoin', jist to see how _red_ikl'us them Methodis' _does_ do!"
+
+The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the
+winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the
+neighborhood.  It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.
+
+"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing
+chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in!  We'll have to see
+about that.  A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to
+be lynched.  But I'll match the Methodists.  Where's Patty?  Patty!
+O, Patty!  Bob, run and find Miss Patty."
+
+And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty!  O' Miss Patty!
+Whah is ye?"
+
+He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn,
+shouting, "Miss Patty!  O!  Miss Patty!"
+
+Where was Patty?
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER X._
+
+PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
+
+Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain
+the milk.
+
+Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a
+spring-house is?  A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide,
+without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and
+icy cold from beneath the hill.  The little cabin-like spring-house
+sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the
+roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you
+see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the
+new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle,
+you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on
+its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up
+eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold
+waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and
+the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel
+whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.
+
+It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden had hidden
+herself.
+
+She brought clean crocks--earthenware milk pans--from the shelf
+outside, where they had been airing to keep them sweet; she held the
+strainer in her left hand and poured the milk through it until each
+crock was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places among the
+stones, so that they stood half immersed in the cold current of
+spring water; she laid the smooth pine cover on each crock, and put a
+clean stone atop that to secure it.
+
+While she was thus putting away the milk her mind was on Morton.  She
+wondered what her father had said to him yesterday.  In the heart of
+her heart she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry him
+in the face of her father's displeasure.  She had never rebelled
+against the iron rule, but she felt herself full of power and full of
+endurance.  She could go off into the wilderness with Morton; they
+would build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with puncheon
+floor and stick chimney; they would sleep, like other poor settlers,
+on beds of dry leaves, and they would subsist upon the food which
+Morton's unerring rifle would bring them from the forest.  These were
+the humble cabin castles she was building.  All girls weave a
+tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes
+and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of
+the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a
+lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a
+cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane
+in a great fire-place.  I know it sounds old-fashioned and
+sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to a heart
+like Patty's what may be the scenery on the tapestry, if love be the
+warp and faith the woof?
+
+[Illustration: PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.]
+
+Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring to plan his own
+and Patty's partnership future, but he drew a more cheerful picture
+than she did, for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain
+Lumsden's displeasure.  He was at the moment going to meet the
+Captain, walking down the foot-path through the woods, kicking the
+dry beech leaves into billows before him and singing a Scotch
+love-song of Burns's which he had learned from his mother.
+
+He planned one future, she another; and in after years they might
+have laughed to think how far wrong were both guesses.  The path
+which Morton followed led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on
+the stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone voice as he
+approached, singing tender words that made her heart stand still:
+
+  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
+  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear
+  Nocht of ill shall come thee near,
+        My bonnie dearie."
+
+
+And as he came right by the spring-house, he sang, now in a lower
+tone lest he should be heard at the house, but still more earnestly,
+and so audibly that the listening Patty could hear every word, the
+last stanza:
+
+  "Fair and lovely as thou art,
+  Thou hast stown my very heart;
+  I can die--but cannot part,
+        My bonnie dearie."
+
+
+And even as she listened to the last line, Morton had discovered that
+the spring-house door was ajar, and turned, shading his eyes, to see
+if perchance Patty might not be within.  He saw her and reached out
+his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed to the
+imperfect light did not see how full of blushes was her face--for she
+feared that he might guess all that she had just been dreaming.  But
+she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness than she would
+have shown had it not been for the displeasure which she supposed her
+father had manifested.  And so she covered the last crock and came
+and stood by him at the door of the spring-house, and he talked right
+on in the tender strain of his song.  And she did not protest, but
+answered back timidly and almost as warmly.
+
+And that is how little negro Bob at last found Patty at the
+spring-house and found Morton with her.  "Law's sake!  Miss Patty,
+done look for ye mos' every whah.  Yer paw wants ye."  And with that
+Bob rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips into a
+broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XI._
+
+THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.
+
+"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain.  "You've been
+keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at
+the loom by this time.  In my time young men and women didn't waste
+their mornings.  Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting.
+Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers
+brought into the settlement by Wheeler.  These circuit riders are
+worse than third day fever 'n' ager.  They go against dancing and
+artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other
+amusements.  They give people the jerks wherever they go.  The
+devil's in 'em.  Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance
+to-night, and ask all you can get along with.  Nothing'll make the
+preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a
+good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the
+power and break their necks, maybe."
+
+Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will
+help me send the invitations."
+
+"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he
+had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone.  And he had the
+satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain
+Lumsden.
+
+"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the
+Captain, chuckling interrogatively.  Morton did not like this
+proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about
+election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother.  He evaded an
+answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning
+the guests.
+
+Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night.
+Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness
+of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions
+she was a queen indeed.  She wore the antique earrings that were an
+heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her
+father had bought her.  These and her new dress of English calico
+made her the envy of all the others.  Pretty Betty Harsha was led out
+by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of
+these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.
+
+Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching.  Behold in Hissawachee Bottom
+the world's evils in miniature!  Here are religion and amusement
+divorced--set over the one against the other as hostile camps.
+
+Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went
+to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he
+went along.
+
+"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden.  Me father was a Catholic and me
+mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a
+mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for
+orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school
+taycher in these haythen backwoods.  But it does same to me that the
+Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans
+as we air.  What would a parson from the ould counthry do here?  He
+moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody
+would be the better of it.  What good does me own grammathical
+acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement?  With all me
+grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative
+case before very bad words.  Hey, Koike?  Now, the Mithodists air a
+narry sort of a payple.  But if you want to make a strame strong you
+hev to make it narry.  I've read a good dale of history, and in me
+own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both
+torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks.  The
+Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin'
+songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation.  But it's
+kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the
+worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime
+among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist.  But the brook
+ain't so bad afther all.  Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"
+
+Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was.  It was very good
+for watering stock.
+
+"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a
+laugh.  "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it
+chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at
+than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race.  But I wish these Mithodists
+would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em
+quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin'
+dthrunk.  And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't
+be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles.  Hey, Koike?"
+
+Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they
+were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house.  Despite the dance there
+were present, from near and far, all the house would hold.  For those
+who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to
+meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their
+curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher.  The dance had taken away
+those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out
+did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by
+raising a row.  Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in
+his uncle's house.
+
+Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people.  A
+little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the
+preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd.  He
+had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist
+preacher, the forest.
+
+Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms,
+shaggy brows, and bristling black hair.  He read the hymn, two lines
+at a time, and led the singing himself.  He prayed with the utmost
+sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the
+simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the
+preacher's message.  He prayed as a man talking face to face with the
+Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an
+undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the
+sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers.
+It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for
+immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder
+out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers
+of ingenious apologies.
+
+When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit
+of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their
+hearts.  Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of
+study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew
+what was of vastly more consequence to him--how to read and expound
+the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among
+whom he labored.  He was of their very fibre.
+
+He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain Lumsden's dance, which
+was prompted, he said, by the devil, to keep men out of heaven.  With
+half a dozen quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish
+arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the audience fluttered
+with sensation.  Magruder had a vicarious conscience; but a vicarious
+conscience is good for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.
+Whitefield said that he never preached a sermon to others till he had
+first preached it to George Whitefield; and Magruder's severities had
+all the more effect that his audience could see that they had full
+force upon himself.
+
+If is hard for us to understand the elements that produced such
+incredible excitements as resulted from the early Methodist
+preaching.  How at a camp-meeting, for instance, five hundred people,
+indifferent enough to everything of the sort one hour before, should
+be seized during a sermon with terror--should cry aloud to God for
+mercy, some of them falling in trances and cataleptic
+unconsciousness; and how, out of all this excitement, there should
+come forth, in very many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems
+to us a puzzle beyond solution.  But the early Westerners were as
+inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate, they were swept into
+most of their decisions by contagious excitements.  And never did any
+class of men understand the art of exciting by oratory more perfectly
+than the old Western preachers.  The simple hunters to whom they
+preached had the most absolute faith in the invisible.  The Day of
+Judgment, the doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the
+righteous were as real and substantial in their conception as any
+facts in life.  They could abide no refinements.  The terribleness of
+Indian warfare, the relentlessness of their own revengefulness, the
+sudden lynchings, the abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the
+ruthlessness of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon which
+they founded the most materialistic conception of hell and the most
+literal understanding of the Day of Judgment.  Men like Magruder knew
+how to handle these few positive ideas of a future life so that they
+were indeed terrible weapons.
+
+On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as
+things by which they drove away the Spirit of God.  The audience
+trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.
+Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own
+conscience.  There was excitement throughout the house.  Some were
+angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to "promises made to dying
+friends," "vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their
+children,"--for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such
+appeals to sensibility.
+
+When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike, who had listened
+intently from the first, found himself breathing hard.  The preacher
+showed how the revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had
+already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of
+the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!"
+
+At these words he turned to the part of the room where Kike sat,
+white with feeling.  Magruder, looking always for the effect of his
+arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused.  The house was utterly
+still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul.  The
+people were sitting as if waiting their doom.  Kike already saw in
+his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the
+leaves and scented by hungry wolves.  He waited to hear his own
+sentence.  Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence.  Now, he
+stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken with
+emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O, young
+man, there are stains of blood on your hands!  How dare you hold them
+up before the Judge of all?  You are another Cain, and God sends his
+messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already
+killed in your heart.  _You are a murderer_!  Nothing but God's mercy
+can snatch you from hell!"
+
+No doubt all this is rude in refined ears.  But is it nothing that by
+these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience?  That
+in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and
+trembled?  Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know
+himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he capable
+of?  Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to
+the rebuke of God.  His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as
+it had before shaken with wrath.  "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried
+he, hiding his face in his hands.
+
+"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the
+preacher.  "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy
+Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as
+damned already!"  And with this he turned and appealed yet more
+powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of
+Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the
+house.  Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while
+many fell upon their knees and prayed.
+
+The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some
+consolation.  You would say that his view of the atonement was crude,
+conventional and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in
+Scripture for general and formulated postulates.  But however
+imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known to his hearers
+the mercy of God.  And surely that is the main thing.  The figure of
+speech is but the vessel; the great truth that God is merciful to the
+guilty, what is this but the water of life?--not less refreshing
+because the jar in which it is brought is rude!  The preacher's whole
+manner changed.  Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to
+the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy.  Perhaps Magruder
+exaggerated the change that had taken place in them.  But is it
+nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's
+justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy?
+It is hard for one who has once passed through this experience not to
+date from it a revolution.  There were many who had not much root in
+themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were
+those who, living half a century afterward, counted their better
+living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism
+to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner.  It was not in Kike to
+change quickly.  Smitten with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his
+seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling.  When the preacher had
+finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing,
+to an exquisitely pathetic tune, Watts' hymn:
+
+  "Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,
+  Let a repenting rebel live.
+  Are not thy mercies large and free?
+  May not a sinner trust in thee?"
+
+
+The meeting was held until late.  Kike remained quietly kneeling, the
+tears trickling through his fingers.  He did not utter a word or cry.
+In all the confusion he was still.  What deliberate recounting of his
+own misdoings took place then, no one can know.  Thoughtless readers
+may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble.  But who of us
+would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our
+own souls?  His simple penitent faith did more for him than all our
+philosophy has done for us, maybe.
+
+At last the meeting was dismissed.  Brady, who had been awe-stricken
+at sight of Kike's agony of contrition, now thought it best that he
+and Kike's mother should go home, leaving the young man to follow
+when he chose.  But Kike staid immovable upon his knees.  His sense
+of guilt had become an agony.  All those allowances which we in a
+more intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the defects
+of education, Kike knew nothing about.  He believed all his
+revengefulness to be voluntary; he had a feeling that unless he found
+some assurance of God's mercy then he could not live till morning.
+So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three brethren that had
+come from adjoining settlements staid and prayed and talked with the
+distressed youth until after midnight.  The early Methodists regarded
+this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.
+
+At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked "Sister Wheeler"
+to pray.  There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so
+excellent as the audible prayers of women.  Women oftener than men
+have a genius for prayer.  Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to
+confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence
+fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving
+over.  Then slowly--slowly, as one who waits for another to
+follow--she began to turn toward trustfulness.  Like a little child
+she spoke to God; under the influence of her praying Kike sobbed
+audibly.  Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too,
+looked to God as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful
+child.
+
+The great struggle was over.  Kike was revengeful no longer.  He was
+distrustful and terrified no longer.  He had "crept into the heart of
+God" and found rest.  Call it what you like, when a man passes
+through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life
+that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf.
+
+Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of
+the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher
+and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship.  He said nothing,
+but when Magruder sang
+
+  "Oh! how happy are they
+  Who their Saviour obey,
+      And have laid up their treasure above!
+  Tongue can never express
+  The sweet comfort and peace
+      Of a soul in its earliest love,"
+
+Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went
+home about the time that his friend Morton, flushed and weary with
+dancing and pleasure, laid himself down to rest.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XII._
+
+MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.
+
+The Methodists had actually made a break in the settlement.  Dancing
+had not availed to keep them out.  It was no longer a question of
+getting "shet" of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating
+the contagion.  There would now be a "class" formed, a leader
+appointed, a regular preaching place established; Hissawachee would
+become part of that great wheel called a circuit; there would be
+revivals and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be
+destroyed.  For now one might never again dance at a "hoe-down,"
+drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race "hosses" on Sunday, without a
+lecture from somebody.  It might be your own wife, too.  Once let the
+Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.
+
+Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences.  By his
+opposition, he had unfortunately spoken for the enmity of the
+Methodists in advance.  The preacher had openly defied him.  Kike
+would join the class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his
+ascendancy.  No concession on his part short of absolute surrender
+would avail.  He resolved therefore that the Methodists should find
+out "who they were fighting."
+
+Brady was pleased.  Gossips are always delighted to have something
+happen out of the usual course.  It gives them a theme, something to
+exercise their wits upon.  Let us not be too hard upon gossip.  It is
+one form of communicative intellectual activity.  Brady, under
+different conditions, might have been a journalist, writing relishful
+leaders on "topics of the time."  For what is journalism but elevated
+and organized gossip?  The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way
+neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for good-natured
+gossip.  Such an one averts absolute mental stagnation, diffuses
+intelligence, and keeps alive a healthful public opinion on local
+questions.
+
+Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake."  That
+was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the
+meeting.  He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had
+happened about which he wanted to talk.  But on this evening Job
+Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.
+
+"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all?  These
+Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell.  Hey?  I
+hear dreadful things about 'em.  Oh dear, it seems like as if
+everything come upon folks at once.  Hey?  The fever's spreadin' at
+Chilicothe, they tell me.  And then, if we should git into a war with
+England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd
+be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got
+skelped.  Precious few, _I_ tell you.  Hey?"
+
+Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away,
+and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his
+imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the
+future.  But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than
+Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner,
+heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.
+
+[Illustration: JOB GOODWIN.]
+
+"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side
+ye're afther lookin' at all the toime.  Where's Moirton?  He aint
+been to school yet since this quarter took up."
+
+"Morton?  He's got to stay out, I expect.  My rheumatiz is mighty
+bad, and I'm powerful weak.  I don't think craps'll be good next
+year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all
+have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and
+driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and
+the Indians come on us.  But here's Mort now."
+
+"Ha!  Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight?  Ye heerd fwat a
+toime we had.  Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and
+a few other hardened sinners.  Ye heerd about Koike?  I reckon the
+Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on
+the Captain's skull, maybe.  Fwat would ye do for a crony now,
+Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"
+
+"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's
+"getting religion" was an unpleasant topic.  "It'll all wear off with
+Kike soon enough."
+
+"Don't be too shore, Moirton.  Things wear off with you, sometoimes.
+Ye swear ye'll niver swear no more, and ye're willin' to bet that
+ye'll niver bet agin, and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife;
+but the flesh is ferninst ye.  When Koike's bad, he's bad all over;
+lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it mesilf.  Now he's
+got good, the divil'll have as hard a toime makin' him bad as I had
+makin' him good.  I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his
+school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad.  Got ivery
+lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of the school!  What do
+you say to that, Moirton?  The divil's got his hands full thair.
+Hey, Moirton?"
+
+"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher.  He wants to get rich just to
+spite the Captain."
+
+"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton.  And he'll be a
+praycher yit.  Didn't he give me a talkin' to this mornin', at
+breakfast?  Think of the impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to
+tell his ould masther that he ought to repint of his sins!  He talked
+to his mother, too, till she croid.  He'll make her belave she is a
+great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit, excipt in her grammar, which
+couldn't be worse.  I've talked to her about that mesilf.  Now,
+Moirton, I'll tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the
+Mithodists.  Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a body, you
+needn't be afeard of.  But those that git it bad, and are
+throublesome, and middlesome, and aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out
+praychers.  The lad that'll tackle his masther and his mother at
+breakfast the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's
+yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed, two to
+one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the faild to be a praycher of
+the worst sort; one of the kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."
+
+"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other people alone?  That
+meddling is just what I don't like," growled Morton.
+
+"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel thought about ould
+Elijy!  We don't any of us loike to have our wickedness or laziness
+middled with.  'Twas middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to;
+and if the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he wouldn't
+niver a been crucified."
+
+"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said Mr. Job Goodwin.
+
+"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin.  I'm rale lazy.  This lookin' at the
+state of me moind's insoides, and this chasin' afther me sins up hill
+and down dale all the toime, would niver agray with me frail
+constitootion.  This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery wake
+in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin', aren't for sich
+oidlers as me.  I'm too good-natered to trate mesilf that way, sure.
+Didn't you iver notice that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a
+rale good-nater'd man?"
+
+Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe in front of the fire,
+and found it well browned.  Supper was ready, and the conversation
+drifted to Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden to
+cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers."  Morton's father shook his
+head ominously.  Didn't believe the Captain was in 'arnest.  Ef he
+was, Mort mout git the fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up.
+'Twouldn't do to depend on no sech promises, no way.
+
+But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton did hold to the
+Captain's promise, and to the hope of Patty.  To the Captain's plans
+for mobbing Wheeler he offered a strong resistance.  But he was ready
+enough to engage in making sport of the despised religionists, and
+even organized a party to interrupt Magruder with tin horns when he
+should preach again.  But all this time Morton was uneasy in himself.
+What had become of his dreams of being a hero?  Here was Kike bearing
+all manner of persecution with patience, devoting himself to the
+welfare of others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly
+living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse circumstances.
+One of Morton's temperament must either grow better or worse, and,
+chafing under these embarassments, he played and drank more freely
+than ever.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XIII._
+
+TWO TO ONE.
+
+Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class
+in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a
+Sunday sermon on his next round.  He was accustomed to preach twice
+every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious
+manner of the circuit-rider of his time.  And since he expected to
+leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next
+appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast
+that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in
+order.
+
+When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton,
+with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin
+horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade.  But Lumsden had
+other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.
+
+John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock
+and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer.
+Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,
+reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach.  When he had ridden
+more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of
+hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the
+Hissawachee valley.  The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the
+preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just
+disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks
+over a battle-field before the engagement begins.  Then he
+dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic
+fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil."  When at
+last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its
+first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was
+ablaze.  Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to
+spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the
+woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in
+the presence of such a scene:
+
+  "O sun of righteousness, arise
+    With healing in thy wing;
+  To my diseased, my fainting soul,
+    Life and salvation bring.
+
+  "These clouds of pride and sin dispel,
+    By thy all-piercing beam;
+  Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart
+    With holy hopes inflame."
+
+
+By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that
+he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple,
+and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old
+acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.
+
+"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle:
+"you git down!"
+
+"What for?" said Magruder.
+
+"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick
+your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."
+
+"But I won't promise."
+
+"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."
+
+"You are two to one.  Will you give me time to draw my coat?"
+
+"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."
+
+[Illustration: TWO TO ONE.]
+
+The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a
+beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then
+laid his coat across the saddle.
+
+"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you.  I advise you now
+to let me alone.  As an American citizen, I have a right to go where
+I please.  My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight
+for my rights."
+
+"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher
+from one side, while Bill came up on the other.  Magruder was one of
+those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and
+endurance.  In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his
+victories in several rude encounters.  Never seeking a fight even
+then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from
+afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to
+"give him what he came after."  He had now greatly the advantage of
+the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.
+
+Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary swearing the preacher
+had surprised him by delivering a blow that knocked him down.  But
+Bill had taken advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the
+cheek.  Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's fist, was a
+little slow in coming to time, and the preacher had a chance to give
+Bill a most polemical blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he
+rushed like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous blow
+that fractured two of his ribs and felled him to the earth.  But Bill
+struck Magruder behind, knocked him over, and threw himself upon him
+after the fashion of the Western free fight.  Nothing saved Magruder
+but his immense strength.  He rose right up with Bill upon him, and
+then, by a deft use of his legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled
+him to the ground.  He did not dare take advantage of his fall,
+however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming up on him
+cautiously.  But when Sniger saw Magruder rushing at him again, he
+made a speedy retreat into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it
+out with Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again ready.
+But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating slowly backward and
+calling out, "Come up on him behind, Jake!  Come up behind!"  But the
+demoralized Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the
+preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having as many arms
+as a Hindoo deity.  Bill kept backing until he tripped and fell over
+a bit of brush, and then picked himself up and made off, muttering:
+
+"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone!  He must have the very
+devil into him!"
+
+About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning, the Irish
+school-master, who was now boarding at Goodwin's, and who had just
+made an early visit to the Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An'
+did ye hear the nooze, Moirton?  Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger hev had
+a bit of Sunday morning ricreation.  They throid to thrash the
+praycher as he was a-comin' through North's Holler, this mornin'; but
+they didn't make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's got in
+him.  He larruped 'em both single-handed, and Jake's ribs are
+cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's nose!  Captain must 'a' had some
+proivate intherest in that muss; hey, Moirton?"
+
+"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men on one, and him a
+preacher; and all I've got to say is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."
+
+"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain?  Hey, Moirton?  But
+fwat did I tell ye about Koike?  The praycher's jaw is lamed by a
+lick Bill gave him, and Koike's to exhort in his place.  I tould ye
+he had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."
+
+The manliness in a character like Morton's must react, if depressed
+too far; and he now notified those who were to help him interrupt the
+meeting that if any disturbance were made, he should take it on
+himself to punish the offender.  He would not fight alongside Bill
+McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like seeking a quarrel with
+Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying himself to himself.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XIV._
+
+KIKE'S SERMON.
+
+During the time that had intervened between Kike's conversion and
+Magruder's second visit to the settlement, Kike had developed a very
+considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings.  In that
+day every influence in Methodist association contributed to make a
+preacher of a man of force.  The reverence with which a self-denying
+preacher was regarded by the people was a great compensation for the
+poverty and toil that pertained to the office.  To be a preacher was
+to be canonized during one's lifetime.  The moment a young man showed
+zeal and fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and sisters as
+one whose duty it was to preach the Gospel; he was asked whether he
+did not feel that he had a divine call; he was set upon watching the
+movements within him to see whether or not he ought to be among the
+sons of the prophets.  Oftentimes a man was made to feel, in spite of
+his own better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking from
+duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in the shape of some
+providential disaster.  Kike, indeed, needed none of these urgings to
+impel him toward the ministry.  He was a man of the prophetic
+temperament--one of those men whose beliefs take hold of them more
+strongly than the objects of sense.  The future life, as preached by
+the early Methodists, with all its joys and all its awful torments,
+became the most substantial of realities to him.  He was in constant
+astonishment that people could believe these things theoretically and
+ignore them in practice.  If men were going headlong to perdition,
+and could be saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by
+preaching, then what nobler work could there be than that of saving
+them?  And, let a man take what view he may of a future life, Kike's
+opinion was the right one--no work can be so excellent as that of
+helping men to better living.
+
+Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist biography which he
+had borrowed, and the sublimated life of Fletcher was the only one
+that fulfilled his ideal.  Methodism preached consecration to its
+disciples.  Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler, who was the
+class-leader at Hissawachee settlement, and from Methodist
+literature, that he must "keep all on the altar."  He must be ready
+to do, to suffer, or to perish, for the Master.  The sternest sayings
+of Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating one's own
+life and kindred, he heard often repeated in exhortations.  Most
+people are not harmed by a literal understanding of hyperbolical
+expressions.  Laziness and selfishness are great antidotes to
+fanaticism, and often pass current for common sense.  Kike had no
+such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel with the dry
+literalness of statutory enactments, he was too honest to evade their
+force, too earnest to slacken his obedience.  He was already prepared
+to accept any burden and endure any trial that might be given as a
+test of discipleship.  All his natural ambition, vehemence, and
+persistence, found exercise in his religious life; and the
+simple-hearted brethren, not knowing that the one sort of intensity
+was but the counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation
+as a "beautiful conversion," a standing miracle.  So it was, indeed,
+and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in the direction of
+individuality, not in opposition to it.
+
+It was a grievous disappointment to the little band of Methodists
+that Brother Magruder's face was so swollen, after his encounter, as
+to prevent his preaching.  They had counted much upon the success of
+this day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch the
+victory.  Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended Kike as a
+substitute, and Magruder sent for him in haste.  Kike was gratified
+to hear that the preacher wanted to see him personally.  His sallow
+face flushed with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before
+the messenger of God.
+
+"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you ready to do and to
+suffer for Christ?"
+
+"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the preacher could mean.
+
+"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the Lord's work to-day.
+My lip is swelled, and my jaw so stiff that I can hardly speak.  Are
+you ready to do the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"
+
+Kike trembled from head to foot.  He had often fancied himself
+preaching his first sermon in a strange neighborhood, and he had even
+picked out his text; but to stand up suddenly before his
+school-mates, before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,
+before Morton, was terrible.  And yet, had he not that very morning
+made a solemn vow that he would not shrink from death itself!
+
+"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.
+
+"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three hundred people
+hungry for the bread of life.  The Master has fed you; he offers you
+the bread to distribute among your friends and neighbors.  Now, will
+you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed Lord who has taken
+you out of a horrible pit and set your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"
+
+Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will do whatever you say,
+if you will pray for me."
+
+"I'll do that, my brother.  And now take your Bible, and go into the
+woods and pray.  The Lord will show you the way, if you put your
+whole trust in him."
+
+The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave Kike his subject,
+and he soon gathered a few thoughts which he wrote down on a fly-leaf
+of the Bible, in the shape of a skeleton.  But it occurred to him
+that he had not one word to say on the subject of the bread of life
+beyond the sentences of his skeleton.  The more this became evident
+to him, the greater was his agony of fear.  He knelt on the brown
+leaves by a prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself;
+he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own feelings were
+involved; he reminded the Lord of his promises to be with them he had
+sent; and then there came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For
+it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak."  Taking
+it, after the manner of the early Methodist mysticism, that the text
+had been supernaturally "suggested" to him, he became calm; and
+finding, from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour for
+meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel Wheeler, and was
+appalled at the sight that met his eyes.  All the settlement, and
+many from other settlements, had come.  The house, the yard, the
+fences, were full of people.  Kike was seized with a tremor.  He did
+not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a throng.  He made a
+detour, and crept in at the back door like a criminal.  For
+stage-fright--this fear of human presence--is not a thing to be
+overcome by the will.  Susceptible natures are always liable to it,
+and neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.
+
+A chair had been placed in the front door of the log house, for Kike,
+that he might preach to the congregation indoors and the much larger
+one outdoors.  Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden bench
+just outside.  Kike crept into the empty chair in the doorway with
+the feeling of one who intrudes where he does not belong.  The
+brethren were singing, as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn
+tune of "Kentucky," the hymn which begins:
+
+  "A charge to keep I have,
+    A God to glorify;
+  A never-dying soul to save
+    And fit it for the sky."
+
+
+Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to him, said: "If you
+get confused, tell your own experience."  The early preacher's
+universal refuge was his own experience.  It was a sure key to the
+sympathies of the audience.
+
+Kike got through the opening exercises very well.  He could pray, for
+in praying he shut his eyes and uttered the cry of his trembling soul
+for help.  He had been beating about among two or three texts, either
+of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks he intended to
+make; but now one fixed itself in his mind as he stood appalled by
+his situation in the presence of such a throng.  He rose and read,
+with a tremulous voice:
+
+"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small
+fishes; but what are they among so many?"
+
+The text arrested the attention of all.  Magruder, though unable to
+speak without pain, could not refrain from saying aloud, after the
+free old Methodist fashion: "The Lord multiply the loaves!  Bless and
+break to the multitude!"  "Amen!" responded an old brother from
+another settlement, "and the Lord help the lad!"  But Kike felt that
+the advantage which the text had given him would be of short
+duration.  The novelty of his position bewildered him.  His face
+flushed; his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on the
+audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the few friends in the
+house: the old brethren leaned their heads upon their hands and began
+to pray.  Whatever spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,
+their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible prayers of
+"Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably, and kept the precipice on
+which he stood constantly present to him.  He tried in succession
+each division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the Bible, and
+found little to say on any of them.  At last, he could not see the
+audience distinctly for confusion--there was a dim vision of heads
+swimming before him.  He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him
+to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should kill him.  The
+Philistines meanwhile were laughing at Kike's evident discomfiture.
+
+But Kike had no notion of sitting down.  The laughter awakened his
+combativeness, and his combativeness restored his self-control.
+Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.
+He was through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six minutes.
+The lad's scanty provisions had not been multiplied.  But he felt
+relieved.  The sermon over, there was no longer necessity for trying
+to speak against time, nor for observing the outward manner of a
+preacher.
+
+"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that I cannot preach
+worth a cent.  When David went out to fight, he had the good sense
+not to put on Saul's armor.  I was fool enough to try to wear Brother
+Magruder's.  Now, I'm done with that.  The text and sermon are gone.
+But I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ.  And before I sit down, I am
+going to tell you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like
+me."
+
+Kike told the story with sincere directness.  His recital of his own
+sins was a rebuke to others; with a trembling voice and a simple
+earnestness absolutely electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and
+of the effect of Magruder's preaching on him.  And now that the
+flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation departed, and
+there came instead the fine glow of martial courage.  He could have
+faced the universe.  From his own life the transition to the lives of
+those around him was easy.  He hit right and left.  The excitable
+crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid and vehement
+utterance, he denounced their sins with the particularity of one who
+had been familiar with them all his life.  Magruder forgot to
+respond; he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with open
+eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious excitement was fast
+setting the whole audience ablaze.  Slowly the people pressed forward
+off the fences.  All at once there was a loud bellowing cry from some
+one who had fallen prostrate outside the fence, and who began to cry
+aloud as if the portals of an endless perdition were yawning in his
+face.  Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the fallen man
+was his antagonist of the morning--Bill McConkey!  Bill had concealed
+his bruised nose behind a tree, but had been drawn forth by the
+fascination of Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the
+effect of his own terror.  This outburst of agony from McConkey was
+fuel to the flames, and the excitement now spread to all parts of the
+audience.  Kike went from man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each
+one in particular.  Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary on
+his own life, waddled away when he saw Kike coming; his mother wept
+bitterly under his exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the
+fence listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's public
+recital of his sins.
+
+At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain Lumsden had come on
+purpose to enjoy Morton's proposed interruption.  He listened a
+minute to Kike's exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at
+the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's impudence contended
+within him until he started for his horse and was seized with that
+curious nervous affection which originated in these religious
+excitements and disappeared with them.*  He jerked violently--his
+jerking only adding to his excitement, which in turn increased the
+severity of his contortions.  This nervous affection was doubtless a
+natural physical result of violent excitement; but the people of that
+day imagined that it was produced by some supernatural agency, some
+attributing it to God, others to the devil, and yet others to some
+subtle charm voluntarily exercised by the preachers.  Lumsden went
+home jerking all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly
+than ever.
+
+
+* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing disease"
+which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XV._
+
+MORTON'S RETREAT.
+
+It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which Morton had
+listened to Kike's hot exhortation.  In vain he argued with himself
+that a man need not be a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all
+over the country," in order to be good.  He knew that Kike's life was
+better than his own, and that he had not force enough to break his
+habits and associations unless he did so by putting himself into
+direct antagonism with them.  He inwardly condemned himself for his
+fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for telling him the blunt
+truth about himself.  But ever as there came the impulse to close the
+conflict and be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly on
+the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought of Patty, whose
+aristocratic Virginia pride would regard marriage with a Methodist as
+worse than death.
+
+And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to his emotions so far
+as to compromise himself, he rushed out of the crowd, hurried home,
+took down his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out of the
+excitement.
+
+As he rode away from home he met Captain Lumsden hurrying from the
+meeting with the jerks, and leading his horse--the contortions of his
+body not allowing him to ride.  With every step he took he grew more
+and more furious.  Seeing Morton, he endeavored to vent his passion
+upon him.
+
+"Why didn't--you--blow--why didn't--why didn't you blow your tin
+horns, this----" but at this point the jerks became so violent as to
+throw off his hat and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his
+teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home, leaving Morton
+to gauge the degree of the Captain's wrath by the involuntary
+distortion of his visage.
+
+Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither he went;
+endeavoring only to allay the excitement, of his conscience, and to
+imagine some sort of future in which he might hope to return and win
+Patty in spite of Lumsden's opposition.  Night found him in front of
+the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of Jonesville; and he
+was rejoiced to find there, on some political errand, Mr. Burchard,
+whom he had met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a
+candidate for sheriff.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Morton?  Howdy do?" said Burchard, cordially,
+having only heard Morton's first name and mistaking it for his last.
+"I'm lucky to meet you in this town.  Do you live over this way?  I
+thought you lived in our county and 'lectioneered you--expecting to
+get your vote."
+
+[Illustration: GAMBLING.]
+
+The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a Sunday evening (or any
+other) meant a game at cards, and as Burchard was the more skillful
+and just now in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents
+of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves to Burchard's,
+the more that Morton in his contending with the religious excitement
+of the morning rushed easily into the opposite excitement of
+gambling.  The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp
+polarity--it has sent many a man headlong to the devil.  When Morton
+had frantically bet and lost all his money, he proceeded to bet his
+rifle, then his grandfather's watch--an ancient time-piece, that
+Burchard examined with much curiosity.  Having lost this, he staked
+his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and offered to put up his boots,
+but Burchard refused them.  The madness of gambling was on the young
+man, however.  He had no difficulty in persuading Burchard to take
+his mare as security for a hundred dollars, which he proceeded to
+gamble away by the easy process of winning once and losing twice.
+
+When the last dollar was gone, his face was very white and calm.  He
+leaned back in the chair and looked at Burchard a moment or two in
+silence.
+
+"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose.  I don't know
+whether I've got any brains or not.  But if you'll lend me the rifle
+you won long enough for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out
+what's inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."
+
+Burchard was not without generous traits, and he was alarmed.  "Come,
+Mr. Morton, don't be desperate.  The luck's against you, but you'll
+have better another time.  Here's your hat and coat, and you're
+welcome.  I've been flat of my back many a time, but I've always
+found a way out.  I'll pay your bill here to-morrow morning.  Don't
+think of doing anything desperate.  There's plenty to live for yet.
+You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself, maybe."
+
+This thrust hurt Morton keenly.  But Burchard was determined to
+divert him from his suicidal impulse.
+
+"Come, old fellow, you're excited.  Come out into the air.  Now,
+don't kill yourself.  You looked troubled when you got here.  I take
+it, there's some trouble at home.  Now, if there is"--here Burchard
+hesitated--"if there is trouble at home, I can put you on the track
+of a band of fellows that have been in trouble themselves.  They help
+one another.  Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but
+they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like you, that's a
+good shot and not afraid."
+
+For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to Morton, so utterly
+had hope died out of his heart.  But only for a moment; then his
+moral sense recoiled.
+
+"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody else.  I can't take
+that road, Mr. Burchard."
+
+"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to laugh.  "I knew
+you wouldn't.  But I wanted to turn your thoughts away from bullets
+and all that.  Now, Mr. Morton----"
+
+"My name's not Morton.  My last name is Goodwin--Morton Goodwin."
+This correction was made as a man always attends to trifles when he
+is trying to decide a momentous question.
+
+"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at him keenly, as the two
+stood together in the moonlight.  Then, after pausing a moment, he
+added: "I had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once.  Devilish
+hard case he was, but good-hearted.  Got killed in a fight in
+Pittsburg."
+
+"He was my brother," said Morton.
+
+"Your brother? thunder!  You don't mean it.  Let's see; he told me
+once his father's name was Moses--no; Job.  Yes, that's it--Job.  Is
+that your father's name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry hard.  Didn't kill
+'em, did it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Both alive yet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing suicide.  You
+ought to think a little of your mother----"
+
+"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely on Burchard; for he
+suddenly saw a vision of the agony his mother must suffer.
+
+"Oh! don't get mad.  I'm going to let you have back your horse and
+gun, only you must give me a bill of sale so that I may be sure you
+won't gamble them away to somebody else.  You must redeem them on
+your honor in six months, with a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
+I'll do that much for the sake of my old friend, Lew Goodwin, who
+stood by me in many a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow
+after all."
+
+Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard left the tavern.
+As it was now past midnight, Goodwin did not go to bed.  At two
+o'clock he gave Dolly corn, and before daylight he rode out of the
+village.  But not toward home.  His gambling and losses would be
+speedily reported at home and to Captain Lumsden.  And moreover, Kike
+would persecute him worse than ever.  He rode out of town in the
+direction opposite to that he would have taken in returning to
+Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was opposite.  He was trying
+what so many other men have tried in vain to do--to run away from
+himself.
+
+But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest lightning
+express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a disagreeable self behind.
+The wise man knows better, and turns round and faces it.
+
+About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure and circuitous trail
+of which he knew nothing, drew near to a low log-house with deer's
+horns over the door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel
+purposes--a place where a stranger might get a little food, a place
+to rest on the floor, and plenty of whiskey.  There were a dozen
+horses hitched to trees about it, and Goodwin got down and went in
+from a spirit of idle curiosity.  Certainly the place was not
+attractive.  The landlord had a cut-throat way of looking closely at
+a guest from under his eye-brows; the guests all wore black beards,
+and Morton soon found reason to suspect that these beards were not
+indigenous.  He was himself the object of much disagreeable scrutiny,
+but he could hardly restrain a mischievous smile at thought of the
+disappointment to which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt
+to rob him in his present penniless condition.  The very worst that
+could happen would be the loss of Dolly and his rifle.  It soon
+occurred to him that this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's
+Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's noted band of
+desperadoes, a place into which few honest men ever ventured.
+
+One of the men presently stepped to the window, rested his foot upon
+the low sill, and taking up a piece of chalk, drew a line from the
+toe to the top of his boot.*  Several others imitated him; and
+Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure, took the
+chalk and marked his right boot in the same way.
+
+
+* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is yet
+told in the neighborhood.  It does not seem that chalking one's boot
+is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of a secret band,
+but I do not suppose that men who follow a highwayman's life are very
+wise people.
+
+
+"Will you drink?" said the man who had first chalked his boot.
+
+Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood near together,
+Morton could plainly discover the falseness of his companion's beard.
+Presently the man fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an
+indifferent tone: "Cut or carry?"
+
+"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning of the lingo, but
+finding himself in a predicament from which there was no escape but
+by drifting with the current.  A few minutes later a bag, which
+seemed to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into his hand,
+and Morton, not knowing what to do with it, thought best to "carry"
+it off.  He mounted his mare and rode away in a direction opposite to
+that in which he had come.  He had not gone more than three miles
+when he met Burchard.
+
+"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"
+
+"Oh, I came by a short cut."
+
+But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in the night, to avoid
+observation.
+
+"Hello!  Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got chalk on your boot!  I
+hope you haven't joined the--"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come.  I found the greatest
+set of disguised cut-throats you ever saw, at this little hole back
+here.  You hadn't better go there, if you don't want to be relieved
+of all the money you got last night.  I saw them chalking their
+boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would come of it.  And
+here's what come of it;" and with that, Morton showed his bag of
+money.  "Now," he said, "if I could find the right owner of this
+money, I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some holler,
+without nary coffin or grave-stone.  I 'low to pay you what I owe
+you, and take the rest out to Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use
+it for a nest-egg.  'Finders, keepers,' you know."
+
+Burchard looked at him darkly a moment.  "Look here, Morton--Goodwin,
+I mean.  You'll lose your head, if you fool with chalk that way.  If
+you don't give that money up to the first man that asks for it, you
+are a dead man.  They can't be fooled for long.  They'll be after
+you.  There's no way now but to hold on to it and give it up to the
+first man that asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky.
+I'm going down this trail a way.  I want to see old Brewer.  He's got
+a good deal of political influence.  Good-bye!"
+
+Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a place two miles
+farther on, where another trail joined the one he was traveling.
+Here there stood a man with a huge beard, a blanket over his
+shoulders, holes cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a
+belt with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap.  The stranger
+stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and saying nothing.  Morton
+was only too glad to give up the money.  And he set Dolly off at her
+best pace, seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters
+of the cut-or-carry gang.  He could not but wonder how Burchard
+should seem to know them so well.  He did not much like the thought
+that Burchard's forbearance had bound him to support that gentleman's
+political aspirations when he had opportunity.  This friendly
+relation with thieves was not what he would have liked to see in a
+favorite candidate, but a cursed fatality seemed to be dragging down
+all his high aspirations.  It was like one of those old legends he
+had heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by little bargains
+with the devil, and had presently found themselves involved in evil
+entanglements on every hand.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XVI._
+
+SHORT SHRIFT.
+
+But Morton had no time to busy himself now with nice scruples.  Bread
+and meat are considerations more imperative to a healthy man than
+conscience.  He had no money.  He might turn aside from the trail to
+hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to do when he started.  But
+ever, as he traveled, he had become more and more desirous of getting
+away from himself.  He was now full sixty or seventy miles from home,
+but he could not make up his mind to stop and devote himself to
+hunting.  At four o'clock the valley of the Mustoga lay before him,
+and Morton, still purposeless, rode on.  And now at last the habitual
+thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon him, and he
+began to be hesitant about going on.  After all, his flight seemed
+foolish.  Patty might not yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why
+should he yield to it, unless he chose?
+
+In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and crave a night's
+lodging at the crossing of the river.  He was the more disposed to
+this that Dolly, having been ridden hard all day without food, showed
+unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing.  He would
+give her a night's rest, and then perhaps take the road back to the
+Hissawachee, or go into the wilderness and hunt.
+
+"Hello the house!" he called.  "Hello!"
+
+A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the door, and responded
+with a "Hello!"
+
+"Can I get to stay here all night?"
+
+"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger.  Kinder full to-night.  You mout git
+a place about a mile furder on whar you could hang up for the night,
+mos' likely; but I can't keep you, no ways."
+
+"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep anywhere," plead Morton.
+
+"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed if she don't!
+Whar did you git her?"
+
+"Raised her," said Morton.
+
+"Whar abouts?"
+
+"Hissawachee."
+
+"You don't say!  How far you rid her to-day?"
+
+"From Jonesville."
+
+"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads!  Mighty purty critter,
+that air.  Powerful clean legs.  She's number one.  Is she your'n,
+did you say?"
+
+"Well, not exactly mine.  That is--".  Here Morton hesitated.
+
+"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up here, no ways.  I
+tuck in one of your sort a month ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off
+in the middle of the night.  I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever
+set eyes on him."  And the man had disappeared in the house before
+Morton could reply.
+
+To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant; to be refused a
+lodging and to be mistaken for a horse-thief filled the cup of
+Morton's bitterness.  He reluctantly turned his horse's head toward
+the river.  There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen that he
+must needs swim Dolly across.
+
+He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately, with a
+feeling that she was the only friend he had left.  "Well, Dolly," he
+said, "it's too bad to make you swim, after such a day; but you must.
+If we drown, we'll drown together."
+
+The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek in a dumb trustfulness.
+
+There was a road cut through the steep bank on the other side, so
+that travelers might ride down to the water's edge.  Knowing that he
+would have to come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the
+water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable place.  Then,
+turning the mare's head upward, he started across.  Dolly swam
+bravely enough until she reached the middle of the stream; then,
+finding her strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and under
+the burden of her master, she refused his guidance, and turned her
+head directly toward the road, which offered the only place of exit.
+The rapid current swept horse and rider down the stream; but still
+Dolly fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the road.
+Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged Dolly to greater
+exertions, and the well-bred creature, rousing all the remains of her
+magnificent force, succeeded in reaching the road.  Then the young
+man got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the water,
+wondered why he should have struggled to preserve a life that he was
+not able to regulate, and that promised him nothing but misery and
+embarrassment.
+
+The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton pushed his tired filley
+on another mile.  Again he hallooed.  This time he was welcomed by an
+old woman, who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the mare
+in the stable.  She didn't ginerally keep no travelers, but it was
+too orful a night fer a livin' human bein' to be out in.  Her son
+Jake would be in thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody
+out in sech a night.  'Twuz good ten miles to the next house.
+
+Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her, and to take his
+place by the fire.
+
+Presently the son came in.
+
+"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton suspiciously.  "Is
+that air your mar in the stable?"
+
+"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether he could call
+Dolly his or not, seeing she had been transferred to Burchard.
+
+"Whar did you come from?"
+
+"From Hissawachee."
+
+"Whar you makin' fer?"
+
+"I don't exactly know."
+
+"See here, mister!  Akordin' to my tell, that air's a mighty peart
+sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what don' know, to save his
+gizzard, whar he mout be a travelin'.  We don't keep no sich people
+as them what rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of
+theirselves.  Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up yer mar and
+putt.  It mout gin us trouble to keep you."
+
+"You ain't going to send me out such a night as this, when I've rode
+fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.
+
+"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer?  Yer health, I
+reckon.  Now, stranger, I've jist got one word to say to you, and
+that is this ere: _Putt_!  PUTT THIRECKLY!  Clar out of these 'ere
+diggin's!  That's all.  Jist putt!"
+
+The young man pronounced the vowel in "put" very flat, as it is
+sounded in the first syllable of "putty," and seemed disposed to add
+a great many words to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much
+Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth.  "Putt out, I say!
+I ain't afeard of none of yer gang.  I hain't got nary 'nother word."
+
+"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word--_I won't_!  You
+haven't got any right to turn a stranger out on such a night."
+
+"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten you."
+
+"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew nearer the fire.
+
+The strapping young fellow straightened himself up and looked at
+Morton in wonder, more and more convinced that nobody but an outlaw
+would venture on a move so bold, and less and less inclined to
+attempt to use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate
+character increased.  Goodwin, for his part, was not a little amused;
+the old mischievous love of fun reasserted itself in him as he saw
+the decline of the young man's courage.
+
+"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band, why don't you be
+careful how you treat me?  The band might give you trouble.  Let's
+have something to eat.  I haven't had anything since last night; I am
+starving."
+
+"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'.  He's tuck the house
+and we can't help ourselves."
+
+Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and in his amusement
+at the success of his ruse and in the comfortable enjoyment of food
+after his long fast his good spirits returned.
+
+When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed in the loft, he became
+aware that there were a number of men in the room below, and he could
+gather that they were talking about him.  He dressed quickly and came
+down-stairs.  The first thing he noticed was that the settler who had
+refused him lodging the night before was the centre of the group, the
+next that they had taken possession of his rifle.  This settler had
+roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the creek in a
+flat-boat some miles below and come up the stream determined to
+capture this young horse-thief.  It is a singular tribute to the
+value of the horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples
+horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious than homicide.
+In such a community to steal a man's horse is the grandest of
+larcenies--it is to rob him of the stepping-stone to civilization.
+
+For such philosophical reflections as this last, however, Morton had
+no time.  He was in the hands of an indignant crowd, some of whom had
+lost horses and other property from the depredations of the famous
+band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were bent on exacting the
+forfeit from this indifferently dressed young man who rode a horse
+altogether too good for him.
+
+Morton was conducted three miles down the river to a log tavern, that
+being a public and appropriate place for the rendering of the
+decisions of Judge Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient
+refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might become
+exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf of public justice.  There
+was no formal trial.  The evidence was given in in a disjointed and
+spontaneous fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd, and
+what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting" was gathered from
+the general outcry.  Educated in Indian wars and having been left at
+first without any courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come
+to believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with the enemies of
+peace and order much superior to the prolix method of the lawyers and
+judges.
+
+And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer than that he was one
+of the gang.  The settler who had refused him a lodging first spoke:
+
+"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that that feller didn't
+own the hoss.  He looked kinder sheepish.  Well, I poked a few
+questions at him and I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions
+in this neck of timber.  I axed him whar he come from, and he let it
+out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles.  And I kinder blazed away at
+praisin' his hoss tell I got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst
+to him, I treed him suddently.  I jest axed him ef the hoss was his'n
+and he hemmed and hawed and says, says he: 'Well, not exactly mine.'
+Then I tole him to putt out."
+
+"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?" put in the youth
+whose unwilling hospitality Morton had enjoyed.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's sartain shore.  He
+tole me she wuz.  And when I axed him whar he was agoin', he tole me
+he didn' know.  I suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out;
+and he wouldn'.  Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun and blow his
+brains out; but marm got skeered and didn' want me to, and I 'lowed
+it was better to let him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe
+come over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come along and
+inquire arter that air mar.  Then he ups and says ef the ole woman
+don' give him sompin' to eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band.
+He said as how he was a member of that gang.  An' he said he hadn't
+had nothin' to eat sence the night before, havin' rid fer twenty-four
+hours."
+
+"I didn't say----" began Morton.
+
+"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done.  Haint you got no manners?  I tole
+him as how I didn't keer three continental derns* fer his whole band
+weth Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole woman wuz kinder
+sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a rale hoss-thief and she gin him
+a little sompin' to eat.  And he did gobble it, I tell _you_!"
+
+
+* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness of the
+paper money issued by the Continental Congress.
+
+
+Young rawbones had repeated this statement a dozen times already
+since leaving home with the prisoner.  But he liked to tell it.
+Morton made the best defense he could, and asked them to send to
+Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that this was only a
+ruse to gain time, and that if they delayed his execution long,
+Micajah Harp and his whole band would be upon them.
+
+The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging.  The cry of "Come
+on, boys, let's string him up," was raised several times, and
+"rushes" at him were attempted, but these rushes never went further
+than the incipient stage, for the very good reason that while many
+were anxious to have him hung, none were quite ready to adjust the
+rope.  The law threatened them on one side, and a dread of the
+vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them on the other.
+The predicament in which the crowd found themselves was a very
+embarrassing one, but these administrators of impromptu justice
+consoled themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till night.
+
+And the rawboned young man, who had given such eager testimony that
+he "warn't afeard of the whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the
+top," concluded about noon that he had better go home--the ole woman
+mout git skeered, you know.  She wuz powerful skeery and mout git
+fits liker'n not, you know.
+
+The weary hours of suspense drew on.  However ready Morton may have
+been to commit suicide in a moment of rash despair, life looked very
+attractive to him now that its duration was measured by the
+descending sun.  And what a quickener of conscience is the prospect
+of immediate death!  In these hours the voice of Kike, reproving him
+for his reckless living, rang in his memory ceaselessly.  He saw what
+a distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a chance to
+try it over again.  But unless help should come from some unexpected
+quarter, he saw that his probation was ended.
+
+It is barely possible that the crowd might have become so demoralized
+by waiting as to have let Morton go, or at least to have handed him
+over to the authorities, had there not come along at that moment Mr.
+Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist preacher of whom Morton
+had made so much sport in Wilkins's Settlement.  Having to preach at
+fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat itinerant,
+and was now hastening to a preaching place near by.  One of the
+crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen, suggested that Morton had orter be allowed
+to see a preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died.  Some of the
+others disagreed.  They warn't nothin' in the nex' world too bad fer
+a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes.  They warn't a stringin' men up
+to send 'em to heaven, but to t' other place.
+
+Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the
+ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of
+God.  He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the
+horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying
+thief upon the cross.  In vain Morton protested his innocence.
+Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd
+to hand him over to the sheriff.  But Mellen's additional testimony
+to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being
+given up to the courts.  As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the
+arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite
+shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the
+condemned man.  Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of
+the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end
+of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as
+an impenitent thief.
+
+Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward
+the horizon.  He heard the rude voices of the mob about him.  But he
+thought of Patty and his mother.
+
+While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for
+death, there passed upon the road an elderly man.  He was just going
+out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him.  When
+he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must
+be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had
+so often heard at the Scotch Settlement.  Could it be that thoughts
+of home and mother had suggested Donaldson?  At least, the faintest
+hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair.
+
+"Call him back!" cried Morton.  "Won't somebody call that old man
+back?  He knows me."
+
+[Illustration: A LAST HOPE.]
+
+Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit.  The leaders looked
+knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders.
+
+"If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried
+the despairing Goodwin.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XVII._
+
+DELIVERANCE.
+
+Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a
+thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery
+and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his
+brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals.  In previous years
+Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have
+carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive
+"new-side" brethren.  He considered the doctrines of these zealous
+Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the
+ungrammatical circuit riders.  At the moment of passing the tavern
+where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in
+"laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines
+and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism.  His square head had
+fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of
+godless and noisy men about the tavern.  He could not spare time to
+note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the
+weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at
+Cincinnati.  He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first
+caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one
+would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr.
+Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant
+that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name.  How should
+he hear Morton's cry?  For just at that moment he had reached the
+portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his
+new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were
+of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.
+
+Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.
+
+"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him.  'Pears like as ef
+he's a-lyin' any how.  I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the
+ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't
+won't do no harm to call him back."  Saying which, he mounted his
+gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.
+
+"Hello, stranger!  I say, there!  Mister!  O, mister!  Hello, you ole
+man on horseback!"
+
+This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger
+interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson
+at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over
+his opponents.
+
+"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the
+messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened
+and not at all pleased to be awakened.
+
+"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had
+three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how
+as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it,
+for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."
+
+"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet
+fairly awake to the situation.  "Indeed?  I'm in a great hurry.  What
+does he want?  Wants me to pray with him, I suppose.  Well, it is
+never too late.  God's election is of grace, and often he seems to
+select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and
+get to himself a great name.  I'll go and see him."
+
+And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern, endeavoring to turn
+his thoughts out of the polemical groove in which they had been
+running all day, that he might think of some fitting words to say to
+a malefactor.  But when he stood before the young man he started with
+surprise.
+
+"What!  Morton Goodwin!  Have you taken to stealing horses?  I should
+have thought that the unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut
+short in God's righteousness, would have been a warning to you.  My
+dear young man, how could you bring such disgrace and shame on the
+gray hairs----"
+
+Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a murmur of excitement
+went through the crowd.  They believed that the prisoner's own
+witness had turned against him and that they had a second quasi
+sanction from the clergy for the deed of violence they were
+meditating.  Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the minister with
+some impatience, crying out:
+
+"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged me too quick.  These
+folks are going to hang me without any evidence at all, except that I
+was riding a good horse.  Now, I want you to tell them whose filley
+yon is."
+
+Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared to the crowd that he
+had seen this young man riding that colt for more than a year past,
+and that if they were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing
+that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.
+
+"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was
+a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.
+
+"I don't know.  How did you come here, Morton?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you a straight story.  I was gambling on Sunday
+night----"
+
+"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.
+
+"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had--horse and gun and
+all--I seemed clean crazy.  I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had,
+and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and
+gun.  Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for
+six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool,
+hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my
+colt with.  That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose
+horse it was, and where I was going."
+
+"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the
+young man go.  You ought to be thankful that God in his good
+providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent
+blood.  He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends
+church with his mother.  I am sorry he has got into bad habits."
+
+"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party;
+and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound
+Morton's arms and let him go.  The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed
+her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man
+from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as
+"his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck."  The horse and gun
+were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse,
+each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate
+attention.  In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to
+some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of
+gambling and Sabbath-breaking.  But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of
+the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped
+easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do
+with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in
+a day.  In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he
+had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.
+Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go
+directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in
+rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man.
+Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech.
+After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be
+drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he
+should become a gambler?  After thinking over it a while, however,
+the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape
+this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a
+religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and
+Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost
+as certainly as a gambler or a thief.
+
+Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present day should be a
+little too severe on our good friend Mr. Donaldson, I must express my
+sympathy for the worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward
+the scene of conflict.  Dear, genteel, and cultivated Methodist
+reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of Methodism, though
+you have so far departed from the standard of the fathers as to wear
+gold and costly apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not
+too hard upon our good friend Donaldson.  Had you, fastidious
+Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs, and refined
+preachers, as you sit in your cushioned pew--had you lived in Ohio
+sixty years ago, would you have belonged to the Methodists, think
+you?  Not at all! your nerves would have been racked by their
+shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by their ditties,
+your grammatical knowledge shocked beyond recovery by their English;
+you could never have worshiped in an excitement that prostrated
+people in religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and obstinate
+sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks.  It is easy to build
+the tombs of the prophets while you reap the harvest they sowed, and
+after they have been already canonized.  It is easy to build the
+tombs of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets of our
+own time, maybe.  Permit me, Methodist brother, to believe that had
+you lived in the days of Parson Donaldson, you would have condemned
+these rude Tishbites as sharply as he did.  But you would have been
+wrong, as he was.  For without them there must have been barbarism,
+worse than that of Arkansas and Texas.  Methodism was to the West all
+that Puritanism was to New England.  Both of them are sublime when
+considered historically; neither of them were very agreeable to live
+with, maybe.
+
+But, alas!  I am growing as theological as Mr. Donaldson himself.
+Meantime Morton has forded the creek at a point more favorable than
+his crossing of the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and
+ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and approaches his
+home, do the embarrassments of his situation become more appalling.
+If he could only be sure of himself in the future, there would be
+hope.  But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action
+possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.
+
+In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a "trace" that led
+him toward home by a much nearer way than he had come.  After riding
+twenty miles, he emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just
+as the sun was sitting.  It happened that the house where he found a
+hospitable supper and lodging was already set apart for Methodist
+preaching that evening.  After supper the shuck-bottom chairs and
+rude benches were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate
+space was left to be filled by seats which should be brought in by
+friendly neighbors.  Morton gathered from the conversation that the
+preacher was none other than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was
+held in such esteem that it was even believed that he had a prophetic
+inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing.  This "class" had been
+founded by his preaching, in the days of his vigor.  He had long
+since given up "traveling," on account of his health.  He was now a
+teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most scholarly of the
+Western itinerants.  He had set out on a journey among the churches
+with whom he had labored, seeking to strengthen the hands of the
+brethren, who were like a few sheep in the wilderness.  The old
+Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome the final visit of
+Paul the Aged than did the backwoods churches this farewell tour of
+Valentine Cook.
+
+Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a Methodist meeting,
+Morton felt no little agitation.  His mother had heard Cook in his
+younger days, in Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame
+as a man and as a preacher.  Morton was not only curious to hear him;
+he entertained a faint hope that the great preacher might lead him
+out of his embarrassment.
+
+After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees trying to collect
+his thoughts; determined at one moment to become a Methodist and end
+his struggles, seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance
+against the sermon that he must hear.  Having walked some distance
+from the house into the bushes, he came suddenly upon the preacher
+himself, kneeling in earnest audible prayer.  So rapt was the old man
+in his devotion that he did not note the approach of Goodwin, until
+the latter, awed at sight of a man talking face to face with God,
+stopped, trembling, where he stood.  Cook then saw him, and, arising,
+reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a voice tremulous
+with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a
+crown of life."  Morton endeavored, in a few stammering words, to
+explain his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed almost
+at once to have forgotten his presence, for he had taken his seat
+upon a log and appeared absorbed in thought.  Morton retreated just
+in time to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full.  The members
+of the church, men and women, as they entered, knelt in silent prayer
+before taking their seats.  Hardly silent either, for the old
+Methodist could do nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in
+what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth, continually in
+audible ejaculations of "Ah--ah!"  "O my Lord, help!"  "Hah!" and
+other groaning expressions of his inward wrestling--groanings easily
+uttered, but entirely without a possible orthography.  With most,
+this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and unreserved nature;
+in later times the ostentatious and hypocritical did not fail to
+cultivate it as an evidence of superior piety.
+
+But now the room is full.  People are crowding the doorways.  The
+good old-class leader has shut his eyes and turned his face
+heavenward.  Presently he strikes up lustily, leading the
+congregation in singing:
+
+  "How tedious and tasteless the hours
+  When Jesus no longer I see!"
+
+
+When he reached the stanza that declares:
+
+  "While blest with a sense of his love
+    A palace a toy would appear;
+  And prisons would palaces prove,
+    If Jesus would dwell with me there."
+
+there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!" and so forth.
+At the last quatrain, which runs,
+
+  "O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!
+    Thy soul-cheering presence restore;
+  Or take me to thee up on high,
+    Where winter and clouds are no more!"
+
+there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must have been spoken
+in a poetic sense.  I cannot believe that any of the excellent
+brethren, even in that moment of exaltation, would really have
+desired translation to the world beyond the clouds.
+
+The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his congregation--a
+very common bit of absent-mindedness with Valentine Cook; and so,
+when this hymn was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated
+soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian Philosopher," that
+inspiring song which begins:
+
+  "Come on, my partners in distress,
+  My comrades in this wilderness,
+    Who still your bodies feel;
+  Awhile forget your griefs and tears,
+  Look forward through this vale of tears
+    To that celestial hill."
+
+
+The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed the preacher,
+having suddenly come to himself, entered hurriedly, and pushed
+forward to the place arranged for him.  The festoons of dried pumpkin
+hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head; a tallow dip,
+sitting in the window, shed a feeble light upon his face as he stood
+there, tall, gaunt, awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,
+hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse black hair
+resisting yet the approach of age, and a _tout ensemble_ unpromising,
+but peculiar.  He began immediately to repeat his hymn:
+
+  "I saw one hanging on a tree
+    In agony and blood;
+  He fixed his languid eye on me,
+    As near the cross I stood."
+
+
+His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have a fascination, and
+the pathos of his voice, quivering with suppressed emotion, was
+indescribable.  Before his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic
+Morton felt that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.
+
+He repeated his text: "_Behold, the day cometh_," and launched at
+once into a strongly impressive introduction about the all-pervading
+presence of God, until the whole house seemed full of God, and Morton
+found himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's presence and
+ineffable holiness.  Then he took up that never-failing theme of the
+pioneer preacher--the sinfulness of sin--and there were suppressed
+cries of anguish over the whole house.  Morton could hardly feel more
+contempt for himself than he had felt for two days past; but when the
+preacher advanced to his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness
+of Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood.  In that
+hour, with God around, above, beneath, without and within--with a
+feeling that since his escape he held his life by a sort of
+reprieve--with the inspiring and persuasive accents of this weird
+prophet ringing in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all
+ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological puzzles, and set
+himself to a self-denying life.  With one final battle he closed his
+conflict about Patty.  He would do right at all hazards.
+
+Morton never had other conversion than this.  He could not tell of
+such a struggle as Kike's.  All he knew was that there had been
+conflict.  When once he decided, there was harmony and peace.  When
+Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting the whole
+house ablaze with feeling, and then proceeded to "open the doors of
+the church" by singing,
+
+  "Am I a soldier of the Cross,
+    A follower of the Lamb,
+  And shall I fear to own his cause,
+    Or blush to speak his name?"
+
+it was with a sort of military exaltation--a defiance of the world,
+the flesh, and the devil--that Morton went forward and took the hand
+of the preacher, as a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among
+those who meant to
+
+  "----conquer though they die."
+
+
+He was accustomed to say in after years, using the Methodist
+phraseology, that "God spoke peace to his soul the moment he made up
+his mind to give up all."  That God does speak to the heart of man in
+its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works with, and not against,
+the laws of mind.  When Morton ceased to contend with his highest
+impulses there was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and
+objective a temperament to have subjective fights with fanciful
+Apollyons.  When peace came he accepted it.  One of the old brethren
+who crowded round him that night and questioned him about his
+experience was "afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion.  They wuzn't
+wras'lin' and strugglin' enough."  But the wise Valentine Cook said,
+when he took Morton's hand to say good-bye, and looked into his clear
+blue eye, "Hold fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XVIII._
+
+THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.
+
+At last the knight was in the saddle.  Much as Morton grieved when he
+thought of Patty, he rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral
+purpose.  Vacillation was over.  He was ready to fight, to sacrifice,
+to die, for a good cause.  It had been the dream of his boyhood; it
+had been the longing of his youth, marred and disfigured by
+irregularities as his youth had been.  In the early twilight of the
+winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle field, and, as
+was his wont in moments of cheerfulness, he sang.  But not now the
+"Highland Mary," or "Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of
+Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night before, some
+stanzas of which had strongly impressed him and accorded exactly with
+his new mood, and his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,
+perhaps, from his religious life:
+
+  "In hope of that immortal crown
+    I now the Cross sustain,
+  And gladly wander up and down,
+    And smile at toil and pain;
+  I suffer on my threescore years,
+    Till my Deliv'rer come
+  And wipe away his servant's tears,
+    And take his exile home.
+
+  * * * * * * * *
+
+  "O, what are all my sufferings here
+    If, Lord, thou count me meet
+  With that enraptured host to appear
+    And worship at thy feet!
+  Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
+    Take life or friends away,
+  But let me find them all again
+    In that eternal day."
+
+
+Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had ceased to sing.  He was
+painfully endeavoring to imagine how he would be received at home and
+at Captain Lumsden's.
+
+At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter twilight, trying to
+keep her heart from fainting entirely.  The story of Morton's losses
+at cards had quickly reached the settlement--with the easy addition
+that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor, and had
+carried off the horse and gun which another had won from him in
+gambling.  This last, the mother steadily refused to believe.  It
+could not be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses of his
+youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal brother, Lewis.  For
+Morton was such a boy as Lewis had never been, and the thought of his
+deserting his home and falling finally into bad practices, had
+brought to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to heart-break.
+Job Goodwin had abandoned all work and taken to his congenial
+employment of sighing and croaking in the chimney-corner, building
+innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.
+
+Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend.  "I am sure, Mrs.
+Goodwin," she said, "Morton will yet be saved; I have been enabled to
+pray for him with faith."
+
+In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not help thinking that it
+was very inconsistent for an Arminian to believe that God would
+convert a man in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to
+believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he pleased.
+Willing, however, to lay the blame of her misfortune on anybody but
+Morton, she said, half peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had
+never come to the settlement.  Morton had been in a hopeful state of
+mind, and they had driven him to wickedness.  Otherwise he would
+doubtless have been a Christian by this time.
+
+And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought--but did not say--that it
+was most absurd for Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having
+driven Morton away from salvation, since, according to her
+Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he were elected.  It
+is so easy to be inconsistent when we try to reason about God's
+relation to his creatures; and so easy to see absurdity in any creed
+but our own!
+
+The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable now to endure the
+darkness, lit her candle.  Then there was a knock at the door.  Ever
+since Sunday the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had turned
+pale at every sound of footsteps without.  Now she called out, "Come
+in!" in a broken voice, and Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed
+his school.
+
+"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can give comfort.  I'm
+sure to say something not intoirely proper to the occasion, whiniver
+I talk to anybody in throuble--something that jars loike a varb that
+disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I may say.
+But I thought I ought to come and say you, and till you as I don't
+belave Moirton would do anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be
+home afore the wake's out.  I've soiphered it out by the Rule of
+Thray.  As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other throubles--comin' out all
+roight--so is Moirton Goodwin to his present dif_fic_culties.  If the
+first term and the third is the same, then the sicond and the fourth
+has got to be idintical.  Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but you're
+an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you can say that me
+dimonsthration's entoirely corrict.  Moirton'll fetch the answer set
+down in the book ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake.
+Thair's no vulgar fractions about him."
+
+"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin, who had held his hand
+up to his best ear, to hear what Brady was saying.  "No, I don't 'low
+he was fractious, fer the mos' part.  But he's gone now, and he'll
+git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the fever, and then
+they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and the Injuns'll be on us, and it
+'pears like as if they wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'.  Hey?"
+
+At that very moment the latch was jerked up and Henry came bursting
+into the room, gasping from excitement.
+
+"What is it?  Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting to his feet.
+
+But Henry gasped again.
+
+"Spake!" said Brady.  "Out wid it!"
+
+"Mort's--a-puttin'--Dolly--in the stable!" said the breathless boy.
+
+"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job Goodwin, sitting
+down again hopelessly.  "Then somebody--Injuns, robbers, or
+somebody--'s killed Mort, and she's found her way back!"
+
+While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler slipped out of the open
+door, that she might not intrude upon the meeting; but Brady--oral
+newspaper that he was--waited, with the true journalistic spirit, for
+an interview.  Hardly had Job Goodwin finished his doleful speech,
+when Morton himself crossed the threshold and reached out his hand to
+his mother, while she reached out both hands and--did what mothers
+have done for returning prodigals since the world was made.  Her
+husband stood by bewildered, trying to collect his wits enough to
+understand how Morton could have been murdered by robbers or Indians
+and yet stand there.  Not until the mother released him, and Morton
+turned and shook hands with his father, did the father get rid of the
+illusion that his son was certainly dead.
+
+"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the shadow, "I'm roight
+glad to see ye back.  I tould 'em ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe.  I
+soiphered it out by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about
+this toime.  One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin' to run away
+from yersilf, one day for repintance, and the nixt the prodigal son
+falls on his mother's neck and confisses his sins."
+
+Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a safeguard against too
+much of a scene.  And to avoid speaking of subjects more unpleasant,
+he plunged at once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's Hole,
+and of his arrest for stealing his own horse.  Then he told how he
+had escaped by the good offices of Mr. Donaldson.  Mrs. Goodwin was
+secretly delighted at this.  It was a new bond between the young man
+and the minister, and now at last she should see Morton converted.
+The religious experience Morton reserved.  He wanted to break it to
+his mother alone, and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to
+Patty.  And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he supposed,
+a full account of Morton's adventures, and being eager to tell so
+choice and fresh a story, found himself unable to stay longer.  But
+just as he reached the door, it occurred to him that if he did not
+tell Morton at once what had happened in his absence, some one else
+would anticipate him.  He had sole possession of Morton's adventure
+anyhow; so he straightened himself up against the door and said:
+
+"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the whoile ye was gone,
+Moirton?"
+
+"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.
+
+"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to be good, as ye plase.
+Ye know how Koike was bilin' over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went
+away in the fall.  Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met Koike
+in the road, and gives him some hard words fer sayin' what he did to
+him last Sunthay.  An' fwat does Koike do but bowldly begins another
+exhortation, tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go to
+hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about and take the
+other thrack.  An' fwat does the Captin do but up wid the flat of his
+hand and boxes Koike's jaw.  An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him
+as Magruder did Jake Sniger.  But not a bit of it!  He fired up rid,
+and thin got pale immajiately.  Thin he turned round t'other soide of
+his face, and, wid a thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't
+want to slap that chake too?  An' the Captin swore at him fer a
+hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the jerks; an' he's been
+a-lookin' loike a sintince that couldn' be parsed iver sence."
+
+"I wonder Kike bore it.  I don't think I could," said Morton,
+meditatively.
+
+"Av coorse ye couldn't.  Ye're not a convarted Mithodist, But I must
+be goin'.  I'm a-boardin' at the Captin's now."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XIX._
+
+PATTY.
+
+Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride, and in Patty's
+circumstances pride was conservative; it saved her from possible
+assimilation with the vulgarity about her.  She was a lily among
+hollyhocks.  Her mother had come of an "old family"--in truth, of two
+or three old families.  All of them had considered that attachment to
+the Established Church was part and parcel of their gentility, and
+most of them had been staunch Tories in the Revolution.  Patty had
+inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and a certain lofty
+inflexibility of disposition.  In this congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden
+had planted traditional prejudices.  Patty read her Prayer-book, and
+wished that she might once attend the stately Episcopal service; she
+disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song of the Baptist
+preacher and the rant of the Methodist itinerant were equally
+distasteful.  She had never seen a clergyman in robes, but she tried,
+from her mother's descriptions, to form a mental picture of the
+long-drawn dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country church.
+Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her age; but her ideals
+were ruled by the pride in which she had been cradled.
+
+For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion.  Methodism
+was new, and, like everything new, lacked traditions,
+picturesqueness, mustiness, and all the other essentials of gentility
+in religious matters.  The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the
+preachers were illiterate, and often rough in voice and speech; they
+made war on dancing and jewelry, and dancing and jewelry appertained
+to good-breeding.  Ever since her father had been taken with that
+strange disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the Methodists
+worse than ever.  They had made a direct attack on her pride.
+
+The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached the ears of Patty.
+The thoughtful unkindness of her father could not leave her without
+so delectable a morsel of news.  He felt sure that Patty's pride
+would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he omitted nothing from
+the tale--the loss of horse and gun, the offer to stake his hat and
+coat, the proposal to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited
+horse--such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story.  He told it at
+the table in order to mortify Patty as much as possible in the
+presence of her brothers and sisters and the hired men.  But the
+effect was quite different from his expectations.  With that
+inconsistency characteristic of the most sensible women when they are
+in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes.  She saw him, in her
+imagination, a hapless and homeless wanderer.  She would not abandon
+him in his misfortunes.  He should have one friend at least.  She was
+sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not inconsistent with
+gentlemanliness.  She had often heard that her mother would have
+inherited a plantation if her grandfather had been able to let cards
+alone.  Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous and impulsive
+weakness.  Then, too, she laid the blame on her favorite scape-goat.
+If it had not been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the
+inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's misfortune
+would not have befallen him.  Patty forgave in advance.  Love
+condones all sins except sins against love.
+
+It was with more than his usual enjoyment of gossip that the
+school-master hurried home to the Captain's that evening to tell the
+story of Morton's return, and to boast that he had already soiphered
+it out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would come out
+roight.  The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses,
+slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse
+to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her
+gambling with Burchard.  But Patty inly resolved to show her lover
+more affection than ever.  She would make him feel that her love
+would be constant when the friendship of others failed.  She liked to
+flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her
+love would reform her lover.
+
+Patty knew he would come.  She went about her work next morning,
+humming some trifling air, that she might seem nonchalant.  But after
+awhile she happened to think that her humming was an indication of
+pre-occupation.  So she ceased to hum.  Then she remembered that
+people would certainly interpret silence as indicative of meditation;
+she immediately fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the
+younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so much?"  Upon
+which, Patty ceased to talk and went to work harder than ever; but,
+being afraid that the eagerness with which she worked would betray
+her, she tried to work more slowly until that was observed.  The very
+devices by which we seek to hide mental pre-occupation generally
+reveal it.
+
+At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the loom-room, where she
+could think without having her thoughts guessed at.  Here, too, she
+would be alone when Morton should come.
+
+Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious change, found it
+hard indeed to tell Patty.  But he counted certainly that she would
+censure him for gambling, which would make it so much easier for him
+to explain to her that the only way for him to escape from vice was
+to join the Methodists, and thus give up all to a better life.  He
+shaped some sentences founded upon this supposition.  But after all
+his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to
+"confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to
+bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room,
+his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty
+blushes.  Ah, weak nature!  He was not blushing for his sins, but for
+his repentance!
+
+Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of
+forgiveness love was.  She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she
+generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow,
+a confession.  She extended her hand cordially and beamed upon him,
+and told him how glad she was that he had come back,
+and--and--well--; she couldn't find anything else to say, but she
+urged him to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair, and tried
+for the life of her to think of something to say--the silence was so
+embarrassing.  But talking for talk's sake is always hard.  One talks
+as one breathes--best when volition has nothing to do with it.
+
+The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as
+Patty's talk.  For he had not expected this sort of an opening.  If
+she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road
+would have been plain.  But now that she loved him and forgave him of
+her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face
+by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar
+fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised?
+Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet.  He
+had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage,
+but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion.  He talked
+about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the
+conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his
+gambling.  But she did not.  Could it be that she had not heard of
+it?  Must he then reveal that to her also?
+
+While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that
+he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began
+to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger
+"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all
+this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said.  Morton thought
+it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:
+there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still
+while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud
+praying of the meetings into ridicule.  And Morton became conscious
+that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to
+confess his conversion.  He thought it better to return to his
+gambling for a starting point.
+
+"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"
+
+"Oh! yes.  I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say
+any more about it, Morton.  You're too good for me with all your
+faults, and you won't do it any more."
+
+"But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was
+gone.  I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--"
+
+"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about
+it because it isn't pleasant.  It'll all come out right at last: I'd
+a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard
+Methodist, like Kike, for instance."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word.  Not one word.  I want you
+to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right."
+
+You think Morton very weak.  But, do you know how exceedingly sweet
+is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and
+suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else?  Poor
+Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so
+much of storm.  It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes
+that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.
+
+At last he rose to go.  He felt himself a Peter.  He had denied the
+Master!
+
+"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not been honest with you.
+I meant to tell you something when I first came, and I didn't.  It is
+hard to have to give up your love.  But I'm afraid you won't care for
+me when I tell you--"
+
+The severity of Morton's penitence only touched Patty the more deeply.
+
+"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done anything naughty, I
+forgive you without knowing it.  But I don't want to hear any more
+about it, I tell you."  And with that the blushing Patty held her
+cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton, trembling with
+conflicting emotions, had kissed her for the first time, she slipped
+away quickly to prevent his making any painful confessions.
+
+For a moment Morton stood charmed with her goodness.  When he
+believed himself to have conquered, he found himself vanquished.
+
+In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part of the distance
+home.  He might write to her about it.  He might let her hear it from
+others.  But he rejected both as unworthy of a man.  The memory of
+the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw away his Methodism
+and rejoice in the love of Patty, now so assured.  But suddenly he
+seemed to himself to be another Judas.  He had not denied the
+Lord--he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!
+
+Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back toward Captain
+Lumsden's.  He entered the loom-room, but it was vacant.  He went
+into the living-room, and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole
+family.  Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered by the opposite
+door.  Patty was carding wool with hand-cards, and she looked up,
+startled at this reappearance of her lover when she thought him
+happily dismissed.
+
+"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into any devil's snare
+by delay, and to atone for his great sin by making his profession as
+public as possible, "Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have
+determined to be a Christian, and I have
+joined--the--Methodist--Church."
+
+Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance an unfortunate
+sound of defiance, and it aroused all Patty's combativeness.  It was
+in fact a death wound to her pride.  She had feared sometimes that
+Morton would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should join the
+despised sect without so much as consulting her was more than she
+could bear.  This, then, was the way in which her forbearance and
+forgiveness were rewarded!  There stood her father, sneering like a
+Mephistopheles.  She would resent the indignity, and at the same time
+show her power over her lover.
+
+"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to see you again," she
+said, with lofty pride, and a solemn awfulness of passion more
+terrible than an oath.
+
+"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton, stretching his hands out
+in eager, despairing entreaty.  But this only gave Patty the greater
+assurance that a little decision on her part would make him give up
+his Methodism.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOICE.]
+
+"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take it back."  There was a
+sternness in the white face and a fire in the black eyes that left
+Morton no hope.
+
+But he straightened himself up now to his full six feet, and said,
+with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty, since you make me choose, I
+shall not give up the Lord, even for you.  But," he added, with a
+broken voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to bear it."
+
+Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in armor giving up his
+ladye love for the sake of monastic religiousness, how admirable he
+would be!  But even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest
+of sacrifices.  It is not the garb or the age that makes sublime a
+soul's offering of heart and hope to duty.  When Morton was gone
+Lumsden chuckled not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her
+courage; but I have understood that she resented his compliments, and
+poured upon him some severe denunciation, in which the Captain heard
+more truth than even Kike had ventured to utter.  Such are the
+inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is wounded.
+
+It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton and Patty are in
+trouble--but you will want to know about Brady.  He was at Colonel
+Wheeler's that evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from
+lynching, when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that Morton
+had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.
+
+"Mithodist?  He's no Mithodist."
+
+"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother told me so; and
+what's more, she said she was glad of it."  Then, seeing Brady's
+discomfiture, she added: "You didn't get all the news that time, Mr.
+Brady."
+
+"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a family intervoo, it's
+not proper fer me to tell all I heerd.  I didn't know the fact was
+made public yit, and so I had to denoy it.  It's the honor of a
+Oirish gintleman, ye know."
+
+What a journalist he would have made!
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XX._
+
+THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.
+
+More than two years have passed since Morton made his great
+sacrifice.  You may see him now riding up to the Hickory Ridge
+Church--a "hewed-log" country meeting-house.  He is dressed in
+homespun clothes.  At the risk of compromising him forever, I must
+confess that his coat is straight-breasted--shad-bellied as the
+profane call it--and his best hat a white one with a broad brim.  The
+face is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one
+year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and the sickness
+and exposure of another year in the malarious cane-brakes of Western
+Tennessee.  Perils of Indians, perils of floods, perils of
+alligators, perils of bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of
+robbers, perils of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of
+five thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five or six
+hundred preachings in the same time, and the care of numberless
+scattered churches in the wilderness have conspired to give
+sedateness to his countenance.  And yet there is a youthfulness about
+the sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that sort of
+humor which Western people call "mischief" about the eyes, that match
+but grotesquely with white hat and shad-bellied coat.
+
+[Illustration: GOING TO CONFERENCE.]
+
+He has been a preacher almost ever since he became a Methodist.  How
+did he get his theological education?  It used to be said that
+Methodist preachers were educated by the old ones telling the young
+ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction Morton carried
+in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple, solid sermons, Charles
+Wesley's hymns, and a Bible.  Having little of the theory and system
+of theology, he was free to take lessons in the larger school of life
+and practical observation.  For the rest, the free criticism to which
+he was subject from other preachers, and the contact with a few
+families of refinement, had obliterated his dialect.  Naturally a
+gentleman at heart, he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he
+met, quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners.  He is regarded as
+a young man of great promise by the older brethren; his clear voice
+is very charming, his strong and manly speech and his tender feeling
+are very inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported
+extraordinary revivals.  Some of the old men sagely predict that
+"he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such ambitious dreams disturb
+his sleep.  He has not "gone into a decline" on account of Patty.  A
+healthy nature will bear heavy blows.  But there is a pain,
+somewhere--everywhere--in his being, when he thinks of the girl who
+stood just above him in the spelling-class, and who looked so divine
+when she was spinning her two dozen cuts a day.  He does not like
+this regretful feeling.  He prays to be forgiven for it.  He
+acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast that he is too much
+like Lot's wife--he finds his heart prone to look back toward the
+objects he once loved.  Often in riding through the stillness of a
+deep forest--and the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode of
+the Almighty--his noble voice rings out fervently and even
+pathetically with that stanza:
+
+  "The dearest idol I have known,
+    Whate'er that idol be,
+  Help me to tear it from thy throne
+    And worship only Thee!"
+
+
+No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he, and none can tell a
+story more effectively in a generation of preachers who are all good
+story-tellers.  He loves his work; its dangers and difficulties
+satisfy the ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings,
+except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in the
+Hissawachee Bottom.  Then the longing to see Patty has seized him and
+he has been fain to hurry away, praying to be delivered from every
+snare of the enemy.
+
+He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat who is approaching
+the country meeting-house.  It is conference-time, and the greetings
+are hearty and familiar.  Everybody is glad to see everybody, and,
+after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand on ceremony
+with anybody else.  Morton has hardly alighted before half a dozen
+preachers have rushed up to him and taken him by the hand.  A tall
+brother, with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:
+
+"How do you do, Brother Goodwin?  Glad to see the alligators haven't
+finished you!"
+
+To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but suddenly he sees,
+standing back of the rest and waiting his turn, a young man with a
+solemn, sallow face, pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered
+by the straight black hair that falls on each side of it.  He wears
+over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes cut through, and seems to
+be perpetually awaiting an ague-chill.  Seeing him, Morton pushes the
+rest aside, and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a cry:
+"Kike, God bless you!  How are you, dear old fellow?  You look sick."
+
+Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over his shoulder and
+looked in his face.  "I am sick, Mort.  Cast down, but not destroyed,
+you know.  I hope I am ready to be offered up."
+
+"Not a bit of it.  You've got to get better.  Offered up?  Why, you
+aren't fit to offer to an alligator.  Where are you staying?"
+
+"Out there."  Kike pointed to the tents of a camp-meeting barely
+visible through the trees.  The people in the neighborhood of the
+Hickory Ridge Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in
+their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up a camp-meeting.
+It was easier to take care of the preachers out of doors than in.
+Morton shook his head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent
+under which he had been assigned to sleep.  The white spot on the end
+of Kike's nose and the blue lines under his finger-nails told plainly
+of the on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some better
+shelter for him than under this thin sheet.  But this was hard to do.
+The few brethren in the neighborhood had already filled their cabins
+full of guests, mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the
+younger men, renowned only for his piety and his revivals, had not
+been thought of for a place elsewhere than on the camp-ground.
+Finding it impossible to get a more comfortable resting place for his
+friend, Morton turned to seek for a physician.  The only doctor in
+the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister, retired from the
+ministry on account of his impaired health.  To him Morton went to
+ask for medicine for Kike.
+
+"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at the camp-ground," said
+Morton, "and--"
+
+"And you want me to see him," said the doctor, in an alert,
+anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags" and donning his hat.
+
+When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike was lodged they found
+a prayer-meeting of a very exciting kind going on in the tent
+adjoining.  There were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs
+commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced ear of
+Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly doctor.
+
+"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to Morton, with great
+positiveness.
+
+"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've done my best to get
+him out of it, but I cannot.  See how thin this tent-cover is."
+
+"And the malaria of these woods is awful.  Camp-meetings, sir, are
+always bad.  And this fuss is enough to drive a patient crazy."
+
+Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said nothing.  They had
+now reached the corner of the tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet,
+holding his hands to his head.  The noise from the prayer-meeting was
+more than his weary brain would bear.
+
+"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor, promptly proceeding to
+lift Kike without even explaining to him who he was, or where he
+proposed to take him.
+
+Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but the poor fellow was
+shaking so that he could not sit there.  Morton then brought out
+Dolly--she was all his own now--and took the slight form of Kike in
+his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man in the saddle.
+
+"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"
+
+"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own horse and spurring
+off to have a bed made ready for Kike.
+
+As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking Kike roused a
+little and said, "She's the same fine old Dolly, Mort."
+
+"A little more sober.  The long rides in the cane-brakes, and the
+responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy, have given her the
+gravity that belongs to the ministry."
+
+Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house!  After the rude
+bear-skins upon which he had languished in the backwoods cabins,
+after the musty feather-beds in freezing lofts, and the pallets of
+leaves upon which he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and
+musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste of heaven.  But
+Kike was almost too sick to be grateful.  The poor frame had been
+kept up by will so long, that now that he was in a good bed and had
+Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick.  What had been ague
+settled into that wearisome disease called bilious fever.  Morton
+staid by him nearly all of the time, looking into the conference now
+and then to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to a
+grand speech from McKendree, attending on the third day of the
+session, when, with the others who had been preaching two years on
+probation, he was called forward to answer the "Questions" always
+propounded to "Candidates for admission to the conference."  Kike
+only was missing from the list of those who were to have heard the
+bishop's exhortations, full of martial fire, and to have answered his
+questions in regard to their spiritual state.  For above all gifts of
+speech or depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early
+Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was of account for
+the ministry who was not "groaning to be made perfect in this life."
+The question stands in the discipline yet, but very many young men
+who assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city church with
+full galleries.
+
+The strange mystery in which appointments were involved could not but
+pique curiosity.  Morton having had one year of mountains, and one
+year of cane-brakes, had come to wish for one year of a little more
+comfort, and a little better support.  There is a romance about going
+threadbare and tattered in a good cause, but even the romance gets
+threadbare and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a
+little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance, charming
+enough in itself, but dull when it grows monotonous.
+
+The awful hour of appointments came on at last.  The brave-hearted
+men sat down before the bishop, and before God, not knowing what was
+to be their fate.  Morton could not guess where he was going.  A
+miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might be his doom,
+or he might--but no, he would not hope that his lot might fall in
+Ohio.  He was a young man, and a young man must take his chances.
+Morton found himself more anxious about Kike than about himself.
+Where would the bishop send the invalid?  With Kike it might be a
+matter of life and death, and Kike would not hear to being left
+without work.  He meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.
+
+The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their destiny, sang
+fervently that fiery hymn of Charles Wesley's:
+
+  "Jesus, the name high over all,
+    In hell or earth or sky,
+  Angels and men before him fall,
+    And devils fear and fly.
+
+  "O that the world might taste and see,
+    The riches of his grace,
+  The arms of love that compass me
+    Would all mankind embrace."
+
+And when they reached the last stanzas there was the ring of soldiers
+ready for battle in their martial voices.  That some of them would
+die from exposure, malaria, or accident during the next year was
+probable.  Tears came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to
+grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they approached the
+climax of the hymn, which the bishop read impressively, two lines at
+a time, for them to sing:
+
+  "His only righteousness I show,
+    His saving truth proclaim,
+  'Tis all my business here below
+    To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'
+
+  "Happy if with my latest breath
+    I may but gasp his name,
+  Preach him to all and cry in death,
+    'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"
+
+Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and the venerable
+Asbury, with calmness and with a voice faltering with age, made them
+a brief address; tender and sympathetic at first, earnest as he
+proceeded, and full of ardor and courage at the close.
+
+"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted some man to take
+Quebec, they began with the oldest General first, asking him:
+'General, will you go and take Quebec?'  To which he made reply, 'It
+is a very difficult enterprise.'  'You may stand aside,' they said.
+One after another the Generals answered that they would, in some more
+or less indefinite manner, until the youngest man on the list was
+reached.  'General Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?'
+'I'll do it or die,' he replied."  Here the bishop paused, looked
+round about upon them, and added, with a voice full of emotion, "He
+went, and did both.  We send you first to take the country allotted
+to you.  We want only men who are determined to do it or die!  Some
+of you, dear brethren, will do both.  If you fall, let us hear that
+you fell like Methodist preachers at your post, face to the foe, and
+the shout of victory on your lips."
+
+The effect of this speech was beyond description.  There were sobs,
+and cries of "Amen," "God grant it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of
+the old log church.  Every man was ready for the hardest place, if he
+must.  Gravely, as one who trembles at his responsibility, the bishop
+brought out his list.  No man looked any more upon his fellow.  Every
+one kept his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop read the
+appointments, until his own name was reached.  Some showed pleasure
+when their names were called, some could not conceal a look of pain.
+When the reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton heard,
+with a little start, the words slowly enounced as the bishop's eyes
+fell on him:
+
+"Jenkinsville Circuit--Morton Goodwin."
+
+Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio.  But it was in the wickedest
+part of Ohio.  Morton half suspected that he was indebted to his
+muscle, his courage, and his quick wit for the appointment.  The
+rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the alligators of
+Mississippi.  But he was young, hopeful and brave, and rather
+relished a difficult field than otherwise.  He listened now for
+Kike's name.  It came at the bottom of the list:
+
+"Pottawottomie Creek--W. T. Smith, Hezekiah Lumsden."
+
+The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to a man so sick as
+Kike was.  He had, therefore, sent him as "second man" or "junior
+preacher" on a circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.
+
+The last appointment having been announced, a simple benediction
+closed the services, and the brethren who had foregone houses and
+homes and fathers and mothers and wives and children for the kingdom
+of heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at Dr.
+Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to the sick Kike, and
+rode away, each in his own direction, and all with a self-immolation
+to the cause rarely seen since the Middle-Age.
+
+They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with fever, and Morton,
+watching by his side.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXI._
+
+CONVALESCENCE.
+
+At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be spared.  There is
+no longer any reason why the rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should
+pine for the muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to "lick as
+soon as they lay eyes on to him."  Dolly's legs are aching for a
+gallop.  Morton and Dr. Morgan have exhausted their several systems
+of theology in discussion.  So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts
+the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient
+brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit.
+Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover.  The doctor has
+taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward
+with sadness to the time when he will leave.
+
+Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back
+through the veins!  You have no longer any pain; you are not well
+enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no
+obligation resting on you but one--that is rest.  Such perfect
+passivity Kike had never known before.  He could walk but little.  He
+sat the livelong day by the open window, as listless as the grass
+that waved before the wind.  All the sense of dire responsibility,
+all those feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of
+his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability, were in
+abeyance.  To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wake and breathe, to suffer
+as a passive instrument the play of whatever feeling might chance to
+come, was Kike's life.
+
+In this state the severity of his character was laid aside.  He
+listened to the quick and eager conversation of Dr. Morgan with a
+gentle pleasure; he answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan
+with quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane Morgan,
+their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as a far off spectator.
+There were but two things that had a real interest for him.  He felt
+a keen delight in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows as
+they went chattering out from under the eaves--their airy vagabondage
+was so restful.  And he liked to watch the quick, careless tread of
+Henrietta Morgan, the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on
+forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the swallows
+themselves.  Though she was eighteen, there was in her full
+child-like cheeks, in her contagious laugh--a laugh most unprovoked,
+coming of itself--in her playful way of performing even her duties, a
+something that so contrasted with and relieved the habitual austerity
+of Kike's temper, and that so fell in with his present lassitude and
+happy carelessness, that he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a
+pillow, to turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.
+So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came to talk with
+her for the sake of hearing them.  He was not forgetful of the solemn
+injunctions Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young
+ministers in the presence of women.  With Miss Jane he was very
+careful lest he should in any way compromise himself, or awaken her
+affections.  Jane was the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if
+he were to marry.  But Nettie was a child--a cheerful butterfly--as
+refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold water to a
+fever-patient.  When she was out of the room, Kike was impatient;
+when she returned, he was glad.  When she sewed, he drew the large
+chair in which he rested in front of her, and talked in his grave
+fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a hundred fancies.  She
+seemed to shine all about him like sunlight.  Poor Kike could not
+refuse to enjoy a fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's
+reverence for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his sickness,
+grew apace into a love for him.
+
+Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected this, the doctor had
+penetrated it.  Kike's whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed
+the ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion, talking with
+eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave sentences before he was
+half through--seeing and hearing everything while he seemed to note
+nothing.  He was not averse to this attachment between the two.
+Provided always, that Kike should give up traveling.  It was all but
+impossible, indeed, for a man to be a Methodist preacher in that day
+and "lead about a wife."  A very few managed to combine the ministry
+with marriage, but in most cases marriage rendered "location" or
+secularization imperative.
+
+[Illustration: CONVALESCENCE.]
+
+Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way that is
+characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie Morgan as she sewed
+and laughed, when Dr. Morgan came in, put his pill-bags upon the high
+bureau, glanced quickly at the two, and said:
+
+"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother.  The
+double-and-twisting is hard work."
+
+Nettie laid her sewing down.  Kike watched her until she had
+disappeared through the door; then he listened until the more
+vigorous spinning indicated to him that younger hands had taken the
+wheel.  His heart sank a little--it might be hours before Nettie
+could return.
+
+Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy himself, with his
+medicines, but he was observing how the young preacher's eyes
+followed his daughter, how his countenance relapsed into its habitual
+melancholy when she was gone.  He thought he could not be mistaken in
+his diagnosis.
+
+"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know what we shall do when
+you get well.  I can't bear to have you go away."
+
+"You have been too good, doctor.  I am afraid you have spoiled me."
+The thought of going to Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more
+painful to Kike.  He had put all thoughts of the sort out of his
+mind, because the doctor wished him to keep his mind quiet.  Now, for
+some reason, Doctor Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future
+upon him.  Why was it unpleasant?  Why had he lost his relish for his
+work?  Had he indeed backslidden?
+
+While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time
+held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as
+though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was
+instituting an inquiry into his own religious state.  Why did he
+shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit?  He had braved much harder
+toil and greater danger.  On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a
+senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would
+devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with
+the preceding.  On inquiring of himself he found that there was no
+circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind,
+except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house.  At first Kike
+Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do
+under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful
+attachment to the family.  Surely gratitude is a generous quality,
+and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him
+under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge?
+And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as
+though he were a brother?  What could be more commendable than that
+he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good?
+
+But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself.  He had
+always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden.  He could not rest now in this
+subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve.
+So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the
+contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another
+and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose
+loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent
+wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of
+whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to.  The
+consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a
+consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of
+pain.
+
+Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught
+the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon
+the forehead of Lumsden.  Then the physician seemed all at once
+satisfied with his medicines.  The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and
+the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.
+
+At this moment Nettie herself came into the room on some errand.
+Kike had heard her wheel stop--had looked toward the door--had caught
+her glance as she came in, and had, in that moment, become aware that
+he was not the only person in love.  Was it, then, that the doctor
+wished to prevent the attachment going further that he had delicately
+reminded his guest of the approach of the time when he must leave?
+These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude of his slow
+convalescence.  Nettie went back to her wheel, and set it humming
+louder than ever, but Kike heard now in its tones some note of
+anxiety that disturbed him.  The doctor came and sat down by him and
+felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had fever, really to add yet
+another link to the chain of evidence that his surmise was correct.
+
+"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much impaired as yours
+cannot recuperate in a few days."
+
+"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious to get to my
+mother's for a rest there, that I may not burden you any longer,
+and----"
+
+"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you think I want to be rid
+of you.  I wish you would stay with me always; I do indeed."
+
+For a moment Kike looked out of the window.  To stay with the doctor
+always would, it seemed to him, be a heaven upon earth.  But had he
+not renounced all thought of a heaven on earth?  Had he not said
+plainly that here he had no abiding place?  Having put his hand to
+the plow, should he look back?
+
+"But I ought not to give up my work."
+
+It was not in this tone that Kike would have spurned such a
+temptation awhile before.
+
+"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I am useful here.  I
+cannot preach a great deal, but I think that I have never done so
+much good as since I began to practice medicine.  I need somebody to
+help me.  I cannot take care of the farm and my practice too.  You
+could look after the farm, and preach every Sunday in the country
+twenty miles round.  You might even study medicine after awhile, and
+take the practice as I grow older.  You will die, if you go on with
+your circuit-riding.  Come and live with me, and be my----assistant."
+The doctor had almost said "my son."  It was in his mind, and Kike
+divined it.
+
+"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to go, "and remember
+that nobody is obliged to kill himself."
+
+And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and tried to see the right;
+and all day long Nettie found occasion to come in on little errands,
+and as often as she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would
+be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as often as she
+went out did he tremble lest he were about to betray the trust
+committed to him.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXII._
+
+THE DECISION.
+
+The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his
+convalescence.  It was wide awake now.  He sat that evening in his
+room trying to see the right way.  According to old Methodist custom
+he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some
+"impression"--that should guide him.
+
+During the great religious excitement of the early part of this
+century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and
+the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a
+ludicrous extent.  It is related that one man retired to the hills
+and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and
+that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah!
+Immersion!"  Various devices were invented for obtaining divine
+direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs.  Lorenzo Dow used
+to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the
+road.  It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all
+ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute,
+or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not
+enlighten or guide the judgment itself.  The opening of a Bible at
+random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan
+movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to
+utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible
+sortilege."
+
+These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of
+heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as
+Kike's.  Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his
+Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or
+remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable
+names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles.  This
+disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith.  Faith like
+Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment.  He prayed again for
+direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas,
+lovest thou me more than these?"  The marked trait in Kike's piety
+was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ.  This
+question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in
+reproach.  He would hesitate no longer.  Love, and life itself,
+should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him.  Then he prayed
+once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about
+leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake.  It
+came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental
+association.  But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or
+of any other law of mental action?  Wesley's sermons and Benson's
+Life of Fletcher constituted his library.  To him it seemed certain
+that this text of scripture was "suggested."  It was a call from
+Christ to give up all for him.  And in the spirit of the sublimest
+self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"
+
+But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide in the evening
+often ebb before morning.  Kike thought himself strong enough to
+begin again to rise at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those
+"rules for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist preacher even
+yet _promises_ to keep.  Following the same rules, he proceeded to
+set apart the first hour for prayer and meditation.  The night before
+all had seemed clear; but now that morning had come and he must soon
+proceed to execute his stern resolve, he found himself full of doubt
+and irresolution.  Such vacillation was not characteristic of Kike,
+but it marked the depth of his feeling for Nettie.  Doubtless, too,
+the enervation of convalescence had to do with it.  Certainly in that
+raw and foggy dawn the forsaking of the paradise of rest and love in
+which he had lingered seemed to require more courage than he could
+muster.  After all, why should he leave?  Might he not be mistaken in
+regard to his duty?  Was he obliged to sacrifice his life?
+
+He conducted his devotions in a state of great mental distraction.
+Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed Pastor which belonged to Dr.
+Morgan lying on the window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some
+light from its stimulating pages.  He remembered that Wesley spoke
+well of Baxter; but he could not fix his mind upon the book.  He kept
+listlessly turning the leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence
+in Latin.  Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that very
+reason his attention was the more readily attracted by the sentence
+in an unknown tongue.  He read it, "_Nec propter vitam, vivendi
+perdere causas_."  He found written in the margin a free rendering:
+"Let us not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth
+living for."  He knelt down now and gave thanks for what seemed to
+him Divine direction.  He had been delivered from a temptation to
+sacrifice the great end of living for the sake of saving his life.
+
+It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife
+and the excellent Jane.  It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to
+Nettie Morgan.  Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling.  She
+did not venture to come to the door.  Kike found her alone in the
+little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned.
+Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand
+coldly for a moment.  But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched
+him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of
+tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie!  God bless you, and keep you
+forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty
+adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back.  He was
+more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this.
+He could never again trust his treacherous heart.
+
+Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks"
+had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with
+people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the
+Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century.  The cabin in
+which his mother lived was very little different from what it was
+when he left it.  The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude;
+the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one
+side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of
+a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon
+the side of his head to leer at you saucily.  The mother received him
+joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he
+had been.  Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the
+fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat
+suspiciously close together.  Brady had long thought of changing his
+state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike,
+whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.
+"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the
+widdy.  But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of
+loife?  And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am.  Did iver
+anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of
+courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of
+a larnt grammairian loike mesilf?  The misfortin' is that Koike don't
+have no wakenisses himsilf.  I wish he had jist one, and thin I
+wouldn't keer.  If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a
+little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure.
+But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould
+coward that I am."
+
+Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the
+thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very
+shapely, suit of jeans.  It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.
+She did not think him fit to go.  But she did not dare to say so.
+How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering
+heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty?  God had laid
+hands on him--the child was hers no longer.  But still she looked her
+heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her
+standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.
+
+And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to
+give him advice--partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any
+"wakeniss" or not.
+
+"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with
+me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a
+praycher.  Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"
+
+"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.
+
+"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're
+born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse
+ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do
+now."
+
+Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity.  The
+remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present
+weakness were fresh in his mind.  He would not again give place to
+the devil.
+
+"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or
+happiness.  We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves
+to the work of Christ.  And see! your head is already blossoming for
+eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."
+
+Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away,
+and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.
+
+"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately.  "Not a
+wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house,
+took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the
+worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on
+general principles when the master was out of humor.
+
+Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie
+Creek circuit?
+
+Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of
+America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men?  The
+highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but
+from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose.  I doubt not
+the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed
+Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus.  Do you think that he
+envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth?
+Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or
+one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could
+imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?
+For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike
+defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and
+dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot,
+with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"
+
+I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to
+electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian
+duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women
+would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and
+say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a
+young man."  "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet
+he talks about it!  I never heerd the beat in all my born days."
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXIII._
+
+RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.
+
+Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the woman.  If Kike is
+happy in his self-abnegation, Patty is not happy in hers.  Pride has
+no balm in it.  However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor
+food.  And Patty has little but pride to feed upon.  The invalid
+mother has now been dead a year, and Patty is almost without
+companionship, though not without suitors.  Land brings
+lovers--land-lovers, if nothing more--and the estate of Patty's
+father is not her only attraction.  She is a young woman of a certain
+nobility of figure and carriage; she is not large, but her bearing
+makes her seem quite commanding.  Even her father respects her, and
+all the more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds
+opportunity.  Patty is thrifty, and in the early West no attraction
+outweighed this wifely ordering of a household.  But Patty will not
+marry any of the suitors who calculate the infirm health of her
+father and the probable division of his estate, and who mentally
+transfer to their future homes the thrift and orderliness they see in
+Captain Lumsden's.  By refusing them all she has won the name of a
+proud girl.  There are times when out of sight of everybody she
+weeps, hardly knowing why.  And since her mother's death she reads
+the prayer-book more than ever, finding in the severe confessions
+therein framed for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of
+the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.
+
+Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers
+him that she refuses to marry.  His hatred of Methodists has assumed
+the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the
+legislature partly by Methodist opposition.  All his love of power
+has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may
+be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts
+him beyond measure.  He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate
+rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her
+fondness for the prayer-book.  Even the prayer-book's earnestness has
+something Methodistic about it.  But Patty has never yet been in a
+Methodist meeting, and with this fact he comforts himself.  He has
+taken pains to buy her jewelry and "artificials" in abundance, that
+he may, by dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from
+temptations to become a Methodist.  For in that time, when fine
+dressing was not common and country neighborhoods were polarized by
+the advent of Methodism in its most aggressive form, every artificial
+flower and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the new sect;
+a well-dressed woman in a congregation was almost a defiance to the
+preacher.  It seemed to Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had
+prophylactic ornaments enough to save her from Methodism.  And to all
+of these he added covert threats that if any child of his should ever
+join these crazy Methodist loons, he would turn him out of doors and
+never see him again.  This threat was always indirect--a remark
+dropped incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown
+quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine, but Patty did
+not fail to comprehend.
+
+[Illustration: THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.]
+
+One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door that out-cast of New
+England--a tin-peddler.  Western people had never heard of Yale
+College or any other glory of Connecticut or New England.  To them it
+was but a land that bred pestilent peripatetic peddlers of tin-ware
+and wooden clocks.  Western rogues would cheat you out of your horse
+or your farm if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of Yankee
+tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said "noo" for new, and
+talked nasally, would work an hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny
+bit."  The tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in at
+Lumsden's door and "made bold" to _in_quire if he could git a night's
+lodging, which the Captain, like other settlers, granted without
+charge.  Having unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse,
+the Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading questions
+about the family and personal history of the Lumsdens, collectively
+and individually.  Having thus taken the first steps toward
+acquaintance by this display of an aggravating interest in the
+welfare of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate and
+truthful accounts--with variations--of his own recent adventures, to
+the boundless amusement of the younger Lumsdens, who laughed more
+heartily at the Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at his
+stories.  He said, among other things, that he had ben to
+Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis' called a "basket
+meetin'."  But when he had proceeded so far with his narrative, he
+prudently stopped and made bold to _in_quire what the Captain thought
+of these Methodists.  The Captain was not slow to express his
+opinion, and the man of tins, having thus reassured himself by taking
+soundings, proceeded to tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks
+to that meetin'.  And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed went
+forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer.  Didn't do no
+pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye, ye know.  Well, ye see, the
+Methodis' they wanted to _in_courage a seeker, and so they all bought
+some tins.  Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands!  (And here
+the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and then the other at
+Patty.)  Fer they was seen a dreffle lot of folks there.  Come to
+hear a young preacher as is 'mazin' elo'kent--Parson Goodwin by name,
+and he was a _good one_ to preach, sartain.
+
+This startled Patty and the Captain.
+
+"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"
+
+"The identikle," said the peddler.
+
+"Raised only half a mile from here," said Lumsden, "and we don't
+think much of him."
+
+"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his sails to Lumsden's
+breezes.  "I calkilate I could preach e'en a'most as well as he does,
+myself, and I wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother.  But he's got a
+good v'ice fer singin'--sich a ring to't, ye see, and he's got a
+smart way thet comes the sympathies over the women folks and
+weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin' at a desp'ate rate.  Was brought
+up here, was he?  Du tell!  He's powerful pop'lar."  Then, catching
+the Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I mean."
+
+"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said the Captain, with a
+chuckle.
+
+"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler, pleased to
+have some information to give.  Seeing that the Captain and his
+daughter were interested in his communication, the peddler paused a
+moment.  A bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part
+with too quickly.
+
+"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware man.  "I heerd say as
+he was a goin' to splice with a gal that could pray like a angel
+afire.  An' I heerd her pray.  She nearly peeled the shingles off the
+skewl-haouse.  Sich another _ex_citement as she perjuced, I never did
+see.  An' I went up to her after meetin' and axed a interest in her
+prayers.  Don't do no harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own
+side!  An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for preachers
+ginerally marry purty faces.  Preachers is a good deal like other
+folks, ef they do purtend to be better, hey?  Well, naow, that Ann
+Elizer Meacham _is_ purty, sartain.  An' everybody says he's goin' to
+marry her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie 'em up next
+Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe.  Then they'll divide the work in
+the middle and go halves.  She'll pray and he'll preach."  At this
+the peddler broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated
+both the Captain and Patty by his news.  He now proposed to sell some
+tinware, thinking he had worked his audience up to the right state of
+mind.
+
+Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at hearing this bit of
+intelligence from Jenkinsville.  What was Morton Goodwin to her?  She
+went around the house as usual this evening, trying to hide all
+appearance of feeling.  She even persuaded her father to buy
+half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets--she smiled at the
+peddler for calling them _pails_.  She was not willing to gratify the
+Captain by showing him how much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee."
+But when she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had lost
+its power to soothe.  She was mortified, vexed, humiliated on every
+hand.  She felt hard and bitter, above all, toward the sect that had
+first made a division between Morton and herself, and cordially
+blamed the Methodists for all her misfortunes.
+
+It happened that upon the very next Sunday Russell Bigelow was to
+preach.  Far and wide over the West had traveled the fame of this
+great preacher, who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in
+his impassioned manner.  "An orator is to be judged not by his
+printed discourses, but by the memory of the effect he has produced,"
+says a French writer; and if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the
+fame that fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely an
+orator of the highest order.  He is known as the "indescribable."
+The news that he was to preach had set the Hissawachee Settlement
+afire with eager curiosity to hear him.  Even Patty declared her
+intention of going, much to the Captain's regret.  The meeting was
+not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods, and she could go for
+this time without entering the house of her father's foe.  She had no
+other motive than a vague hope of hearing something that would divert
+her; life had grown so heavy that she craved excitement of any kind.
+She would take a back seat and hear the famous Methodist for herself.
+But Patty put on all of her gold and costly apparel.  She was
+determined that nobody should suspect her of any intention of
+"joining the church."  Her mood was one of curiosity on the surface,
+and of proud hatred and quiet defiance below.
+
+No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a meeting held in the
+forest; no forest is so satisfying as a forest of beech; the
+wide-spreading boughs--drooping when they start from the trunk, but
+well sustained at the last--stretch out regularly and with a steady
+horizontalness, the last year's leaves form a carpet like a cushion,
+while the dense foliage shuts out the sun.  To this meeting in the
+beech, woods Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile
+away.*  As she passed through a little cove, she saw a man lying flat
+on his face in prayer.  It was the preacher.  Awe-stricken, Patty
+hurried on to the meeting.  She had fully intended to take a seat in
+the rear of the congregation, but being a little confused and
+absent-minded she did not observe at first where the stand had been
+erected, and that she was entering the congregation at the side
+nearest to the pulpit.  When she discovered her mistake it was too
+late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full of standing
+people; there was nothing for her but to take the only vacant seat in
+sight.  This put her in the very midst of the members, and in this
+position she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other
+settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly dressed, for that
+time, sitting in the very midst of the devout sisters--for the men
+and women sat apart.  All around Patty there was not a single
+"artificial," or piece of jewelry.  Indeed, most of the women wore
+calico sunbonnets.  The Hissawachee people who knew her were
+astounded to see Patty at meeting at all.  They remembered her
+treatment of Morton, and they looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and
+Magog incarnated in one.  This sense of the conspicuousness of her
+position was painful to Patty, but she presently forgot herself in
+listening to the singing.  There never was such a chorus as a
+backwoods Methodist congregation, and here among the trees they sang
+hymn after hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with triumphant
+joy, now with solemn earnestness.  They sang "Children of the
+Heavenly King," and "Come let us anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet,
+blow," and "Arise my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of
+grace!"  While they were singing this last, the celebrated preacher
+entered the pulpit, and there ran through the audience a movement of
+wonder, almost of disappointment.  His clothes were of that sort of
+cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did not fit him.  He
+was rather short, and inexpressibly awkward.  His hair hung unkempt
+over the best portion of his face--the broad projecting forehead.
+His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones and chin large.
+His mouth was wide and with a sorrowful depression at the corners,
+his nostrils thin, his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile.  He
+took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,--"Seeking a bride
+for his master," and, according to the custom of the time, he first
+expounded the incident, and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by
+applying it to the soul's marriage to Christ.  Notwithstanding the
+ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness of his postures, there
+was a gentlemanliness about his address that indicated a man not
+unaccustomed to good society.  His words were well-chosen; his
+pronunciation always correct; his speech grammatical.  In all of
+these regards Patty was disappointed.
+
+
+* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the
+accompanying incident.
+
+
+But the sermon.  Who shall describe "the indescribable"?  As the
+servant, he proceeded to set forth the character of the Master.  What
+struck Patty was not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of
+his argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that every divine
+trait which he described had reflected itself in the life of the
+preacher himself.  For none but the manliest of men can ever speak
+worthily of Jesus Christ.  As Bigelow proceeded he won her famished
+heart to Christ.  For such a Master she could live or die; in such a
+life there was what Patty needed most--a purpose; in such a life
+there was a friend; in such a life she would escape that sense of the
+ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the unworthiness of her own
+pride.  All that he said of Christ's love and condescension filled
+her with a sense of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly.
+There were a hundred others as much affected, but the eyes of all her
+neighbors were upon her.  If Patty should be converted, what a
+victory!
+
+And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy of a soul wedded
+forever to Christ--living nobly after the pattern of His life--Patty
+resolved that she would devote herself to this life and this Saviour,
+and rejoiced in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the
+sermon.  Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage and to
+pride--to pride in its best sense.  Who would be ashamed of such a
+Bridegroom?  And as he depicted the trials that some must pass
+through in accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally
+made the sacrifice.  As he described the glory of renouncing the
+world, she thought of her jewelry and the spirit of defiance in which
+she had put it on.  There, in the midst of that congregation, she
+took out her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet.  We
+may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an over-strained
+literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn renunciation of the
+world--the whole-hearted espousal of herself, for all eternity, to
+Him who stands for all that is noblest in life.  Of course this
+action was visible to most of the congregation--most of all to the
+preacher himself.  To the Methodists it was the greatest of triumphs,
+this public conversion of Captain Lumsden's daughter, and they showed
+their joy in many pious ejaculations.  Patty did not seek
+concealment.  She scorned to creep into the kingdom of heaven.  It
+seemed to her that she owed this publicity.  For a moment all eyes
+were turned away from the orator.  He paused in his discourse until
+Patty had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism.  Then,
+turning with tearful eyes to the audience, the preacher, with
+simple-hearted sincerity and inconceivable effect, burst out with,
+"Hallelujah!  I have found a bride for my Master!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXIV_
+
+DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.
+
+Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a spectator--having decided
+to risk a new attack of the jerks that he might stand guard over
+Patty.  But Patty was so far forward that he could not see her,
+except now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep over the
+shoulders of some taller man standing in front.  It was only when
+Bigelow uttered these exulting words that he gathered from the
+whispers about him that Patty was the center of excitement.  He
+instantly began to swear and to push through the crowd, declaring
+that he would take Patty home and teach her to behave herself.  The
+excitement which he produced presently attracted the attention of the
+preacher and of the audience.  But Patty was too much occupied with
+the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give any attention to
+it.
+
+"She is my daughter, and she's _got_ to learn to obey," said Lumsden
+in his quick, rasping voice, pushing energetically toward the heart
+of the dense assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by
+force.  Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at the
+moment when her father had forced his way through the fringe of
+standing people that bordered the densely packed congregation, and
+was essaying, in his headlong anger, to reach her and drag her forth.
+
+The Methodists of that day generally took pains to put themselves
+under the protection of the law in order to avoid disturbance from
+the chronic rowdyism of a portion of the people.  There was a
+magistrate and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in penetrating
+the cordon of standing men, had come directly upon the country
+justice, who, though not a Methodist, had been greatly moved by
+Bigelow's oratory, and who, furthermore, was prone, as country
+justices sometimes are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office.  At
+any rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this great
+orator and this assemblage of people had in some sense put themselves
+under the protection of the Majesty of the Law as represented in his
+own important self.  And for Captain Lumsden to come swearing and
+fuming right against his sacred person was not only a breach of the
+law, it was--what the justice considered much worse--a contempt of
+court.  Hence ensued a dialogue:
+
+_The Court_--Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate.  In interrupting the
+worship of Almighty God by this peaceful assemblage you are violating
+the law.  I do not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if
+you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged to vindicate the
+majesty of the law by ordering the constable to arrest you for a
+breach of the peace, as against this assembly.  (J. P. here draws
+himself up to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the
+dignity of the law.)
+
+_Outraged Father_--Squire, I'll have you know that Patty Lumsden's my
+daughter, and I have a right to control her; and you'd better mind
+your own business.
+
+_Justice of the Peace_ (lowering his voice to a solemn and very
+judicial bass)--Is she under eighteen years of age?
+
+_By-stander_ (who doesn't like Lumsden)--She's twenty.
+
+_Justice_--If your daughter is past eighteen, she is of age.  If you
+lay hands on her I'll have to take you up for a salt and battery.  If
+you carry her off I'll take her back on a writ of replevin.  Now,
+Captain, I could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance;
+and if you don't leave the meeting at once I'll do it.
+
+Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever, but a stalwart
+class-leader from another settlement, provoked by the interruption of
+the eloquent sermon and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid
+off his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting Lumsden,
+neck and heels, on his own account.  At the same moment an old sister
+near at hand began to pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him!
+Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like Saul of Tarsus.  O
+Lord, smite the stiff-necked persecutor by almighty power!"
+
+This last was too much for the Captain.  He might have risked arrest,
+he might have faced the herculean class-leader, but he had already
+felt the jerks and was quite superstitious about them.  This prayer
+agitated him.  He was not ambitious to emulate Paul, and he began to
+believe that if he stood still a minute longer he would surely be
+smitten to the ground at the request of the sister with a relish for
+dramatic conversions.  Casting one terrified glance at the old
+sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven, Lumsden broke
+through the surrounding crowd and started toward home at a most
+undignified pace.
+
+Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted during the remainder
+of the sermon by forebodings.  But she had a will as inflexible as
+her father's, and now that her will was backed by convictions of duty
+it was more firmly set than ever.  Bigelow announced that he would
+"open the door of the church," and the excited congregation made the
+forest ring with that hymn of Watts' which has always been the
+recruiting song of Methodism.  The application to Patty's case
+produced great emotion when the singing reached the stanzas:
+
+  "Must I be carried to the skies
+    On flowery beds of ease,
+  While others fought to win the prize
+    And sailed through bloody seas?
+
+  "Are there no foes for me to face?
+    Must I not stem the flood?
+  Is this vile world a friend to grace
+    To help me on to God?"
+
+
+At this point Patty slowly rose from the place where she had been
+sitting weeping, and marched resolutely through the excited crowd
+until she reached the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in
+token of her desire to become a church-member.  While she came
+forward, the congregation sang with great fervor, and not a little
+sensation:
+
+  "Since I must fight if I would reign,
+    Increase my courage, Lord;
+  I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
+    Supported by thy word."
+
+
+After many had followed Patty's example the meeting closed.  Every
+Methodist shook hands with the new converts, particularly with Patty,
+uttering words of sympathy and encouragement.  Some offered to go
+home with her to keep her in countenance in the inevitable conflict
+with her father, but, with a true delicacy and filial dutifulness,
+Patty insisted on going alone.  There are battles which are fought
+better without allies.
+
+That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and suspense.  As she came
+up to the house she saw her father sitting on the door-step,
+riding-whip in hand.  Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying
+his raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted--a habit having its
+root in a domineering disposition--she was not without apprehension
+that he would use personal violence.  But he was quiet now, from
+extreme anger.
+
+"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on the spot to give up
+this infernal Methodism, or you can't come in here to bring your
+praying and groaning into my ears.  Are you going to give it up?"
+
+"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty.  "You need me.  I can
+stand it, but what will you do when your rheumatism comes on next
+winter?  Do let me stay and take care of you.  I won't bother you
+about my religion."
+
+"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in my house,"
+screamed the father, frantically.  He would have said more, but he
+choked.  "You've disgraced the family," he gasped, after a minute.
+
+Patty stood still, and said no more.
+
+"Will you give up your nonsense about being religious?"
+
+Patty shook her head.
+
+"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an oath he went into
+the house and pulled the latch-string in.  The latch-string was the
+symbol of hospitality.  To say that "the latch-string was out" was to
+open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the most significant
+and inhospitable act Lumsden could perform.  For when the
+latch-string is in, the door is locked.  The daughter was not only to
+be a daughter no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach the
+latch-string was withdrawn.
+
+Patty was full of natural affection.  She turned away to seek a home.
+Where?  She walked aimlessly down the road at first.  She had but one
+thought as she receded from the old house that had been her home from
+infancy----
+
+The latch-string was drawn in.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXV._
+
+ANN ELIZA.
+
+How shall I make you understand this book, reader of mine, who never
+knew the influences that surrounded a Methodist of the old sort.  Up
+to this point I have walked by faith; I could not see how the present
+generation could be made to comprehend the earnestness of their
+grandfathers.  But I have hoped that, none the less, they might dimly
+perceive the possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in
+the bones.
+
+But now?
+
+You have never been a young Methodist preacher of the olden time.
+You never had over you a presiding elder who held your fate in his
+hands; who, more than that, was the man appointed by the church to be
+your godly counsellor.  In the olden time especially, presiding
+elders were generally leaders of men, the best and greatest men that
+the early Methodist ministry afforded; greatest in the qualities most
+prized in ecclesiastical organization--practical shrewdness,
+executive force, and a piety of unction and lustre.  How shall I make
+you understand the weight which the words of such a man had when he
+thought it needful to counsel or admonish a young preacher?
+
+Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value as an organizer, had
+been made an "elder," and just now he thought it his duty to have a
+solemn conversation with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville
+circuit, upon matters of great delicacy.  Magruder was not a man of
+nice perceptions, and he was dimly conscious of his own unfitness for
+the task before him.  It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting.
+He had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would like to have a
+word with him, and they were walking side by side through the woods.
+Neither of them looked at the other.  The "elder" was trying in vain
+to think of a point at which to begin; the young preacher was
+wondering what the elder would say.
+
+"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother," said Magruder,
+desperately.
+
+When they had sat down there was a pause.
+
+"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother Goodwin?" he broke out
+abruptly at last.
+
+"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly, not disposed to help
+the presiding elder out of his difficulty.  Then he added: "But not
+thinking it a profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my
+thoughts to other things."
+
+"Ahem!  But have you not taken some steps toward matrimony without
+consulting with your brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you have done a great wrong
+to a defenceless girl, who is a stranger in a strange land."
+
+"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?" asked Morton, startled by the
+solemnity with which the presiding elder spoke.
+
+"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the matter to guess who the
+person is.  You have encouraged her to think that you meant to marry
+her.  If I am correctly informed, you even advised Holston, who was
+her lover, not to annoy her any more, and you assumed to defend her
+rights in the lawsuit about a piece of land.  Whether you meant to
+marry her or not, you have at least compromised her.  And in such
+circumstances there is but one course open to a Christian or a
+gentleman."  The elder spoke severely.
+
+[Illustration: ANN ELIZA.]
+
+"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth," said Morton,
+rising and speaking with vehemence.  "I have been very much struck
+with the eloquence of Sister Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or
+speaks in love-feast.  I did not mean to marry anybody.  I have
+always defended the poor and the helpless.  She told me her history
+one day, and I felt sorry for her.  I determined to befriend her."
+Here Morton paused in some embarrassment, not knowing just how to
+proceed.
+
+"Befriend a woman!  That is the most imprudent thing in the world for
+a minister to do, my dear brother.  You cannot befriend a woman
+without doing harm."
+
+"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to give it to her.
+She told me that she had refused Bob Holston five times, and that he
+kept troubling her.  I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated with
+him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the country and said that
+I told him I was engaged to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he
+didn't let her alone.  What I did tell him was, that I was Ann
+Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I thought, as a
+gentleman, he ought to take five refusals as sufficient, and not wait
+till he was knocked down by refusals."
+
+"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take up a woman's cause
+that way, you have got to marry her or ruin her and yourself, too.
+If you were not a minister you might have a female friend or two; and
+you might help a woman in distress.  But you are a sheep in the midst
+of--of--wolves.  Half the girls on this circuit would like to marry
+you, and if you were to help one of them over the fence, or hold her
+bridle-rein for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five minutes
+with her about the turnip crop, she would consider herself next thing
+to engaged.  Now, as to Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to
+gossip over the whole circuit."
+
+"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising indignation.
+
+"Why, everybody.  I hadn't more than touched the circuit at Boggs'
+Corners till I heard that you were to be married at this very
+Quarterly Meeting.  And I felt a little grieved that you should go so
+far without any consultation with me.  I stopped at Sister
+Sims's--she's Ann Eliza's aunt I believe--and told her that I
+supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require my aid pretty
+soon, and she burst into tears.  She said that if there had been
+anything between you and Ann Eliza, it must be broken off, for you
+hadn't stopped there at all on your last round.  Now tell me the
+plain truth, brother.  Did you not at one time entertain a thought of
+marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"
+
+"I have thought about it.  She is good-looking and I could not be
+with her without liking her.  Then, too, everybody said that she was
+cut out for a preacher's wife.  But I never paid her any attention
+that could be called courtship.  I stopped going there because
+somebody had bantered me about her.  I was afraid of talk.  I will
+not deny that I was a little taken with her, at first, but when I
+thought of marrying her I found that I did not love her as one ought
+to love a wife--as much as I had once loved somebody else.  And then,
+too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry have to locate
+sooner or later, and I don't want to give up the ministry.  I think
+it's hard if a man cannot help a girl in distress without being
+forced to marry her."
+
+"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter further," said
+the elder, who was more than ever convinced by Morton's admissions
+that he had acted reprehensibly.  "I have confidence in you.  You
+have done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not.  There is only
+one way of making the thing right.  It's a bad thing for a preacher
+to have a broken heart laid at his door.  Now I tell you that I don't
+know anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than Sister
+Meacham.  If the case stands as it does now I may have to object to
+the passage of your character at the next conference."
+
+This last was an awful threat.  In that time when the preachers lived
+far apart, the word of a presiding elder was almost enough to ruin a
+man.  But instead of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly
+stubborn.  If the elder and the conference could be so unjust he
+would bear the consequences, but would never submit.
+
+The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house, and the
+presiding elder accordingly preached in the grove.  All the time of
+his preaching Morton Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the
+zealous Ann Eliza were there.  But no Ann Eliza appeared.  Nothing
+but grief could thus keep her away from the meeting.  The more Morton
+meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel.  He had acted from
+the highest motives.  He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt--the
+weak-looking Sister Sims--had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness
+the appearance of courtship.  How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann
+Eliza of any design?  Old ministers know better than to trust
+implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people.
+There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and
+fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves.
+Intrigue is one of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks--a small
+but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of Mansoul under an
+alias.
+
+A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from other people.  He
+was conscious that Magruder's confidence in him was weakened, and it
+seemed to him that all the brethren and sisters looked at him
+askance.  When he came to make the concluding prayer he had a sense
+of hollowness in his devotions, and he really began to suspect that
+he might be a hypocrite.
+
+In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and in the presence of
+class-leaders, stewards, local preachers and exhorters from different
+parts of the circuit, the once popular preacher felt that he had
+somehow lost caste.  He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which
+the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for three months
+of labor; and small as was the amount, the scrupulous and now morbid
+Morton doubted whether he were fairly entitled to it.  Sometimes he
+thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience by marrying
+Ann Eliza with or without love.  But his whole proud, courageous
+nature rebelled against submitting to marry under compulsion of
+Magruder's threat.
+
+At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and he got on but
+poorly.  He looked in vain for Miss Ann Eliza Meacham.  She was not
+there to go through the audience and with winning voice persuade
+those who were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's bench
+for prayer.  She was not there to pray audibly until every heart
+should be shaken.  Morton was not the only person who missed her.  So
+famous a "working Christian" could not but be a general favorite; and
+the people were not slow to divine the cause of her absence.  Brother
+Goodwin found the faces of his brethren averted, and the grasp of
+their hands less cordial.  But this only made him sulky and stubborn.
+He had never meant to excite Sister Meacham's expectations, and he
+would not be driven to marry her.
+
+The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting saw all the roads
+crowded with people.  Everybody was on horseback, and almost every
+horse carried "double."  At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast
+began in the large school-house.  No one was admitted who did not
+hold a ticket, and even of those who had tickets some were turned
+away on account of their naughty curls, their sinful "artificials,"
+or their wicked ear-rings.  At the moment when the love-feast began
+the door was locked, and no tardy member gained admission.  Plates,
+with bread cut into half-inch cubes, were passed round, and after
+these glasses of water, from which each sipped in turn--this meagre
+provision standing ideally for a feast.  Then the speaking was opened
+by some of the older brethren, who were particularly careful as to
+dates, announcing, for instance, that it would be just thirty-seven
+years ago the twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke
+peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at the mourner's
+bench in Logan's school-house on the banks of the South Fork of the
+Roanoke River in Old Virginny."  This statement the brethren had
+heard for many years, with a proper variation in date as the time
+advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted it again with pious
+ejaculations of thanksgiving.  There was a sameness in the
+perorations of these little speeches.  Most of the old men wound up
+by asking an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their
+"last days might be their best days," and that their "path might grow
+brighter and brighter unto the perfect day."  Soon the elder sisters
+began to speak of their trials and victories, of their "ups and
+downs," their "many crooked paths," and the religion that "happifies
+the soul."  With their pathetic voices the fire spread, until the
+whole meeting was at a white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!"
+"Bless the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the fervor of
+feeling.  Of course, you, sitting out of the atmosphere of it and
+judging coldly, laugh at this indecorous fervor.  Perhaps it is just
+as well to laugh, but for my part I cannot.  I know too well how deep
+and vital were the emotions out of which came these utterances of
+simple and earnest hearts.  I find it hard to get over an early
+prejudice that piety is of more consequence than propriety.
+
+Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza.  If she were present he
+could hardly tell it.  Make the bonnets of women cover their faces
+and make them all alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting
+forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a uniform of
+homespun cotton, and there is not much individuality left.  If Ann
+Eliza Meacham were present she would, according to custom, speak
+early; and all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and
+eloquent utterances.  So when the speaking and singing had gone on
+for an hour, and the voice of Sister Meacham was not heard, Morton
+sadly concluded that she must have remained at home, heart-broken on
+account of disappointment at his neglect.  In this he was wrong.
+Just at that moment a sister rose in the further corner of the room
+and began to speak in a low and plaintive voice.  It was Ann Eliza.
+But how changed!
+
+She proceeded to say that she had passed through many fiery trials in
+her life.  Of late she had been led through deep waters of
+temptation, and the floods of affliction had gone over her soul.
+(Here some of the brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at
+Brother Goodwin.)  The devil had tempted her to stay at home.  He had
+tempted her to sit silent this morning, telling her that her voice
+would only discourage others.  But at last she had got the victory
+and received strength to bear her cross.  With this, her voice rose
+and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph to the end.  Morton was
+greatly affected, not because her affliction was universally laid at
+his door, but because he now began to feel, as he had not felt
+before, that he had indeed wrought her a great injury.  As she stood
+there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved her.  He pitied her;
+and Pity lives on the next floor below Love.
+
+As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader think too meanly of
+her.  She had resolved to "catch" Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment
+she saw him.  But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the
+rights which the highest civilization accords to woman is that of
+"bringing down" the chosen man if she can.  Ann Eliza was not
+consciously hypocritical.  Her deep religious feeling was genuine.
+She had a native genius for devotion--and a genius for devotion is as
+much a natural gift as a genius for poetry.  Notwithstanding her
+eloquence and her rare talent for devotion, her gifts in the
+direction of honesty and truthfulness were few and feeble.  A
+phrenologist would have described such a character as possessing
+"Spirituality and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small."
+You have seen such people, and the world is ever prone to rank them
+at first as saints, afterwards as hypocrites; for the world
+classifies people in gross--it has no nice distinctions.  Ann Eliza,
+like most people of the oratorical temperament, was not
+over-scrupulous in her way of producing effects.  She could sway her
+own mind as easily as she could that of others.  In the case of
+Morton, she managed to believe herself the victim of misplaced
+confidence.  She saw nothing reprehensible either in her own or her
+aunt's manœuvering.  She only knew that she had been bitterly
+disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through whom the
+disappointment had come.
+
+Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards of his time.  Such
+genuine fervor was, in his estimation, evidence of a high state of
+piety.  One "who lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist
+phrase, must be honest and pure and good.  So Morton reasoned.  He
+had wounded such an one.  He owed reparation.  In marrying Ann Eliza
+he would be acting generously, honestly and wisely, according to the
+opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority he knew.  For
+in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get the most saintly of wives, the most
+zealous of Christians, the most useful of women.  So when Mr.
+Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the service to put
+away every sin out of their hearts before they ventured to take the
+communion, Morton, with many tears, resolved to atone for all the
+harm he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, and to
+marry her--if the Lord should open the way.
+
+But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion.  His high spirit
+resented the threat of the presiding elder.  He would not be driven
+into marriage.  In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed the
+night.  But Magruder being a shrewd man, guessed the state of
+Morton's feelings, and perceived his own mistake.  As he mounted his
+horse on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted eyes, ready to bid
+an official farewell to his presiding elder, but not ready to give
+his usual cordial adieu to Brother Magruder.
+
+"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with sincere pity,
+"forgive me; I ought not to have spoken as I did.  I know you will do
+right, and I had no right to threaten you.  Be a man; that is all.
+Live above reproach and act like a Christian.  I am sorry you have
+involved yourself.  It is better not to marry, maybe, though I have
+always maintained that a married man can live in the ministry if he
+is careful and has a good wife.  Besides, Sister Meacham has some
+land."
+
+So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little distance.  Then he
+turned back and said:
+
+"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden to take his place on
+Peterborough circuit till Conference.  I suppose some young exhorter
+can be found to take Lumsden's place as second man on Pottawottomie
+Creek, and Peterborough is too important a place to be left vacant."
+
+"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton, coldly.
+
+"Oh!  I hope he will.  Peterborough isn't much more unhealthy than
+Pottawottomie Creek.  A little more intermittent fever, maybe.  But
+it is the best I can do.  The work is everything.  The men are the
+Lord's.  Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose him,
+though.  He'll stop and see you as he comes through, I suppose.  I
+think I'd better give you the plan of his circuit, which I got the
+other day."  After adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the
+two preachers parted again.
+
+Morton mounted Dolly.  The day was far advanced, and he had an
+appointment to preach that very evening at the Salt Fork
+school-house.  He had never yet failed to suffer from a disturbance
+of some sort when he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and
+having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was sure of a
+perilous encounter.  But now the prospect of fighting with the wild
+beasts of Salt Fork was almost enchanting.  It would divert him from
+graver apprehensions.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXVI._
+
+ENGAGEMENT.
+
+You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of mind as he rides
+toward Salt Fork, weighing considerations of right and wrong, of duty
+and disinclination, in the balance.  He is not an epic hero, for epic
+heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by intuition just what
+is right, or they are like Milton's Satan, unencumbered with a sense
+of duty.  But Morton was neither infallible nor a devil.  A man of
+sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a woman's heart
+without compunction.
+
+When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met by Burchard, now sheriff
+of the county, and warned that he would be attacked.  Burchard begged
+him to turn back.  Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice and
+time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been under such
+obligations to him, and had not been touched by this new evidence of
+his friendship.  But Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his
+life.
+
+"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard," he said, "and I
+will do it or die."
+
+Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could not get rid of his
+love affair.  He was touched to find lying on the desk in the
+school-house a little unsigned billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting,
+uttering a warning similar to that just given by Burchard.
+
+It was with some tremor that he looked round, in the dim light of two
+candles, upon the turbulent faces between him and the door.  His
+prayer and singing were a little faint.  But when once he began to
+preach, his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice rose
+above all the shuffling sounds of disorder.  The interruptions,
+however, soon became so distinct that he dared not any longer ignore
+them.  Then he paused in his discourse and looked at the rioters
+steadily.
+
+"You think you will scare me.  It is my business to rebuke sin.  I
+tell you that you are a set of ungodly ruffians and law breakers.  I
+tell your neighbors here that they are miserable cowards.  They let
+lawless men trample on them.  I say, shame on them!  They ought to
+organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."
+
+Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a horse-pistol.  Morton
+turned pale; but something in his warm, Irish blood impelled him to
+proceed.  "I called you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily.  "Now
+I tell you that you are cut-throats.  If you kill me here to-night, I
+will show your neighbors that it is better to die like a man than to
+live like a coward.  The law will yet be put in force whether you
+kill me or not.  There are some of you that would belong to Micajah
+Harp's gang of robbers if you dared.  But you are afraid; and so you
+only give information and help to those who are no worse, only a
+little braver than you are."
+
+[Illustration: FACING A MOB.]
+
+Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him too far.  He now saw
+that his denunciation had degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt
+had provoked his enemies beyond measure.  He had been foolhardy; for
+what good could it do for him to throw away his life in a row?  There
+was murder in the eyes of the ruffians.  Half-a-dozen pistols were
+cocked in quick succession and he caught the glitter of knives.  A
+hasty consultation was taking place in the back part of the room, and
+the few Methodists near him huddled together like sheep.  If he
+intended to save his life there was no time to spare.  The address
+and presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood did not
+fail him now.  It would not do to seem to quail.  Without lowering
+his fiercely indignant tone, he raised his right hand and demanded
+that honest citizens should rally to his support and put down the
+riot.  His descending hand knocked one of the two candles from the
+pulpit in the most accidental way in the world.  Starting back
+suddenly, he managed to upset, and extinguish the other just at the
+instant when the infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon
+him.  The room was thus made totally dark.  Morton plunged into the
+on-coming crowd.  Twice he was seized and interrogated, but he
+changed his voice and avoided detection.  When at last the crowd gave
+up the search and began to leave the house, he drifted with them into
+the outer darkness and rain.  Once upon Dolly he was safe from any
+pursuit.
+
+When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond danger, Morton was in
+better spirits than at any time since the elder's solemn talk on the
+preceding Saturday.  He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and
+of a sense of triumph.  So bold a speech, and so masterly an escape
+as he had made could not but demoralize men like the Salt Forkers.
+He laughed a little at himself for talking about dying and then
+running away, but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity
+to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression of these
+lawless gangs.  He would himself head a party against them if
+necessary.
+
+This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression as his mind
+reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's writing.  How thoughtful in her
+to send it!  How delicate she was in not signing it!  How forgiving
+must her temper be!  What a stupid wretch he was to attract her
+affection, and now what a perverse soul he was to break her devoted
+heart!
+
+This was the light in which Morton saw the situation.  A more
+suspicious man might have reasoned that Ann Eliza probably knew no
+more of Goodwin's peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the
+neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous thrusting of
+herself on his attention.  A suspicious person would have reasoned
+that her delicacy in not signing the note was only a pretense, since
+Morton had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in the
+affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her.  But Morton was
+not suspicious.  How could he be suspicious of one upon whom the Lord
+had so manifestly poured out his Spirit?  Besides, the suspicious
+view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann Eliza did love
+Morton almost to distraction, and had entertained the liveliest
+apprehensions of hie peril at Salt Fork.
+
+But with however much gratitude he might regard Ann Eliza's action,
+Morton Goodwin could not quite bring himself to decide on marriage.
+He could not help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had
+discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house, nor could he
+help contrasting that strong love with the feebleness of the best
+affection he could muster for the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann
+Eliza Meacham.
+
+But as he proceeded round the circuit it became more and more evident
+to Morton that he had suffered in reputation by his cool treatment of
+Miss Meacham.  Elderly people love romance, and they could not
+forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way they wished.
+They felt that nothing could be so appropriate as the marriage of a
+popular preacher with so zealous a woman.  It was a shock to their
+sense of poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the only
+fitting denouement.  So that between people who were disappointed at
+the come-out, and young men who were jealous of the general
+popularity of the youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had
+visibly declined.  Nevertheless there was quite a party of young
+women who approved of his course.  He had found the minx out at last!
+
+One of the results of the Methodist circuit system, with its great
+quarterly meetings, was the bringing of people scattered over a wide
+region into a sort of organic unity and a community of feeling.  It
+widened the horizon.  It was a curious and, doubtless, also a
+beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of half-civilized
+territory called Jenkinsville circuit there was now a common topic
+for gossip and discussion.  When Morton reached the very northernmost
+of his forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped from the
+excitement.
+
+"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat at breakfast,
+"whatever folks may say, I am sure you had a perfect right to give up
+Sister Meacham.  A man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her
+out.  _I_ don't think it would take a smart man like you long to find
+out that Sister Meacham isn't all she pretends to be.  I have heard
+some things about her standing in Pennsylvania.  I guess you found
+them out."
+
+"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said Morton, as soon as he
+could recover from the shock, and interrupt the stream of Sister
+Sharp's talk.
+
+"Everybody thought you did."
+
+"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding out anything, I can
+tell you that Sister Meacham is, I believe, one of the best and most
+useful Christians in the world."
+
+"That's what everybody thought," replied the other, maliciously,
+"until you quit off going with her so suddenly.  People have thought
+different since."
+
+This shot took effect.  Morton could bear that people should slander
+him.  But, behold! a crop of slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely
+to grow out of his mistake.  In the midst of a most unheroic and, as
+it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and perplexity, he came at
+last to Mount Zion meeting-house.  It was here that Ann Eliza
+belonged, and here he must decide whether he would still leave her to
+suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of his own good name,
+or make a marriage which, to those wiser than he, seemed in every way
+advisable.  Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day.  When once the
+benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved to free himself from
+remorse and obloquy by the only honorable course.  He would ride over
+to Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself to Ann Eliza.
+
+Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister Meacham's true
+character that made him hesitate?  Or was it that a pure-hearted man
+always shrinks from marriage without love?  He reined his horse at
+the road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed the
+hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion class, instead of
+receiving Sister Sims's welcome.  He intended by this means to
+postpone his decision till afternoon.
+
+Out of the frying-pan into the fire!  The leader took Brother Goodwin
+aside and informed him that Sister Ann Eliza was very ill.  She might
+never recover.  It was understood that she was slowly dying of a
+broken heart.
+
+Morton could bear no more.  To have made so faithful a person, who
+had even interfered to save his life, suffer in her spirit was bad
+enough; to have brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her
+outright was ingratitude and murder.  He wondered at his own
+stupidity and wickedness.  He rode in haste to Sister Sims's.  Ann
+Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously ill, and was ill more of a
+malarious fever than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and
+disappointment had much to do with it.  Morton, convinced that he was
+the author of her woes, felt more tenderness to her in her emaciation
+than he had ever felt toward her in her beauty.  He could not profess
+a great deal of love, so he contented himself with expressing his
+gratitude for the Salt Fork warning.  Explanations about the past
+were awkward, but fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk
+much on exciting subjects.  Besides, she did not seem to be very
+exacting.  Morton's offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness
+that annoyed him.  When he rode away to his next appointment, he did
+not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected
+to.  He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty
+would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances,
+and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted.  And yet, one must not
+expect all qualities in one person.  What could be finer than Ann
+Eliza's lustrous piety?  She was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second
+Mrs. Fletcher, maybe.  And how much she must love him to pine away
+thus!  And how forgiving she was!
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXVII._
+
+THE CAMP MEETING.
+
+The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's life did not allow
+Morton much opportunity for the society of the convalescent Ann
+Eliza.  Fortunately.  For when he was with her out of meeting he
+found her rather dull.  To all expression of religious sentiment and
+emotion she responded sincerely and with unction; to Morton's highest
+aspirations for a life of real self-sacrifice she only answered with
+a look of perplexity.  She could not understand him.  He was "so
+queer," she said.
+
+But people whose lives are joined ought to make the best of each
+other.  Ann Eliza loved Morton, and because she loved him she could
+endure what seemed to her an unaccountable eccentricity.  If Goodwin
+found himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the highest
+qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting that all women were
+probably deficient in these regards.  For men generalize about women,
+not from many but from one.  And men, being egotists, suffer a
+woman's love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins.  And then
+Morton took refuge in other people's opinions.  Everybody thought
+that Sister Meacham was just the wife for him.  It is pleasant to
+have the opinion of all the world on your side where your own heart
+is doubtful.
+
+Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted through the mind of
+Morton Goodwin and gave him a moment of fright.  But Patty was one of
+the things of this world which he had solemnly given up.  Of her
+conversion he had not heard.  Mails were few and postage cost a
+silver quarter on every letter; with poor people, correspondence was
+an extravagance not to be thought of except on the occasion of a
+death or wedding.  At farthest, one letter a year was all that might
+be afforded.  As it was, Morton was neither very happy nor very
+miserable as he rode up to the New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant
+midsummer afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.
+
+Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable entertainment.  So earnest and
+gifted a Christian as she was always welcome; and now that she held a
+mortgage on the popular preacher every tent on the ground would have
+been honored by her presence.  Morton found a lodging in the
+preacher's tent, where one bed, larger, transversely, than that of
+the giant Og, was provided for the collective repose of the
+preachers, of whom there were half-a-dozen present.  It was always a
+solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping of sheets,
+blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who made this bed gave a
+cross-wise continuity to the bed-clothing.
+
+This meeting was held just six weeks after the quarterly meeting
+spoken of in the last chapter.  Goodwin's circuit lay on the west
+bank of the Big Wiaki River, and this camp-meeting was held on the
+east bank of that stream.
+
+It was customary for all the neighboring preachers to leave their
+circuits and lend their help in a camp-meeting.  All detached parties
+were drawn in to make ready for a pitched battle.  Morton had, in his
+ringing voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick wit,
+rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and, as the nearest
+preacher, he was, of course, expected to help.
+
+The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to Jonesville circuit
+had gone after the zealous itinerant like "an arrow after a wild
+goose," and he had only received it in season to close his affairs on
+Pottawottomie Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on his way to
+his new work.  His emaciated face smote Morton's heart with terror.
+The old comrade thought that the death which Kike all but longed for
+could not be very far away.  And even now the zealous and austere
+young man was so eager to reach his circuit of Peterborough that he
+would only consent to tarry long enough to preach on the first
+evening.  His voice was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in
+the uproar of a mob that had come determined to make an end of the
+meeting.
+
+So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from Jenkinsville and
+Salt Fork that the brethren were demoralized.  After the close of the
+service they gathered in groups debating whether or not they should
+give up the meeting.  But two invincible men stood in the pulpit
+looking out over the scene.  Without a thought of surrendering,
+Magruder and Morton Goodwin were consulting in regard to police
+arrangements.
+
+"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have the sheriff here in
+the morning.  I am afraid he hasn't got back-bone enough to handle
+these fellows.  Do you know him?"
+
+"Burchard?  Yes; I've known him two or three years."
+
+Morton could not help liking the man who had so generously forgiven
+his gambling debt, but he had reason to believe that a sheriff who
+went to Brewer's Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his
+political alliances.
+
+"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to spare you from
+preaching and exhorting, but you must take charge of the police and
+keep order."
+
+"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"If I am in command there'll be a fight.  I don't believe in letting
+rowdies run over you.  If you put me in authority, and give me the
+law to back me, somebody'll be hurt before morning.  The rowdies hate
+me and I am not fond of them.  I've wanted such a chance at these
+Jenkinsville and Salt Fork fellows ever since I've been on the
+circuit."
+
+"I wish you _would_ clean them out," said the sturdy old elder, the
+martial fire shining from under his shaggy brows.
+
+Morton soon had the brethren organized into a police.  Every man was
+to carry a heavy club; some were armed with pistols to be used in an
+emergency.  Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot.
+Goodwin said that his father had fought King George, and he would not
+be ruled by a mob.  By such fannings of the embers of revolutionary
+patriotism he managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.
+
+At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and sent out scouts.
+Platforms of poles, six feet high and covered with earth, stood on
+each side of the stand or pulpit.  On these were bright fires which
+threw their light over the whole space within the circle of tents.
+Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons covered with cotton
+cloth, in which slept people from a distance who had no other
+shelter.  In this outer darkness Morton, as military dictator, had
+ordered other platforms erected, and on these fires were now kindling.
+
+The returning scouts reported at midnight that the ruffians, seeing
+the completeness of the preparations, had left the camp-ground.
+Goodwin was the only man who was indisposed to trust this treacherous
+truce.  He immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away than
+before on every road leading to the ground, with instructions to let
+him know instantly, if any body of men should be seen approaching.
+
+From Morton's previous knowledge of the people, he was convinced that
+in the mob were some men more than suspected of belonging to Micajah
+Harp's gang of thieves.  Others were allies of the gang--of that
+class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and a wholesome
+fear of the law, but whose protection and assistance is the right
+foot upon which every form of brigandage stands.  Besides these there
+were the reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from a love
+of mischief for its own sake; men who were not yet thieves, but from
+whose ranks the bands of thieves were recruited.  With these last
+Morton's history gave him a certain sympathy.  As the classes
+represented by the mob held the balance of power in the politics of
+the county, Morton knew that he had not much to hope from a trimmer
+such as Burchard.
+
+About four o'clock in the morning one of the mounted sentinels who
+had been posted far down the road came riding in at full speed, with
+intelligence that the rowdies were coming in force from the direction
+of Jenkinsville.  Goodwin had anticipated this, and he immediately
+awakened his whole reserve, concentrating the scattered squads and
+setting them in ambush on either side of the wagon track that led to
+the camp-ground.  With a dozen mounted men well armed with clubs, he
+took his own stand at a narrow place where the foliage on either side
+was thickest, prepared to dispute the passage to the camp.  The men
+in ambush had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as soon as the
+fight should begin in front.  It was a simple piece of strategy
+learned of the Indians.
+
+The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders, coming round a
+curve, caught sight of Morton and his right hand man.  Then there was
+a surprised reining up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge
+on the other.  At the first blow Goodwin felled his man, and the
+riderless horse ran backward through the ranks.  The mob was taken by
+surprise, and before the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to
+his men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both flanks.  The
+rowdies fought hard, but from the beginning the victory of the guard
+was assured by the advantage of ambush and surprise.  The only
+question to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had ordered
+the arrest of every man that the guard could bring in.  But so sturdy
+was the fight that only three were taken.  One of the guard received
+a bad flesh wound from a pistol shot.  Goodwin did not give up
+pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash into the river
+opposite Jenkinsville.  He then rode back, and as it was getting
+light threw himself upon one side of the great bunk in the preachers'
+tent, and slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the pulpit
+for the eight o'clock preaching.
+
+When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that day he was evidently
+frightened at the earnestness of Morton's defence.  Burchard was one
+of those politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a
+compromise with a typhoon.  He was in a strait between his fear of
+the animosity of the mob and his anxiety to please the Methodists.
+Goodwin, taking advantage of this latter feeling, got himself
+appointed a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he
+secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those whom he knew to
+be leaders.  Then he summoned his guard as a posse, and, having thus
+put law on his side, he announced that if the ruffians came again the
+guard must follow him until they were entirely subdued.
+
+Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly that such extreme
+measures would cost his life.  Some of these men belonged to Harp's
+band, and he would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of the
+gang.  "Don't throw away your life," entreated Burchard.
+
+"That's what life is for," said Morton.  "If a man's life is too good
+to throw away in fighting the devil, it isn't worth having."  Goodwin
+said this in a way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice.
+But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could not help thinking that
+if Patty were in place of Ann Eliza, Morton might think life good for
+something else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.
+
+As there was every sign of an approaching riot during the evening
+service, and as no man could manage the tempest so well as Brother
+Goodwin, he was appointed to preach.  A young theologian of the
+present day would have drifted helpless on the waves of such a mob.
+When one has a congregation that listens because it ought to listen,
+one can afford to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen
+when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in the world
+for an orator.  It will teach him methods of homiletic arrangement
+which learned writers on Sacred Rhetoric have never dreamed of.
+
+The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's tall figure
+appeared in the stand.  Frontier-men are very susceptible to physical
+effects, and there was a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well
+calculated to impress them.  Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power of
+his mind and body was at its best in the presence of a storm.  He
+knew better than to take a text.  He must surprise the mob into
+curiosity.
+
+"There is a man standing back in the crowd there," he began, pointing
+his finger in a certain direction where there was much disorder, and
+pausing until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny story I
+once heard."  At this point the turbulent sons of Belial, who loved
+nothing so much as a funny story, concluded to postpone their riot
+until they should have their laugh.  Laugh they did, first at one
+funny story, and then at another--stories with no moral in
+particular, except the moral there is in a laugh.  Brother Mellen,
+who sat behind Morton, and who had never more than half forgiven him
+for not coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a meeting,
+was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the pulpit, but Magruder,
+the presiding elder, was delighted.  He laughed at each story, and
+laughed loud enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the senior's
+approval of his drollery.  But somehow--the crowd did not know
+how,--at some time in his discourse--the Salt Fork rowdies did not
+observe when,--Morton managed to cease his drollery without
+detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of
+laughter.  The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping their curiosity
+perpetually excited, Goodwin did not give them time to rally at all.
+Whenever an interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the
+ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so gain the
+sympathy of the rough crowd who were habituated to laugh on the side
+of the winner in all rude tournaments of body or mind.  Knowing
+perfectly well that he would have to fight before the night was over,
+Morton's mind was stimulated to its utmost.  If only he could get the
+religious interest agoing, he might save some of these men instead of
+punishing them.  His soul yearned over the people.  His oratory at
+last swept out triumphant over everything; there was weeping and
+sobbing; some fell in uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in
+terror.  Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton described
+how, step by step, a young man was led from bad to worse, and then
+recited his own experience.  At last there was the utmost excitement.
+As soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the point of
+confusion, the rioters broke the spell of Morton's speech and began
+their disturbance.  Goodwin immediately invited the penitents into
+the enclosed pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space was
+filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and groans made the woods
+resound.  But at the same moment the rioters increased their noisy
+demonstrations, and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell
+them, descended from the pulpit and took command of his camp-meeting
+police.
+
+Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway enough to have
+necessitated the severest measures if it had not been for Mr. Mellen.
+As soon as he detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the
+effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it.  He did not ask
+permission of the presiding elder, as he was in duty bound to do, but
+as soon as there was a pause in the singing he began to exhort.  His
+style was violently aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob.
+He began with the true old Homeric epithets of early Methodism,
+exploding them like bomb-shells.  "You are hair-hung and
+breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.
+
+"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to the infinite
+amusement of the rest.
+
+[Illustration: "HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN."]
+
+For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind of religious aqua
+fortis upon the turbulent crowd, which grew more and more turbulent
+under his inflammatory treatment.  Finding himself likely to be
+defeated, he turned toward Goodwin and demanded that the camp-meeting
+police should enforce order.  But Morton was contemplating a
+master-stroke that should annihilate the disorder in one battle, and
+he was not to be hurried into too precipitate an attack.
+
+Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as small doses of
+nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation, he thought it necessary
+to administer stronger ones.  "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and
+when you get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to roast
+your souls in!"
+
+"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled ruffians, and Brother
+Mellen gave up the fight, reproaching Morton hotly for not
+suppressing the mob.  "I thought you was a man," he said.
+
+"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said Goodwin, savagely.
+"Do you get a club and ride by my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am
+sure you are a man."
+
+Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all the while at
+Morton's tardiness.
+
+"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.
+
+But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt internal
+maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.
+
+Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should report to him the
+first attempt at concentration on the part of the rowdies.  He had
+not been deceived by their feints in different parts of the camp, but
+had drawn his men together.  He knew that there was some directing
+head to the mob, and that the only effectual way to beat it was to
+beat it in solid form.
+
+At last a young man came running to where Goodwin stood, saying:
+"They're tearing down a tent."
+
+"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting deliberately.
+"Catch all you can, boys.  Don't shoot if you can help it.  Keep
+close together.  We have got to ride all night."
+
+He had increased his guard by mustering in every able-bodied man,
+except such as were needed to conduct the meetings.  Most of these
+men were Methodists, but they were all frontiermen who knew that
+peace and civilization have often to be won by breaking heads.  By
+the time this guard started the camp was in extreme confusion; women
+were running in every direction, children were crying and men were
+stoutly denouncing Goodwin for his tardiness.
+
+Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two parts, he sent one
+half round the outside of the camp-ground in one direction, while he
+rode with the other to attack the mob on the other side.  The
+foot-police were sent through the circle to attack them in a third
+direction.
+
+As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw the mob off their
+guard.  They had demolished one tent and, in great exultation, had
+begun on another, when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two
+sides, dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their ironwood and
+hickory clubs.  Then the footmen charged them in front, and the mob
+were forced to scatter and mount their horses as best they could.  As
+Morton had captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback and
+attempted a rescue.  For two or three minutes the fight was a severe
+one.  The roughs made several rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the
+savage blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader from falling
+into their hands.  At last, however, after firing several shots, and
+wounding one of the guard, they retreated, Goodwin vigorously
+persuading his men to continue the charge.  When the rowdies had been
+driven a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform torch,
+the same strangely dressed man who had taken the money from his hand
+that day near Brewer's Hole.  This man, in his disguise of long beard
+and wolf-skin cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp by
+creeping through the bushes.
+
+"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen.  "I know him--he's a
+thief."
+
+No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him, and but for the
+intervening brush-wood, which broke the force of the blow, it might
+have killed him.
+
+"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton to his men; but the
+other side now made a strong rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.
+
+Then they fled, and this time, letting the less guilty rowdies
+escape, Morton pursued the well-known thieves and their allies into
+and through Jenkinsville, and on through the country, until the
+hunted fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods on foot.
+For two days more Morton harried them, arresting one of them now and
+then until he had captured eight or ten.  He chased one of these into
+Brewer's Hole itself.  The shoes had been torn from his feet by
+briers in his rough flight, and he left tracks of blood upon the
+floor.  The orderly citizens of the county were so much heartened by
+this boldness and severity on Morton's part that they combined
+against the roughs and took the work into their own hands, driving
+some of the thieves away and terrifying the rest into a sullen
+submission.  The camp-meeting went on in great triumph.
+
+Burchard had disappeared--how, nobody knew.  Weeks afterward a
+stranger passing through Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such
+a man on a keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi,
+and it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found a home in New
+Orleans, that refuge of broken adventurers.  Why he had fled no one
+could guess.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXVIII._
+
+PATTY AND HER PATIENT.
+
+We left Patty standing irresolute in the road.  The latch-string of
+her father's house was drawn in; she must find another home.  Every
+Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course; Colonel Wheeler
+would be only too glad to receive her.  But Colonel Wheeler and all
+the Methodist people were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy
+forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's foes.  She
+did not want to foreclose every door to a reconciliation.  Mrs.
+Goodwin's was not to be thought of.  There was but one place, and
+that was with Kike's mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative,
+was naturally her first resort in exile.
+
+Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she found the
+schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow, though neither he nor she
+dared think of marriage with Kike's awful displeasure in the
+back-ground.
+
+"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty had received
+permission to stay in the cabin of her aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how
+sthrange things comes to pass, Miss Lumsden.  You turned Moirton off
+yersilf fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits sint
+adrift."  Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish Moirton noo, now
+don't oi?  Revinge is swate, and this sort of revinge would be swater
+on many accounts."
+
+The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady looked out of the
+window and continued, in a sort of soliloquy: "Moirton would be
+_that_ glad.  Ha! ha!  He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better
+thrick than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out.  It'll simplify
+matters fer Moirton.  A sum's aisier to do when its simplified,
+loike.  An' now it'll be as aisy to Moirton when he hears about it,
+as twice one is two--as simple as puttin' two halves togither to make
+a unit."  Here the master rubbed his hands in glee.  He was pleased
+with the success of his illustration.  Then he muttered: "They'll
+agree in ginder, number and parson!"
+
+"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."
+
+"Make fun of ye!  Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint in yer ould
+schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've done yer dooty.  I was
+only throyin' to congratilate ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate
+the whole thing whin he hears about it."
+
+"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up with her old pride,
+"I know there will be those who will say that I joined the church to
+get Morton back, I want you to say that Morton is to be married--was
+probably married to-day--and that I knew of it some days ago."
+
+Brady's countenance fell.  "Things niver come out roight," he said,
+as he absently put on his hat.  "They talk about spicial
+providinces," he soliloquized, as he walked away, "and I thought as I
+had caught one at last.  But it does same sometoimes as if a
+bluntherin' Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better if
+he had aholt of the stairin' oar.  But, psha!  Oi've only got one or
+two pets of me own to look afther.  God has to git husbands fer ivery
+woman ixcipt the old maids.  An' some women has to have two, of which
+I hope is the Widdy Lumsden!  But Mithodism upsets iverything.
+Koike's so religious that he can't love anybody but God, and he don't
+know how to pity thim that does.  And Koike's made us both mortally
+afeard of his goodness.  I wish he'd fall dead in love himself once;
+thin he'd know how it fales!"
+
+Patty soon found that her father could not brook her presence in the
+neighborhood, and that the widow's hospitality to her was resented as
+an act of hostility to him.  She accordingly set herself to find some
+means of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the same time of
+earning her living.
+
+Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder to a quarterly
+meeting on the circuit to which Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing
+of Patty's case, he proposed to get her employment as a teacher.  He
+had heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood of the
+Hickory Ridge church, where the conference had met.  So Patty was
+settled as a teacher.  For ten hours a day she showed children how to
+"do sums," heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them
+droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic" department of
+the old English Reader, and taught them spelling from the "a-b abs"
+to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty" and its octopedal companions.  And
+she boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian ex-minister, when
+he learned that she was Kike's cousin, and a sufferer for her
+religion, insisted that her Sundays should be passed in his house.
+And being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the people, he
+soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors among the poor and the
+sick.  Something of good-breeding and refinement there was in her
+manner that made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans who
+had moved into the hollows, and her kindness was all the more
+grateful on account of her dignity.  She was "a grand lady," they
+declared, and besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in
+her way of tendin' folks what's sick."  They loved to tell how "she
+nussed Bill Turner's wife through the awfulest spell of the yaller
+janders you ever seed; an' toted _Miss_ Cole's baby roun' all night
+the night her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm with his
+own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness.  She's better'n forty doctors,
+root or calomile."
+
+[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.]
+
+One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house door just as the
+long spelling-class had broken up, and Patty was getting ready to
+send the children home.  The doctor sat on his horse while each of
+the boys, with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other, walked
+to the door, and, after the fashion of those good old days, turned
+round and bowed awkwardly at the teacher.  Some bobbed their heads
+forward on their breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more
+respectful, bent their bodies into crescents.  Each seemed alike glad
+when he was through with this abominable bit of ceremony, the only
+bit of ceremony in the whole round of their lives.  The girls, in
+short linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes, came
+after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would have bewildered a
+dancing-master.
+
+"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher appeared, "I am
+sorry to see you so tired.  I want you to go home with me.  I have
+some work for you to do to-morrow."
+
+There were no buggies in that day.  The roads were mostly
+bridle-paths, and those that would admit wagons would have shaken a
+buggy to pieces.  Patty climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor
+rode as close as possible to the fence where she stood.  Then she
+dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two rode off together.
+
+Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange man was lying wounded
+at the house of a family named Barkins, on Higgins's Run.  The man
+refused to give his name, and the family would not tell what they
+knew about him.  As Barkins bore a bad reputation, it was quite
+likely that the stranger belonged to some band of thieves who lived
+by horse-stealing and plundering emigrants.  He seemed to be in great
+mental anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor.  The doctor
+therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at Barkins's, and do what
+she could for the patient.  "It is our business to do the man good,"
+said Doctor Morgan, "not to have him arrested.  Gospel is always
+better than Law."
+
+On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled with a side-saddle
+for Patty, and he and she rode to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky
+glen, where once lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its
+name, and where now resided a man who was suspected of giving much
+indirect assistance to the gangs of thieves that infested the
+country, though he was too lame to be actively engaged in any bold
+enterprises.
+
+Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty as she crossed
+the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a square-shouldered, raw-boned
+woman, looked half inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over
+her door-sill.  Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her frame at
+the thought of staying in such a place all day; but Doctor Morgan had
+an authoritative way with such people.  When called to attend a
+patient, he put the whole house under martial law.
+
+"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better.  He needs a good deal
+done for him to-day, and I brought the school-mistress to help you,
+knowing you had a houseful of children and plenty of work."
+
+"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan, but you had orter
+know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss in to spy out a body's
+housekeepin' 'thout givin' folks half a chance to bresh up a little.
+I 'low she haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth ten
+of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled ole man."  She
+sulkily brushed off a stool with her apron and offered it to Patty.
+But Patty, with quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while
+the doctor went into the only other room of the house to see the
+patient, she seized upon the woman's dish-towel and went to wiping
+the yellow crockery as Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the
+crabbed remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell how
+she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little, and how she had
+upset the table and spilt everything on the floor.  She looked into
+Mrs. Barkins's face with so much friendly confidence, her laugh had
+so much assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the
+square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded to show her
+increasing friendliness by boxing "Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too
+closte to the lady and starrin at her that a-way."
+
+Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and beckoned to Patty.
+
+"I've brought you the only medicine that will do you any good," he
+said, rapidly, to the sick man.  "This is Miss Lumsden, our
+school-mistress, and the best hand in sickness you ever saw.  She
+will stay with you an hour."
+
+The patient turned his wan face over and looked wearily at Patty.  He
+seemed to be a man of forty, but suffering and his unshorn beard had
+given him a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger.  He had
+evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he looked about the room
+for a seat for Patty.  "I'll take care of myself," said Patty,
+cheerfully--seeing his anxious desire to be polite.
+
+"I will write down some directions for you," said Dr. Morgan, taking
+out pencil and paper.  When he handed the directions to Patty they
+read:
+
+"I leave you a lamb among wolves.  But the Shepherd is here!  It is
+the only chance to save the poor fellow's life or his soul.  I will
+send Nettie over in an hour with jelly, and if you want to come home
+with her you can do so.  I will stop at noon."
+
+With that he bade her good-bye and was gone.  Patty put the room in
+order, wiped off the sick man's temples, and he soon fell into a
+sleep.  When he awoke she again wiped his face with cold water.  "My
+mother used to do that," he said.
+
+"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.
+
+"I think not.  I have been a bad man, and it is a wonder that I
+didn't break her heart.  I would like to see her!"
+
+"Where is she?" asked Patty.
+
+The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's the use of bringing
+my disgrace home to her door?" he said.
+
+"But I think she would bear your disgrace and everything else for the
+sake of wiping your face as I do."
+
+"I believe she would," said the wounded man, tremulously.  "I would
+like to go to her, and ever since I came away I have meant to go as
+soon as I could get in the way of doing better.  But I get worse all
+the time.  I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care how soon.  The
+sooner the better;" and he sighed wearily.
+
+Patty had the tact not to contradict him.
+
+"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and I used to run away to
+keep from hearing it.  I'd give everything to hear her read now."
+
+"Shall I read to you?"
+
+"If you please."
+
+"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?" said Patty.
+
+"How do you know which that is?--I don't!"
+
+"Don't you think one woman knows how another woman feels?" asked
+Patty.  And she sat by the little four-light window and took out her
+pocket Testament and read the three immortal parables in the
+fifteenth of Luke.  The man's curiosity was now wide awake; he
+listened to the story of the sheep lost and found, but when Patty
+glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied; he hearkened to the story of
+the coin that was lost and found, and still he looked at her with
+faint eagerness, as if trying to guess why she should call that his
+mother's favorite chapter.  Then she read slowly, and with sincere
+emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale of the prodigal son and
+his hunger, and his good resolution, and his tattered return, and the
+old father's joy.  And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed
+could not hide his tears.
+
+"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he asked.
+
+"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively.  "And you'll notice
+that this prodigal son didn't wait to make himself better, or even
+until he could get a new suit of clothes."
+
+The sick man said nothing.
+
+The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at that moment and said:
+
+"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."
+
+"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient, anxiously.
+
+"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.
+
+Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks, was standing timidly
+at the outside door.  Patty took the jelly from her hand and sent a
+note to the Doctor:
+
+"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in the safest place in
+the world--doing my duty."
+
+And when the doctor read it he said, in his nervously abrupt fashion:
+"Perfect angel!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXIX._
+
+PATTY'S JOURNEY.
+
+Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when the heart is cheered,
+and as Patty, after spending Saturday and Sunday with the patient,
+found time to come in and give him his breakfast every morning before
+she went to school, he grew more and more cheerful, and the doctor
+announced in his sudden style that he'd "get along."  In all her
+interviews Patty was not only a woman but a Methodist.  She read the
+Bible and talked to the man about repentance; and she would not have
+been a Methodist of that day had she neglected to pray with him.  She
+could not penetrate his reserve.  She could not guess whether what
+she said had any influence on him or not.  Once she was startled and
+lost faith in any good result of her labors when she happened, in
+arranging things about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap
+and some heavy false-whiskers.  She had more than suspected all along
+that her patient was a highwayman, but upon seeing the very disguises
+in which his crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked
+herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable of
+theft--perhaps of murder--could ever be any better.  She found
+herself, after that, trying to imagine how the wounded man would look
+in so fierce a mask.  But she soon remembered all that she had
+learned of the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit
+working in the worst of sinners, and she got her testament and read
+aloud to the highwayman the story of the crucified thief.
+
+It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him take his breakfast--he
+was sitting propped up in bed--that he startled her most effectually.
+Lifting his eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare
+that comes of feebleness, he asked:
+
+"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit rider named Goodwin?"
+
+Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret.  She turned away to
+hide her face, and said:
+
+"I used to go to school with him when we were children."
+
+"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said the patient, "that
+made me tremble all over.  He's a great preacher.  I wish I was as
+good as he is."
+
+Patty made some remark about his having been a good boy.
+
+"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used to hear that he had
+been a little hard--swore and drank and gambled, to say nothing of
+dancing and betting on horses.  But they said some girl jilted him in
+that day.  I suppose he got into bad habits because she jilted him,
+or else she jilted him because he was bad.  Do you know anything
+about it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"
+
+Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it.  She was going to
+defend herself--he must know that she was the person--but how?  Then
+she remembered that he was only repeating what had been a matter of
+common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness led her to answer:
+
+"She acted badly--turned him off because he became a Methodist."
+
+"But there was trouble before that, I thought.  When he gambled away
+his coat and hat one night."
+
+"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty, casting about in her
+own mind how she might change the conversation.
+
+"Is she alive yet?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet," said the man.
+
+Patty now plead that she must hasten to school.  She omitted reading
+the Bible and prayer with the patient for that morning.  It was just
+as well.  There are states of mind not favorable to any but the most
+private devotions.
+
+On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the cabin a moment, but on
+coming near she saw horses tied in front of it, and her heart failed
+her.  She reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the gang
+and she could not bring herself to plunge into their midst in the
+dusk of the evening.  But on Saturday morning she found the strangers
+not yet gone, and heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey."  "Too
+soft! too soft! altogether," said one.  "We ought to have shipped
+him----"  Here the conversation was broken off.
+
+The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she found very uneasy.
+He was glad to see her, and told her she must stay by him.  He seemed
+anxious for the men to go away, which at last they did.  Then he
+listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became sufficiently
+uproarious to warrant him in talking.
+
+"I want you to save a man's life."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Preacher Goodwin's."
+
+Patty turned pale.  She had not the heart to ask a question.
+
+"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll tell you all about
+it."
+
+Patty promised.
+
+"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat Woods on Sunday
+afternoon.  He preaches in Jenkinsville at eleven, and at Salt Fork
+at three.  Between the two he will be killed.  You must go yourself.
+They'll never suspect you of such a ride.  If any man goes out of
+this settlement, and there's a warning given, he'll be shot.  You
+must go through the woods to-night.  If you go in the daytime, you
+and I will both be killed, maybe.  Will you do it?"
+
+Patty had her full share of timidity.  But in a moment she saw a
+vision of Morton Goodwin slain.
+
+"I will go."
+
+"You must not tell the doctor a word about where you're going; you
+must not tell Goodwin how you got the information."
+
+"He may not believe me."
+
+"Anybody would believe you."
+
+"But he will think that I have been deceived, and he cannot bear to
+look like a coward."
+
+"That's true," said Pinkey.  "Give me a piece of paper.  I will write
+a word that will convince him."
+
+He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word and folded it.  "I
+can trust you; you must not open this paper," he said.
+
+"I will not," said Patty.
+
+"And now you must leave and not come back here until Monday or
+Tuesday.  Do not leave the settlement until five o'clock.  Barkins
+will watch you when you leave here.  Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till
+afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion.  Take the east road
+when you start, and then if anybody is watching they will think that
+you are going to the lower settlement.  Turn round at Wright's
+corner.  It will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom, but
+there is only one trail through the woods.  You must ride through
+to-night or you cannot reach Jenkinsville to-morrow.  God will help
+you, I suppose, if He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than
+half believe."
+
+Patty went away bewildered.  The journey did not seem so dreadful as
+the long waiting.  She had to appear unconcerned to the people with
+whom she boarded.  Toward evening she told them she was going away
+until Monday, and at five o'clock she was at the doctor's door,
+trembling lest some mishap should prevent her getting a horse.
+
+"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated face sharply.
+"I didn't find you at Barkins's as I expected when I got there this
+morning.  Sick man did not say much.  Anything wrong?  What scared
+you away?"
+
+"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."
+
+"You shall have anything you ask."
+
+"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and ask me no questions
+and make no objections."
+
+"I will trust you."
+
+"I must have a horse at once for a journey."
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"This evening."
+
+"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to go away so late, unless
+it is a matter of life and death----"
+
+"It is a matter of life and death."
+
+"And you can't trust me?"
+
+"It is not my secret.  I promised not to tell you."
+
+"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask questions.  Are you
+certain you are not deceived?  Mayn't there be some plot?  Mayn't I
+go with you?  Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in
+saving the life of the person you speak of?"
+
+Patty looked a little startled.  "I may be deceived, but I feel so
+sure that I ought to go that I will try to go on foot, if I cannot
+get a horse."
+
+"Patty, I don't like this.  But I can only trust your judgment.  You
+ought not to have been bound not to tell me."
+
+"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go.  It is a matter of
+life and death to another that it shall not be known that I went.  It
+is a matter of life and death to you and me both that you shall not
+go with me."
+
+"Is the life you are going to save worth risking your own for?  Is it
+only the life of a robber?"
+
+"It is a life worth more than mine.  Ask me no more questions, but
+have Bob saddled for me."  Patty spoke as one not to be refused.
+
+The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted, half eagerly and half
+timidly.
+
+"When will you come back?"
+
+"In time for school, Monday."
+
+"Patty, think again before you start," called the doctor.
+
+"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode away.
+
+"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered to himself half a
+hundred times in the next forty-eight hours.
+
+When she had ridden a mile on the road that led to the "lower
+settlement" she turned an acute angle, and came back on the
+hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, if I may speak so
+geometrically.  She thus went more than two miles to strike the main
+trail toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from her
+starting-place.  She reached the woods in Long Bottom just as Pinkey
+told her she would, at dark.  She was appalled at the thought of
+riding sixteen miles through a dense forest of beech trees in the
+night over a bridle-path.  She reined up her horse, folded her hands,
+and offered a fervent prayer for courage and help, and then rode into
+the blackness ahead.
+
+There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very valley in Ohio
+in regard to this dark ride of Patty's.  I know it will be thought
+incredible, but in that day marvelous things were not yet out of
+date.  This legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood of
+the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved herself for her lonely
+and perilous ride by prayer, there came to her, out of the darkness
+of the forest, two beautiful dogs.  One of them started ahead of her
+horse and one of them became her rear-guard.  Protected and comforted
+by her dumb companions, Patty rode all those lonesome hours in that
+wilderness bridle-path.  She came, at midnight, to a settler's house
+on the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found lodging.  The
+dogs lay in the yard.  In the early morning the settler's wife came
+out and spoke to them but they gave her no recognition at all.  Patty
+came a few moments later, when they arose and greeted her with all
+the eloquence of dumb friends, and then, having seen her safely
+through the woods and through the night, the two beautiful dogs,
+wagging a friendly farewell, plunged again into the forest and
+went--no man knows whither.
+
+Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to me well avouched.
+Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all
+away and show how there was only one dog, and that he was not
+beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail.  Or that the
+whole thing is but a "solar myth."  The middle-ages have not a more
+pleasant story than this of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy
+a brave lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest.  At any
+rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians were answers to her
+prayer.  She bade them good-by as they disappeared in the mystery
+whence they came, and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's
+favor to her enterprise.  Sometimes her heart was sorely troubled at
+the thought of Morton's being already the husband of another, and all
+that Sunday morning she took lessons in that hardest part of
+Christian living--the uttering of the little petition which gives all
+the inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the
+accomplishment of His will.
+
+She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven.  Meeting had already
+begun.  She knew the Methodist church by its general air of square
+ugliness, and near it she hitched old Bob.
+
+When she entered the church Morton was preaching.  Her long
+sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise, and she sat upon the back seat
+listening to the voice whose music was once all her own.  Morton was
+preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions to his own
+trials when he became a Christian which deeply touched the audience,
+but which moved none so much as Patty.
+
+The congregation was dismissed but the members remained to "class,"
+which was always led by the preacher when he was present.  Most of
+the members sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had gone
+Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a large space between her
+and the rest.  Morton asked each one to speak, exhorting each in
+turn.  At last, when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where
+Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and thus addressed
+her:
+
+"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with you to-day?  Do
+you feel that you have an interest in the Savior?"
+
+Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of melancholy Patty spoke.
+There was that in her superior diction and in her delicacy of
+expression that won upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the
+brethren and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord bless
+our strange sister," and so on.  But Morton?  From the first word he
+was thrilled with the familiar sound of the voice.  It could not be
+Patty, for why should Patty be in Jenkinsville?  And above all, why
+should she be in class-meeting?  Of her conversion he had not heard.
+But though it seemed to him impossible that it could be Patty, there
+was yet a something in voice and manner and choice of words that had
+almost overcome him; and though he was noted for the freshness of the
+counsels that he gave in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the
+sense of having known the speaker, that he could not think of
+anything to say.  He fell hopelessly into that trite exhortation with
+which the old leaders were wont to cover their inanity.
+
+"Sister," he said, "you know the way--walk in it."
+
+Then the brethren and sisters sang:
+
+  "O brethren will you meet me
+  On Canaan's happy shore?"
+
+
+And the meeting was dismissed.
+
+The members thought themselves bound to speak to the strange sister.
+She evaded their kindly questions as they each shook hands with her,
+only answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin.  The
+preacher was eager and curious to converse with her, but one of the
+old brethren had button-holed him to complain that Brother Hawkins
+had 'tended a barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had
+ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession.  When the old
+brother had finished his complaint and had left the church, Morton
+was glad to see the strange sister lingering at the door.  He offered
+his hand and said:
+
+"A stranger here, I suppose?"
+
+"Not quite a stranger, Morton."
+
+"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed
+
+Patty for her part was pleased and silent.
+
+"Are you a Methodist then?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said, greatly agitated.
+
+"To save your life.  I am glad I can make you some amend for the way
+I treated you the last time I saw you."
+
+"To save my life!  How?"
+
+"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this afternoon you
+will be killed on the way."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"You must not ask any questions.  I cannot tell you anything more."
+
+"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody who wanted to scare
+me."
+
+Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of paper which Pinkey had
+given her.  She handed it to Morton, saying:
+
+"I don't know what is in this, but the person who sent the message
+said that you would understand."
+
+Morton opened the paper and started.  "Where is he?" he asked.
+
+"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling faintly.
+
+"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to tell me?"
+
+"Not at all.  When I joined the church Father pulled the latch-string
+in.  I am teaching school at Hickory Ridge."
+
+"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner."  Morton led her horse to
+the house of one of the members, introduced her as an old schoolmate,
+who had brought him an important warning, and asked that she receive
+some dinner.
+
+He then asked Patty to let him go back with her or send an escort,
+both of which she firmly refused.  He left the house and in a minute
+sat on his Dolly before the gate.  At sight of Dolly Patty could have
+wept.  He called her to the gate.
+
+"If you won't let me go with you I must go to Salt Fork.  These men
+must understand that I am not afraid.  I shall ride ten miles farther
+round and they will never know how I did it.  Dolly can do it,
+though.  How shall I thank you for risking your life for me?  Patty,
+if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll die for you.  I would
+rather die for you than not."
+
+"Thank you, Morton.  You are married, I hear."
+
+"Not married, but I am to be married."  He spoke half bitterly, but
+Patty was too busy suppressing her own emotion to observe his tone.
+
+"I hope you'll be happy."  She had determined to say so much.
+
+"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till I die.  I am
+marrying one I never chose.  I am utterly miserable.  Why didn't you
+leave me to be waylaid and killed?  My life isn't worth the saving.
+But God bless you, Patty."
+
+So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and was soon gone away
+around the Wolf Creek road--a long hard ride, with no dinner, and a
+sermon to preach at three o'clock.
+
+And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in Jenkinsville, her
+hostess entertained her with accounts of Sister Ann Eliza Meacham,
+whom Brother Goodwin was to marry.  She heard how eloquent was Sister
+Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and what a model
+preacher's wife she would be.  But the good sister added slyly that
+she didn't more than half believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at
+all.  He'd tried his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do
+it.
+
+When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon she did her best,
+as a good Christian, to feel sorry that Morton could not love the one
+he was to marry.  In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in
+her heart she was a woman.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXX._
+
+THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.
+
+When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not
+difficult to forecast his fate.  Everybody saw that he was going into
+a consumption.  One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to
+live, but not longer.  Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself.  He
+rejoiced in it.  He was one of those rare spirits to whom the
+invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious
+duty is a voice never neglected.  That he had sacrificed his own life
+to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets
+except that he had not been more zealous.  What was life if he could
+save even one soul?
+
+"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike.  If you had
+taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."
+
+"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied
+Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health,
+you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might
+live long enough to save many others.  When God puts a soul before me
+I save that one if il costs my life.  When I am gone God will find
+others.  It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful.  What if by
+some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell?  O!  Morton, I am
+oppressed with responsibility!  I will be glad when God shall say, It
+is enough."
+
+Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike.  He was but fulfilling
+the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not
+quite emulate him.  Read the minutes of the old conferences and you
+will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory
+of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing.  Men were
+nothing--the work was everything.  Methodism let the dead bury their
+dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave
+of one of its own heroes.
+
+But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid
+Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months' work.  Two of this
+he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away.  The other
+one had gone for quinine.  Now he had no clothes that would long hold
+together.  He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had
+carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she
+loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers.  He
+could come back in three days.  Two days more would suffice to reach
+Peterborough circuit.  So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his
+appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee.  But he did not
+get back to camp-meeting.  An attack of fever held him at home for
+several weeks.
+
+At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from
+home.  His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to
+return to his home it would only be to die.  And as this was,
+perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him
+of her intention to marry Brady.  While Brady thought to do the
+handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending,
+whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately
+propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage.  It was
+quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate
+at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however.
+But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her
+heart failed her.  He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full
+of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of
+making him understand her feelings.  Once she began by alluding to
+her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust
+in the Lord he would be with her.  What was she to do?  How make a
+rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals?  And
+that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?
+
+The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow
+that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small
+wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.
+
+"Oh, I can't bear to," said she.  "I won't never see him any more and
+I might hurt him, and----"
+
+"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."
+
+"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.
+
+"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden.
+If I do it, it'll same jist loike axin' the b'y's consint to marry
+his mother."
+
+"But I can't noways do it," said the widow.  "If you love me you
+might take that load offen me."
+
+"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady marched into the
+sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was
+resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair.  Brady took a seat
+opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and
+reached up his iron gray hair uneasily.  To his surprise Kike began
+the conversation.
+
+"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very wisely, I think," said
+Kike.
+
+"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.
+
+"To be sure I have."
+
+"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'.  Ye're pecooliar
+loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize with other folks because
+ye're livin' roight up in hiven all the toime."
+
+"Why don't you live more in heaven?"
+
+"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help me," said Brady,
+adroitly.  "But I'm one of the koind that's lonesome, and in doire
+nade of company.  I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd
+niver be a fool agin.  But ye see ye ain't niver been in love in all
+yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"
+
+"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a strange softness
+coming into his voice.
+
+"Did ye iver!  Who'd a thought it?"  And Brady made large eyes at
+him.  "Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others," he added
+with some exultation.
+
+"I do.  That's why I said you and mother were very foolish."
+
+"Fwy, now; there it is agin.  Fwat do ye mane?"
+
+"Why this.  When I was here before I saw that you and mother had
+taken a liking to each other.  I thought by this time you'd have been
+married.  And I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't.  But you're
+as far away as ever.  Here's mother's land that needs somebody to
+take care of it.  I am going away never to come back.  If I could see
+you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could
+die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."
+
+"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes.  "Fwy didn't you
+say that before?  Ye're a prophet and a angel, I belave.  I wish I
+was half as good, or a quarther.  God bliss ye, me boy.  I wish--I
+wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and your
+mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to spake to ye about
+this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased.  Now,
+will ye marry us before ye go?"
+
+"I haven't got any license."
+
+"Here 'tis, in me pocket."
+
+"Where's a witness or two?"
+
+"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other
+room."
+
+"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike.  "I must get away in an hour."
+
+And he married them.  They wept over him, and he made no concealment
+that he was going away for the last time.  He rode out from
+Hissawachee never to come back.  Not sad, but exultant, that he had
+sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life
+everlasting.  For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide
+from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a
+hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and
+children.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXXI._
+
+KIKE.
+
+To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through Morton's great diocese
+of Jenkinsville Circuit.  He could not ride far.  Even so intemperate
+a zealot as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his
+calculations.  He must save his strength in journeying or he could
+not reach his circuit, much less preach when he got there.  At the
+close of his second day he inquired for a Methodist house at which to
+stop, and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located"
+preacher--one who had been a "travelling" preacher, but, having
+married, was under the necessity of entangling himself with the
+things of this world that he might get bread for his children.  As he
+rode up to the house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the
+fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in progress.  He
+was in Morton's circuit; who could tell that he should not meet him
+here?
+
+When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the door between the two
+rooms preaching, with the back of a "split-bottomed" chair for a
+pulpit.  For a moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten
+with death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton never
+spoke better on that favorite theme of the early Methodist
+evangelist--the rest in heaven--than while drawing his inspiration
+from the pallid countenance of his comrade.
+
+"Ah!  Kike!" he said, when the meeting was dismissed, "I wish you had
+my body."
+
+"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for, Mort?  Let God have
+his way," said Kike, smiling contentedly.
+
+But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay awake.  He could not
+let the poor fellow go off alone.  So in the morning he arranged with
+the located brother to take his appointments for awhile and let him
+ride one day with Kike.
+
+"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the ex-preacher.  "The
+corn's laid by and I've got nothing to do, and I'm spoiling for a
+preach."
+
+Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of Hickory Ridge, and
+Morton, persuaded that Kike was unfit to preach, endeavored to induce
+him to turn aside and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his
+road.
+
+"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength left.  I cannot
+spend it better than in trying to save souls.  There's Peterborough
+vacant three months since Brother Jones was first taken sick.  I want
+to make one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the heart I
+have.  Then I'll cease at once to work and live, and who knows but
+that I may slay more in my death than in my life?"
+
+But Morton feared that he would not be able to make one round.  He
+thought he had an overestimate of his strength, and that the final
+break-down might come at any moment.  So, on the morning of the
+second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to return.  He
+would see him safe among the members on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.
+
+Now it happened that they missed the trail and wandered far out of
+their way.  It rained all the afternoon, and Kike got drenched in
+crossing a stream.  Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter.
+He stopped at a cabin.
+
+"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler, as soon as he saw
+them.  "I 'low ye're preachers.  Brother Goodwin I know.  Heerd him
+down at camp-meetin' last fall,--time conference met on the Ridge.
+And this brother looks mis'rable.  Got the shakes, I 'low?  Your
+name, brother, is--"
+
+"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.
+
+"Lumsden?  Wy, that air's the very name of our school-miss, and she's
+stayin' here jes' now.  I kinder recolleck that you was sick up at
+Dr. Morgan's, conference time.  Hey?"
+
+Morton looked bewildered.
+
+"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"
+
+"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low.  Ain't it, Sister
+Lumsden?"  This last to Patty, who at that moment appeared from the
+bedroom, and without answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike
+with a cry of joy.  Patty was "boarding round," and it was her time
+to stay here.
+
+"How did we get here?  We aimed at Lanham's Ferry," said Morton,
+bewildered.
+
+"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low.  You should've gone by
+Hanks's Mills."
+
+[Illustration: THE REUNION.]
+
+Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother, Morton was
+determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's.  Kike was just sick enough
+to be passive, and he suffered himself to be put back into the saddle
+to ride to the doctor's.  Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields and
+gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed away in the bed he
+had occupied before.  Thus do men try to run away from fate, and rush
+into her arms in spite of themselves.
+
+It did not require very great medical skill to understand what must
+be the result of Kike's sickness.
+
+"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked Morton, next morning.
+
+"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the physician, in his
+abrupt manner.  "There's not water enough left in the branch to run
+the mill seven days.  Wasted life, sir, wasted life.  It is a pity
+but you Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."
+
+Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every minute that he might see
+Nettie come in.  But she did not come.  He had wished to avoid her
+father's house for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to be
+thus near her and not see her.  Toward evening he called Patty to him.
+
+"Lean down here!" he said.
+
+Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.
+
+"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.
+
+"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.
+
+"Why don't she come in to see me?"
+
+"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty; "she seems to be
+crying half the time."
+
+Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening.  But Nettie did not
+come.  To have come into Kike's room would have been to have revealed
+her love for one who had never declared his love for her.  The mobile
+face of Nettie disclosed every emotion.  No wonder she was fain to
+keep away.  And yet the desire to see him almost overcame her fear of
+seeing him.
+
+When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast the next morning,
+the patient looked at him wistfully.
+
+"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth.  Will I ever get up?"
+
+"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the physician, huskily.
+
+A smile of relief spread over Kike's face.  At that word the awful
+burden of his morbid sense of responsibility for the world's
+salvation, the awful burden of a self-sacrifice that was terrible and
+that must be life-long, slipped from his weary soul.  There was then
+nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's release.  He
+shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!" and lay for minutes,
+motionless.  As the doctor made a movement to leave him, Kike opened
+his eyes and looked at him eagerly.
+
+"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the straight black hair
+off Kike's forehead, and petting him as though he were a child.
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Doctor----" said Kike, and then closed his eyes again.
+
+"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart, dear boy."  The
+tears were in the doctor's eyes.
+
+"If you think it best--if you think it best, mind--I would like to
+see Nettie."
+
+"Of course it is best.  I am glad you mentioned it.  It will do her
+good, poor soul."
+
+"If you think it best----"
+
+"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated.  "Speak out."
+
+"All alone."
+
+"Yes, you shall see her alone.  That is best."  The doctor's
+utterance was choked as he hastened out.
+
+Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door.  It seemed a long time after
+the doctor went before Nettie came in.  It was only three
+minutes--three minutes in which Nettie vainly strove to wipe away
+tears that flowed faster than she could remove them.  At last her
+hand was on the latch.  She gained a momentary self-control.  But
+when she opened the door and saw his emaciated face, and his black
+eyes looking so eagerly for her, it was too much for the poor little
+heart.  The next moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing
+violently.  And Kike put out his feeble hands and drew the golden
+head up close to his bosom, and spoke tenderer words than he had ever
+heard spoken in his life.  And then he closed his eyes, and for a
+long time nothing was said.  It came about after Nettie's tears were
+spent that they talked of all that they had felt; of the life past
+and of the immortal life to come.  Hours went by and none intruded
+upon this betrothal for eternity.  Patty had waited without,
+expecting to be called to take her place again by her cousin's
+bedside.  But she did not like to remain in conversation with Morton.
+It could bring nothing but pain to them both.  It occurred to her
+that she had not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike
+came.  She started immediately, glad to escape from the regrets
+excited by the presence of Morton, and touched with remorse that she
+had so long neglected a man on whose heart she thought she had been
+able to make some religious impression.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXXII._
+
+PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.
+
+Pinkey was grum.  He didn't like to be neglected, if he was a
+highwayman.  He had gotten out of bed and drawn on his boots.
+
+"So you couldn't come to see me because there was a young preacher
+sick at the doctor's?" he said, when Patty entered.
+
+"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty, "and he is going to
+die."
+
+"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little.  "But Goodwin is
+there, too.  I hope you didn't tell him anything about me?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."
+
+"He seems to be."
+
+"And people that are grateful are very likely to have other feelings
+after awhile."  There was a significance in Pinkey's manner that
+Patty greatly disliked.
+
+"You should not talk in that way.  Mr. Goodwin is engaged to be
+married."
+
+"Is he?  Do you mind telling me her name?"
+
+"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."
+
+"What?--Who?--To Ann Eliza?  How did it happen that I have never
+heard of that?  To Ann Eliza!  Confound her; what a witch that girl
+is!  I wish I could spoil her game this time.  Goodwin's too good for
+her and she sha'n't have him."  Then he sat still as if in
+meditation.  After a moment he resumed: "Now, Miss Lumsden, you've
+done one good turn for him, you must do another.  I want to send a
+note to this Ann Eliza."
+
+"_I_ cannot take it," said Patty, trembling.
+
+"You saved his life, and now you are unwilling to save him from a
+worse evil.  You ought not to refuse."
+
+"You ought not to ask it.  The circumstances of the case are
+peculiar.  I will not take it."
+
+"Will you take a note to Goodwin?"
+
+"Not on this business."
+
+Pinkey was startled at the emotion she showed, and looked at her
+inquiringly: "You were a schoolmate of Morton's--of Goodwin's, I
+mean--and a body would think that you might be the identical
+sweetheart that sent him adrift for joining the Methodists--and then
+joined the Methodists herself, eh?"
+
+Patty said nothing, but turned away.
+
+"By the holy Moses," said Pinkey, in a half-soliloquy, "if that's the
+case, I'll break the net of that fisherwoman this time or drown
+myself a-trying."
+
+Patty had intended to read the Bible to her patient, but her mind was
+so disturbed that she thought best to say good-morning.  Pinkey
+roused himself from a reverie to call her back.
+
+"Will you answer me one question?" he asked.  "Does Goodwin want to
+marry this girl?  Is he happy about it, do you think?"
+
+"I am sure he isn't," said Patty, reproaching herself in a moment
+that she had said so much.
+
+Patty made some kindly remark to Mrs. Barkins as she went out, walked
+briskly to the fence, halted, looked off over the field a moment,
+turned round and came back.  When she re-entered Pinkey's room he had
+put on his great false-whiskers and wolf-skin cap, and she trembled
+at the transformation.  He started, but said: "Don't be afraid, Miss
+Lumsden, I am not meditating mischief.  I will not hurt you,
+certainly, and you must not betray me.  Now, what is it?"
+
+"Don't do anything wrong in this matter," said Patty.  "Don't do
+anything that'll lie heavy on your soul when you come to die.--I'm
+afraid you'll do something wrong for Mr. Goodwin's sake, or--mine."
+
+"No.  But if I was able to ride I'd do one thunderin' good thing.
+But I am too weak to do anything, plague on it!"
+
+"I wish you would put these deceits in the fire and do right," she
+said, indicating his disguises.  "I am disappointed to see that you
+are going back to your old ways."
+
+He made no reply, but laid off his disguises and lay down on the bed,
+exhausted.  And Patty departed, grieved that all her labors were in
+vain, while Pinkey only muttered to himself, "I'm too weak, confound
+it!"
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXXIII._
+
+THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.
+
+Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any one venture to open the
+door of Kike's room.  He found the patient much better.  But the
+improvement could not be permanent, the sedative of mental rest and
+the tonic of joy had come too late.
+
+"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one more service.  Nettie
+will explain to you what it is."
+
+After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away, leading Kike's
+horse with him.  The doctor thought he could guess what Morton went
+for, but, even in melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children,
+are fond of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that
+which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to themselves.  At ten
+o'clock that night Morton came back without Kike's horse.
+
+"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown visibly weaker.
+
+Morton nodded.
+
+"And you sent the message?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank into a satisfied
+sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate to Doctor Morgan and Patty
+that he had seen in the moonlight a notorious highwayman.  "His
+nickname is Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes from or
+goes to.  He got a hard blow in a fight with the police force of the
+camp meeting.  It's a wonder it didn't break his head.  I searched
+for him everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared.  If I had
+been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him, for he was
+alone."
+
+Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.
+
+"Our patient, Patty."
+
+But Patty did not say a word.
+
+"You must have got that information through him!" said Morton, with
+surprise.
+
+But Patty only kept still.
+
+"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had killed my
+deliverer!  Strange that he should be the bearer of a message to me,
+though.  I should rather expect him to kill me than to save me."
+
+Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away while yet so weak, and
+found in herself the flutterings of a hope for which she knew there
+was no satisfactory ground.
+
+When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking.  "Doctor Morgan," he
+said, "do not leave me long.  Nettie and I want to be married before
+I die."
+
+"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to suspect Kike's
+secret.
+
+"Morton got it the other day.  And I am looking for my mother to-day.
+I don't want to be married till she comes.  Morton took my horse and
+sent for her."
+
+Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived.  On Sunday morning
+he was almost past speaking.  Nettie had gone out of the room, and
+Kike was apparently asleep.
+
+"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to Morton, pointing
+to the dying man.
+
+"Yes, indeed.  What a pity he had no care for himself," answered
+Morton.
+
+"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."
+
+Patty got the Bible.
+
+"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the seventh verse to the
+thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke as if he were announcing a text.
+
+Then, when Patty was about to read, he said: "Stop.  Call Nettie."
+
+When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she read all about the
+alabaster box of ointment, very precious, that was broken over the
+head of Jesus, and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's
+reply.
+
+"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan, with effusion,
+"what is spent for love is never wasted.  It is a very precious box
+of ointment that you have broken upon Christ's head, my son.  The
+Lord will not forget it."
+
+When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the door on Sunday morning,
+the people had already begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the
+expectation that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge church.
+Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous all the country over, was
+dying, they filled Doctor Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad,
+silent groups on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the shade
+of the yard trees.  As the dying preacher's mother passed through,
+the crowd of country people fell back and looked reverently at her.
+
+Kike was already far gone.  He was barely able to greet his mother
+and the good-hearted Brady, whose demonstrative Irish grief knew no
+bounds.  Then Kike and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all.
+This sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than a funeral.
+After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's side, and he rallied for a
+moment and solemnly pronounced a benediction on her.  Then he lifted
+up his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord!  I have kept back nothing.
+Amen."
+
+His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie.  The people had crowded
+into the hall and stood at the windows.  For awhile all thought him
+dead.
+
+A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and lighted upon the bed
+of the dying man.  The early Western people believed in marvels, and
+Kike was to them a saint.  At sight of the snow-white dove pluming
+itself upon his breast they all started back.  Was it a heavenly
+visitant?  Kike opened his eyes and gazed upon the dove a moment.
+Then he looked significantly at Nettie, then at the people.  The dove
+plumed itself a moment longer, looked round on the people out of its
+mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the window again and
+disappeared in the sunlight.  A smile overspread the dying man's
+face, he clasped his hands upon his bosom, and it was a full minute
+before anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of Hezekiah
+Lumsden had gone to its rest.
+
+He had requested that no name should be placed over his grave.  "Let
+God have any glory that may come from my labors, and let everybody
+but Nettie forget me," he said.  But Doctor Morgan had a slab of the
+common blue limestone of the hills--marble was not to be had--cut out
+for a headstone.  The device upon it was a dove, the only
+inscription: "An alabaster box of very precious ointment."
+
+Death is not always matter for grief.  If you have ever beheld a rich
+sunset from the summit of a lofty mountain, you will remember how the
+world was transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent light,
+and how, long after the light had faded from the cloud-drapery, and
+long after the hills had begun to lose themselves in the abyss of
+darkness, there lingered a glory in the western horizon--a joyous
+memory of the splendid pomp of the evening.  Even so the glory of
+Kike's dying made all who saw it feel like those who have witnessed a
+sublime spectacle, which they may never see again.  The memory of it
+lingered with them like the long-lingering glow behind the western
+mountains.  Sorry that the suffering life had ended in peace, one
+could not be; and never did stormy day find more placid sunset than
+his.  Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to her.  When he
+was gone she was as one whom an angel of God had embraced.  She
+regretted his absence, but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and
+she had not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.
+
+The only commemoration his name received was in the conference
+minutes, where, like other such heroes, he was curtly embalmed in the
+usual four lines:
+
+"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely gave up his life for
+his work.  He was tireless in labor, patient in suffering, bold in
+rebuking sin, holy in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."
+
+The early Methodists had no time for eulogies.  A handful of earth, a
+few hurried words of tribute, and the bugle called to the battle.
+The man who died was at rest, the men who staid had the more work to
+do.
+
+
+NOTE.  In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's bed,
+I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.--E.E.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXXIV._
+
+THE BROTHERS.
+
+Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a letter from her father,
+asking her to come home.  Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote
+penitently and asked Patty's forgiveness.  Captain Lumsden never did
+anything otherwise than meanly.  He wrote that he was now bedridden
+with rheumatism, and it seemed hard that he should be forsaken by his
+oldest daughter, who ought to be the stay of his declining years.  He
+did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so religious and yet
+leave him to suffer without the comfort of her presence.  The other
+children were young, and the house was in hopeless confusion.  If the
+Methodists had not quite turned her heart away from her poor
+afflicted father, she would come at once and help him in his
+troubles.  He was ready to forgive the past, and as for her religion,
+if she did not trouble him with it, she could do as she pleased.  He
+did not think much of a religion that set a daughter against her
+father, though.
+
+Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that it set before her
+to feel the sting very keenly.  There was another pain that had grown
+worse with every day she had spent with Morton.  Beside her own
+sorrow she felt for him.  There was a strange restlessness in his
+eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he was doing, that
+indicated how fearfully the tempest raged within.  For Morton's old
+desperation was upon him, and Patty was in terror for the result.
+About the time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul also.
+He had mastered himself, and the restless wildness had given place to
+a look of constraint and suffering that was less alarming but hardly
+less distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding her own
+agony.  But the disappearance of Pinkey had awakened some hope in
+her.  Not one jot of this trembling hopefulness did she dare impart
+to Morton, who for his part had but one consolation--he would throw
+away his life in the battle, as Kike had done before him.
+
+So eager was Patty to leave her school now and hasten to her father,
+that she could not endure to stay the weeks that were necessary to
+complete her term.  She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the
+possibility of getting some one to take her place, and both had
+concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane Morgan being too
+much out of health.  But to their surprise Nettie offered her
+services.  She had not been of much more use in the world than a
+humming-bird, she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would be
+better pleased that she should make herself useful.
+
+Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and Morton, who could
+not reach the distant part of his circuit, upon which his supply was
+now preaching, in time to resume his work at once, concluded to set
+out for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents fared.
+But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who departed in company with
+Brady and his wife.  Morton would not trust himself in her society
+longer.  He therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks to
+Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.
+
+I may not describe the enthusiasm with which Morton was received at
+home.  Scarcely had he kissed his mother and shaken hands with his
+father, who was surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had
+been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting up into
+manhood, when his mother whispered to him that his brother Lewis was
+alive and had come home.
+
+"What!  Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I thought he was killed in
+Pittsburg ten years ago."
+
+"That was a false report.  He had been doing badly, and he did not
+want to return, and so he let us believe him dead.  But now he has
+come back and he is afraid you will not receive him kindly.  I
+suppose he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard on his
+evil ways.  But you won't be too hard, will you?"
+
+"I?  God knows I have been too great a sinner myself for that.  Where
+is Lew?  I can just remember how he used to whittle boats for me when
+I was a little boy.  I remember the morning he ran off, and how after
+that you always wanted to move West.  Poor Lew!  Where has he gone?"
+
+His mother opened the door of the little bed-room and led out the
+brother.
+
+"What!  Burchard?" cried Morton.  "What does this mean?  Are you
+Lewis Goodwin?"
+
+[Illustration: THE BROTHERS.]
+
+"I am!"
+
+"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun when you found out who
+I was.  That's how you saved me that day at Brewer's Hole.  And
+that's why you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other warning.
+Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you anyhow, but I ought to be not
+only glad as a brother, but glad that I can thank you for saving my
+life."
+
+"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."
+
+"What of that?  God forgives, and I am sure that it is not for such a
+sinner as I am to condemn you.  If you knew what desperate thoughts
+have tempted me in the last week you would know how much I am your
+brother."
+
+Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed it open, with a
+"Howdy, Misses Goodwin?  Howdy, Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"
+
+"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady.  We thought he was dead."
+
+"Heigh-ho!  The prodigal's come back agin, eh?  Mrs. Goodwin, I
+congratilate ye."
+
+And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis.  Patty, who stood
+behind, came forward, and Morton said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother
+Lewis."
+
+"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis.  "She knows me already.  If
+it hadn't been for her I might have been dead, and in perdition, I
+suppose.
+
+"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.
+
+"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable of the Prodigal Son,
+and told me that it was my mother's favorite chapter."
+
+"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it every day for years.
+But how did you know that, Patty?"
+
+"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman knew how another woman
+felt.  But you don't know how good Miss Lumsden is.  She did not know
+me as Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different character.
+I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast of it, Mort, at once.  Then
+there'll be no surprises afterward.  And if you hate me when you know
+it all, I can't help it."  With that he stepped into the bedroom and
+came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.
+
+"What!  Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.
+
+"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to knock down, and then
+hunted all over the country to find."
+
+Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery of his brother's
+bad character, Patty added adroitly: "The Pinkey that saved your
+life, Morton."
+
+Morton got up and stood before his brother.  "Give me your hand
+again, Lewis.  I am so glad you came home at last.  God bless you."
+
+Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands.  "I have been a very
+wicked man, Morton, but I never committed a murder.  I am guilty of
+complicity.  I got tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band.  I
+helped them because they had a hold on me, and I was too weak to risk
+the consequences of breaking with them.  That complicity has spoiled
+all my life.  But the crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly
+committed by others.  Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all
+sins were laid."
+
+"I must hurry home," said Patty.  "I only stopped to shake hands,"
+and she rose to go.
+
+"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to destroy these lies.
+You shall have them to do what you like with.  I wish you could take
+my sins, too."
+
+Patty put the disguises into the fire.  "Only God can take your
+sins," she said.
+
+"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis, with bitterness.
+
+Patty went home in anxiety.  Lewis Goodwin seemed to have forgotten
+the resolution he had made as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.
+
+But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of present duty crowd
+out thoughts of possible happiness.  She bore the peculiar paternal
+greetings of her father; she installed herself at once, and began,
+like a good genius, to evolve order out of chaos.  By the time
+evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.
+
+That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother Lewis strolled into
+the woods together.  It was not safe for Lewis to walk about in the
+day time.  The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah
+Harp's band, perhaps, on the other.  But in the twilight he told
+Morton something which interested the latter greatly, and which
+increased his gratitude to Lewis.  That you may understand what this
+communication was, I must go back to an event that happened the week
+before--to the very last adventure that Lewis Goodwin had in his
+character of Pinkey.
+
+Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed.  She had ridden ten miles to
+Mount Tabor Church, one of Morton's principal appointments.  No doubt
+Ann Eliza persuaded herself--she never had any trouble in persuading
+herself--that zeal for religious worship was the motive that impelled
+her to ride so far to church.  But why, then, did she wish she had
+not come, when instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother
+Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located brother who was
+supplying his place in his absence at Kike's bedside?  Why did she
+not go on to the afternoon appointment as she had intended?  Certain
+it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log church--called Mount
+Tabor because it was built in a hollow, perhaps--she felt
+unaccountably depressed.  She considered it a spiritual struggle, a
+veritable hand to hand conflict with Satan.  She told the brethren
+and sisters that she must return home, she even declined to stay to
+dinner.  She led the horse up to a log and sprang into the saddle,
+riding away toward home as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer
+would carry her.  She was vexed that Morton should stay away from his
+appointments on this part of his circuit to see anybody die.  He
+might know that it would be a disappointment to her.  She satisfied
+herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination the
+half-coldness with which she would treat Brother Goodwin when she
+should meet him.  She inly rehearsed the scene.  But with most people
+there is a more secret self, kept secret even from themselves.  And
+in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that she would not dare treat
+Brother Goodwin coolly.  She had a sense of insecurity in her hold
+upon him.
+
+Riding thus through the great forests of beech and maple Ann Eliza
+had reached Cherry Run, only half a mile from her aunt's house, and
+the old horse, scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture
+ahead of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the "run," when
+what should she see ahead but a man in wolf-skin cap and long
+whiskers.  She had heard of Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this
+must be he.  Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the
+highwayman advanced.
+
+"I haven't anything to give you.  What do you want?"
+
+"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do your duty," he said,
+seating himself by the side of the trail on a stump.
+
+[Illustration: AN ACCUSING MEMORY.]
+
+"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened, starting her horse.
+
+"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want to talk to you."
+And he sat down again, holding fast to her bridle-rein.
+
+"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense of helplessness.
+
+"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a canting tone, "that you
+are doing just right?  Is not there something in your life that is
+wrong?  With all your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a
+wicked woman."
+
+Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire.  "Who are you, that talk in
+this way?  You are a robber, and you know it!  If you don't repent
+you will be lost!  Seek religion now.  You will soon sin away your
+day of grace, and what an awful eternity--"
+
+Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein, partly because it
+was habitual with her, and consequently easier in a moment of
+confusion than any other, and partly because it was her forte and she
+thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations were her best
+weapons.  But when she reached the words "awful eternity," Pinkey
+cried out sneeringly:
+
+"Hold up, Ann Eliza!  You don't run over me that way.  I'm bad
+enough, God knows, and I'm afraid I shall find my way to hell some
+day.  But if I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on my
+arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do.  You see I know
+all about you, and it's no use for you to glory-hallelujah me."
+
+Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate to the occasion, and
+so she remained silent.
+
+"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your hooks, now, and that you
+mean to marry him against his will.  Is that so?"
+
+"No, it isn't.  He proposed to me himself."
+
+"O, yes!  I suppose he did.  You made him!"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"I suppose not.  You never did.  Not even in Pennsylvania.  How about
+young Harlow?  Who made him?"
+
+Ann Eliza changed color.  "Who are you?" she asked.
+
+"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name?  The one you danced
+with down at Stevens's one night."
+
+"What do you bring up all my old sins for?" asked Ann Eliza, weeping.
+"You know I have repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to
+lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my sins and let me see
+the light of his reconciled countenance----"
+
+"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey.  "You sha'n't glory-hallelujah
+me in that style, confound you!  Maybe God has forgiven you for
+driving Harlow to drink himself into tremens and the grave, and for
+sending that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing, you
+know.  You wouldn't like me to mention it.  You've got a very pretty
+face, Ann Eliza,--you know you have.  But Brother Goodwin don't love
+you.  You entangled him; you know you did.  Has God forgiven you for
+that, yet?  Don't you think you'd better go to the mourners' bench
+next time yourself, instead of talking to the mourners as if you were
+an angel?  Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can sing
+glory-hallelujah.  Hey?"
+
+"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.
+
+"Not yet, you angelic creature.  Now that I come to think of it,
+piety suits your style of feature.  Ann Eliza, I want to ask you one
+question before we part, to meet down below, perhaps.  If you are so
+pious, why can't you be honest?  Why can't you tell Preacher Goodwin
+what you left Pennsylvania for?  Why the devil don't you let him know
+beforehand what sort of a horse he's getting when he invests in you?
+Is it pious to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he
+wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth?  Come now, you talk a good
+deal about the 'bar of God,' what do you think will become of such a
+swindle as you are, at the bar of God?"
+
+"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up the sins that I have
+put behind my back.  Why should I talk with--with Brother Goodwin or
+anybody about them?"
+
+For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by reasoning that God's
+forgiveness had made the unpleasant facts of her life as though they
+were not.  It was very unpleasant, when she had put down her memory
+entirely upon certain points, to have it march up to her from
+without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and false whiskers, and speaking
+about the most disagreeable subjects.
+
+"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience, but you don't seem
+to have any.  You are totally depraved, I believe, if you do love to
+sing and shout and pray.  Now, when a preacher cannot get a man to be
+good by talking at his conscience, he talks damnation to him.  But
+you think you have managed to get round on the blind side of God, and
+I don't suppose you are afraid of hell itself.  So, as conscience and
+perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else.  You are going to
+write a note to Preacher Goodwin and let him off.  I am going to
+carry it."
+
+"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"
+
+"You aren't afraid of gunpowder.  You think you'd sail into heaven
+straight, by virtue of your experiences.  I am not going to shoot
+you, but here is a pencil and a piece of paper.  You may write to
+Goodwin, or I shall.  If I write I will put down a truthful history
+of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and I shall be quite particular to
+tell him why you left Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize
+the wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly blue eyes.
+But, if you write, I'll keep still."
+
+"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.
+
+"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious tormentor, leading
+the horse up to the stump.
+
+Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the pencil.  Her ingenious
+mind immediately set itself to devising some way by which she might
+satisfy the man who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and
+yet keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher.  But the man stood
+behind her and said, as she began, "Now write what I say.  I don't
+care how you open.  Call him any sweet name you please.  But you'd
+better say 'Dear Sir.'"
+
+Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."
+
+"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken off.  It is my fault,
+not yours.'"
+
+"I won't write that."
+
+"Yes, you will, my pious friend.  Now, Ann Eliza, you've got a nice
+face; when a man once gets in love with you he can't quite get out.
+I suppose I will feel tender toward you when we meet to part no more,
+down below.  I was in love with you once."
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"O, that don't matter!  I was going to say that if I hadn't been in
+love with your blue eyes once I wouldn't have taken the trouble to
+come forty miles to get you to write this letter.  I was only a mile
+away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I heard that you had
+victimized him.  I could have sent him a note.  I came over here to
+save you from the ruin you deserve.  I would have told him more than
+the people in Pennsylvania ever knew.  Come, my dear, scribble away
+as I say, or I will tell him and everybody else what will take the
+music out of your love-feast speeches in all this country."
+
+With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting that she could send
+another note after this and tell Brother Goodwin that a highwayman
+who entertained an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot
+and extorted this from her.  She handed the note to Pinkey.
+
+"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive this sin, too.  You
+may pray and shout till you die.  I'll never say anything--unless you
+open communication with preacher Goodwin again.  Do that, and I'll
+blow you sky-high."
+
+"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and--"
+
+"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter names than that, and
+you don't look half so fascinating when you're mad as when you are
+talking heavenly.  Good by, Miss Meacham."  And with that Pinkey went
+into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and rode away, not on
+the road but through the woods.
+
+If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her many lovers this
+might be she would have set about forming some plan for circumventing
+him.  But the mystery was too much for her.  She sincerely loved
+Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others had now come back
+to her own lips.  And with it came a little humility.  She could not
+again forget her early sins so totally.  She looked to see them start
+out of the bushes by the wayside at her.
+
+After this recital it is not necessary that I should tell you what
+Lewis Goodwin told his brother that night as they strolled in the
+woods.
+
+At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not stay longer with
+safety.  The war with Great Britain had broken out and he joined the
+army at Chillicothe under his own name, which was his best disguise.
+He was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that he was trying to
+wipe the stain off his name.  He afterward moved West and led an
+honest life, but the memory of his wild youth never ceased to give
+him pain.  Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed sinner as
+forgetfulness.
+
+
+
+
+_CHAPTER XXXVI._
+
+GETTING THE ANSWER.
+
+When Patty went down to strain the milk on the morning after her
+return, the hope of some deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had
+well-nigh died out.  If he had had anything to communicate, Morton
+would not have delayed so long to come to see her.  But, standing
+there as of old, in the moss-covered spring-house, she was, in spite
+of herself, dreaming dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she
+could have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin, while he was
+yet Pinkey, had dropped.  By the time the first crock was filled with
+milk and adjusted to its place in the cold current, she had recalled
+that morning of nearly three years before, when she had resolved to
+forsake father and mother and cleave to Morton; by the time the
+second crock had been neatly covered with its clean block she thought
+she could almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on that
+morning:
+
+  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,
+  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,
+  Nocht of ill may come thee near,
+  My bonnie dearie."
+
+
+Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance with the Book of
+Discipline, given up "singing those songs that do not tend to the
+glory of God," but she felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again,
+assuring her of his strong protection, as it had on that morning
+three years ago.  Meanwhile, she had filled all the crocks, and now
+turned to pass out of the low door when she saw, standing there as he
+had stood on that other morning, Morton Goodwin.  He was more manly,
+more self-contained, than then.  Years of discipline had ripened them
+both.  He stepped back and let her emerge into the light; he handed
+her that note which Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty
+read:
+
+
+"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:
+
+"Dear Sir--The engagement between us is broken off.  It is my fault
+and not yours.
+
+"ANN E. MEACHAM."
+
+
+"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty, in pity.  Morton
+loved her better for her first unselfish thought.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.]
+
+He told her frankly the history of the engagement; and then he and
+Patty sat and talked in a happiness so great that it made them quiet,
+until some one came to call her, when Morton walked up to the house
+to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and mollified Captain
+Lumsden.
+
+"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he came to understand
+how matters stood, "you've got the answer in the book.  It's quare
+enough.  Now, 'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and one
+is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to anybody.  You've got it,
+and I'm glad of it.  May ye niver conjugate the varb 'to love'
+anyways excipt prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural
+number, 'we love.'  I don't keer ef ye add the futur' tinse, and say,
+'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the parfect and say, 'we have
+loved,' but may ye always stick fast to first parson, plural number,
+prisint tinse, indicative mood, active v'ice!"
+
+Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some trepidation.  He
+feared that the old brethren would blame him more than ever.  But
+this time he found himself the object of much sympathy.  Ann Eliza
+had forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement with the very
+willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a great deal to think how he had
+"cut out" the preacher, after all.  And when Brother Magruder came to
+understand that he had not understood Morton's case at all, and to
+understand that he never should be able to understand it, he thought
+to atone for any mistake he might have made by advising the bishop to
+send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included Hissawachee.  And
+Morton liked the appointment better than Magruder had expected.
+Instead of living with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon
+installed himself for the year at the house of Captain Lumsden, in
+the double capacity of general supervisor of the moribund man's
+affairs and son-in-law.
+
+There rise before me, as I write these last lines, visions of
+circuits and stations of which Morton was afterward the
+preacher-in-charge, and of districts of which he came to be presiding
+elder.  Are not all of these written in the Book of the Minutes of
+the Conferences?  But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of Patty and
+her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded nowhere but in the
+Book of God's Remembrance.
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Circuit Rider, 

-by Edward Eggleston

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-<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***</div>

-

-<p><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-front"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-front.jpg" alt="SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  <i>See page 56.</i>">

-<br>

-SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  <i><a href="#p56">See page 56.</a></i>

-</p>

-

-<h1>

-<br><br>

-  THE<br>

-  CIRCUIT RIDER<br>

-</h1>

-

-<p class="t3b">

-  A Tale of the Heroic Age,<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="t3">

-  BY<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="t2">

-  EDWARD EGGLESTON,<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="t4">

-  <i>Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the<br>

-  World," etc.</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t4">

-  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness."&mdash;<i>Isaiah.</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="t4">

-  "&mdash;&mdash;Beginners of a better time,<br>

-  And glorying in their vows."&mdash;<i>Tennyson.</i><br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3">

-  NEW YORK:<br>

-  J. B. FORD & COMPANY<br>

-  1874.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t4">

-  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by<br>

-  J. B. FORD & COMPANY,<br>

-  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3">

-  TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,<br>

-<br>

-  THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE<br>

-  HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,<br>

-<br>

-  THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3b">

-  CONTENTS.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-  CHAPTER<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent smcap" style="line-height: 1.5">

-  I.&mdash;<a href="#chap01">The Corn Shucking</a><br>

-  II.&mdash;<a href="#chap02">The Frolic</a><br>

-  III.&mdash;<a href="#chap03">Going to Meeting</a><br>

-  IV.&mdash;<a href="#chap04">A Battle</a><br>

-  V.&mdash;<a href="#chap05">A Crisis</a><br>

-  VI.&mdash;<a href="#chap06">The Fall Hunt</a><br>

-  VII.&mdash;<a href="#chap07">Treeing a Preacher</a><br>

-  VIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap08">A Lesson in Syntax</a><br>

-  IX.&mdash;<a href="#chap09">The Coming of the Circuit Rider</a><br>

-  X.&mdash;<a href="#chap10">Patty in the Spring-House</a><br>

-  XI.&mdash;<a href="#chap11">The Voice in the Wilderness</a><br>

-  XII.&mdash;<a href="#chap12">Mr. Brady Prophesies</a><br>

-  XIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap13">Two to One</a><br>

-  XIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap14">Kike's Sermon</a><br>

-  XV.&mdash;<a href="#chap15">Morton's Retreat</a><br>

-  XVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap16">Short Shrift</a><br>

-  XVII.&mdash;<a href="#chap17">Deliverance</a><br>

-  XVIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap18">The Prodigal Returns</a><br>

-  XIX.&mdash;<a href="#chap19">Patty</a><br>

-  XX.&mdash;<a href="#chap20">The Conference at Hickory Ridge</a><br>

-  XXI.&mdash;<a href="#chap21">Convalescence</a><br>

-  XXII.&mdash;<a href="#chap22">The Decision</a><br>

-  XXIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap23">Russell Bigelow's Sermon</a><br>

-  XXIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap24">Drawing the Latch-String in</a><br>

-  XXV.&mdash;<a href="#chap25">Ann Eliza</a><br>

-  XXVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap26">Engagement</a><br>

-  XXVII.&mdash;<a href="#chap27">The Camp-Meeting</a><br>

-  XXVIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap28">Patty and her Patient</a><br>

-  XXIX.&mdash;<a href="#chap29">Patty's Journey</a><br>

-  XXX.&mdash;<a href="#chap30">The Schoolmaster and the Widow</a><br>

-  XXXI.&mdash;<a href="#chap31">Kike</a><br>

-  XXXII.&mdash;<a href="#chap32">Pinkey's Discovery</a><br>

-  XXXIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap33">The Alabaster Box Broken</a><br>

-  XXXIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap34">The Brother</a><br>

-  XXXV.&mdash;<a href="#chap35">Plnkey and Ann Eliza</a><br>

-  XXXVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap36">Getting the Answer</a><br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3b">

-  ILLUSTRATIONS.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="noindent smcap" style="line-height: 1.5">

-  1. <a href="#img-front">Spinning-wheel and Rifle</a> ... Frontispiece<br>

-  2. <a href="#img-012">Captain Lumsden</a><br>

-  3. <a href="#img-016">Mort Goodwin</a><br>

-  4. <a href="#img-024">Homely S'manthy</a><br>

-  5. <a href="#img-025">Patty and Jemima</a><br>

-  6. <a href="#img-028">Little Gabe's Discomfiture</a><br>

-  7. <a href="#img-036">In the Stable</a><br>

-  8. <a href="#img-044">Mort, Dolly and Kike</a><br>

-  9. <a href="#img-051">Good Bye!</a><br>

-  10. <a href="#img-059">The Altercation</a><br>

-  11. <a href="#img-064">The Irish Schoolmaster</a><br>

-  12. <a href="#img-070">Electioneering</a><br>

-  13. <a href="#img-077">Patty in her Chamber</a><br>

-  14. <a href="#img-089">Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard</a><br>

-  15. <a href="#img-096">Patty in the Spring-House</a><br>

-  16. <a href="#img-112">Job Goodwin</a><br>

-  17. <a href="#img-118">Two to One</a><br>

-  18. <a href="#img-133">Gambling</a><br>

-  19. <a href="#img-152">A Last Hope</a><br>

-  20. <a href="#img-181">The Choice</a><br>

-  21. <a href="#img-185">Going to Conference</a><br>

-  22. <a href="#img-199">Convalescence</a><br>

-  23. <a href="#img-214">The Connecticut Peddler</a><br>

-  24. <a href="#img-231">Ann Eliza</a><br>

-  25. <a href="#img-245">Facing a Mob</a><br>

-  26. <a href="#img-262">"Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"</a><br>

-  27. <a href="#img-270">The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge</a><br>

-  28. <a href="#img-300">The Reunion</a><br>

-  29. <a href="#img-316">The Brothers</a><br>

-  30. <a href="#img-322">An Accusing Memory</a><br>

-  31. <a href="#img-330">At the Spring-House Again</a><br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3b">

-PREFACE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Whatever is incredible in this story is true.

-The tale I have to tell will seem strange to

-those who know little of the social life of the West at the

-beginning of this century.  These sharp contrasts of

-corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed

-by wild revivals; these contacts of highwayman and

-preacher; this <i>mélange</i> of picturesque simplicity,

-grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of abandoned

-wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those

-who know the country now.  But the books of biography

-and reminiscence which preserve the memory of that

-time more than justify what is marvelous in these pages.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where

-my grandfather&mdash;brave old Indian-fighter!&mdash;had

-defended his family in a block-house built in a wilderness

-by his own hands, I grew up familiar with this strange

-wild life.  At the age when other children hear fables

-and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with

-traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen.

-Instead of imaginary giant-killers, children then heard

-of real Indian-slayers; instead of Blue-Beards, we

-had Murrell and his robbers; instead of Little Red

-Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring

-adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with

-wild beasts on the very road we traveled to school.  In

-many households the old customs still held sway; the

-wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut and made up in

-the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,

-apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet

-fallen into disuse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor

-the hunter is the center-piece, but the circuit-rider.

-More than any one else, the early circuit preachers

-brought order out of this chaos.  In no other class was

-the real heroic element so finely displayed.  How do I

-remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the

-old preachers, whose constitutions had conquered starvation

-and exposure&mdash;who had survived swamps, alligators,

-Indians, highway robbers and bilious fevers!  How

-was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of

-rude experience&mdash;how was my imagination wrought upon

-by the recital of their hair-breadth escapes!  How was

-my heart set afire by their contagious religious

-enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I bestrode the

-saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the

-heavy burden of emulating their toils!  Surely I have a

-right to celebrate them, since they came so near being

-the death of me.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men

-without enthusiasm.  But nothing has been further from

-my mind than the glorifying of a sect.  If I were capable

-of sectarian pride, I should not come upon the platform

-of Christian union* to display it.  There are those,

-indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I

-have frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of

-early Methodism.  I beg they will remember the solemn

-obligations of a novelist to tell the truth.  Lawyers and

-even ministers are permitted to speak entirely on one

-side.  But no man is worthy to be called a novelist

-who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce

-the higher form of history, by writing truly of men as

-they are, and dispassionately of those forms of life

-that come within his scope.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in

-<i>The Christian Union</i>.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie,

-I could not treat the early religious life of the West

-otherwise than with the most cordial sympathy and

-admiration.  And yet this is not a "religious novel,"

-one in which all the bad people are as bad as they can

-be, and all the good people a little better than they

-can be.  I have not even asked myself what may be

-the "moral."  The story of any true life is wholesome,

-if only the writer will tell it simply, keeping impertinent

-preachment of his own out of the way.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with

-some good people by confessing in the start that, from

-the first chapter to the last, this is a love-story.  But it

-is not my fault.  It is God who made love so universal

-that no picture of human life can be complete where

-love is left out.

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-E. E.

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-BROOKLYN, <i>March</i>, 1874.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3">

-"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>

-

-<p class="t2">

-THE CIRCUIT RIDER

-</p>

-

-<p class="t3b">

-A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER I.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE CORN-SHUCKING.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the

-book.  Fifty or sixty years off the date at the

-head of your letter is easy enough to the "organ of

-number," but a severe strain on the imagination.  It

-is hard to go back to the good old days your

-grandmother talks about&mdash;that golden age when people were

-not roasted alive in a sleeping coach, but gently tipped

-over a toppling cliff by a drunken stage-driver.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Grand old times were those in which boys politely

-took off their hats to preacher or schoolmaster,

-solacing their fresh young hearts afterward by making

-mouths at the back of his great-coat.  Blessed days! in

-which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked

-with starched dignity, and yet were not too good to

-drink peach-brandy and cherry-bounce with folks;

-when Congressmen were so honorable that they scorned

-bribes, and were only kept from killing one another

-by the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms.  It was in

-those old times of the beginning of the reign of

-Madison, that the people of the Hissawachee settlement, in

-Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the corn-shuckin'

-down at Cap'n Lumsden's."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment

-that opens the gayeties of the season.  The

-shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage of being

-set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and

-quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that

-were to follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and

-simple&mdash;parties alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown

-ridge five or six feet high.  The Captain was

-not insensible to considerations of economy.  He

-knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long

-run to have it husked by his own farm hands; the

-expense of an entertainment in whiskey and other

-needful provisions, and the wasteful handling of the

-corn, not to mention the obligation to send a hand

-to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the

-gratuitous labor.  But who can resist the public

-sentiment that requires a man to be a gentleman

-according to the standard of his neighbors?  Captain

-Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which

-were oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his

-own corn would have been to forfeit his respectability

-entirely.  It would have placed him on the Pariah

-level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who

-had bought a place farther up the creek, and who

-dared to husk his own corn, practise certain forbidden

-economies, and even take pay for such trifles as

-butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf which he

-had killed.  The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee

-had been a matter of serious debate.  A man "as

-tight as the bark on a beech tree," and a Yankee

-besides, was next door to a horse-thief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's.

-The "women-folks" turned the festive occasion into

-farther use by stretching a quilt on the frames, and

-having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in

-quilting and gossiping&mdash;the younger women blushing

-inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, with hope and

-fear, as the names of certain young men were mentioned.

-Who could tell what disclosures the evening frolic

-might produce?  For, though "circumstances alter

-cases," they have no power to change human nature;

-and the natural history of the delightful creature

-which we call a young woman was essentially the same

-in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago, that

-it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern

-times.  Difference enough of manner and

-costume&mdash;linsey-woolsey, with a rare calico now and then for

-Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite young

-girls&mdash;but these things are only outward.  The dainty

-girl that turns away from my story with disgust, because

-"the people are so rough," little suspects how entirely

-of the cuticle is her refinement&mdash;how, after all, there

-is a touch of nature that makes Polly Ann and Sary

-Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and Blanche,

-and Mabel.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was just dark&mdash;the rising full moon was blazing

-like a bonfire among the trees on Campbell's Hill,

-across the creek&mdash;when the shucking party gathered

-rapidly around the

-Captain's ridge of

-corn.  The first

-comers waited for the

-others, and spent the

-time looking at the

-heap, and speculating

-as to how many

-bushels it would

-"shuck out."  Captain

-Lumsden, an

-active, eager man,

-under the medium

-size, welcomed his

-neighbors cordially,

-but with certain reserves.

-That is to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth

-to each new comer, but brought his voice up at the last

-like a whip-cracker; there was a something in what

-Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his enunciation,

-which reminded the person addressed that Captain

-Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with

-politeness, as became an old Virginia gentleman, was

-not a man whose supremacy was to be questioned for

-a moment.  He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,

-Bill?"  "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin',

-eh?" and "Hello, Bob, I thought you had the shakes&mdash;got

-out at last, did you?"  Under this superficial

-familiarity a certain reserve of conscious superiority and

-flinty self-will never failed to make itself appreciated.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-012"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-012.jpg" alt="CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.">

-<br>

-CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Let us understand ourselves.  When we speak of

-Captain Lumsden as an old Virginia gentleman, we

-speak from his own standpoint.  In his native state

-his hereditary rank was low&mdash;his father was an

-"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good

-blood," had made money by doubtful means.  But

-such is the advantage of emigration that among

-outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole

-Virginny" was credential enough.  Was not the Old

-Dominion the mother of presidents, and of

-gentlemen?  And so Captain Lumsden was accustomed to

-tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip,

-while he alluded to his relationships to "the old

-families," the Carys, the Archers, the Lees, the Peytons,

-and the far-famed William and Evelyn Bird; and he

-was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to

-that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled

-"Enroughty," while it is mysteriously and inexplicably

-pronounced "Darby," and to the "Tolivars," whose

-name is spelled "Taliaferro."  Nothing smacks more

-of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling

-and pronouncing.  In all the Captain's strutting talk

-there was this shade of truth, that he was related to

-the old families through his wife.  For Captain Lumsden

-would have scorned a <i>prima facie</i> lie.  But, in his

-fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal&mdash;little acorns

-of fact grew to great oaks of fable.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-How quickly a crowd gathers!  While I have been

-introducing you to Lumsden, the Captain has been

-shaking hands in his way, giving a cordial grip, and

-then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as

-if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while

-calling out, "Ho, Tom!  Howdy, Stevens?  Hello,

-Johnson! is that you?  Did come after all, eh?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When once the company was about complete, the

-next step was to divide the heap.  To do this, judges

-were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield, a slow-speaking

-man, who was believed to know a great deal because

-he said little, and looked at things carefully; and

-Jake Sniger, who also had a reputation for knowing

-a great deal, because he talked glibly, and was good

-at off-hand guessing.  Butterfield looked at the corn,

-first on one side, and then on the end of the heap.

-Then he shook his head in uncertainty, and walked

-round to the other end of the pile, squinted one eye,

-took sight along the top of the ridge, measured its

-base, walked from one end to the other with long strides

-as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings

-with one eye shut, while the young lads stared at

-him with awe.  Jake Sniger strode away from the

-corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who

-scorned to examine anything minutely.  He pointed to

-the left, and remarked to his admirers that he "'low'd

-they was a heap sight more corn in the left hand

-eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,

-and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz

-the leetle, flint, hominy corn, and had a right smart

-sprinklin' of nubbins."  He "'low'd whoever got aholt

-of them air nubbins would git sucked in.  It was

-neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own

-part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even,

-and had orter be divided in the middle of the pile."  Strange

-to say, Butterfield, after all his sighting, and

-pacing, and measuring, arrived at the same difficult

-and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence

-served to confirm the popular confidence in the

-infallibility of the two judges.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided

-exactly in the middle.  A fence rail, leaning against

-either side, marked the boundary between the territories

-of the two parties.  The next thing to be done

-was to select the captains.  Lumsden, as a prudent

-man, desiring an election to the legislature, declined

-to appoint them, laughing his chuckling kind of laugh,

-and saying, "Choose for yourselves, boys, choose for

-yourselves."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was

-no better husker.  He wanted to be captain on one

-side, but somebody in the crowd objected that there

-was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to

-Bill's shuckin."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's

-the one they say kin lick me.  I'd like to lay him out

-wunst."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He ain't yer."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks,

-I 'low," said Jake Sniger, as a tall, well-built young

-man came striding hurriedly through the stripped corn

-stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail fence, and

-cleared it at a bound.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a

-nephew of Captain Lumsden.  "Couldn't many fellers

-do that eight-rail fence so clean."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came

-up taking off his wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping

-his forehead.  "We thought you wuzn't a comin'.

-Here, you and Conkey choose up."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-016"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-016.jpg" alt="MORT GOODWIN.">

-<br>

-MORT GOODWIN.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy,

-and ready to give up such a distinction to others.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not a bit of it," said Mort.  "You don't

-appreciate kindness; where's your stick?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then

-passing the hand of one above that of the other, it

-was soon decided that Bill McConkey should have the

-first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the first

-choice of corn.  The shuckers were thus all divided

-into two parts.  Captain Lumsden, as host, declining

-to be upon either side.  Goodwin chose the end of

-the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a desp'rate

-sight of nubbins."  Then, at a signal, all hands

-went to work.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The corn had to be husked and thrown into a

-crib, a mere pen of fence-rails.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden,

-as he started the whiskey bottle on its encouraging

-travels along the line of shuckers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey.  "Pull away,

-my sweats! work like dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em

-all to thunder, er bust a biler, by jimminy!  Peel 'em

-off!  Thunder and blazes!  Hurrah!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This loud hallooing may have cheered his own

-men, but it certainly stimulated those on the other

-side.  Morton was more prudent; he husked with all

-his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,

-"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the

-breath he spends in noise we'll spend in gittin' the

-corn peeled.  Here, you! don't you shove that corn

-back in the shucks!  No cheats allowed on this side!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his

-own men, where he could overlook them and husk,

-without intermission, himself; knowing that his own

-dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of

-two men.  When one or two boys on his side began

-to run over to see how the others were getting along,

-he ordered them back with great firmness.  "Let them

-alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work hard

-at first, everybody will work hard at the last."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping

-husks with unremitting eagerness; the heap of

-unshucked corn had grown smaller, the crib was nearly

-full of the white and yellow ears, and a great billow

-of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who

-sat next to Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty

-Lumsden," said Ben North, with a chuckle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never

-knew how near he came to getting a whipping.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers.

-McConkey had drunk rather freely, and his "Pull

-away, sweats!" became louder than ever.  Morton found

-it necessary to run up and down his line once or

-twice, and hearten his men by telling them that they

-were "sure to beat if they only stuck to it well."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the

-side led by Goodwin would have given it up once if

-it had not been for his cheers; the others were so

-near to victory that they began to shout in advance,

-and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the

-battle,&mdash;for Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work

-in a way that set them wild by contagion, and for

-the last minute they made almost superhuman exertions,

-sending a perfect hail of white corn into the

-crib, and licking up the last ear in time to rush with

-a shout into the territory of the other party, and seize

-on one or two dozen ears, all that were left, to show

-that Morton had clearly gained the victory.  Then

-there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a

-general expression of good feeling.  But Bill McConkey

-vowed that he "knowed what the other side done with

-their corn," pointing to the husk pile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can

-find more corn in your shucks than you kin in

-mine."  But Bill did not accept the wager.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After husking the corn that remained under the

-rails, the whole party adjourned to the house, washing

-their hands and faces in the woodshed as they passed

-into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the other

-half block-house fortification.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial

-supper was set in the apartment which was commonly

-used for parlor and sitting room, and which was now

-pressed into service for a dining room.  The ladies

-stood around against the wall with a self-conscious

-air of modesty, debating, no doubt, the effect of their

-linsey-woolsey dresses.  For what is the use of carding

-and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting and sewing

-to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER II.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE FROLIC.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers

-eating with awkward embarrassment, as frontiermen

-always do in company,&mdash;even in the company of each

-other.  To eat with decency and composure is the

-final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of

-Hissawachee Bottom got through with the disagreeable

-performance as hurriedly as possible, the more so that

-their exciting strife had given them vigorous relish for

-Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and batter-cakes,

-and "punkin-pies."  The quilters had taken their

-supper an hour before, the table not affording room

-for both parties.  When supper was over the "things"

-were quickly put away, the table folded up and

-removed to the kitchen&mdash;and the company were then

-ready to enjoy themselves.  There was much gawky

-timidity on the part of the young men, and not a

-little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of the young

-women; but the most courageous presently got some of

-the rude, country plays a-going.  The pawns were sold

-over the head of the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as

-the wit of the company, devised all manner of penalties

-for the owners.  Susan Tomkins had to stand up

-in the corner, and say,

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Here I stand all ragged and dirty,<br>

-  Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-These lines were supposed to rhyme.  When Aleck

-Tilley essayed to comply with her request, she tried to

-run like a turkey, but was stopped in time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The good taste of people who enjoy society novels

-will decide at once that these boisterous, unrefined

-sports are not a promising beginning.  It is easy

-enough to imagine heroism, generosity and courage in

-people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great

-heroes, the world's demigods, grew in just such rough

-social states as that of Ohio in the early part of this

-century.  There is nothing more important for an

-over-refined generation than to understand that it has

-not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity,

-and that it must not only tolerate rude folk, but

-sometimes admire in them traits that have grown

-scarce as refinement has increased.  So that I may

-not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took

-the place of another until the excitement and

-merriment reached a pitch which would be thought not

-consonant with propriety by the society that loves

-round-dances with <i>roués</i>, and "the German"

-untranslated&mdash;though, for that matter, there are people

-old-fashioned enough to think that refined deviltry is not

-much better than rude freedom, after all.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of

-his time of life into the boisterous sport; but there

-was one drawback to his pleasure&mdash;Patty Lumsden

-would not play.  He was glad, indeed, that she did

-not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his

-companions.  But, then, did Patty like the part he was

-taking in the rustic revel?  He inly rejoiced that his

-position as the blindfold Justice, meting out punishment

-to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some

-extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of

-kissing.  True, it was quite possible that the severest

-prescription he should make might fall on his own

-head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he was

-saved by his good luck and the penetration which

-enabled him to guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the

-seller, when the offered pawn was his own.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull

-for the growing mirth of the company.  They ranged

-themselves round the room on benches and chairs,

-and began to sing the old song:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow&mdash;<br>

-  Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow&mdash;<br>

-  You nor I, but the farmers, know<br>

-  Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Thus the farmer sows his seed,<br>

-  Thus he stands and takes his ease,<br>

-  Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,<br>

-  And whirls around and views his lands.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Sure as grass grows in the field,<br>

-  Down on this carpet you must kneel,<br>

-  Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,<br>

-  And rise again upon your feet."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-It is not very different from the little children's

-play&mdash;an old rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed

-in England from immemorial time.  McConkey took

-the handkerchief first, and, while the company were

-singing, he pretended to be looking around and puzzling

-himself to decide whom he would favor with his

-affection.  But the girls nudged one another, and

-looked significantly at Jemima Huddlestone.  Of course,

-everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima.  That

-was fore-ordained.  Everybody knew it except Bill and

-Jemima!  Bill fancied that he was standing in entire

-indecision, and Jemima&mdash;radiant peony!&mdash;turned her

-large, red-cheeked face away from Bill, and studied

-meditatively a knot in a floor-board.  But her averted

-gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and

-the significant titter of the company deepened the hue

-and widened the area of red in her cheeks.  Attempts

-to seem unconscious generally result disastrously.  But

-the tittering, and nudging, and looking toward Jemima,

-did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now

-the singers have reached the line which prescribes the

-kneeling.  Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and

-with a sudden effort recovers from his vacant and

-wandering stare, wheels about, spreads the "handkercher"

-at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently

-kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance

-with the order of the play, and with reluctance

-only apparent, also drops upon her knees on the

-handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her

-red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it

-awakens laughter and applause.  Bill now arises with

-the air of a man who has done his whole duty under

-difficult circumstances.  Jemima lifts the handkerchief,

-and, while the song repeats itself, selects some gentleman

-before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss

-in the same fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to

-spread before some new divinity.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-024"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-024.jpg" alt="HOMELY S'MANTHY.">

-<br>

-HOMELY S'MANTHY.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This alternation had gone on for some time.  Poor,

-sanguine, homely

-Samantha Britton

-had looked smilingly

-and expectantly

-at each successive

-gentleman who bore

-the handkerchief;

-but in vain.  "S'manthy"

-could never

-understand why her

-seductive smiles

-were so unavailing.

-Presently, Betty

-Harsha was chosen

-by somebody&mdash;Betty

-had a pretty,

-round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be

-chosen, sooner or later.  Everybody knew whom she

-would choose.  Morton Goodwin was the desire of

-her heart.  She dressed to win him; she fixed her

-eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in

-his way; she compelled him to escort her home

-against his will; and now that she held the

-handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin.  Morton, for

-his part, was too young to be insensible to the

-charms of the little round, impulsive face, the twinkling

-eyes, the red, pouting lips; and he was not averse

-to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright, linsey

-frock, single him but for her admiration.  But just

-at this moment he wished she might choose some

-one else.  For Patty Lumsden, now that all her guests

-were interested in the play, was relieved from her

-cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the

-exciting amusement.

-She stood

-behind Jemima

-Huddleston, and

-never was there

-finer contrast

-than between the

-large, healthful,

-high-colored

-Jemima, a typical

-country belle, and

-the slight, intelligent,

-fair-skinned

-Patty, whose

-black hair and

-eyes made her complexion seem whiter, and whose

-resolute lips and proud carriage heightened the refinement

-of her face.  Patty, as folks said, "favored" her

-mother, a woman of considerable pride and much

-refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude

-customs of the neighborhood, had about as bad a

-reputation as one can have in a frontier community.  She

-was regarded as excessively "stuck up."  This stigma

-of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain.  His

-family was part of himself, and he liked to believe

-them better than anybody's else.  But he heartily

-wished that Patty would sacrifice her dignity, at this

-juncture, to further his political aspirations.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-025"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-025.jpg" alt="PATTY AND JEMIMA.">

-<br>

-PATTY AND JEMIMA.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her

-bright new calico&mdash;an extraordinary bit of finery in

-those days&mdash;Goodwin wished that Betty would attack

-somebody else, for once.  But Betty Harsha bore

-down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness,

-did not wait for the appropriate line to come&mdash;she did

-not give the farmer time to "stomp" his foot, and

-clap his hands, much less to whirl around and view

-his lands&mdash;but plumped down upon the handkerchief

-before Morton, who took his own time to kneel.  But

-draw it out as he would, he presently found himself,

-after having been kissed by Betty, standing foolishly,

-handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended for

-Betty were not yet finished.  Betty's precipitancy,

-and her inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set

-all the players laughing, and the laugh seemed to

-Goodwin to be partly at himself.  For, indeed, he was

-perplexed.  To choose any other woman for his "true

-love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more

-than he could do; to offer to kneel before her was

-more than he dared to do.  He hesitated a moment;

-he feared to offend Patty; he must select some one.

-Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face

-of S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had

-been to the others, with an anxious smile.  Morton

-saw a way out.  Patty could not be jealous of S'manthy.

-He spread the handkerchief before the delighted

-girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the

-right to choose a partner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to

-say, Gabriel Powers, junior.  His father was "Old

-Gabe," the most miserly farmer of the neighborhood.

-But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and had

-been over the mountains, had made some money,

-nobody could tell how, and had invested his entire

-capital in "store clothes."  He wore a mustache, too, which,

-being an unheard-of innovation in those primitive times,

-marked him as a man who had seen the world.  Everybody

-laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired

-him.  None of the girls had yet dared to select

-Little Gabe.  To bring their linsey near to store-cloth&mdash;to

-venture to salute his divine mustache&mdash;who could

-be guilty of such profanity?  But S'manthy was

-morally certain that she would not soon again have a

-chance to select a "true love," and she determined to

-strike high.  The players did not laugh when she

-spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little Gabe.

-They were appalled.  But Gabe dropped on one knee,

-condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the

-handkerchief with a delicate flourish of the hand

-which wore a ring with a large jewel, avouched by

-Little Gabe to be a diamond&mdash;a jewel that was at

-least transparent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once

-a question of solemn import to every young woman

-of the company; for even girls in linsey are not free

-from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies

-better dressed.  In her heart nearly every young woman

-wished that Gabe would choose herself.  But Gabe

-was one of those men who, having done many things

-by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing can

-be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be

-sufficiently transcendent.  He knew that Miss Lumsden

-held herself aloof from the kissing-plays, and he

-knew equally that she looked favorably on Morton

-Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he

-had already marked out his own line of action.  He

-stood in quiet repose while the first two stanzas were

-sung.  As the third began, he stepped quickly round

-the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood

-before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath.

-Patty's cheeks did not grow red, but pale, she turned

-suddenly and called out toward the kitchen:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What do you want?

-I am coming," and then

-walked quietly out, as

-if unconscious of Little

-Gabe's presence or

-purpose.  But poor Little

-Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far

-to recover himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got

-up immediately, but not in time to escape the general

-chorus of laughter and jeers.  He sneered at the

-departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could

-make her run."  But he could not conceal his

-discomfiture.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-028"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-028.jpg" alt="LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.">

-<br>

-LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed

-to have a word with Patty.  He found her standing

-in the deserted kitchen, and his heart beat quick with

-the thought that she might be waiting for him.  The

-ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place

-made the logs of the kitchen walls bright, and gave

-a tint to Patty's white face.  But just as Morton was

-about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky tread

-sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his

-aggravating metallic little laugh, and saying,

-"Morton, where's your manners?  There's nobody to go

-home with Betty Harsha."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not

-loud enough for the Captain to hear.  And he escorted

-Betty home.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER III.</i>

-<br><br>

-GOING TO MEETING.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Every history has one quality in common with

-eternity.  Begin where you will, there is always a

-beginning back of the beginning.  And, for that

-matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the

-ending.  Only because we may not always begin, like

-Knickerbocker, at the foundation of the world, is it

-that we get courage to break somewhere into the

-interlaced web of human histories&mdash;of loves and

-marriages, of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of

-successes and disappointments, of gettings and havings,

-and spendings and losings.  Yet, break in where we

-may, there is always just a little behind the beginning,

-something that needs to be told.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I find it necessary that the reader should understand

-how from childhood Morton had rather worshiped

-than loved Patty Lumsden.  When the long

-spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its

-numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative

-standing, Patty was always "one," and Morton "two."  On

-one memorable occasion, when the all but infallible

-Patty misspelled a word, the all but infallible

-Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and

-went down with her.  When she afterward regained

-her place, he took pains to stand always "next to

-head."  Bulwer calls first love a great "purifier of

-youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting,

-horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that

-were prevalent among the young men of that day,

-Morton was kept from worse vices by his devotion to

-Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Had he worshiped her less, he might long since

-have proposed to her, and thus have ended his

-suspense; but he had an awful sense of Patty's nobility?

-and of his own unworthiness.  Moreover, there was a

-lion in the way.  Morton trembled before the face of

-Captain Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was

-by far the largest land-owner in the settlement.  In

-that day of long credit, he had managed to place

-himself in such a way that he could make his power felt,

-directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within

-twenty miles of him.  The very judges on the bench

-were in debt to him.  On those rare occasions when

-he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck so

-ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or

-consequences, that he had become a terror to

-everybody.  Two or three families had been compelled

-to leave the settlement by his vindictive persecutions,

-so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal

-authority.  Morton Goodwin's father was but a small

-farmer on the hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had

-lost the greater part of a considerable patrimony.

-How could Morton, therefore, make direct advances to

-so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of

-refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her

-father?  Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but

-disillusion&mdash;Morton preferred to cherish his hopeless

-hope, living in vain expectation of some improbable

-change that should place him at better advantage in

-his addresses to Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in

-regard to his own disposition in the matter.  He had

-frowned upon Goodwin's advances by treating him

-with that sort of repellant patronage which is so

-aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for

-knocking down the author of the insult.  But of late,

-having observed the growing force and independence

-of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over the

-men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the

-necessity of attaching such a person to himself, particularly

-for the election which was to take place in the

-autumn.  Not that he had any intention of suffering

-Patty to marry Morton.  He only meant to play fast

-and loose a while.  Had he even intended to give his

-approval to the marriage at last, he would have played

-fast and loose all the same, for the sake of making

-Patty and her lover feel his power as long as possible.

-At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope

-to bind the ardent young man to his interest.  Morton,

-on his part, reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness

-should continue to increase in the future as it had

-in the three weeks past, it would become even cordial,

-after a while.  To young men in love, all good

-things are progressive.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On the Sunday morning following the shucking,

-Morton rose early, and went to the stable.  Did you

-ever have the happiness to see a quiet autumn

-Sunday in the backwoods?  Did you ever observe the

-stillness, the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the

-gentleness of wind, the chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks

-of blackbirds getting ready for migration, the lazy

-cawing of crows, softened by distance, the half-laughing

-bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped

-beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at

-you the while, as if to say, "Don't you wish you

-might guess?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Not that Morton saw aught of these things.  He

-never heard voices, or saw sights, out of the common,

-and that very October Sunday had been set apart for

-a horse-race down at "The Forks."  The one piece

-of property which our young friend had acquired

-during his minority was a thorough-bred filley, and he

-felt certain that she&mdash;being a horse of the first

-families&mdash;would be able to "lay out" anything that could

-be brought against her.  He was very anxious about

-the race, and therefore rose early, and went out into

-the morning light that he might look at his mare, and

-feel of her perfect legs, to make sure that she was in

-good condition.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"All right, Dolly?" he said&mdash;"all right this morning,

-old lady? eh?  You'll beat all the scrubs; won't

-you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation,

-Morton came to breakfast, only to have his

-breath taken away.  His mother asked him to ride to

-meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny

-her as it was to give up the race at "The Forks."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Rough associations had made young Goodwin a

-rough man.  His was a nature buoyant, generous, and

-complaisant, very likely to take the color of his

-surroundings.  The catalogue of his bad habits is

-sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of

-Sunday-school morality.  He often swore in a way

-that might have edified the army in Flanders.  He

-spent his Sundays in hunting, fishing, and riding

-horse-races, except when he was needed to escort his

-mother to meeting.  He bet on cards, and I am afraid he

-drank to intoxication sometimes.  Though he was too

-proud and manly to lie, and too pure to be unchaste,

-he was not a promising young man.  The chances

-that he would make a fairly successful trip through

-life did not preponderate over the chances that he

-would wreck himself by intemperance and gambling.

-But his roughness was strangely veined by nobleness.

-This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow

-had a chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held

-him always ready to devote himself in any way to her

-service.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of

-reverence.  Her father had been one of those fine old

-Irish gentlemen, with grand manners, extravagant habits,

-generous impulses, brilliant wit, a ruddy nose, and

-final bankruptcy.  His daughter, Jane Morton, had

-married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the

-Revolution&mdash;a man who was "a poor manager."  He lost

-his patrimony, and, what is worse, lost heart.  Upon

-his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens.  But

-her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when

-anchored back to a great tuck-comb, showed an errant,

-Irish tendency to curl.  Morton's hung in waves about

-his neck, and he cherished his curls, proud of the

-resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very

-queen, to be served right royally.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But it was hard&mdash;when he had been training the

-filley from a colt&mdash;when he had looked forward for

-months to this race as a time of triumph&mdash;to have so

-severe a strain put upon his devotion to his mother.

-When she made the request, he did not reply.  He

-went to the barn and stroked the filley's legs&mdash;how

-perfect they were!&mdash;and gave vent to some very old

-and wicked oaths.  He was just making up his mind

-to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks,

-when his decision was curiously turned by a word from

-his brother Henry, a lad of twelve, who had followed

-Morton to the stable, and now stood in the door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you.

-I wouldn't stand it.  You go and run Doll, and lick

-Bill Conkey's bay fer him.  He'll think you're afeard,

-ef you don't.  The old lady hain't got no right to

-make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a

-purty day as this."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up

-from the meditative scratching of Dolly's fetlocks,

-"don't you talk that away about mother.  She's every

-inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's had to

-foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin'

-and Lew's bad end&mdash;and you and me not promisin'

-much better.  It's mighty little I kin do to make

-things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to meetin'

-every day in the week, ef she says so."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-036"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-036.jpg" alt="IN THE STABLE.">

-<br>

-IN THE STABLE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see

-ef she don't."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nary Presbyterian.  They's no Presbyterian in

-me.  I'm a hard nut.  I would like to be a elder, or

-a minister, if it was in me, though, just to see the

-smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think

-about it.  Looky here, Hen!  I'll tell you something.

-Mother's about forty times too good for us.  When I

-had the scarlet fever, and was cross, she used to set

-on the side of the bed, and tell me stories, about

-knights and such like, that she'd read about in

-grandfather's books when she was a girl&mdash;jam up good

-stories, too, you better believe.  I liked the knights,

-because they rode fine horses, and was always ready

-to fight anything that come along, but always fair and

-square, you know.  And she told me how the knights

-fit fer their religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody

-that had got tromped down by somebody else.  I

-wished I'd been a knight myself.  I 'lowed it would be

-some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin'

-good.  But then it seemed as if I couldn't find

-nothin' worth the fightin' fer.  One day I lay a-thinkin',

-and a-lookin' at mother's white lady hands, and face

-fit fer a queen's.  And in them days she let her hair

-hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was

-bright like as if they had a light <i>inside</i> of 'em, you

-know.  She was a queen, <i>I</i> tell you!  And all at wunst

-it come right acrost me, like a flash, that I mout as

-well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and

-I've been at it ever since.  I 'low I've give her a

-sight of trouble, with my plaguey wild ways, and I

-come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this mornin', dogged

-ef I didn't.  But here goes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless

-Dolly, while Henry put the side-saddle on old Blaze,

-saying, as he drew the surcingle tight, "For my part,

-I don't want to fight for nobody.  I want to do as I

-dog-on please."  He was meditating the fun he would

-have catching a certain ground-hog, when once his

-mother should be safely off to meeting.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped

-his mother to mount, gallantly put her foot in the

-stirrup, arranged her long riding-skirt, and then mounted

-his own mare.  Dolly sprang forward prancing and

-dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly

-pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting

-would be a dull affair, if it were not for the fun of

-letting Dolly know who was her master.  The ride

-to church was a long one, for there had never been

-preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than

-ten miles away.  Morton found the sermon rather

-more interesting than usual.  There still lingered in

-the West at this time the remains of the controversy

-between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians,

-that dated its origin before the Revolution.  Parson

-Donaldson belonged to the Old side.  With square,

-combative face, and hard, combative voice, he made

-war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and

-the grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in

-particular upon the exciting meetings of the Methodists.

-The great Cane Ridge Camp-meeting was yet fresh in

-the memories of the people, and for the hundredth

-time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian

-ministers who had originated this first of

-camp-meetings, and set agoing the wild excitements now

-fostered by the Methodists.  He said that Presbyterians

-who had anything to do with this fanaticism

-were led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right

-in driving some of them out.  As for Methodists, they

-denied "the Decrees."  What was that but a denial

-of salvation by grace?  And this involved the overthrow

-of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification

-by Faith.  This is rather the mental process by which

-the parson landed himself at his conclusions, than his

-way of stating them to his hearers.  In preaching, he

-did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the

-decrees logically involved the rest.  He translated his

-conclusions into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted

-that these crazy, illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit

-riders were traitors to Protestantism, denying the

-doctrine of Justification, and teaching salvation by the

-merit of works.  There were many divines, on both

-sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed

-justified any amount of unfairness.  (But all that is past!)

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this

-discourse, and when they were again in the saddle to

-ride the ten miles home, he assured his mother that

-he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often, rain or

-shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody

-every time.  He thought it wouldn't be hard to be

-good, if a body could only have something bad to

-fight.  "Don't you remember, mother, how you used

-to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress,"

-and show me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon

-till his hide wouldn't hold shucks?  If I could fight

-the devil that way, I wouldn't mind being a Christian."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton felt especially pleased with the minister

-to-day, for Mr. Donaldson delighted to have the young

-men come so far to meeting; and imagining that he

-might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had hospitably

-urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment

-before starting on their homeward journey.  It

-is barely possible that the stimulus of the good

-parson's cherry-bounce had quite as much to do with

-Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of his

-discourse.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap04"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER IV.</i>

-<br><br>

-A BATTLE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The fight so much desired by Morton came soon

-enough.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut,"

-little traveled, Morton found time to master Dolly's

-fiery spirit and yet to scan the woods with the habitual

-searching glance of a hunter.  He observed on

-one of the trees a notice posted.  A notice put up in

-this out-of-the-way place surprised him.  He endeavored

-to make his restless steed approach the tree, that

-he might read, but her wild Arabian temper took fright

-at something&mdash;a blooded horse is apt to see visions&mdash;and

-she would not stand near the tree.  Time after

-time Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied

-away.  At last, Mrs. Goodwin begged him to give over

-the attempt and come on; but Morton's love of

-mastery was now excited, and he said,

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question

-between Dolly and me will have to be discussed and

-settled right here.  Either she will stand still by this

-sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or t'other lays

-down to rest."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze

-browse by the road-side, and with shaping her thoughts

-into a formal regret that Morton should spend the

-holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her maternal

-heart she admired his will and courage.  He was so

-like her own father, she thought&mdash;such a gentleman!

-And she could not but hope that he was one of God's

-elect.  If so, what a fine Christian he would be when

-he should be converted!  And, quiet as she was without,

-her heart was in a moment filled with agony and

-prayer and questionings.  How could she live in heaven

-without Morton?  Her eldest son had already died

-a violent death in prodigal wanderings from home.

-But Morton would surely be saved!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less

-for anything in heaven than he did to master the

-rebellious Dolly.  He rode her all round the tree; he

-circled that maple, first in one direction, then in

-another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly

-see.  Then he held her while he read the notice,

-saying with exultation, "Now, my lady, do you think you

-can stand still?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity,

-Morton had not cared to know the contents of the paper.

-Even curiosity had been forgotten in his combat with

-Dolly.  But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch

-Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah

-Lumsden, deceased," he forgot his victory over his

-horse in his interest in the document itself.  It was

-therein set forth that, by order of the probate court in

-and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden,

-administrator, would sell at public auction all that

-parcel of land belonging to the estate of the said

-Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known and described as

-follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode

-away (I am afraid he swore by thunder instead of by

-something else, out of a filial regard for his mother).

-"By thunder! if that ain't too devilish mean!  I

-s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat

-little Kike&mdash;he has gone to robbing him.  He means

-to buy that land himself; or, what's the same thing,

-git somebody to do it for him.  That's what he put

-that notice in this holler fer.  The judge is afraid of

-him; and so's everybody else.  Poor Kike won't have

-a dollar when he's a man."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin.

-"It's a shame for a whole settlement to be

-cowards, and to let one man rule them.  It's worse

-than having a king."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain

-Lumsden; and this appeal to the anti-monarchic

-feeling of the time moved him.  He could not bear that

-his mother, of all, should think him cowardly.  His

-pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension,

-and his provoking way of keeping Patty and himself

-apart.  Why should he not break with him, and have

-done with it, rather than stand by and see Kike

-robbed?  But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put

-Patty Lumsden farther away from him.  He was a

-knight who had suddenly come in sight of his

-long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied.  And

-so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely

-spoke a word to his mother all the rest of his ride.

-For here were his friendship for little Kike, his

-innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden, and his strong

-sense of justice, on one side; his love for Patty&mdash;stronger

-than all the rest&mdash;on the other.  In the stories

-of chivalry which his mother had told, the love of

-woman had always been a motive to valiant deeds for

-the right.  And how often had he dreamed of doing

-some brave thing while Patty applauded!  Now, when

-the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side.

-This unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him,

-as such embarrassment always does a person disposed

-to act impulsively and in right lines.  And so it

-happened that he rode on in moody silence, while the

-mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the

-son, mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain

-endeavor to recall some passages that might have

-"found a lodgment in his mind."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton,

-he might even then have chosen Patty, letting the

-interests of his friends take care of themselves.  But he

-did not decide it squarely.  He began by excusing

-himself to himself:&mdash;What could he do for Kike?  He

-had no influence with the judge; he had no money to

-buy the land, and he had no influential friends.  He

-might agitate the question and sacrifice his own hope,

-and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike.  No doubt

-all these considerations of futility had their weight

-with him; nevertheless he had an angry consciousness

-that he was not acting bravely in the matter.  That

-he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed that he

-would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his

-eyes to Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of

-one day getting his consent to marry his daughter!

-It was this anger with himself that made Morton

-restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks

-that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or

-three times, in spite of his good resolution not to drink

-more than once.  It was this restlessness that carried

-him at last to the cabin of the widow Lumsden, that

-evening, to see her son Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-044"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-044.jpg" alt="MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.">

-<br>

-MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys

-with straight black hair that one sees so often in

-southern latitudes.  He was called "Little Kike" only to

-distinguish him from his father, who had also borne

-the name of Hezekiah.  Delicate in health and quiet

-in manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his

-emotions were not only profound but persistent.

-Dressed in buck-skin breeches and homespun cotton

-overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came

-up.  The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face

-relaxed a little, as with a smile deeper than it was broad

-he lifted himself up and said,

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came

-round and stroked her fine neck, and expressed his

-regret that she hadn't run at the Forks and beat Bill

-McConkey's bay horse.  He wished he owned such "a

-beast."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little

-stronger, I will open that crick bottom, and then I

-shall make some money and be able to buy a blooded

-horse like Dolly.  Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's;

-who knows?"  And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness

-at the vision of his impending prosperity.  But

-Morton could not smile, nor could he bear to tell

-Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that

-very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike

-had built upon it.  Morton had made up his mind not

-to tell Kike.  Why should he?  Kike would hear of

-his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his part

-would only destroy his own hopes without doing

-anything for Kike.  But if Morton meant to be prudent

-and keep silence, why had he not staid at home?

-Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender

-frame was a constant provocation to speech?  Was

-there a self contending against a self?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly.

-"I was nearly well when I went down to Uncle

-Enoch's to work; and he made me work in the rain.

-'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and

-throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain.

-It'll do you good.  Your mother has ruined you, keeping

-you over the fire.  You want hardening.  Rain is

-good for you, water makes you grow; you're a perfect

-baby.'  I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a

-finishment to me, though."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks

-had not increased his prudence.  As usual in such

-cases, the prudent Morton and the impulsive Morton

-stood the one over against the other; and, as always

-the imprudent self is prone to spring up without

-warning, and take the other by surprise, so now the young

-man suddenly threw prudence and Patty behind, and

-broke out with&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some

-maledictions for emphasis.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That was not exactly telling what he had resolved

-not to tell, but it rendered it much more difficult to

-keep the secret; for Kike grew a little red in the face,

-and was silent a minute.  He himself was fond of

-roundly denouncing his uncle.  But abusing one's

-relations is a luxury which is labeled "strictly private,"

-and this savage outburst from his friend touched Kike's

-family pride a little.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I know that as well as you do," was all he said,

-however.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He would swindle his own children," said Morton,

-spurred to greater vehemence by Kike's evident

-disrelish of his invective.  "He will chisel you out of

-everything you've got before you're of age, and then

-make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake

-your head."  And Morton looked off down the road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What's the matter, Mort?  What set you off on

-Uncle Nuck to-night?  He's bad enough, Lord knows;

-but something must have gone wrong with you.  Did

-he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, he didn't," said Morton.  And now that Patty

-was recalled to his mind, he was vexed to think that

-he had gone so far in the matter.  His tone provoked

-Kike in turn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mort, you've been drinking!  What brought you

-down here?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand

-again.  Patty and prudence were out of sight at once,

-and the young man swore between his teeth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said

-Kike, alarmed.  "What's up?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly.  "Nothing,

-only your affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in

-Jackson's holler&mdash;on the side of the tree furthest from

-the road&mdash;advertising your crick bottom for sale.

-That's all.  Old Virginia gentleman!  Old Virginia

-<i>devil</i>!  Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?"  And

-then he added something about hell and damnation.

-These two last words had no grammatical relation

-with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of

-Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with

-Captain Lumsden and the subject under discussion.

-Nobody is quite a Universalist in moments of indignation.

-Every man keeps a private and select perdition

-for the objects of his wrath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Morton had thus let out the secret he had

-meant to retain, Kike trembled and grew white about

-the lips.  "I'll never forgive him," he said, huskily.

-"I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I

-ain't!"  He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless

-air that belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Can you ride her?  Where are you going?" Morton

-was loth to commit himself by lending his horse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that

-sale; and I've got a right to choose a gardeen.  I

-mean to take one that will make Uncle Enoch open

-his eyes.  I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he hates

-Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done.  As for ridin'

-Dolly, you know I can back any critter with four legs."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton,

-reluctantly.  He knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the

-Captain would hear of it; and then, farewell to Patty!

-But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and wrath,

-he could not quite refuse.  Dolly went home at a

-tremendous pace, and Morton, commonly full of good

-nature, was, for once, insufferably cross at supper-time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry,

-provokingly.  "You're cross as a coon when it's

-cornered."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin.

-The fond mother still hoped that the struggle

-in his mind was the great battle of Armageddon that

-should be the beginning of a better life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a

-contempt for himself.  He tried in vain to acquit himself

-of cowardice&mdash;the quality which a border man considers

-the most criminal.  Early in the morning he fed

-Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came.

-After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on

-the other side of the creek.  Could it be Kike?  Was

-he going to walk to Jonesville, twenty miles away?

-And with his ague-shaken body?  How roundly Morton

-cursed himself for the fear that made him half

-refuse the horse!  For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a

-half refusal was equivalent to the most positive denial.

-It was not too late.  Morton threw the saddle and

-bridle on Dolly, and mounted.  Dolly sprang forward,

-throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen

-minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way!  Take

-Dolly."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, I won't, Morton.  I oughtn't to have axed you

-to let me have her.  I know how you feel about Patty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Confound&mdash;no, I won't say confound Patty&mdash;but

-confound me, if I'm mean enough to let you walk to

-Jonesville.  I was a devlish coward yesterday.  Here,

-take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you," and

-Morton laughed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm

-goin' to walk."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, you look like it!  You'll die before you git

-half-way, you blamed little fool you!  If you won't

-take Dolly, then I'll go along to bury your bones.

-They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such bones,

-though."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable

-for his servility to Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No ways jest now," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?"

-asked Sniger, smiling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place,"

-said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now

-Kike, the fat's all in the fire.  When the Captain finds

-out what you've done, Sniger is sure to tell that he

-see us together.  I've got to fight it out now anyhow,

-and you've got to take Dolly."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, Morton, I can't."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness

-of his knees would have persuaded him to relent.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-051"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-051.jpg" alt="GOOD-BYE!">

-<br>

-GOOD-BYE!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said

-Morton, dismounting.  As soon as Kike had obligingly

-taken hold of the bridle, Morton started toward home,

-singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of his

-rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till

-he had finished the song, and reached the summit of

-the hill.  Then he had the satisfaction of seeing Kike

-in the saddle, laughing to think how his friend had

-outwitted him.  Morton waved his hat heartily, and

-Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she

-plunged forward, carrying him out of sight in a few

-minutes.  Morton's mother was disappointed, when he came

-in late to breakfast, to see that his brow was clear.  She

-feared that the good impressions of the day before had

-worn away.  How little does one know of the real

-nature of the struggle between God and the devil, in the

-heart of another!  But long before Kike had brought

-Dolly back to her stall, the exhilaration of self-sacrifice

-in the mind of Morton had worn away, and the possible

-consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap05"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER V.</i>

-<br><br>

-A CRISIS.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Work, Morton could not.  After his noonday dinner

-he lifted his flint-lock gun from the forked

-sticks upon the wall where it was laid, and set out to

-seek for deer,&mdash;rather to seek forgetfulness of the

-anxiety that preyed upon him.  Excitement was almost a

-necessity with him, even at ordinary times; now, it

-seemed the only remedy for his depression.  But

-instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot everything but

-Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it

-impossible to absorb himself in hunting.  For when a

-frontierman loves, he loves with his whole nature.

-The interests of his life are few, and love, having

-undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.  After

-two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he

-started a deer, but did not see at in time to shoot.

-He had tramped through the brush without caution or

-vigilance.  He now saw that it would be of no avail

-to keep up this mockery of hunting.  He was seized

-with an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her

-once more before the door should be closed against

-him.  He might strike the trail, and reach the settlement

-in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the

-Captain was away from the house.  His only chance

-was to see her in the absence of her father, who would

-surely contrive some interruption if he were present.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return

-was about half accomplished he ran headlong into the

-very midst of a flock of wild turkeys.  They ran

-swiftly away in two or three directions, but not until

-the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down

-two glossy young gobblers.  Tying their legs together

-with a strip of paw-paw bark, he slung them across

-his gun, and laid his gun over his shoulder, pleased

-that he would not have to go home quite empty-handed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn

-afternoon, he is such a man as one likes to see:

-quite six feet high, well made, broad, but not too

-broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose litheness

-indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled

-away somewhere for an emergency.  His walk is direct,

-elastic, unflagging; he is like his horse, a clean

-stepper; there is neither slouchiness, timidity, nor

-craftiness in his gait.  The legs are as much a test of

-character as the face, and in both one can read

-resolute eagerness.  His forehead is high rather than

-broad, his blue eye and curly hair, and a certain

-sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his Scotch-Irish

-mother.  His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him

-the look of a hunter.  The homespun "hunting shirt"

-hangs outside his buckskin breeches, and these

-terminate below inside his rawhide boots.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well

-enough by this time, but, like a policeman on duty,

-Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect his

-function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at

-the gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air

-of surly vigilance.  The young man hails him with a

-friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old fellow smooths

-his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed

-tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical

-enough if Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the

-old cabin portion of the building, used for a kitchen

-and loom-room.  The monotonous rise and fall of the

-wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder and

-louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then

-slacking, then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new

-climax&mdash;this cadenced hum, as he hears it, is made

-rhythmical by the tread of feet that run back across

-the room after each climax of sound.  He knows the

-quick, elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead

-entrance to the house, and passes round to the

-kitchen door.  It is Patty, as he thought, and, as his

-shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very act of

-urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it

-till it roars, and at the same time nods merrily at

-Morton over the top of it; then she trips back across

-the room, drawing the yarn with her left hand, which

-she holds stretched out; when the impulse is somewhat

-spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty

-catches the wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle,

-and turns to the door.  She changes her spinning stick

-to the left hand, and extends her right with a genial

-"Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, one for you and one for mother."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill,

-doffing his coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead

-with his red handkerchief.  "Go on with your spinning,

-Patty, I like to see you spin."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I will.  I mean to spin two dozen cuts

-to-day.  I've been at it since five o'clock."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin.  He

-was, in his present perplexed state, willing to avoid all

-conversation except such broken talk as might be

-carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the

-spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure

-as did the old spinning-wheel.  Patty's perfect form

-was disfigured by no stays, or pads, or paniers&mdash;her

-swift tread backwards with her up-raised left hand, her

-movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her

-agile figure in lithe action.  If plastic art were not an

-impossibility to us Americans, our stone-cutters might

-long since have ceased, like school-boys, to send us

-back from Rome imitation Venuses, and counterfeit

-Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and

-stagey Washingtons on stage-horses;&mdash;they would by

-this time have found out that in our primitive life

-there are subjects enough, and that in mythology and

-heroics we must ever be dead copyists.  But I do not

-believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat

-there in the October evening sun and watched the little

-feet, yet full of unexhausted energy after traveling to

-and fro all day.  He did not know, or care, that Patty,

-with her head thrown back and her left arm half

-outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject

-for a statue.  He had never seen marble, and had

-never heard of statues except in the talk of the old

-schoolmaster.  How should her think to call her

-statuesque?  Or how should he know that the wide old

-log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast

-fireplace, wherein sit the two huge, black andirons, and

-wherein swings an iron crane on which hang pot-hooks

-with iron pots depending&mdash;the old kitchen, with

-its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are

-festooned strings of drying pumpkins&mdash;how should

-Morton Goodwin know that this wide old kitchen,

-with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,

-fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two

-dozen cuts of yarn in a day, would make a <i>genre</i>

-piece, the subject of which would be good enough for

-one of the old Dutch masters?  He could not know

-all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet

-treading swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and

-as he saw the fine face, ruddy with the vigorous

-exercise, looking at him over the top of a whirling wheel

-whose spokes were invisible&mdash;he did know that Patty

-Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he

-shuddered when he remembered that to-morrow, and

-indefinitely afterward, he might be shut out from her

-father's house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<a id="p56"></a>

-It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's

-broken patches of sprightly talk and the monotonous

-symphony of her wheel, that Captain Lumsden came

-into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his

-boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around

-to the kitchen door.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Morton! here, eh?  Been hunting?  This

-don't pay.  A young man that is going to get on in

-the world oughtn't to set here in the sunshine talking

-to the girls.  Leave that for nights and Sundays.  I'm

-afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and

-late.  Eh?"  And the captain chuckled his hard little

-laugh.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon

-vanish, as he rose to go.  He laid the turkey

-destined for Patty inside the door, took up the other,

-and was about to leave.  Meantime the captain had

-lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his

-thirst.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary

-way, between his sips of water&mdash;and Morton felt his

-face color at the first mention of Kike.  "I saw Kike

-crossing the creek on your mare.  You oughtn't to let

-him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet.  Here

-comes Kike himself.  I wonder where he's been to?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he

-opened the gate, evidence of deep passion; but

-Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking for anything

-remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat

-him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached,

-while Watch faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've

-you been cavorting on that filley to-day?  I told Mort

-he was a fool to let a snipe like you ride that

-she-devil.  She'll break your blamed neck some day, and

-then there'll be one fool less."  And the captain

-chuckled triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting

-the thing.  "Don't kick the dog!  What an ill-natured

-ground-hog you air!  If I had the training of you, I'd

-take some of that out."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You haven't got the training of me, and you never

-will have."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man,"

-chuckled Captain Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't know what you call impudence," said

-Kike, stretching his slender frame up to its full height,

-and shaking as if he had an ague-chill; "but you are

-a tyrant and a scoundrel!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Tut! tut!  Kike, you're crazy, you little brute.

-What's up?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You know what's up.  You want to cheat me out

-of that bottom land; you have got it advertised on

-the back side of a tree in North's holler, without

-consulting mother or me.  I have been over to Jonesville

-to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my

-gardeen."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Colonel Wheeler?  Why, that's an insult to me!"  And

-the captain ceased to laugh, and grew red.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I hope it is.  I couldn't get the judge to take

-back the order for the sale of the land; he's afeard of

-you.  But now let me tell you something, Enoch

-Lumsden!  If you sell my land by that order of the

-court, you'll lose more'n you'll make.  I ain't afeard

-of the devil nor none of his angels; and I recken

-you're one of the blackest.  It'll cost you more burnt

-barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and sheep

-than what you make will pay for.  You cheated pappy,

-but you shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike.

-I'll turn Ingin, and take Ingin law onto you, you old

-thief and&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-059"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-059.jpg" alt="THE ALTERCATION.">

-<br>

-THE ALTERCATION.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised

-his cowhide.  "I'll teach you some manners, you

-impudent little brat!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or

-foot.  "Hit me if you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and

-they'll be blood betwixt us then.  You hit me wunst,

-and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year.  You

-or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all

-about her two dozen a day, and stood frightened in

-the door, near Morton.  Morton advanced and took

-hold of Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, Kike!  Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike,

-shaking loose.  "I've got an account to settle, and ef

-he tetches a thread of my coat with a cowhide, it'll be

-a bad day fer both on us.  We'll settle with blood

-then."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled

-the captain.  "I know well enough who put Kike up

-to this.  I'll settle with both of you, some day."  Then,

-with an oath, the captain went into the house,

-while the two young men moved away down the road,

-Morton not daring to look at Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-What Morton dreaded most had come upon him.

-As for Kike, when once they were out of sight of

-Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame was

-terrible.  He sat down on a log and cried with grief and

-anger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances,

-Mort," said he.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Morton did not reply.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap06"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER VI.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE FALL HUNT.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Morton led Kike home in silence, and then

-returned to his father's house, deposited his turkey

-outside the door, and sat down on a broken chair by

-the fire-place.  His father, a hypochondriac, hard of

-hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at

-him steadily a moment, and then said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Sick, Mort?  Goin' to have a chill?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, sir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as

-he stuffed his pipe full of leaf tobacco which he had

-chafed in his hand, and sat down on the other side of

-the fire-place.  "I feel a kind of all-overishness

-myself.  I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this

-year.  Hey?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't know, sir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I said I didn't know."  Morton found it hard to

-answer his father with decency.  The old man said

-"Oh," when he understood Morton's last reply; and

-perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he

-devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on

-the awful consequences that might result if "the fever,"

-which was rumored to have broken out at Chilicothe,

-should spread to the Hissawachee bottom.  Mrs. Goodwin

-took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence

-of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and

-she began to hope more than ever that he might

-prove to be one of the elect.  Indeed, she thought it

-quite probable that a boy so good to his mother would

-be one of the precious few; for though she knew that

-the election was unconditional, and of grace, she could

-not help feeling that there was an antecedent probability

-of Morton's being chosen.  She went quietly and

-cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin corn-meal

-dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a

-griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the

-hoe in its place before the fire, setting the sassafras

-tea to draw, skimming the milk, and arranging the

-plates&mdash;white, with blue edges&mdash;and the yellow cups

-and saucers on the table, and all the while praying

-that Morton might be found one of those chosen before

-the foundation of the world to be sanctified and

-saved to the glory of God.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible

-breaking out of the fever, and the meditation of his

-wife about the hopeful state of her son, and the

-painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break

-with Captain Lumsden&mdash;all three set agoing primarily

-by one cause&mdash;were all three simultaneously interrupted

-by the appearance of the younger son, Henry, at

-the door, with a turkey.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father.  "Well,

-the captain's feeling clever, I 'low."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said

-it was with Miss Patty's somethin' or other&mdash;couplements,

-Bob called 'em."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton,

-smiling.  "Well, you're gettin' on there mighty

-fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to send a

-turkey?"  The mother looked anxiously at her son,

-seeing he did not evince any pleasure at so singular a

-present from Patty.  Morton was obliged to explain

-the state of affairs between himself and the captain,

-which he did in as few words as possible.  Of course,

-he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the

-turkey was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional

-pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe

-again, after supper.  "Quarreled with Lumsden!  He'll

-drive us off.  We'll all take the fever"&mdash;for every evil

-that Job Goodwin thought of immediately became

-inevitable, in his imagination&mdash;"we'll all take the fever,

-and have to make a new settlement in winter time."  Saying

-this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth,

-rested his elbow on his knee, and his head on his

-hand, diligently exerting his imagination to make real

-and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from

-this new and improved stand-point of despair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But the wise mother set herself to planning; and

-when eight o'clock had come, and Job Goodwin had

-forgotten the fever, having fallen into a doze in his

-shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that

-the best thing for him and Kike would be to get out

-of the settlement until the captain should have time

-to cool off.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything

-desperate.  We want some meat for winter; and

-though it's a little early yet, you'd better start off with

-Kike in the morning," she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown

-pain and forebodings in some excitement, Morton did

-not need a second suggestion from his mother.  He

-feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he

-had little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he

-had an eager desire to forget his trouble in a chase

-after bears and deer.  He seized his cap, saddled and

-mounted Dolly, and started at once to the house of

-Kike's mother.  Soon after Morton went, his father

-woke up, and, finding his son gone out, complained,

-as he got ready for bed, that the boy would "ketch the

-fever, certain, runnin' 'round that away at night."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-064"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-064.jpg" alt="THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.">

-<br>

-THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton found Kike

-in a state of

-exhaustion&mdash;pale, angry, and

-sick.  Mr. Brady, the

-Irish school-master,

-from whom the boys

-had received most of

-their education and

-many a sound whipping,

-was doing his

-best to divert Kike

-from his revengeful

-mood.  It is a singular

-fact in the history

-of the West, that so

-large a proportion of the first school-masters were

-Irishmen of uncertain history.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ha!  Moirton, is it you?" said Brady.  "I'm

-roight glad to see ye.  Here's this b'y says hay'd a

-shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a toiched him

-with his roidin'-fwhip.  An' I've been a-axin ov him

-fwoi hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times,

-sayin' oive lathered him with baich switches.  I didn't

-guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay wuz, sure.  Else I'd a

-had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd a

-venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was

-the bayginnin'.  Hay moight a busted me impty pate

-for tellin' him that A wusn't B."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling

-at the good old fellow's banter.  Brady was bent on

-mollifying Kike, who was one of his brightest and

-most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and

-Morton in scholarship though much younger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was

-much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion.

-"I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger," she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair

-madam?" asked the Irishman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I

-could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't

-be sich a fool.  Boys is allers powerful troublesome

-when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween&mdash;nary man nor

-boy.  They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n

-they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and

-talk about shootin', and all sich like.  Deliver me from

-a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap,

-and larnt what's what.  Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's

-been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y

-he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like

-his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't

-turn.  An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I <i>would</i> be glad ef

-he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike

-to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden.  Nobody

-but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an'

-it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the

-Jedgment-day.  Nothin' does my heart so much good,

-like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle

-<i>then</i>, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake

-a mortgage in <i>his</i> face.  It's the on'y rale nice thing

-about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'.

-I mean to call his attention to some things then.  He

-won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust

-families thar, I 'low."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of

-Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little,

-partly at his mother's way of putting things, and

-partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he

-and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the

-fall hunt.  Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on

-him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his

-uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the

-opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a

-rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant

-to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't want to run away from him.  He'll think

-I've backed out," he said, hesitatingly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you

-put out and git some bear's ile for your noice black

-hair.  If the cap'n makes so bowld as to sell ye out

-of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile ye're

-gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git

-back.  The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit.

-It'll burn a dale better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad.

-An', as for the shootin' part, practice on the bears fust!

-'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the captain, and

-him ye're own dair uncle, ye know.  He'll keep till ye

-come back.  If I say anybody a goin' to crack him

-owver, I'll jist spake a good word for ye, an' till him

-as the captin's own affictionate niphew has got the

-fust pop at him, by roight of bayin' blood kin, sure."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation

-of the matter; and while he hesitated, his mother

-said he should go.  She'd bundle him off in the

-early morning.  And long before daylight, the two

-boys, neither of whom had slept during the night,

-started, with guns on their shoulders, and with the

-venerable Blaze for a pack-horse.  Dolly was a giddy

-young thing, that could not be trusted in business so

-grave.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap07"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER VII.</i>

-<br><br>

-TREEING A PREACHER.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Had I but bethought myself in time to call this

-history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue,

-as "The Wild Hunters of the Far West," or even by one

-of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school

-literature&mdash;milk for babes&mdash;is now made attractive, as,

-for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter."  I might

-here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description

-of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands

-of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after

-deer under the direction of Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After two weeks of such varying success as hunters

-have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the

-discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest

-settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition.

-Wilkins' store, which was the center of a settlement,

-was a double log-building.  In one end the proprietor

-kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets,

-cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of

-earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton

-cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn

-and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco

-for "chawing," a little "store-tea"&mdash;so called in

-contra-distinction to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in

-general use&mdash;with a plentiful stock of whisky, and

-some apple-brandy.  The other end of this building

-was a large room, festooned with strings of drying

-pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted

-by one small window with four lights of glass.  In this

-room, which contained three beds, and in the loft

-above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a

-first-class hotel.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to

-Diana and Bacchus.  Our young friends visited the

-settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not because they

-wished to rest, but because they had begun to get

-lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to

-find some frolic in progress, and in making new

-acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be

-able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games

-at cards, and other social enjoyments.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined

-store and tavern at ten o'clock in the morning, and

-found the expected crowd of loafers.  The new-comers

-"took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the

-foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the

-target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and

-were soon accepted as clever fellows.  A frontierman

-could bestow no higher praise&mdash;to be a clever fellow

-in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without

-grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to

-be always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks

-for the crowd," and to be able to hit a three-inch

-"mark" at two hundred paces without bragging.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a

-little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in

-homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand,

-and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman.

-He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an

-acute observer might have guessed from his face that

-his life had been one of daring adventure, and many

-vicissitudes.  There were traces also of conflicting

-purposes, of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of

-character; the melancholy history of good intentions

-overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations

-was written in his countenance.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-070"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-070.jpg" alt="ELECTIONEERING.">

-<br>

-ELECTIONEERING.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of

-Morton's companions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke

-to each one as though he had known him always.  He

-proposed "the drinks" as the surest road to an

-acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger paid

-the score, not in skins but in silver coin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously,

-"you're mighty clever, by hokey.  What are you

-running fer?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time.  I

-'low to run for sheriff next heat," said the stranger,

-who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home.

-I live at Jenkinsville.  I sot out in life a poor boy.

-I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that my shoes hurts

-my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand

-most of the time."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the

-stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well,

-Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done

-before.  We're all goin' to vote for you, without t'other

-man happens to do it up slicker'n you do.  I don't

-believe he can, though.  That was got off very nice."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh

-which this sally produced, and to make friends with

-Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and

-whose influence was worth securing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and

-play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even

-of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny

-anecdotes&mdash;little stories that had been aired in the same

-order at every other tavern and store in the county.

-From sheer <i>ennui</i> it was proposed that they should

-attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away.

-They could at least get some fun out of it.  Burchard,

-foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself.  He wished

-he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on.  And

-"push on" he did.  In a closely contested election

-even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton and Kike relished the expedition.  They

-had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting,

-illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an

-appearance of piety.  Mr. Donaldson had often

-fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt

-almost sure that they could count on his apostolic

-approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a

-Methodist meeting.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest

-type.  His speech was full of dialectic forms and

-ungrammatical phrases.  His illustrations were

-exceedingly uncouth.  It by no means followed that he was

-not an effective preacher.  All these defects were rather

-to his advantage,&mdash;the backwoods rhetoric was suited

-to move the backwoods audience.  But the party from

-the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything.

-They came for amusement, and set themselves

-diligently to seek it.  Morton was ambitious to lead

-among his new friends, as he did at home, and on

-this occasion he made use of his rarest gift.  The

-preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up"

-with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude

-metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was

-fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin,

-who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the

-diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of

-Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat

-in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher,

-as if profoundly interested in the discourse.  The

-women were startled and the grave brethren turned

-their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the

-young men.  In a moment the squeaking ceased, and

-there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which

-seemed to be on the women's side of the room.  Brother

-Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request

-that the dog should be removed, when he began to

-suspect from the sensation among the young men that

-the disturbance was from them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies

-will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of

-four."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no

-permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being

-a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the

-audience, but for the applause of the young revelers

-with whom he had come.  He kept silence now, until

-the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his

-stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous

-pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem

-sufficiently terrible to his hearers.  At last, when he

-got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out

-dramatically, "What are these awful sounds I hear?"  At

-this point he made a pause, which would have been

-very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a

-crow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung

-and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no

-bottom."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming

-to come from nowhere in particular.  Mr. Mellen now

-ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the

-room in which the young men sat, evidently intending

-to deal out summary justice to some one.  He was

-a man of immense strength, and his face indicated

-that he meant to eject the whole party.  But they all

-left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the

-preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence.

-Mr. Mellen was perplexed.  A disembodied voice

-wandering about the room would have been too much

-for Hercules himself.  When the baffled orator turned

-back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in

-an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of

-Mr. Mellen's inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon

-him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap08"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER VIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-A LESSON IN SYNTAX.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The young men were gone until the latter part of

-November.  Several persons longed for their

-return.  Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to feel a

-strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and

-died in the woods.  He was also very sure that each

-succeeding day would witness some act of hostility

-toward himself on the part of Captain Lumsden; and

-as each day failed to see any evil result from the

-anger of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any

-tidings of disaster to Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully

-carried forward the dark foreboding with compound

-interest to the next day.  He abounded in quotations

-of such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's

-days were few and full of trouble.  The book of

-Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial fountain of misery&mdash;he

-delighted to found his despairing auguries upon

-the superior wisdom of Solomon.  He looked for

-Morton's return with great anxiety, hoping to find

-that nothing worse had happened to him than the

-shooting away of an arm.  Mrs. Goodwin, for her

-part, dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of

-hunting.  She feared lest Morton should fall into the

-bad habits that had carried away from home an older

-brother, for whose untimely death in an affray she

-had never ceased to mourn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Patty!  When her father had on that angry

-afternoon discovered the turkey that Morton had given

-her, and had sent it home with a message in her

-name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that

-she was.  She held her head aloft; she neither indicated

-pleasure nor displeasure at her father's course;

-she would not disclose any liking for Morton, nor

-any complaisance toward her father.  This air of

-defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired.  It showed

-her mettle, he said to himself.  Patty would almost

-have finished that two dozen cuts of yarn if it had

-cost her life.  She even managed to sing, toward the

-last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine

-o'clock, she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,&mdash;drawing

-a sigh of relief when the reel snapped,&mdash;and hung her

-twelve hanks up together, she seemed as blithe as

-ever.  Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand,

-with wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked

-approvingly on Patty's achievement.  Patty showed her

-good blood, was the mother's reflection.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-077"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-077.jpg" alt="PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.">

-<br>

-PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Patty?  She did not hurry.  She put everything

-away carefully.  She was rather slow about

-retiring.  But when at last she went aloft into her room

-in the old block-house part of the building, and shut

-and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the

-high, old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she

-looked at herself in the little looking-glass and did

-not see there the face she had been able to keep

-while the eyes of others were upon her.  She saw

-weariness, disappointment, and dejection.  Her strong

-will held her up.  She undressed herself with habitual

-quietness.  She even stopped to look again in self-pity

-at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on her

-night-cap.  But

-when at last she

-had blown out the

-candle, and carefully

-extinguished

-the wick, and had climbed

-into the great, high,

-billowy feather-bed under

-the rafters, she

-buried her tired head in

-the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once

-admitting to herself what she was crying about.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And as the days wore on, and her father ceased

-to speak of Kike or Morton, and she heard that they

-were out of the settlement, she found in herself an

-ever-increasing desire to see Morton.  The more she

-tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied

-to herself the existence of the feeling, the more intense

-did it become.  Whenever hunters passed the gate, going

-after or returning laden with game, she stopped

-involuntarily to gaze at them.  But she never failed, a

-moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of

-countenance and to rebuke herself for curiosity so

-idle.  What were hunters to her?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But one evening the travelers whom she looked for

-went by.  They were worse for wear; their buckskin

-pantaloons were torn by briers; their tread was

-heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,

-peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse,

-did not fail to recognize old Blaze, burdened

-as he was with venison, bear-meat and skins, nor to

-note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at

-Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse

-of herself.  That look of Morton's sent a blush of

-pleasure over her face, which she could not quite

-conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a younger

-brother a minute later.  But when she saw her father

-gallop rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the

-young men, her sense of pleasure changed quickly to

-foreboding.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part,

-to throw off their troubles in the excitement of

-hunting.  But when at last they had accumulated all the

-meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they

-could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home.

-And with the turning of their steps toward home had

-come the inevitable turning of their thoughts toward

-old perplexities.  Morton then confided to Kike his

-intention of leaving the settlement and leading the

-life of a hermit in the wilderness in case it should

-prove to be "all off" between him and Patty.  And

-Kike said that his mind was made up.  If he found

-that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be

-revenged in some way and then run off and live with

-the Indians.  It is not uncommon for boys now-a-days

-to make stern resolutions in moments of wretchedness

-which they never attempt to carry out.  But the

-rude life of the West developed deep feeling and a

-hardy persistence in a purpose once formed.  Many a

-young man crossed in love or incited to revenge had

-already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a

-morose hermit or a desperado among the savages.

-At the period of life when the animal fights hard for

-supremacy in the soul of man, destiny often hangs

-very perilously balanced.  It was at that day a

-question in many cases whether a young man of force

-would become a rowdy or a class-leader.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When once our hunters had entered the settlement

-they became more depressed than ever.  Morton's eyes

-searched Captain Lumsden's house and yard in vain

-for a sight of Patty.  Kike looked sternly ahead of

-him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded

-of his uncle's existence.  And when, five minutes later,

-they heard horse-hoofs behind them, and, looking back,

-saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping after them on

-his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat

-fast with excitement.  Morton wondered what the Captain

-could want with them, seeing it was not his way

-to carry on his conflicts by direct attack; and Kike

-contented himself with looking carefully to the

-priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking

-straight forward.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, boys!  Howdy?  Got a nice passel of furs,

-eh?  Had a good time?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished

-at the greeting, but eager enough to be on good

-terms again with Patty's father.  Kike said not a

-word, but grew white with speechless anger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain

-tapped it with his cow-hide whip.  "Killed a bar,

-too; who killed it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Kike," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Purty good fer you, Kike!  Got over your pout

-about that land yet?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could

-not.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss

-about nothing!  I didn't sell it, of course, when you

-didn't want me to, but you ought to have a little

-manners in your way of speaking.  Come to me next

-time, and don't go running to the judge and old

-Wheeler.  If you won't be a fool, you'll find your

-own kin your best friends.  Come over and see me

-to-morry, Mort.  I've got some business with you.

-Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty

-looked at his face to see what had been the nature

-of his interview with the boys.  With a characteristic

-love of exerting power over the moods of another, he

-said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest

-little brute I ever did see."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Patty spent most of her time during the

-night in trying to guess what this saying indicated.

-It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the

-Captain's cordiality might signify.  Kike was pleased

-that his land had not been sold, but he was not in

-the least mollified by that fact.  He was glad of his

-victory and hated his uncle all the more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly

-enjoyed the warm hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the

-milk and butter, that he got at his mother's table.

-His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and

-sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them

-all before Christmas or Noo Years.  Morton told of

-his meeting with the Captain in some elation, but Job

-Goodwin shook his head.  He "knowed what that

-meant," he said.  "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep.

-He'd hit sometime when you didn't know whar the

-lick come from.  And he'd hit powerful hard when he

-<i>did</i> hit, you be shore."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Before the supper was over, who should come in

-but Brady.  He had heard, he said, that Morton had

-come home, and he was dayloighted to say him agin.

-Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all

-the gossip of the settlement, and having a most

-miscellaneous and disordered lot of information besides,

-Brady was always welcome; he filled the place of a

-local newspaper.  He was a man of much reading, but

-with no mental discipline.  He had treasured all the

-strange and delightful things he had ever heard or

-read&mdash;the bloody murders, the sudden deaths, the

-wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups and

-downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of

-humorous stories.  He had so many of these at command

-that it was often surmised that he manufactured

-them.  He "boarded 'round" during school-time, and

-sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a man

-can be said to sponge who paid for his board so

-amply in amusement, information, flattery, and a

-thousand other good offices.  Good company is scarcer

-and higher in price in the back settlements than in

-civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing

-of <i>ennui</i>, has declared that the genial Brady's

-"company wuz worth his keep,"&mdash;an opinion in which

-husbands and children always coincided.  For

-welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes

-another's reception sure until he is pretty certain of his

-wife's disposition toward the guest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with

-right good will, and Brady catechised "Moirton"

-about his adventures.  The story of Kike's first bear

-roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when

-Morton told of his encounter with the circuit-rider,

-Brady laughed merrily.  Nothing was too bad in his

-eyes for "a man that undertook to prache afore hay

-could parse."  Brady's own grammatical knowledge,

-indeed, had more influence on his parsing than on

-his speech.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to

-the strangest of all his adventures&mdash;the meeting with

-Captain Lumsden; and while he told it, the schoolmaster's

-eyes were brimming full of fun.  By the time

-the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that

-Brady knew more about it than he affected to.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you

-could tell something about this thing.  What made the

-coon come down so easy?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair

-father-in-law (that is to bay) a coun.  Ye ought to

-have larn't some manners agin this toime, with all the

-batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer supayriors.

-An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling

-the ears of a sleepy dog with a straw, saw an

-infinite deal of fun in this rig on Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady.

-How did you fetch the Captain round?  For

-I think you did it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under

-his eyebrows with his face all a-twinkle with fun.

-"I jist parsed the sintince in sich a way as to put

-the Captin in the nominative case.  He loikes to be

-put in the nominative case, does the Captin.  If iver

-yer goin' to win the devoine craycher that calls him

-father ye'll hev to larn to parse with Captin Lumsden

-for the nominative."  Here Brady gave the whole

-party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his

-head reflectively upon his bosom.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of

-parsing.  You left that rule of syntax out last winter."

-said Morton, seeking to draw out the master by

-humoring his fancy.  "How did you parse the sentence

-with him, while Kike and I were gone?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs

-the varb, and thin the varb governs 'most all the

-rist of the sintince."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the

-same time the pompous air and authoritative voice

-with which Brady was accustomed to make such a

-demand of a pupil.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton.  But ye must all

-be quiet about it.  I wint to say the Captin soon

-afther yerself and Koike carried yer two impty skulls

-into the woods.  An' I looked koind of confidintial-loike

-at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to

-riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,'

-siz I, 'till the folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz

-I; 'ye've got more interest in the county,' siz I, 'than

-the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've got the brains to exart an

-anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I.  Will, ye see,

-Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,'

-siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he.  An'

-I saw I had 'im.  I'd jist put 'im in the nominative

-case governin' the varb.  And I was the varb.  An' I

-mint to govern, the rist."  Here Brady stopped to smile

-complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I,

-'ye must be moighty keerful not to give the inimy any

-handle onto ye,' siz I.  An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll

-be keerful,' siz he.  An' I siz, 'Captin, be pertik'ler

-keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may make so

-bowld,' siz I.  'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere.

-They're a-talkin' about it now.'  An' the Captin siz,

-'Will, Brady, I say I kin thrust ye,' siz he.  An' I

-siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye kin thrust

-the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I.  'Brady,'

-siz he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me,

-since the little brat's gone and brought ole Whayler

-into it,' siz he.  'Ye bitter belave it is, Captin,' siz I.

-'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he.  'Spoike the guns,

-Captin,' siz I.  'How?' siz he.  'Make it all roight

-with Koike and Moirton,' siz I.  'As fer Moirton,' siz

-I, 'he's the smartest <i>young</i> man,' siz I (puttin'

-imphasis on '<i>young</i>,' you say), he's the smartest young

-man,' siz I, 'in the bottoms; and if ye kin make an

-alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got the smartest old

-man managin' the smartest young man.  An' if ye kin

-make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi

-at 'im, 'atwixt that devoine young craycher, yer

-charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and Moirton, ye've got him

-tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,' siz I.  An'

-he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all.

-I'll think about it,' siz he.  An' that's how I made

-Captin Lumsden the nominative case governin' the

-varb&mdash;that's myself&mdash;and thin the varb rigilates the

-rist.  But I must go and say Koike, or the little

-black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid

-the captin.  Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin,

-it's meself as has got a hard sum in the rule of

-thray.  This toime I hope the answer'll come out all

-roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on

-the shoulder and went out.  Then he put his head

-into the door again to say that the answer set down

-in the book was: "Misthress Patty Goodwin."

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap09"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER IX.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the

-flag of independence in the Hissawachee bottom.

-He had been a Captain in the Revolution; but

-Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to

-grow during the quarter of a century that followed

-the close of the war.  An ex-officer's neighbors

-carried him forward with his advancing age; a sort of

-ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of

-military titles as the Revolution passed into history

-and heroes became scarcer.  And emigration always

-advanced a man several degrees&mdash;new neighbors, in

-their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give

-him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as

-possible the lustre which the new-comer conferred upon

-the settlement.  Thus Captain Wheeler in Maryland

-was Major Wheeler in Western Pennsylvania, and a

-full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his

-second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek.

-And yet I may be wrong.  Perhaps it was not the

-transplanting that did it.  Even had he remained on

-the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through a

-process of canonization as he advanced in life that

-would have brought him to a colonelcy: other men

-did.  For what is a Colonel but a Captain gone to seed?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression;

-and, as a conscientious writer, far be it from me

-to use slang.  And I take great credit to myself for

-avoiding it just now, since nothing could more

-perfectly describe Wheeler.  His hair was grizzling, his

-shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded

-in an expression of perpetual resistance, and his

-prominent chin and brow seemed to have been jammed

-together; the space between was too small.  He had an

-air of defense; his nature was always in a

-"guard-against-cavalry" attitude.  He had entered into the

-spirit of colonial resistance from childhood; he was

-born in antagonism to kings and all that are in

-authority; it was a family tradition that he had been

-flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into

-the face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of

-course looked about for the power that was to be

-resisted, and was not long in finding it in his neighbor,

-Captain Lumsden.  He was the one opponent whom

-Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure.

-To Wheeler this fight against Lumsden was the

-one delightful element of life in the Bottoms.  He had

-now the comfortable prospect of spending his declining

-years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful

-foe, whose encroachments on the rights and privileges

-of his neighbors would afford him an inexhaustible

-theme for denunciation, and a delightful incitement

-to the exercise of his powers of resistance.  And

-thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better

-relish because of his contest with Lumsden.  Mordecai

-could not have had half so much pleasure in staring

-stiffly at the wicked Haman as Isaiah Wheeler found

-in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without so

-much as a nod of recognition.  And Haman's feelings

-were not more deeply wounded than Lumsden's.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married;

-for at home he could find no encroachments to resist.

-The perfect temper of his wife disarmed even his

-opposition.  He had begun his married life by fighting

-his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the

-Hissawachee and found Methodism unpopular, he took up

-arms in its defense.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such was the man whom Kike had selected as

-guardian&mdash;a man who, with all his disagreeableness,

-was possessed of honesty, a virtue not inconsistent

-with oppugnancy.  But Kike's chief motive in choosing

-him was that he knew that the choice would be a

-stab to his uncle's pride.  Moreover, Wheeler was the

-only man who would care to brave Lumsden's anger

-by taking the trust.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and

-to this house, on the day after the return of Morton

-and Kike, there rode a stranger.  He was a broad-shouldered,

-stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five, with a

-serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white

-hat, a coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted

-and buttoned to the chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey"

-leggings tied about his legs below the knees.  He

-rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of saddlebags.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double

-cabin, he shouted, after the Western fashion, "Hello!

-Hello the house!"

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-089"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-089.jpg" alt="COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.">

-<br>

-COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous

-barking, ranging in key all the way from the

-contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice" to the deep

-baying of a huge bull-dog.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler,

-opening the door, and shouting to the dogs, "You,

-Bull, come here!  Git out, pup!  Clear out, all of

-you!"  And he accompanied this command by threateningly

-lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs

-scampered away, and a third sneakingly retreated; but the

-bull-dog turned with reluctance, and, without smoothing

-his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the

-house, protesting with surly growls against this

-authoritative interruption.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler,

-advancing with caution, but without much cordiality.

-He would not commit himself to a welcome too rashly;

-strangers needed inspection.  "'Light, won't you?"

-he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to

-dismount, while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who

-came out at that moment to "put up the stranger's

-horse, and give him some fodder and corn."  Then

-turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment,

-and said: "A preacher, I reckon, sir?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard

-that your wife was a member of the Methodist Church,

-and that you were very friendly; so I came round

-this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for

-preaching.  I have one or two vacant days on my

-round, and thought maybe I might as well take

-Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I didn't find

-anything to prevent."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-By this time the colonel and his guest had reached

-the door, and the former only said, "Well, sir, let's go

-in, and see what the old woman says.  I don't agree

-with you Methodists about everything, but I do think

-that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody

-to say anything against circuit riders without

-taking it up."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly

-religious face&mdash;a countenance in which scruples are

-balanced by evenness of temperament&mdash;was at the

-moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue dye that

-stood in a great iron kettle by the fire.  She made

-haste to wash and dry her hands, that she might have

-a "good, old-fashioned Methodist shake-hands" with

-Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist preacher she

-had seen since she left Pittsburg."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder

-should preach in his house.  Methodists had just

-the same rights in a free country that other people

-had.  He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement didn't

-belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of

-England in his time, and was jist as ready to fight

-aginst the King of Hissawachee Bottom."  The Colonel

-almost relaxed his stubborn lips into a smile when

-he said this.  Besides, he proceeded, his wife was a

-Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose.

-He was friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a

-professor.  If his wife didn't want to wear rings or

-artificials, it was money in his pocket, and nobody had

-a right to object.  Colonel Wheeler plumed himself

-before the new preacher upon his general friendliness

-toward religion, and really thought it might be set down

-on the credit side of that account in which he imagined

-some angelic book-keeper entered all his transactions.

-He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain,"

-as he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin'

-for he got from <i>such</i> a wife as his, and his own

-gineral friendliness to the preachers and the Methodis'

-meetings, he would be saved at the last, <i>somehow or

-nother</i>."  It was not in the man to reflect that his

-"gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin

-in a gineral spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the

-settlement to inform everybody that there would be

-preaching in his house that evening.  The news was

-told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of

-loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home

-that afternoon, called a "Hello!" at every house he

-passed; and when the salutation from within was

-answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they

-had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel

-Wheeler's."  And then the eager listener, generally the

-woman of the house, would cry out, "Laws-a-massy!

-You don't say!  A Methodis'?  One of the shoutin'

-kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches!

-What will the Captin' do?  They do say he <i>does</i> hate

-the Methodis' worse nor copperhead snakes, now.

-Some old quarrel, liker'n not.  Well, I'm agoin', jist to

-see how <i>red</i>ikl'us them Methodis' <i>does</i> do!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The news was sent to Brady's school, which had

-"tuck up" for the winter, and from this centre also it

-soon spread throughout the neighborhood.  It reached

-Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his

-little crowing chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the

-Methodists in!  We'll have to see about that.  A man that

-brings such people to the settlement ought to be

-lynched.  But I'll match the Methodists.  Where's

-Patty?  Patty!  O, Patty!  Bob, run and find Miss

-Patty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty!

-O' Miss Patty!  Whah is ye?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran

-down toward the barn, shouting, "Miss Patty!  O!

-Miss Patty!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Where was Patty?

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap10"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER X.</i>

-<br><br>

-PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house,

-as usual, to strain the milk.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not

-know what a spring-house is?  A little log cabin six

-feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where

-the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold

-from beneath the hill.  The little cabin-like

-spring-house sits always in the hollow; as you approach it

-you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which

-Western people call "clapboards," you see the green

-moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see

-the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs

-that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and

-open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges,

-you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly

-from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear

-cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and

-in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the

-presence of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues

-of poetry which you can never turn into words.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was in just such a spring-house that Patty

-Lumsden had hidden herself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She brought clean crocks&mdash;earthenware milk pans&mdash;from

-the shelf outside, where they had been airing

-to keep them sweet; she held the strainer in her left

-hand and poured the milk through it until each crock

-was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places

-among the stones, so that they stood half immersed in

-the cold current of spring water; she laid the smooth

-pine cover on each crock, and put a clean stone atop

-that to secure it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While she was thus putting away the milk her

-mind was on Morton.  She wondered what her father

-had said to him yesterday.  In the heart of her heart

-she resolved that if Morton loved her she would

-marry him in the face of her father's displeasure.  She

-had never rebelled against the iron rule, but she felt

-herself full of power and full of endurance.  She could

-go off into the wilderness with Morton; they would

-build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with

-puncheon floor and stick chimney; they would sleep,

-like other poor settlers, on beds of dry leaves, and they

-would subsist upon the food which Morton's unerring

-rifle would bring them from the forest.  These were

-the humble cabin castles she was building.  All girls

-weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight

-wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and

-brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy,

-but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat

-to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out

-of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked

-her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great

-fire-place.  I know it sounds old-fashioned and

-sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to

-a heart like Patty's what may be the scenery on the

-tapestry, if love be the warp and faith the woof?

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-096"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-096.jpg" alt="PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.">

-<br>

-PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring

-to plan his own and Patty's partnership future,

-but he drew a more cheerful picture than she did,

-for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain

-Lumsden's displeasure.  He was at the moment

-going to meet the

-Captain, walking

-down the foot-path

-through the woods,

-kicking the dry

-beech leaves into

-billows before him

-and singing a Scotch love-song of Burns's which he

-had learned from his mother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He planned one future, she another; and in after

-years they might have laughed to think how far wrong

-were both guesses.  The path which Morton followed

-led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on the

-stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone

-voice as he approached, singing tender words that

-made her heart stand still:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;<br>

-  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear<br>

-  Nocht of ill shall come thee near,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My bonnie dearie."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-And as he came right by the spring-house, he

-sang, now in a lower tone lest he should be heard at

-the house, but still more earnestly, and so audibly

-that the listening Patty could hear every word, the

-last stanza:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Fair and lovely as thou art,<br>

-  Thou hast stown my very heart;<br>

-  I can die&mdash;but cannot part,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My bonnie dearie."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-And even as she listened to the last line, Morton

-had discovered that the spring-house door was ajar,

-and turned, shading his eyes, to see if perchance Patty

-might not be within.  He saw her and reached out

-his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet

-unaccustomed to the imperfect light did not see how

-full of blushes was her face&mdash;for she feared that he

-might guess all that she had just been dreaming.  But

-she was resolved at any rate to show him more

-kindness than she would have shown had it not been for

-the displeasure which she supposed her father had

-manifested.  And so she covered the last crock and

-came and stood by him at the door of the spring-house,

-and he talked right on in the tender strain of

-his song.  And she did not protest, but answered

-back timidly and almost as warmly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And that is how little negro Bob at last found

-Patty at the spring-house and found Morton with her.

-"Law's sake!  Miss Patty, done look for ye mos'

-every whah.  Yer paw wants ye."  And with that Bob

-rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips

-into a broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap11"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XI.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain.

-"You've been keeping Patty down at the spring-house

-when she should have been at the loom by this

-time.  In my time young men and women didn't

-waste their mornings.  Nights and Sundays are good

-enough for visiting.  Now, see here, Patty, there's one

-of them plagued Methodist preachers brought into the

-settlement by Wheeler.  These circuit riders are worse

-than third day fever 'n' ager.  They go against dancing

-and artificials and singing songs and reading

-novels and all other amusements.  They give people

-the jerks wherever they go.  The devil's in 'em.  Now

-I want you to go to work and get up a dance to-night,

-and ask all you can get along with.  Nothing'll

-make the preacher so mad as to dance right under

-his nose; and we'll keep a good many people away

-who might get the jerks, or fall down with the power

-and break their necks, maybe."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty was always ready to dance, and she only

-said: "If Morton will help me send the invitations."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of

-the discomfiture he had wrought in a Methodist

-meeting while he was gone.  And he had the satisfaction

-of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased

-Captain Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh,

-Mort?" said the Captain, chuckling interrogatively.

-Morton did not like this proposition, for, notwithstanding

-theological, differences about election, Mrs. Wheeler

-was a fast friend of his mother.  He evaded

-an answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her

-mother concerning the guests.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and

-reels nearly all night.  Morton danced with Patty to

-his heart's content, and in the happiness of Morton's

-assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions

-she was a queen indeed.  She wore the antique

-earrings that were an heir-loom in her mother's

-family, and a showy breast-pin which her father had

-bought her.  These and her new dress of English

-calico made her the envy of all the others.  Pretty

-Betty Harsha was led out by some one at almost

-every dance, but she would have given all of these

-for one dance with Morton Goodwin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching.  Behold

-in Hissawachee Bottom the world's evils in miniature!

-Here are religion and amusement divorced&mdash;set over

-the one against the other as hostile camps.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the

-widow Lumsden, went to the meeting with Kike and

-his mother, explaining his views as he went along.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden.  Me father

-was a Catholic and me mother a Prisbytarian, and

-they compromised on me by making me a mimber of

-the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me

-for orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything

-else but a school taycher in these haythen backwoods.

-But it does same to me that the Mithodists air the

-only payple that can do any good among sich pagans

-as we air.  What would a parson from the ould

-counthry do here?  He moight spake as grammathical as

-Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody would be the

-better of it.  What good does me own grammathical

-acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement?

-With all me grammar I can't kape me boys from

-makin' God's name the nominative case before very bad

-words.  Hey, Koike?  Now, the Mithodists air a narry

-sort of a payple.  But if you want to make a strame

-strong you hev to make it narry.  I've read a good

-dale of history, and in me own estimation the ould

-Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both torrents,

-because they're both shet up by narry banks.  The

-Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and

-dancin' and singin' songs, which is all vairy foolish in me

-own estimation.  But it's kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race

-that turns the whale that fades the worruld to

-git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its

-toime among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's

-grist.  But the brook ain't so bad afther all.  Hey,

-Mrs. Lumsden?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it

-was.  It was very good for watering stock.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the

-schoolmaster, with a laugh.  "And to me own oi the

-wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it chooses and doin'

-what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at than, the

-sthraight-travelin' mill-race.  But I wish these

-Mithodists would convart the souls of some of these

-youngsters, and make 'em quit their gamblin' and swearin'

-and bettin' on horses and gettin' dthrunk.  And maybe

-if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't

-be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles.  Hey,

-Koike?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for

-by this time they were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's

-house.  Despite the dance there were present,

-from near and far, all the house would hold.  For

-those who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double

-motive for going to meeting; a disposition to resent

-the slight was added to their curiosity to hear the

-Methodist preacher.  The dance had taken away those

-who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people

-left out did not feel under any obligation to gratify

-Captain Lumsden by raising a row.  Kike had been

-invited, but had disdained to dance in his uncle's

-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were

-crowded with people.  A little open space was left at

-the door between the rooms for the preacher, who

-presently came edging his way in through the crowd.

-He had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the

-early Methodist preacher, the forest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders,

-powerful arms, shaggy brows, and bristling black

-hair.  He read the hymn, two lines at a time, and led

-the singing himself.  He prayed with the utmost

-sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows

-and gave the simple people a deeper reverence for the

-dreadfulness of the preacher's message.  He prayed as

-a man talking face to face with the Almighty Judge of

-the generations of men; he prayed with an undoubting

-assurance of his own acceptance with God, and

-with the sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of

-his unforgiven hearers.  It is not argument that reaches

-men, but conviction; and for immediate, practical

-purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder out of

-a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute

-writers of ingenious apologies.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve

-not the Holy Spirit of God," he seemed to his hearers

-a prophet come to lay bare their hearts.  Magruder

-had not been educated for his ministry by years

-of study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and

-Systematics; but he knew what was of vastly more

-consequence to him&mdash;how to read and expound the hearts

-and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among

-whom he labored.  He was of their very fibre.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain

-Lumsden's dance, which was prompted, he said, by the

-devil, to keep men out of heaven.  With half a dozen

-quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish

-arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the

-audience fluttered with sensation.  Magruder had a

-vicarious conscience; but a vicarious conscience is good

-for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.  Whitefield

-said that he never preached a sermon to others till

-he had first preached it to George Whitefield; and

-Magruder's severities had all the more effect that his

-audience could see that they had full force upon himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If is hard for us to understand the elements that

-produced such incredible excitements as resulted from

-the early Methodist preaching.  How at a camp-meeting,

-for instance, five hundred people, indifferent

-enough to everything of the sort one hour before,

-should be seized during a sermon with terror&mdash;should

-cry aloud to God for mercy, some of them falling in

-trances and cataleptic unconsciousness; and how, out

-of all this excitement, there should come forth, in very

-many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems to us

-a puzzle beyond solution.  But the early Westerners

-were as inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate,

-they were swept into most of their decisions by

-contagious excitements.  And never did any class of men

-understand the art of exciting by oratory more

-perfectly than the old Western preachers.  The simple

-hunters to whom they preached had the most absolute

-faith in the invisible.  The Day of Judgment, the

-doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the righteous

-were as real and substantial in their conception

-as any facts in life.  They could abide no refinements.

-The terribleness of Indian warfare, the relentlessness

-of their own revengefulness, the sudden lynchings, the

-abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the ruthlessness

-of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon

-which they founded the most materialistic conception

-of hell and the most literal understanding of the Day

-of Judgment.  Men like Magruder knew how to handle

-these few positive ideas of a future life so that they

-were indeed terrible weapons.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On this evening he seized upon the particular sins

-of the people as things by which they drove away the

-Spirit of God.  The audience trembled as he moved

-on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.  Every

-man found himself in turn called to the bar of his

-own conscience.  There was excitement throughout

-the house.  Some were angry, some sobbed aloud, as

-he alluded to "promises made to dying friends,"

-"vows offered to God by the new-made graves of

-their children,"&mdash;for pioneer people are very susceptible

-to all such appeals to sensibility.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike,

-who had listened intently from the first, found himself

-breathing hard.  The preacher showed how the

-revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had

-already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in

-the leaves of the woods where none but the wolf could

-ever find him!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At these words he turned to the part of the room

-where Kike sat, white with feeling.  Magruder, looking

-always for the effect of his arrows, noted Kike's

-emotion and paused.  The house was utterly still,

-save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten

-soul.  The people were sitting as if waiting their

-doom.  Kike already saw in his imagination the

-mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the leaves

-and scented by hungry wolves.  He waited to hear

-his own sentence.  Hitherto the preacher had spoken

-with vehemence.  Now, he stopped and began again

-with tears, and in a tone broken with emotion,

-looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O,

-young man, there are stains of blood on your hands!

-How dare you hold them up before the Judge of all?

-You are another Cain, and God sends his messenger

-to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have

-already killed in your heart.  <i>You are a murderer</i>!

-Nothing but God's mercy can snatch you from hell!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No doubt all this is rude in refined ears.  But is

-it nothing that by these rude words he laid bare

-Kike's sins to Kike's conscience?  That in this

-moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his

-sins, and trembled?  Can you do a man any higher

-service than to make him know himself, in the light

-of the highest sense of right that he capable of?

-Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher

-as to the rebuke of God.  His frail frame shook

-with fear and penitence, as it had before shaken with

-wrath.  "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried he,

-hiding his face in his hands.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Thank God for showing it to you, my young

-friend," responded the preacher.  "What a wonder

-that your sins did not drive away the Holy Ghost,

-leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as

-good as damned already!"  And with this he turned

-and appealed yet more powerfully to the rest, already

-excited by the fresh contagion of Kike's penitence,

-until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the

-house.  Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their

-feeling, while many fell upon their knees and prayed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The preacher now thought it time to change, and

-offer some consolation.  You would say that his view

-of the atonement was crude, conventional and

-commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in Scripture

-for general and formulated postulates.  But however

-imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known

-to his hearers the mercy of God.  And surely that is

-the main thing.  The figure of speech is but the vessel;

-the great truth that God is merciful to the guilty,

-what is this but the water of life?&mdash;not less refreshing

-because the jar in which it is brought is rude!  The

-preacher's whole manner changed.  Many weeping and

-sobbing people were swept now to the other extreme,

-and cried aloud with joy.  Perhaps Magruder

-exaggerated the change that had taken place in them.

-But is it nothing that a man has bowed his soul in

-penitence before God's justice, and then lifted his face

-in childlike trust to God's mercy?  It is hard for one

-who has once passed through this experience not

-to date from it a revolution.  There were many who

-had not much root in themselves, doubtless, but among

-Magruder's hearers this day were those who, living

-half a century afterward, counted their better living

-from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's

-antagonism to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner.

-It was not in Kike to change quickly.  Smitten

-with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his seat and

-slowly knelt, quivering with feeling.  When the preacher

-had finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and

-joy, he began to sing, to an exquisitely pathetic tune,

-Watts' hymn:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,<br>

-  Let a repenting rebel live.<br>

-  Are not thy mercies large and free?<br>

-  May not a sinner trust in thee?"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-The meeting was held until late.  Kike remained

-quietly kneeling, the tears trickling through his fingers.

-He did not utter a word or cry.  In all the confusion

-he was still.  What deliberate recounting of his own

-misdoings took place then, no one can know.  Thoughtless

-readers may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in

-his trouble.  But who of us would not be better if

-we could be brought thus face to face with our own

-souls?  His simple penitent faith did more for him

-than all our philosophy has done for us, maybe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last the meeting was dismissed.  Brady, who

-had been awe-stricken at sight of Kike's agony of

-contrition, now thought it best that he and Kike's

-mother should go home, leaving the young man to

-follow when he chose.  But Kike staid immovable

-upon his knees.  His sense of guilt had become an

-agony.  All those allowances which we in a more

-intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the

-defects of education, Kike knew nothing about.  He

-believed all his revengefulness to be voluntary; he

-had a feeling that unless he found some assurance of

-God's mercy then he could not live till morning.  So

-the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three

-brethren that had come from adjoining settlements

-staid and prayed and talked with the distressed youth

-until after midnight.  The early Methodists regarded

-this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and

-asked "Sister Wheeler" to pray.  There was nothing

-in the old Methodist meetings so excellent as the

-audible prayers of women.  Women oftener than men

-have a genius for prayer.  Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly,

-penitently to confess, not Kike's sins, but the

-sins of all of them; her penitence fell in with Kike's;

-she confessed the very sins that he was grieving over.

-Then slowly&mdash;slowly, as one who waits for another to

-follow&mdash;she began to turn toward trustfulness.  Like a

-little child she spoke to God; under the influence of

-her praying Kike sobbed audibly.  Then he seemed to

-feel the contagion of her faith; he, too, looked to God

-as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful child.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The great struggle was over.  Kike was revengeful

-no longer.  He was distrustful and terrified no

-longer.  He had "crept into the heart of God" and

-found rest.  Call it what you like, when a man passes

-through such an experience, however induced, it separates

-the life that is passed from the life that follows

-by a great gulf.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose

-up at the close of the prayer, and with a peaceful

-face shook hands with the preacher and the brethren,

-rejoicing in this new fellowship.  He said nothing,

-but when Magruder sang

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Oh! how happy are they<br>

-  Who their Saviour obey,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And have laid up their treasure above!<br>

-  Tongue can never express<br>

-  The sweet comfort and peace<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of a soul in its earliest love,"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them

-good-night, and went home about the time that his

-friend Morton, flushed and weary with dancing and

-pleasure, laid himself down to rest.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap12"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XII.</i>

-<br><br>

-MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The Methodists had actually made a break in the

-settlement.  Dancing had not availed to keep them

-out.  It was no longer a question of getting "shet"

-of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating

-the contagion.  There would now be a "class" formed,

-a leader appointed, a regular preaching place

-established; Hissawachee would become part of that

-great wheel called a circuit; there would be revivals

-and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be

-destroyed.  For now one might never again dance at

-a "hoe-down," drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race

-"hosses" on Sunday, without a lecture from somebody.

-It might be your own wife, too.  Once let the

-Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences.

-By his opposition, he had unfortunately spoken

-for the enmity of the Methodists in advance.  The

-preacher had openly defied him.  Kike would join the

-class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his

-ascendancy.  No concession on his part short of

-absolute surrender would avail.  He resolved therefore

-that the Methodists should find out "who they were

-fighting."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brady was pleased.  Gossips are always delighted

-to have something happen out of the usual course.  It

-gives them a theme, something to exercise their wits

-upon.  Let us not be too hard upon gossip.  It is one

-form of communicative intellectual activity.  Brady,

-under different conditions, might have been a journalist,

-writing relishful leaders on "topics of the time."  For

-what is journalism but elevated and organized

-gossip?  The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way

-neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for

-good-natured gossip.  Such an one averts absolute mental

-stagnation, diffuses intelligence, and keeps alive a

-healthful public opinion on local questions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's

-"ry-al hoe-cake."  That was the reason he assigned for

-his visit on the evening after the meeting.  He was

-always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had

-happened about which he wanted to talk.  But on this

-evening Job Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at

-first.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to

-us all?  These Methodis' sets people crazy with the

-jerks, I've hearn tell.  Hey?  I hear dreadful things

-about 'em.  Oh dear, it seems like as if everything

-come upon folks at once.  Hey?  The fever's spreadin'

-at Chilicothe, they tell me.  And then, if we should

-git into a war with England, you know, and the

-Indians should come and skelp us, they'd be precious

-few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that

-got skelped.  Precious few, <i>I</i> tell you.  Hey?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his

-pipe and laid it away, and punched the fire meditatively,

-endeavoring to discover in his imagination some

-new and darker pigment for his picture of the future.

-But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than

-Methodists, Indians,

-and fever, he

-set the tongs in the

-corner, heaved a

-sigh of discouragement,

-and looked at

-Brady inquiringly.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-112"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-112.jpg" alt="JOB GOODWIN.">

-<br>

-JOB GOODWIN.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ye're loike the

-hootin' owl,

-Misther Goodwin; it's

-the black side ye're

-afther lookin' at all

-the toime.  Where's

-Moirton?  He aint

-been to school yet

-since this quarter

-took up."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton?  He's

-got to stay out, I

-expect.  My rheumatiz is mighty bad, and I'm powerful

-weak.  I don't think craps'll be good next year, and

-I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we

-all have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their

-excitement and driving people crazy with jerks, and

-war breaks out with England, and the Indians come on

-us.  But here's Mort now."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ha!  Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight?

-Ye heerd fwat a toime we had.  Most iverybody got

-struck harmless, excipt mesilf and a few other

-hardened sinners.  Ye heerd about Koike?  I reckon the

-Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a

-warrantee on the Captain's skull, maybe.  Fwat would

-ye do for a crony now, Moirton, if Koike come to be

-a praycher?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with

-whom Kike's "getting religion" was an unpleasant

-topic.  "It'll all wear off with Kike soon enough."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't be too shore, Moirton.  Things wear off

-with you, sometoimes.  Ye swear ye'll niver swear no

-more, and ye're willin' to bet that ye'll niver bet agin,

-and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife; but the

-flesh is ferninst ye.  When Koike's bad, he's bad all

-over; lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it

-mesilf.  Now he's got good, the divil'll have as hard

-a toime makin' him bad as I had makin' him good.

-I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his

-school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad.  Got

-ivery lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of

-the school!  What do you say to that, Moirton?  The

-divil's got his hands full thair.  Hey, Moirton?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher.  He wants to

-get rich just to spite the Captain."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton.

-And he'll be a praycher yit.  Didn't he give me a

-talkin' to this mornin', at breakfast?  Think of the

-impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to tell his ould

-masther that he ought to repint of his sins!  He talked

-to his mother, too, till she croid.  He'll make her

-belave she is a great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit,

-excipt in her grammar, which couldn't be worse.  I've

-talked to her about that mesilf.  Now, Moirton, I'll

-tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the

-Mithodists.  Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a

-body, you needn't be afeard of.  But those that git it

-bad, and are throublesome, and middlesome, and

-aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out praychers.  The lad

-that'll tackle his masther and his mother at breakfast

-the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's

-yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed,

-two to one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the

-faild to be a praycher of the worst sort; one of the

-kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other

-people alone?  That meddling is just what I don't

-like," growled Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel

-thought about ould Elijy!  We don't any of us loike to

-have our wickedness or laziness middled with.  'Twas

-middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to; and if

-the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he

-wouldn't niver a been crucified."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said

-Mr. Job Goodwin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin.  I'm rale lazy.

-This lookin' at the state of me moind's insoides, and

-this chasin' afther me sins up hill and down dale all

-the toime, would niver agray with me frail constitootion.

-This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery

-wake in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin',

-aren't for sich oidlers as me.  I'm too good-natered to

-trate mesilf that way, sure.  Didn't you iver notice

-that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a rale

-good-nater'd man?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe

-in front of the fire, and found it well browned.

-Supper was ready, and the conversation drifted to

-Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden

-to cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers."  Morton's

-father shook his head ominously.  Didn't believe the

-Captain was in 'arnest.  Ef he was, Mort mout git the

-fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up.  'Twouldn't

-do to depend on no sech promises, no way.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton

-did hold to the Captain's promise, and to the hope

-of Patty.  To the Captain's plans for mobbing Wheeler

-he offered a strong resistance.  But he was ready

-enough to engage in making sport of the despised

-religionists, and even organized a party to interrupt

-Magruder with tin horns when he should preach

-again.  But all this time Morton was uneasy in

-himself.  What had become of his dreams of being a

-hero?  Here was Kike bearing all manner of persecution

-with patience, devoting himself to the welfare of

-others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly

-living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse

-circumstances.  One of Morton's temperament must

-either grow better or worse, and, chafing under these

-embarassments, he played and drank more freely than

-ever.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap13"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-TWO TO ONE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Magruder had been so pleased with his success

-in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement

-that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday

-sermon on his next round.  He was accustomed to

-preach twice every week-day and three times on every

-Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider

-of his time.  And since he expected to leave

-Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for

-his next appointment, he determined to reach the

-settlement before breakfast that he might have time to

-confirm the brethren and set things in order.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon

-drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of

-Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt

-the preacher with a serenade.  But Lumsden had

-other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should

-rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in

-reading, meditation and prayer.  Five o'clock found

-Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,

-reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach.

-When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping

-himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came

-suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the

-Hissawachee valley.  The gray dawn was streaking

-the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked

-forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features

-in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field

-before the engagement begins.  Then he dismounted,

-and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic

-fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the

-devil."  When at last he got into the saddle again

-the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams

-into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze.

-Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe

-to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the

-hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's

-hymn, which might have been composed in the

-presence of such a scene:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "O sun of righteousness, arise<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With healing in thy wing;<br>

-  To my diseased, my fainting soul,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Life and salvation bring.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "These clouds of pride and sin dispel,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By thy all-piercing beam;<br>

-  Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With holy hopes inflame."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-By the time he had finished the second stanza, the

-bridle-path that he was following brought him into a

-dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking

-toward him two stout men, none other than our old

-acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's

-horse by the bridle: "you git down!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What for?" said Magruder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go

-back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee

-Bottom agin."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I won't promise."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You are two to one.  Will you give me time to

-draw my coat?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-118"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-118.jpg" alt="TWO TO ONE.">

-<br>

-TWO TO ONE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation,

-tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental

-prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat

-across the saddle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you.

-I advise you now to let me alone.  As an American

-citizen, I have a right to go where I please.  My

-father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to

-fight for my rights."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and

-approaching the preacher from one side, while Bill came

-up on the other.  Magruder was one of those short,

-stocky men who have no end of muscular force and

-endurance.  In his unregenerate days he had been

-celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters.

-Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless,

-when any ambitious champion came from afar for the

-purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to

-"give him what he came after."  He had now greatly

-the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of

-the art of boxing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary

-swearing the preacher had surprised him by delivering

-a blow that knocked him down.  But Bill had taken

-advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the

-cheek.  Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's

-fist, was a little slow in coming to time, and the

-preacher had a chance to give Bill a most polemical

-blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he rushed

-like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one

-tremendous blow that fractured two of his ribs and felled

-him to the earth.  But Bill struck Magruder behind,

-knocked him over, and threw himself upon him after

-the fashion of the Western free fight.  Nothing saved

-Magruder but his immense strength.  He rose right up

-with Bill upon him, and then, by a deft use of his

-legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled him to the

-ground.  He did not dare take advantage of his fall,

-however, for Jake had regained his feet and was

-coming up on him cautiously.  But when Sniger saw

-Magruder rushing at him again, he made a speedy retreat

-into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it out with

-Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again

-ready.  But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating

-slowly backward and calling out, "Come up on him

-behind, Jake!  Come up behind!"  But the demoralized

-Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the

-preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having

-as many arms as a Hindoo deity.  Bill kept backing

-until he tripped and fell over a bit of brush, and then

-picked himself up and made off, muttering:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone!  He

-must have the very devil into him!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning,

-the Irish school-master, who was now boarding at

-Goodwin's, and who had just made an early visit to the

-Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An' did ye

-hear the nooze, Moirton?  Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger

-hev had a bit of Sunday morning ricreation.  They

-throid to thrash the praycher as he was a-comin'

-through North's Holler, this mornin'; but they didn't

-make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's

-got in him.  He larruped 'em both single-handed,

-and Jake's ribs are cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's

-nose!  Captain must 'a' had some proivate intherest

-in that muss; hey, Moirton?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men

-on one, and him a preacher; and all I've got to say

-is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain?

-Hey, Moirton?  But fwat did I tell ye about Koike?

-The praycher's jaw is lamed by a lick Bill gave him,

-and Koike's to exhort in his place.  I tould ye he

-had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The manliness in a character like Morton's must

-react, if depressed too far; and he now notified those

-who were to help him interrupt the meeting that if

-any disturbance were made, he should take it on himself

-to punish the offender.  He would not fight alongside

-Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like

-seeking a quarrel with Lumsden, for the sake of

-justitifying himself to himself.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap14"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XIV.</i>

-<br><br>

-KIKE'S SERMON.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-During the time that had intervened between

-Kike's conversion and Magruder's second visit

-to the settlement, Kike had developed a very

-considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings.

-In that day every influence in Methodist association

-contributed to make a preacher of a man of force.

-The reverence with which a self-denying preacher was

-regarded by the people was a great compensation for

-the poverty and toil that pertained to the office.  To

-be a preacher was to be canonized during one's

-lifetime.  The moment a young man showed zeal and

-fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and

-sisters as one whose duty it was to preach the

-Gospel; he was asked whether he did not feel that he

-had a divine call; he was set upon watching the

-movements within him to see whether or not he

-ought to be among the sons of the prophets.  Oftentimes

-a man was made to feel, in spite of his own

-better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah,

-slinking from duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in

-the shape of some providential disaster.  Kike, indeed,

-needed none of these urgings to impel him toward

-the ministry.  He was a man of the prophetic

-temperament&mdash;one of those men whose beliefs take hold

-of them more strongly than the objects of sense.  The

-future life, as preached by the early Methodists, with

-all its joys and all its awful torments, became the

-most substantial of realities to him.  He was in

-constant astonishment that people could believe these

-things theoretically and ignore them in practice.  If

-men were going headlong to perdition, and could be

-saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by

-preaching, then what nobler work could there be than

-that of saving them?  And, let a man take what view

-he may of a future life, Kike's opinion was the right

-one&mdash;no work can be so excellent as that of helping

-men to better living.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist

-biography which he had borrowed, and the sublimated

-life of Fletcher was the only one that fulfilled

-his ideal.  Methodism preached consecration to its

-disciples.  Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler,

-who was the class-leader at Hissawachee settlement,

-and from Methodist literature, that he must "keep all

-on the altar."  He must be ready to do, to suffer, or

-to perish, for the Master.  The sternest sayings of

-Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating

-one's own life and kindred, he heard often repeated in

-exhortations.  Most people are not harmed by a literal

-understanding of hyperbolical expressions.  Laziness

-and selfishness are great antidotes to fanaticism, and

-often pass current for common sense.  Kike had no

-such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel

-with the dry literalness of statutory enactments, he was

-too honest to evade their force, too earnest to slacken

-his obedience.  He was already prepared to accept

-any burden and endure any trial that might be given

-as a test of discipleship.  All his natural ambition,

-vehemence, and persistence, found exercise in his

-religious life; and the simple-hearted brethren, not

-knowing that the one sort of intensity was but the

-counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation as a

-"beautiful conversion," a standing miracle.  So it was,

-indeed, and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in

-the direction of individuality, not in opposition to it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was a grievous disappointment to the little band

-of Methodists that Brother Magruder's face was so

-swollen, after his encounter, as to prevent his preaching.

-They had counted much upon the success of this

-day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch

-the victory.  Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended

-Kike as a substitute, and Magruder sent for him

-in haste.  Kike was gratified to hear that the preacher

-wanted to see him personally.  His sallow face flushed

-with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before

-the messenger of God.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you

-ready to do and to suffer for Christ?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the

-preacher could mean.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the

-Lord's work to-day.  My lip is swelled, and my jaw

-so stiff that I can hardly speak.  Are you ready to do

-the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike trembled from head to foot.  He had often

-fancied himself preaching his first sermon in a strange

-neighborhood, and he had even picked out his text;

-but to stand up suddenly before his school-mates,

-before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,

-before Morton, was terrible.  And yet, had he not that

-very morning made a solemn vow that he would not

-shrink from death itself!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three

-hundred people hungry for the bread of life.  The

-Master has fed you; he offers you the bread to

-distribute among your friends and neighbors.  Now, will

-you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed

-Lord who has taken you out of a horrible pit and set

-your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will

-do whatever you say, if you will pray for me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll do that, my brother.  And now take your

-Bible, and go into the woods and pray.  The Lord will

-show you the way, if you put your whole trust in

-him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave

-Kike his subject, and he soon gathered a few thoughts

-which he wrote down on a fly-leaf of the Bible, in the

-shape of a skeleton.  But it occurred to him that he

-had not one word to say on the subject of the bread

-of life beyond the sentences of his skeleton.  The

-more this became evident to him, the greater was his

-agony of fear.  He knelt on the brown leaves by a

-prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself;

-he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own

-feelings were involved; he reminded the Lord of his

-promises to be with them he had sent; and then there

-came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For it

-shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall

-speak."  Taking it, after the manner of the early

-Methodist mysticism, that the text had been supernaturally

-"suggested" to him, he became calm; and finding,

-from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour

-for meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel

-Wheeler, and was appalled at the sight that met his

-eyes.  All the settlement, and many from other

-settlements, had come.  The house, the yard, the fences,

-were full of people.  Kike was seized with a tremor.

-He did not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a

-throng.  He made a detour, and crept in at the back

-door like a criminal.  For stage-fright&mdash;this fear of

-human presence&mdash;is not a thing to be overcome by the

-will.  Susceptible natures are always liable to it, and

-neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A chair had been placed in the front door of the

-log house, for Kike, that he might preach to the

-congregation indoors and the much larger one outdoors.

-Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden

-bench just outside.  Kike crept into the empty chair

-in the doorway with the feeling of one who intrudes

-where he does not belong.  The brethren were singing,

-as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn tune of

-"Kentucky," the hymn which begins:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "A charge to keep I have,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A God to glorify;<br>

-  A never-dying soul to save<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And fit it for the sky."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to

-him, said: "If you get confused, tell your own

-experience."  The early preacher's universal refuge was his

-own experience.  It was a sure key to the sympathies

-of the audience.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike got through the opening exercises very well.

-He could pray, for in praying he shut his eyes and

-uttered the cry of his trembling soul for help.  He

-had been beating about among two or three texts,

-either of which would do for a head-piece to the

-remarks he intended to make; but now one fixed itself

-in his mind as he stood appalled by his situation in

-the presence of such a throng.  He rose and read,

-with a tremulous voice:

-</p>

-

-<p style="font-size: 85%">

-<br>

-"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two

-small fishes; but what are they among so many?"

-<br>

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The text arrested the attention of all.  Magruder,

-though unable to speak without pain, could not refrain

-from saying aloud, after the free old Methodist fashion:

-"The Lord multiply the loaves!  Bless and break

-to the multitude!"  "Amen!" responded an old brother

-from another settlement, "and the Lord help the

-lad!"  But Kike felt that the advantage which the text

-had given him would be of short duration.  The novelty

-of his position bewildered him.  His face flushed;

-his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on

-the audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the

-few friends in the house: the old brethren leaned their

-heads upon their hands and began to pray.  Whatever

-spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,

-their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible

-prayers of "Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably,

-and kept the precipice on which he stood

-constantly present to him.  He tried in succession each

-division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the

-Bible, and found little to say on any of them.  At last,

-he could not see the audience distinctly for

-confusion&mdash;there was a dim vision of heads swimming before

-him.  He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him

-to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should

-kill him.  The Philistines meanwhile were laughing at

-Kike's evident discomfiture.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Kike had no notion of sitting down.  The

-laughter awakened his combativeness, and his combativeness

-restored his self-control.  Persistent people

-begin their success where others end in failure.  He was

-through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six

-minutes.  The lad's scanty provisions had not been

-multiplied.  But he felt relieved.  The sermon over,

-there was no longer necessity for trying to speak

-against time, nor for observing the outward manner of

-a preacher.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that

-I cannot preach worth a cent.  When David went out

-to fight, he had the good sense not to put on Saul's

-armor.  I was fool enough to try to wear Brother

-Magruder's.  Now, I'm done with that.  The text and

-sermon are gone.  But I'm not ashamed of Jesus

-Christ.  And before I sit down, I am going to tell

-you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like

-me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike told the story with sincere directness.  His

-recital of his own sins was a rebuke to others; with a

-trembling voice and a simple earnestness absolutely

-electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and of the

-effect of Magruder's preaching on him.  And now that

-the flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation

-departed, and there came instead the fine glow of

-martial courage.  He could have faced the universe.

-From his own life the transition to the lives of those

-around him was easy.  He hit right and left.  The

-excitable crowd swayed with consternation as, in a

-rapid and vehement utterance, he denounced their sins

-with the particularity of one who had been familiar

-with them all his life.  Magruder forgot to respond;

-he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with

-open eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious

-excitement was fast setting the whole audience

-ablaze.  Slowly the people pressed forward off the

-fences.  All at once there was a loud bellowing cry

-from some one who had fallen prostrate outside the

-fence, and who began to cry aloud as if the portals

-of an endless perdition were yawning in his face.

-Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the

-fallen man was his antagonist of the morning&mdash;Bill

-McConkey!  Bill had concealed his bruised nose behind

-a tree, but had been drawn forth by the fascination of

-Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the effect

-of his own terror.  This outburst of agony from

-McConkey was fuel to the flames, and the excitement now

-spread to all parts of the audience.  Kike went from

-man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each one in

-particular.  Brady, not wishing to hear a public

-commentary on his own life, waddled away when he saw

-Kike coming; his mother wept bitterly under his

-exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the fence

-listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's

-public recital of his sins.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain

-Lumsden had come on purpose to enjoy Morton's

-proposed interruption.  He listened a minute to Kike's

-exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at

-the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's

-impudence contended within him until he started for

-his horse and was seized with that curious nervous

-affection which originated in these religious

-excitements and disappeared with them.*  He jerked

-violently&mdash;his jerking only adding to his excitement, which

-in turn increased the severity of his contortions.  This

-nervous affection was doubtless a natural physical

-result of violent excitement; but the people of that day

-imagined that it was produced by some supernatural

-agency, some attributing it to God, others to the devil,

-and yet others to some subtle charm voluntarily

-exercised by the preachers.  Lumsden went home jerking

-all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly

-than ever.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing

-disease" which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap15"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XV.</i>

-<br><br>

-MORTON'S RETREAT.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which

-Morton had listened to Kike's hot exhortation.  In

-vain he argued with himself that a man need not be

-a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all over

-the country," in order to be good.  He knew that

-Kike's life was better than his own, and that he had

-not force enough to break his habits and associations

-unless he did so by putting himself into direct

-antagonism with them.  He inwardly condemned himself

-for his fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for

-telling him the blunt truth about himself.  But ever

-as there came the impulse to close the conflict and

-be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly

-on the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought

-of Patty, whose aristocratic Virginia pride would

-regard marriage with a Methodist as worse than death.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to

-his emotions so far as to compromise himself, he

-rushed out of the crowd, hurried home, took down

-his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out

-of the excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As he rode away from home he met Captain

-Lumsden hurrying from the meeting with the jerks,

-and leading his horse&mdash;the contortions of his body

-not allowing him to ride.  With every step he took

-he grew more and more furious.  Seeing Morton, he

-endeavored to vent his passion upon him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why didn't&mdash;you&mdash;blow&mdash;why didn't&mdash;why didn't

-you blow your tin horns, this&mdash;&mdash;" but at this point

-the jerks became so violent as to throw off his hat

-and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his

-teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home,

-leaving Morton to gauge the degree of the Captain's

-wrath by the involuntary distortion of his visage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither

-he went; endeavoring only to allay the excitement,

-of his conscience, and to imagine some sort of future in

-which he might hope to return and win Patty in spite

-of Lumsden's opposition.  Night found him in front

-of the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of

-Jonesville; and he was rejoiced to find there, on

-some political errand, Mr. Burchard, whom he had

-met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a

-candidate for sheriff.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How do you do, Mr. Morton?  Howdy do?"

-said Burchard, cordially, having only heard Morton's

-first name and mistaking it for his last.  "I'm lucky

-to meet you in this town.  Do you live over this

-way?  I thought you lived in our county and

-'lectioneered you&mdash;expecting to get your vote."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-133"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-133.jpg" alt="GAMBLING.">

-<br>

-GAMBLING.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a

-Sunday evening (or any other) meant a game at cards,

-and as Burchard was the more skillful and just now

-in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents

-of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves

-to Burchard's, the more that Morton in his contending

-with the religious excitement of the morning

-rushed easily into the opposite excitement of gambling.

-The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp

-polarity&mdash;it has sent many a man headlong to the

-devil.  When Morton had frantically bet and lost all

-his money, he proceeded to bet his rifle, then his

-grandfather's watch&mdash;an ancient time-piece, that

-Burchard examined with much curiosity.  Having lost

-this, he staked his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and

-offered to put up his boots, but Burchard refused

-them.  The madness of gambling was on the young

-man, however.  He had no difficulty in persuading

-Burchard to take his mare as security for a hundred

-dollars, which he proceeded to gamble away by the

-easy process of winning once and losing twice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When the last dollar was gone, his face was very

-white and calm.  He leaned back in the chair and

-looked at Burchard a moment or two in silence.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose.

-I don't know whether I've got any brains or not.

-But if you'll lend me the rifle you won long enough

-for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out what's

-inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Burchard was not without generous traits, and he

-was alarmed.  "Come, Mr. Morton, don't be desperate.

-The luck's against you, but you'll have better

-another time.  Here's your hat and coat, and you're

-welcome.  I've been flat of my back many a time,

-but I've always found a way out.  I'll pay your

-bill here to-morrow morning.  Don't think of doing

-anything desperate.  There's plenty to live for yet.

-You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself,

-maybe."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This thrust hurt Morton keenly.  But Burchard

-was determined to divert him from his suicidal impulse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, old fellow, you're excited.  Come out into

-the air.  Now, don't kill yourself.  You looked

-troubled when you got here.  I take it, there's some

-trouble at home.  Now, if there is"&mdash;here Burchard

-hesitated&mdash;"if there is trouble at home, I can put

-you on the track of a band of fellows that have

-been in trouble themselves.  They help one another.

-Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but

-they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like

-you, that's a good shot and not afraid."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to

-Morton, so utterly had hope died out of his heart.

-But only for a moment; then his moral sense recoiled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody

-else.  I can't take that road, Mr. Burchard."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to

-laugh.  "I knew you wouldn't.  But I wanted to turn

-your thoughts away from bullets and all that.  Now,

-Mr. Morton&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"My name's not Morton.  My last name is

-Goodwin&mdash;Morton Goodwin."  This correction was made

-as a man always attends to trifles when he is trying

-to decide a momentous question.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at

-him keenly, as the two stood together in the

-moonlight.  Then, after pausing a moment, he added: "I

-had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once.

-Devilish hard case he was, but good-hearted.  Got

-killed in a fight in Pittsburg."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He was my brother," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Your brother? thunder!  You don't mean it.

-Let's see; he told me once his father's name was

-Moses&mdash;no; Job.  Yes, that's it&mdash;Job.  Is that your

-father's name?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry

-hard.  Didn't kill 'em, did it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Both alive yet?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing

-suicide.  You ought to think a little of your

-mother&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely

-on Burchard; for he suddenly saw a vision of the

-agony his mother must suffer.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh! don't get mad.  I'm going to let you have

-back your horse and gun, only you must give me a

-bill of sale so that I may be sure you won't gamble

-them away to somebody else.  You must redeem them

-on your honor in six months, with a hundred and

-twenty-five dollars.  I'll do that much for the sake of my

-old friend, Lew Goodwin, who stood by me in many

-a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow after all."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard

-left the tavern.  As it was now past midnight, Goodwin

-did not go to bed.  At two o'clock he gave Dolly

-corn, and before daylight he rode out of the village.

-But not toward home.  His gambling and losses

-would be speedily reported at home and to Captain

-Lumsden.  And moreover, Kike would persecute him

-worse than ever.  He rode out of town in the direction

-opposite to that he would have taken in returning

-to Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was

-opposite.  He was trying what so many other men

-have tried in vain to do&mdash;to run away from himself.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest

-lightning express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a

-disagreeable self behind.  The wise man knows better,

-and turns round and faces it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure

-and circuitous trail of which he knew nothing, drew

-near to a low log-house with deer's horns over the

-door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel

-purposes&mdash;a place where a stranger might get a little

-food, a place to rest on the floor, and plenty of

-whiskey.  There were a dozen horses hitched to trees

-about it, and Goodwin got down and went in from a

-spirit of idle curiosity.  Certainly the place was not

-attractive.  The landlord had a cut-throat way of

-looking closely at a guest from under his eye-brows;

-the guests all wore black beards, and Morton soon

-found reason to suspect that these beards were not

-indigenous.  He was himself the object of much

-disagreeable scrutiny, but he could hardly restrain a

-mischievous smile at thought of the disappointment to

-which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt

-to rob him in his present penniless condition.

-The very worst that could happen would be the loss

-of Dolly and his rifle.  It soon occurred to him that

-this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's

-Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's

-noted band of desperadoes, a place into which few

-honest men ever ventured.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the men presently stepped to the window,

-rested his foot upon the low sill, and taking up a

-piece of chalk, drew a line from the toe to the top

-of his boot.*  Several others imitated him; and

-Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure,

-took the chalk and marked his right boot in the same

-way.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is

-yet told in the neighborhood.  It does not seem that chalking

-one's boot is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of

-a secret band, but I do not suppose that men who follow a

-highwayman's life are very wise people.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-"Will you drink?" said the man who had first

-chalked his boot.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood

-near together, Morton could plainly discover the

-falseness of his companion's beard.  Presently the man

-fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an indifferent

-tone: "Cut or carry?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning

-of the lingo, but finding himself in a predicament

-from which there was no escape but by drifting with

-the current.  A few minutes later a bag, which seemed

-to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into

-his hand, and Morton, not knowing what to do with

-it, thought best to "carry" it off.  He mounted his

-mare and rode away in a direction opposite to that in

-which he had come.  He had not gone more than

-three miles when he met Burchard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh, I came by a short cut."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in

-the night, to avoid observation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello!  Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got

-chalk on your boot!  I hope you haven't joined

-the&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come.  I

-found the greatest set of disguised cut-throats you ever

-saw, at this little hole back here.  You hadn't better

-go there, if you don't want to be relieved of all the

-money you got last night.  I saw them chalking their

-boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would

-come of it.  And here's what come of it;" and with

-that, Morton showed his bag of money.  "Now," he

-said, "if I could find the right owner of this money,

-I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some

-holler, without nary coffin or grave-stone.  I 'low to

-pay you what I owe you, and take the rest out to

-Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use it for a nest-egg.

-'Finders, keepers,' you know."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Burchard looked at him darkly a moment.  "Look

-here, Morton&mdash;Goodwin, I mean.  You'll lose your

-head, if you fool with chalk that way.  If you don't

-give that money up to the first man that asks for it,

-you are a dead man.  They can't be fooled for long.

-They'll be after you.  There's no way now but to

-hold on to it and give it up to the first man that

-asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky.  I'm

-going down this trail a way.  I want to see old

-Brewer.  He's got a good deal of political influence.

-Good-bye!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a

-place two miles farther on, where another trail joined

-the one he was traveling.  Here there stood a man

-with a huge beard, a blanket over his shoulders, holes

-cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a belt

-with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap.  The

-stranger stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and

-saying nothing.  Morton was only too glad to give up

-the money.  And he set Dolly off at her best pace,

-seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters

-of the cut-or-carry gang.  He could not but wonder

-how Burchard should seem to know them so well.  He

-did not much like the thought that Burchard's forbearance

-had bound him to support that gentleman's

-political aspirations when he had opportunity.  This

-friendly relation with thieves was not what he would

-have liked to see in a favorite candidate, but a cursed

-fatality seemed to be dragging down all his high

-aspirations.  It was like one of those old legends he had

-heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by

-little bargains with the devil, and had presently found

-themselves involved in evil entanglements on every

-hand.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap16"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XVI.</i>

-<br><br>

-SHORT SHRIFT.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-But Morton had no time to busy himself now with

-nice scruples.  Bread and meat are considerations

-more imperative to a healthy man than conscience.

-He had no money.  He might turn aside from the

-trail to hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to

-do when he started.  But ever, as he traveled, he had

-become more and more desirous of getting away from

-himself.  He was now full sixty or seventy miles from

-home, but he could not make up his mind to stop and

-devote himself to hunting.  At four o'clock the valley

-of the Mustoga lay before him, and Morton, still

-purposeless, rode on.  And now at last the habitual

-thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon

-him, and he began to be hesitant about going on.

-After all, his flight seemed foolish.  Patty might not

-yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why should he

-yield to it, unless he chose?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and

-crave a night's lodging at the crossing of the river.

-He was the more disposed to this that Dolly, having

-been ridden hard all day without food, showed

-unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing.

-He would give her a night's rest, and then perhaps

-take the road back to the Hissawachee, or go into the

-wilderness and hunt.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello the house!" he called.  "Hello!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the

-door, and responded with a "Hello!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Can I get to stay here all night?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger.  Kinder full

-to-night.  You mout git a place about a mile furder on

-whar you could hang up for the night, mos' likely;

-but I can't keep you, no ways."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep

-anywhere," plead Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed

-if she don't!  Whar did you git her?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Raised her," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Whar abouts?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hissawachee."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You don't say!  How far you rid her to-day?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"From Jonesville."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads!  Mighty

-purty critter, that air.  Powerful clean legs.  She's

-number one.  Is she your'n, did you say?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, not exactly mine.  That is&mdash;".  Here Morton

-hesitated.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up

-here, no ways.  I tuck in one of your sort a month

-ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off in the middle of

-the night.  I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever set

-eyes on him."  And the man had disappeared in the

-house before Morton could reply.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant;

-to be refused a lodging and to be mistaken for

-a horse-thief filled the cup of Morton's bitterness.  He

-reluctantly turned his horse's head toward the river.

-There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen

-that he must needs swim Dolly across.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately,

-with a feeling that she was the only friend he

-had left.  "Well, Dolly," he said, "it's too bad to make

-you swim, after such a day; but you must.  If we

-drown, we'll drown together."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek

-in a dumb trustfulness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There was a road cut through the steep bank on

-the other side, so that travelers might ride down to

-the water's edge.  Knowing that he would have to

-come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the

-water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable

-place.  Then, turning the mare's head upward, he

-started across.  Dolly swam bravely enough until she

-reached the middle of the stream; then, finding her

-strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and

-under the burden of her master, she refused his guidance,

-and turned her head directly toward the road, which

-offered the only place of exit.  The rapid current

-swept horse and rider down the stream; but still Dolly

-fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the

-road.  Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged

-Dolly to greater exertions, and the well-bred creature,

-rousing all the remains of her magnificent force,

-succeeded in reaching the road.  Then the young man

-got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the

-water, wondered why he should have struggled to

-preserve a life that he was not able to regulate, and

-that promised him nothing but misery and embarrassment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton

-pushed his tired filley on another mile.  Again he

-hallooed.  This time he was welcomed by an old woman,

-who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the

-mare in the stable.  She didn't ginerally keep no

-travelers, but it was too orful a night fer a livin' human

-bein' to be out in.  Her son Jake would be in

-thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody out

-in sech a night.  'Twuz good ten miles to the next

-house.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her,

-and to take his place by the fire.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Presently the son came in.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton

-suspiciously.  "Is that air your mar in the stable?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether

-he could call Dolly his or not, seeing she had been

-transferred to Burchard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Whar did you come from?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"From Hissawachee."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Whar you makin' fer?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't exactly know."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"See here, mister!  Akordin' to my tell, that air's

-a mighty peart sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what

-don' know, to save his gizzard, whar he mout be a

-travelin'.  We don't keep no sich people as them what

-rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of

-theirselves.  Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up

-yer mar and putt.  It mout gin us trouble to keep you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You ain't going to send me out such a night as

-this, when I've rode fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer?

-Yer health, I reckon.  Now, stranger, I've jist got one

-word to say to you, and that is this ere: <i>Putt</i>!  PUTT

-THIRECKLY!  Clar out of these 'ere diggin's!  That's

-all.  Jist putt!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The young man pronounced the vowel in "put"

-very flat, as it is sounded in the first syllable of

-"putty," and seemed disposed to add a great many words

-to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much

-Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth.

-"Putt out, I say!  I ain't afeard of none of yer gang.

-I hain't got nary 'nother word."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word&mdash;<i>I

-won't</i>!  You haven't got any right to turn a stranger

-out on such a night."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten

-you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew

-nearer the fire.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The strapping young fellow straightened himself up

-and looked at Morton in wonder, more and more

-convinced that nobody but an outlaw would venture on a

-move so bold, and less and less inclined to attempt to

-use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate

-character increased.  Goodwin, for his part, was not a little

-amused; the old mischievous love of fun reasserted

-itself in him as he saw the decline of the young man's

-courage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band,

-why don't you be careful how you treat me?  The

-band might give you trouble.  Let's have something

-to eat.  I haven't had anything since last night; I am

-starving."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'.

-He's tuck the house and we can't help ourselves."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours,

-and in his amusement at the success of his ruse and

-in the comfortable enjoyment of food after his long

-fast his good spirits returned.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed

-in the loft, he became aware that there were a

-number of men in the room below, and he could gather

-that they were talking about him.  He dressed quickly

-and came down-stairs.  The first thing he noticed was

-that the settler who had refused him lodging the night

-before was the centre of the group, the next that they

-had taken possession of his rifle.  This settler had

-roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the

-creek in a flat-boat some miles below and come up

-the stream determined to capture this young horse-thief.

-It is a singular tribute to the value of the

-horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples

-horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious

-than homicide.  In such a community to steal a man's

-horse is the grandest of larcenies&mdash;it is to rob him of

-the stepping-stone to civilization.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For such philosophical reflections as this last, however,

-Morton had no time.  He was in the hands of

-an indignant crowd, some of whom had lost horses

-and other property from the depredations of the

-famous band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were

-bent on exacting the forfeit from this indifferently

-dressed young man who rode a horse altogether too

-good for him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton was conducted three miles down the river

-to a log tavern, that being a public and appropriate

-place for the rendering of the decisions of Judge

-Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient

-refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might

-become exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf

-of public justice.  There was no formal trial.  The

-evidence was given in in a disjointed and spontaneous

-fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd,

-and what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting"

-was gathered from the general outcry.  Educated in

-Indian wars and having been left at first without any

-courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come to

-believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with

-the enemies of peace and order much superior to the

-prolix method of the lawyers and judges.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer

-than that he was one of the gang.  The settler who

-had refused him a lodging first spoke:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that

-that feller didn't own the hoss.  He looked kinder

-sheepish.  Well, I poked a few questions at him and

-I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions in

-this neck of timber.  I axed him whar he come from,

-and he let it out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles.

-And I kinder blazed away at praisin' his hoss tell I

-got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst to him,

-I treed him suddently.  I jest axed him ef the hoss

-was his'n and he hemmed and hawed and says, says

-he: 'Well, not exactly mine.'  Then I tole him to putt

-out."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?"

-put in the youth whose unwilling hospitality Morton

-had enjoyed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's

-sartain shore.  He tole me she wuz.  And when I axed

-him whar he was agoin', he tole me he didn' know.  I

-suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out; and

-he wouldn'.  Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun

-and blow his brains out; but marm got skeered and

-didn' want me to, and I 'lowed it was better to let

-him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe come

-over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come

-along and inquire arter that air mar.  Then he ups

-and says ef the ole woman don' give him sompin' to

-eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band.  He

-said as how he was a member of that gang.  An' he

-said he hadn't had nothin' to eat sence the night

-before, havin' rid fer twenty-four hours."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I didn't say&mdash;&mdash;" began Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done.  Haint you

-got no manners?  I tole him as how I didn't keer

-three continental derns* fer his whole band weth

-Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole

-woman wuz kinder sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a

-rale hoss-thief and she gin him a little sompin' to eat.

-And he did gobble it, I tell <i>you</i>!"

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness

-of the paper money issued by the Continental Congress.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-Young rawbones had repeated this statement a

-dozen times already since leaving home with the

-prisoner.  But he liked to tell it.  Morton made the

-best defense he could, and asked them to send to

-Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that

-this was only a ruse to gain time, and that if they

-delayed his execution long, Micajah Harp and his

-whole band would be upon them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging.

-The cry of "Come on, boys, let's string him

-up," was raised several times, and "rushes" at him

-were attempted, but these rushes never went further

-than the incipient stage, for the very good reason

-that while many were anxious to have him hung,

-none were quite ready to adjust the rope.  The law

-threatened them on one side, and a dread of the

-vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them

-on the other.  The predicament in which the crowd

-found themselves was a very embarrassing one, but

-these administrators of impromptu justice consoled

-themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till

-night.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And the rawboned young man, who had given

-such eager testimony that he "warn't afeard of the

-whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the top,"

-concluded about noon that he had better go home&mdash;the

-ole woman mout git skeered, you know.  She wuz

-powerful skeery and mout git fits liker'n not, you know.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The weary hours of suspense drew on.  However

-ready Morton may have been to commit suicide in a

-moment of rash despair, life looked very attractive to

-him now that its duration was measured by the

-descending sun.  And what a quickener of conscience is

-the prospect of immediate death!  In these hours the

-voice of Kike, reproving him for his reckless living,

-rang in his memory ceaselessly.  He saw what a

-distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a

-chance to try it over again.  But unless help should

-come from some unexpected quarter, he saw that his

-probation was ended.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It is barely possible that the crowd might have

-become so demoralized by waiting as to have let Morton

-go, or at least to have handed him over to the

-authorities, had there not come along at that moment

-Mr. Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist

-preacher of whom Morton had made so much sport

-in Wilkins's Settlement.  Having to preach at

-fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat

-itinerant, and was now hastening to a preaching place

-near by.  One of the crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen,

-suggested that Morton had orter be allowed to see a

-preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died.  Some of

-the others disagreed.  They warn't nothin' in the nex'

-world too bad fer a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes.

-They warn't a stringin' men up to send 'em to heaven,

-but to t' other place.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mellen was called in, however, and at once

-recognized Morton as the ungodly young man who had

-insulted him and disturbed the worship of God.  He

-exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the

-owner of the horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready

-to forgive even the dying thief upon the cross.  In

-vain Morton protested his innocence.  Mellen told him

-that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd

-to hand him over to the sheriff.  But Mellen's

-additional testimony to Morton's bad character had

-destroyed his last chance of being given up to the

-courts.  As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the

-arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take

-definite shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in

-full sight of the condemned man.  Mr. Mellen used

-with telling effect, at every one of the fifty-eight places

-upon his next round, the story of the sad end of this

-hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and

-ended as an impenitent thief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun

-descending toward the horizon.  He heard the rude

-voices of the mob about him.  But he thought of Patty

-and his mother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While the mob was thus waiting for night, and

-Morton waiting for death, there passed upon the road

-an elderly man.  He was just going out of sight, when

-Morton roused himself enough to observe him.  When

-he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the

-notion that it must be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian

-preacher, whose sermons he had so often heard

-at the Scotch Settlement.  Could it be that thoughts

-of home and mother had suggested Donaldson?  At

-least, the faintest hope was worth clutching at in a

-time of despair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Call him back!" cried Morton.  "Won't

-somebody call that old man back?  He knows me."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-152"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-152.jpg" alt="A LAST HOPE.">

-<br>

-A LAST HOPE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit.  The

-leaders looked knowingly the one at the other, and

-shrugged their shoulders.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you don't call him back you will be a set of

-murderers!" cried the despairing Goodwin.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap17"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XVII.</i>

-<br><br>

-DELIVERANCE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Parson Donaldson was journeying down to

-Cincinnati&mdash;at that time a thriving village of

-about two thousand people&mdash;to attend Presbytery

-and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of

-some of his brethren in the matters of doctrine and

-revivals.  In previous years Mr. Donaldson had been

-beaten a little in his endeavors to have carried through

-the extremest measures against his more progressive

-"new-side" brethren.  He considered the doctrines of

-these zealous Presbyterians as very little better than

-the crazy ranting of the ungrammatical circuit riders.

-At the moment of passing the tavern where Morton

-sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in

-"laying out" a speech with which he intended to

-rout false doctrines and annihilate forever incipient

-fanaticism.  His square head had fallen forward, and

-he only observed that there was a crowd of

-godless and noisy men about the tavern.  He could

-not spare time to note anything farther, for the fate

-of Zion seemed to hang upon the weight and cogency

-of the speech which he meant to deliver at Cincinnati.

-He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first

-caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding

-that no one would go after him, set up a vigorous

-calling of his name, Mr. Donaldson did not hear it,

-or at least did not think for an instant that anybody

-in that crowd could be calling his own name.  How

-should he hear Morton's cry?  For just at that

-moment he had reached the portion of his argument

-in which he triumphantly proved that his new-side

-friends, however unconscious they might be of the

-fact, were of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of

-fatal error.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of

-the crowd.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him.

-'Pears like as ef he's a-lyin' any how.  I don't 'low

-as he knows the ole coon, or the ole coon knows

-him&mdash;liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't won't

-do no harm to call him back."  Saying which, he

-mounted his gaunt horse and rode away after

-Mr. Donaldson.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hello, stranger!  I say, there!  Mister!  O, mister!

-Hello, you ole man on horseback!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was the polite manner of address with which

-the messenger interrupted the theological meditations

-of the worthy Mr. Donaldson at the moment of his

-most triumphant anticipations of victory over his

-opponents.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning

-round on the messenger a little tartly; much as one

-would who is suddenly awakened and not at all pleased

-to be awakened.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a

-hoss-thief, and we had three-quarters of a notion of

-stringin' on him up; but he says as how as he knows

-you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll

-do it, for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's

-sartain shore."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the

-parson, not yet fairly awake to the situation.  "Indeed?

-I'm in a great hurry.  What does he want?  Wants

-me to pray with him, I suppose.  Well, it is never

-too late.  God's election is of grace, and often he

-seems to select the greatest sinners that he may

-thereby magnify his grace and get to himself a great name.

-I'll go and see him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern,

-endeavoring to turn his thoughts out of the polemical

-groove in which they had been running all day, that

-he might think of some fitting words to say to a

-malefactor.  But when he stood before the young man

-he started with surprise.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What!  Morton Goodwin!  Have you taken to

-stealing horses?  I should have thought that the

-unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut short in

-God's righteousness, would have been a warning to

-you.  My dear young man, how could you bring such

-disgrace and shame on the gray hairs&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a

-murmur of excitement went through the crowd.  They

-believed that the prisoner's own witness had turned

-against him and that they had a second quasi sanction

-from the clergy for the deed of violence they were

-meditating.  Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the

-minister with some impatience, crying out:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged

-me too quick.  These folks are going to hang me

-without any evidence at all, except that I was riding

-a good horse.  Now, I want you to tell them whose

-filley yon is."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared

-to the crowd that he had seen this young man riding

-that colt for more than a year past, and that if they

-were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing

-that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had,

-and whar he was a-goin'?" said the man from the

-other side of the river.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't know.  How did you come here, Morton?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I'll tell you a straight story.  I was

-gambling on Sunday night&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in

-the minister.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I

-had&mdash;horse and gun and all&mdash;I seemed clean crazy.  I

-lost a hundred dollars more'n I had, and I give the

-man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and

-gun.  Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased

-and keep 'em for six months and I was ashamed

-to go home; so I rode off, like a fool, hoping to find

-some place where I could make the money to redeem

-my colt with.  That's how I didn't give straight

-answers about whose horse it was, and where I was

-going."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll

-have to let the young man go.  You ought to be

-thankful that God in his good providence has saved

-you from the guilt of those who shed innocent blood.

-He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and

-often attends church with his mother.  I am sorry he

-has got into bad habits."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said

-one of the party; and as the rest offered no objection,

-he cut the cords that bound Morton's arms and let

-him go.  The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed her,

-hoping that some accident would leave her in his

-hands; the man from the other side of the creek had

-taken possession of the rifle as "his sheer, considerin'

-the trouble he'd tuck."  The horse and gun were now

-reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to

-disperse, each one having suddenly remembered some

-duty that demanded immediate attention.  In a little

-while Morton sat on his horse listening to some very

-earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of

-gambling and Sabbath-breaking.  But Mr. Donaldson,

-having heard of the Methodistic excitement in the

-Hissawachee settlement, slipped easily to that, and

-urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do

-with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night

-and withered in a day.  In fact the old man delivered

-to Morton most of the speech he had prepared for

-the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.

-Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise

-that he would go directly home, and, with a few

-seasonable words on God's mercy in rescuing him from

-a miserable death, he parted from the young man.

-Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well

-with his speech.  After all, was it not better, perhaps,

-that this young man should be drawn into the whirlpool

-of a Methodist excitement than that he should

-become a gambler?  After thinking over it a while,

-however, the logical intellect of the preacher luckily

-enabled him to escape this dangerous quicksand, in

-reaching the sound conclusion that a religious

-excitement could only result in spiritual pride and

-Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these

-would be lost as certainly as a gambler or a thief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present

-day should be a little too severe on our good friend

-Mr. Donaldson, I must express my sympathy for the

-worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward the

-scene of conflict.  Dear, genteel, and cultivated

-Methodist reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of

-Methodism, though you have so far departed from the

-standard of the fathers as to wear gold and costly

-apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not too

-hard upon our good friend Donaldson.  Had you,

-fastidious Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs,

-and refined preachers, as you sit in your cushioned

-pew&mdash;had you lived in Ohio sixty years ago, would you

-have belonged to the Methodists, think you?  Not at

-all! your nerves would have been racked by their

-shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by

-their ditties, your grammatical knowledge shocked

-beyond recovery by their English; you could never have

-worshiped in an excitement that prostrated people in

-religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and

-obstinate sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks.

-It is easy to build the tombs of the prophets while

-you reap the harvest they sowed, and after they have

-been already canonized.  It is easy to build the tombs

-of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets

-of our own time, maybe.  Permit me, Methodist brother,

-to believe that had you lived in the days of Parson

-Donaldson, you would have condemned these rude

-Tishbites as sharply as he did.  But you would have

-been wrong, as he was.  For without them there must

-have been barbarism, worse than that of Arkansas and

-Texas.  Methodism was to the West all that Puritanism

-was to New England.  Both of them are sublime

-when considered historically; neither of them were very

-agreeable to live with, maybe.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But, alas!  I am growing as theological as

-Mr. Donaldson himself.  Meantime Morton has forded the

-creek at a point more favorable than his crossing of

-the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and

-ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and

-approaches his home, do the embarrassments of his

-situation become more appalling.  If he could only be

-sure of himself in the future, there would be hope.

-But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action

-possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a

-"trace" that led him toward home by a much nearer

-way than he had come.  After riding twenty miles, he

-emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just as

-the sun was sitting.  It happened that the house where

-he found a hospitable supper and lodging was already

-set apart for Methodist preaching that evening.  After

-supper the shuck-bottom chairs and rude benches

-were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate

-space was left to be filled by seats which should be

-brought in by friendly neighbors.  Morton gathered

-from the conversation that the preacher was none other

-than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was held in

-such esteem that it was even believed that he had a

-prophetic inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing.

-This "class" had been founded by his preaching, in

-the days of his vigor.  He had long since given up

-"traveling," on account of his health.  He was now a

-teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most

-scholarly of the Western itinerants.  He had set out on a

-journey among the churches with whom he had labored,

-seeking to strengthen the hands of the brethren,

-who were like a few sheep in the wilderness.  The

-old Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome

-the final visit of Paul the Aged than did the backwoods

-churches this farewell tour of Valentine Cook.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a

-Methodist meeting, Morton felt no little agitation.

-His mother had heard Cook in his younger days, in

-Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame

-as a man and as a preacher.  Morton was not only

-curious to hear him; he entertained a faint hope that

-the great preacher might lead him out of his

-embarrassment.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees

-trying to collect his thoughts; determined at one

-moment to become a Methodist and end his struggles,

-seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance

-against the sermon that he must hear.  Having walked

-some distance from the house into the bushes, he

-came suddenly upon the preacher himself, kneeling in

-earnest audible prayer.  So rapt was the old man in

-his devotion that he did not note the approach of

-Goodwin, until the latter, awed at sight of a man

-talking face to face with God, stopped, trembling,

-where he stood.  Cook then saw him, and, arising,

-reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a

-voice tremulous with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto

-death, and I will give thee a crown of life."  Morton

-endeavored, in a few stammering words, to explain

-his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed

-almost at once to have forgotten his presence, for

-he had taken his seat upon a log and appeared

-absorbed in thought.  Morton retreated just in time

-to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full.  The

-members of the church, men and women, as they

-entered, knelt in silent prayer before taking their seats.

-Hardly silent either, for the old Methodist could do

-nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in

-what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth,

-continually in audible ejaculations of "Ah&mdash;ah!"  "O

-my Lord, help!"  "Hah!" and other groaning expressions

-of his inward wrestling&mdash;groanings easily uttered,

-but entirely without a possible orthography.  With

-most, this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and

-unreserved nature; in later times the ostentatious and

-hypocritical did not fail to cultivate it as an evidence

-of superior piety.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But now the room is full.  People are crowding

-the doorways.  The good old-class leader has shut his

-eyes and turned his face heavenward.  Presently he

-strikes up lustily, leading the congregation in singing:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "How tedious and tasteless the hours<br>

-  When Jesus no longer I see!"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-When he reached the stanza that declares:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "While blest with a sense of his love<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A palace a toy would appear;<br>

-  And prisons would palaces prove,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If Jesus would dwell with me there."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!"

-and so forth.  At the last quatrain, which runs,

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy soul-cheering presence restore;<br>

-  Or take me to thee up on high,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where winter and clouds are no more!"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must

-have been spoken in a poetic sense.  I cannot believe

-that any of the excellent brethren, even in that

-moment of exaltation, would really have desired

-translation to the world beyond the clouds.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his

-congregation&mdash;a very common bit of absent-mindedness

-with Valentine Cook; and so, when this hymn

-was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated

-soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian

-Philosopher," that inspiring song which begins:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Come on, my partners in distress,<br>

-  My comrades in this wilderness,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who still your bodies feel;<br>

-  Awhile forget your griefs and tears,<br>

-  Look forward through this vale of tears<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To that celestial hill."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed

-the preacher, having suddenly come to himself,

-entered hurriedly, and pushed forward to the place

-arranged for him.  The festoons of dried pumpkin

-hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head;

-a tallow dip, sitting in the window, shed a feeble

-light upon his face as he stood there, tall, gaunt,

-awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,

-hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse

-black hair resisting yet the approach of age, and a

-<i>tout ensemble</i> unpromising, but peculiar.  He began

-immediately to repeat his hymn:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "I saw one hanging on a tree<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In agony and blood;<br>

-  He fixed his languid eye on me,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As near the cross I stood."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have

-a fascination, and the pathos of his voice, quivering

-with suppressed emotion, was indescribable.  Before

-his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic Morton felt

-that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He repeated his text: "<i>Behold, the day cometh</i>," and

-launched at once into a strongly impressive introduction

-about the all-pervading presence of God, until the

-whole house seemed full of God, and Morton found

-himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's

-presence and ineffable holiness.  Then he took up that

-never-failing theme of the pioneer preacher&mdash;the

-sinfulness of sin&mdash;and there were suppressed cries of

-anguish over the whole house.  Morton could hardly

-feel more contempt for himself than he had felt for

-two days past; but when the preacher advanced to

-his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness of

-Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood.

-In that hour, with God around, above, beneath, without

-and within&mdash;with a feeling that since his escape he

-held his life by a sort of reprieve&mdash;with the inspiring

-and persuasive accents of this weird prophet ringing

-in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all

-ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological

-puzzles, and set himself to a self-denying life.  With one

-final battle he closed his conflict about Patty.  He

-would do right at all hazards.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton never had other conversion than this.  He

-could not tell of such a struggle as Kike's.  All he

-knew was that there had been conflict.  When once

-he decided, there was harmony and peace.  When

-Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting

-the whole house ablaze with feeling, and then

-proceeded to "open the doors of the church" by singing,

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Am I a soldier of the Cross,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A follower of the Lamb,<br>

-  And shall I fear to own his cause,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or blush to speak his name?"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-it was with a sort of military exaltation&mdash;a defiance

-of the world, the flesh, and the devil&mdash;that Morton

-went forward and took the hand of the preacher, as

-a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among those

-who meant to

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "&mdash;&mdash;conquer though they die."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-He was accustomed to say in after years, using

-the Methodist phraseology, that "God spoke peace

-to his soul the moment he made up his mind to give

-up all."  That God does speak to the heart of man

-in its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works

-with, and not against, the laws of mind.  When Morton

-ceased to contend with his highest impulses there

-was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and

-objective a temperament to have subjective fights with

-fanciful Apollyons.  When peace came he accepted it.

-One of the old brethren who crowded round him that

-night and questioned him about his experience was

-"afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion.  They wuzn't

-wras'lin' and strugglin' enough."  But the wise

-Valentine Cook said, when he took Morton's hand to say

-good-bye, and looked into his clear blue eye, "Hold

-fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap18"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XVIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-At last the knight was in the saddle.  Much as

-Morton grieved when he thought of Patty, he

-rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral purpose.

-Vacillation was over.  He was ready to fight, to

-sacrifice, to die, for a good cause.  It had been the

-dream of his boyhood; it had been the longing of

-his youth, marred and disfigured by irregularities as

-his youth had been.  In the early twilight of the

-winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle

-field, and, as was his wont in moments of cheerfulness,

-he sang.  But not now the "Highland Mary," or

-"Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of

-Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night

-before, some stanzas of which had strongly impressed

-him and accorded exactly with his new mood, and

-his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,

-perhaps, from his religious life:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "In hope of that immortal crown<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I now the Cross sustain,<br>

-  And gladly wander up and down,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And smile at toil and pain;<br>

-  I suffer on my threescore years,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till my Deliv'rer come<br>

-  And wipe away his servant's tears,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And take his exile home.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  * * * * * * * *<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "O, what are all my sufferings here<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If, Lord, thou count me meet<br>

-  With that enraptured host to appear<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And worship at thy feet!<br>

-  Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take life or friends away,<br>

-  But let me find them all again<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In that eternal day."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had

-ceased to sing.  He was painfully endeavoring to

-imagine how he would be received at home and at

-Captain Lumsden's.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter

-twilight, trying to keep her heart from fainting

-entirely.  The story of Morton's losses at cards had

-quickly reached the settlement&mdash;with the easy addition

-that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor,

-and had carried off the horse and gun which

-another had won from him in gambling.  This last,

-the mother steadily refused to believe.  It could not

-be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses

-of his youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal

-brother, Lewis.  For Morton was such a boy as Lewis

-had never been, and the thought of his deserting his

-home and falling finally into bad practices, had brought

-to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to

-heart-break.  Job Goodwin had abandoned all work

-and taken to his congenial employment of sighing

-and croaking in the chimney-corner, building

-innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend.

-"I am sure, Mrs. Goodwin," she said, "Morton will

-yet be saved; I have been enabled to pray for him

-with faith."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not

-help thinking that it was very inconsistent for an

-Arminian to believe that God would convert a man

-in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to

-believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he

-pleased.  Willing, however, to lay the blame of her

-misfortune on anybody but Morton, she said, half

-peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had never

-come to the settlement.  Morton had been in a hopeful

-state of mind, and they had driven him to wickedness.

-Otherwise he would doubtless have been a

-Christian by this time.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought&mdash;but

-did not say&mdash;that it was most absurd for

-Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having driven

-Morton away from salvation, since, according to her

-Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he

-were elected.  It is so easy to be inconsistent when

-we try to reason about God's relation to his creatures;

-and so easy to see absurdity in any creed but our

-own!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable

-now to endure the darkness, lit her candle.  Then

-there was a knock at the door.  Ever since Sunday

-the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had

-turned pale at every sound of footsteps without.  Now

-she called out, "Come in!" in a broken voice, and

-Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed his school.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can

-give comfort.  I'm sure to say something not intoirely

-proper to the occasion, whiniver I talk to anybody in

-throuble&mdash;something that jars loike a varb that

-disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I

-may say.  But I thought I ought to come and say

-you, and till you as I don't belave Moirton would do

-anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be home afore

-the wake's out.  I've soiphered it out by the Rule of

-Thray.  As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other

-throubles&mdash;comin' out all roight&mdash;so is Moirton Goodwin to

-his present dif<i>fic</i>culties.  If the first term and the third

-is the same, then the sicond and the fourth has got

-to be idintical.  Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but

-you're an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you

-can say that me dimonsthration's entoirely corrict.

-Moirton'll fetch the answer set down in the book

-ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake.  Thair's

-no vulgar fractions about him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin,

-who had held his hand up to his best ear, to hear

-what Brady was saying.  "No, I don't 'low he was

-fractious, fer the mos' part.  But he's gone now, and

-he'll git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the

-fever, and then they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and

-the Injuns'll be on us, and it 'pears like as if they

-wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'.  Hey?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At that very moment the latch was jerked up and

-Henry came bursting into the room, gasping from

-excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What is it?  Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting

-to his feet.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Henry gasped again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Spake!" said Brady.  "Out wid it!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mort's&mdash;a-puttin'&mdash;Dolly&mdash;in the stable!" said the

-breathless boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job

-Goodwin, sitting down again hopelessly.  "Then

-somebody&mdash;Injuns, robbers, or somebody&mdash;'s killed Mort,

-and she's found her way back!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler

-slipped out of the open door, that she might not

-intrude upon the meeting; but Brady&mdash;oral newspaper

-that he was&mdash;waited, with the true journalistic spirit,

-for an interview.  Hardly had Job Goodwin finished

-his doleful speech, when Morton himself crossed the

-threshold and reached out his hand to his mother,

-while she reached out both hands and&mdash;did what

-mothers have done for returning prodigals since the

-world was made.  Her husband stood by bewildered,

-trying to collect his wits enough to understand how

-Morton could have been murdered by robbers or

-Indians and yet stand there.  Not until the mother

-released him, and Morton turned and shook hands

-with his father, did the father get rid of the illusion

-that his son was certainly dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the

-shadow, "I'm roight glad to see ye back.  I tould 'em

-ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe.  I soiphered it out

-by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about

-this toime.  One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin'

-to run away from yersilf, one day for repintance, and

-the nixt the prodigal son falls on his mother's neck

-and confisses his sins."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a

-safeguard against too much of a scene.  And to avoid

-speaking of subjects more unpleasant, he plunged at

-once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's

-Hole, and of his arrest for stealing his own horse.

-Then he told how he had escaped by the good offices

-of Mr. Donaldson.  Mrs. Goodwin was secretly

-delighted at this.  It was a new bond between the young

-man and the minister, and now at last she should see

-Morton converted.  The religious experience Morton

-reserved.  He wanted to break it to his mother alone,

-and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to Patty.

-And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he

-supposed, a full account of Morton's adventures, and

-being eager to tell so choice and fresh a story, found

-himself unable to stay longer.  But just as he reached

-the door, it occurred to him that if he did not tell

-Morton at once what had happened in his absence,

-some one else would anticipate him.  He had sole

-possession of Morton's adventure anyhow; so he

-straightened himself up against the door and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the

-whoile ye was gone, Moirton?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to

-be good, as ye plase.  Ye know how Koike was bilin'

-over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went away in the

-fall.  Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met

-Koike in the road, and gives him some hard words fer

-sayin' what he did to him last Sunthay.  An' fwat

-does Koike do but bowldly begins another exhortation,

-tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go

-to hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about

-and take the other thrack.  An' fwat does the Captin

-do but up wid the flat of his hand and boxes Koike's

-jaw.  An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him as

-Magruder did Jake Sniger.  But not a bit of it!  He

-fired up rid, and thin got pale immajiately.  Thin he

-turned round t'other soide of his face, and, wid a

-thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't want to

-slap that chake too?  An' the Captin swore at him

-fer a hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the

-jerks; an' he's been a-lookin' loike a sintince that

-couldn' be parsed iver sence."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I wonder Kike bore it.  I don't think I could,"

-said Morton, meditatively.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Av coorse ye couldn't.  Ye're not a convarted

-Mithodist, But I must be goin'.  I'm a-boardin' at

-the Captin's now."

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap19"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XIX.</i>

-<br><br>

-PATTY.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride,

-and in Patty's circumstances pride was conservative;

-it saved her from possible assimilation with the

-vulgarity about her.  She was a lily among hollyhocks.

-Her mother had come of an "old family"&mdash;in truth,

-of two or three old families.  All of them had

-considered that attachment to the Established Church was

-part and parcel of their gentility, and most of them

-had been staunch Tories in the Revolution.  Patty

-had inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and

-a certain lofty inflexibility of disposition.  In this

-congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden had planted traditional

-prejudices.  Patty read her Prayer-book, and wished that

-she might once attend the stately Episcopal service;

-she disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song

-of the Baptist preacher and the rant of the Methodist

-itinerant were equally distasteful.  She had never seen

-a clergyman in robes, but she tried, from her mother's

-descriptions, to form a mental picture of the long-drawn

-dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country

-church.  Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her

-age; but her ideals were ruled by the pride in which

-she had been cradled.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar

-aversion.  Methodism was new, and, like everything new,

-lacked traditions, picturesqueness, mustiness, and all

-the other essentials of gentility in religious matters.

-The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the preachers

-were illiterate, and often rough in voice and

-speech; they made war on dancing and jewelry, and

-dancing and jewelry appertained to good-breeding.

-Ever since her father had been taken with that strange

-disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the

-Methodists worse than ever.  They had made a direct

-attack on her pride.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached

-the ears of Patty.  The thoughtful unkindness of her

-father could not leave her without so delectable a

-morsel of news.  He felt sure that Patty's pride

-would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he

-omitted nothing from the tale&mdash;the loss of horse and

-gun, the offer to stake his hat and coat, the proposal

-to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited horse&mdash;such

-were the items of Captain Lumsden's story.  He

-told it at the table in order to mortify Patty as much

-as possible in the presence of her brothers and sisters

-and the hired men.  But the effect was quite different

-from his expectations.  With that inconsistency

-characteristic of the most sensible women when they are

-in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes.  She

-saw him, in her imagination, a hapless and homeless

-wanderer.  She would not abandon him in his

-misfortunes.  He should have one friend at least.  She

-was sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not

-inconsistent with gentlemanliness.  She had often

-heard that her mother would have inherited a plantation

-if her grandfather had been able to let cards

-alone.  Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a

-generous and impulsive weakness.  Then, too, she laid

-the blame on her favorite scape-goat.  If it had not

-been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the

-inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's

-misfortune would not have befallen him.  Patty forgave

-in advance.  Love condones all sins except sins

-against love.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was with more than his usual enjoyment of

-gossip that the school-master hurried home to the

-Captain's that evening to tell the story of Morton's

-return, and to boast that he had already soiphered it

-out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would

-come out roight.  The Captain, as he ate his waffles

-with country molasses, slurred the whole thing, and

-wanted to know if he was going to refuse to pay a

-debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly

-lost her gambling with Burchard.  But Patty inly

-resolved to show her lover more affection than ever.

-She would make him feel that her love would be

-constant when the friendship of others failed.  She

-liked to flatter herself, as other young women have to

-their cost, that her love would reform her lover.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty knew he would come.  She went about her

-work next morning, humming some trifling air, that

-she might seem nonchalant.  But after awhile she

-happened to think that her humming was an indication

-of pre-occupation.  So she ceased to hum.  Then

-she remembered that people would certainly interpret

-silence as indicative of meditation; she immediately

-fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the

-younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so

-much?"  Upon which, Patty ceased to talk and went

-to work harder than ever; but, being afraid that the

-eagerness with which she worked would betray her,

-she tried to work more slowly until that was observed.

-The very devices by which we seek to hide mental

-pre-occupation generally reveal it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the

-loom-room, where she could think without having her

-thoughts guessed at.  Here, too, she would be alone

-when Morton should come.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious

-change, found it hard indeed to tell Patty.  But

-he counted certainly that she would censure him for

-gambling, which would make it so much easier for

-him to explain to her that the only way for him to

-escape from vice was to join the Methodists, and thus

-give up all to a better life.  He shaped some

-sentences founded upon this supposition.  But after all

-his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to

-help him to "confess Christ before men," he found

-the cross exceedingly hard to bear; and when he set

-his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room, his

-heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with

-guilty blushes.  Ah, weak nature!  He was not

-blushing for his sins, but for his repentance!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make

-him feel how full of forgiveness love was.  She saw

-nobleness in his very shame, and she generously

-resolved that she would not ask, that she would not

-allow, a confession.  She extended her hand cordially

-and beamed upon him, and told him how glad she

-was that he had come back, and&mdash;and&mdash;well&mdash;; she

-couldn't find anything else to say, but she urged him

-to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair,

-and tried for the life of her to think of something to

-say&mdash;the silence was so embarrassing.  But talking for

-talk's sake is always hard.  One talks as one

-breathes&mdash;best when volition has nothing to do with it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not

-half so much so as Patty's talk.  For he had not

-expected this sort of an opening.  If she had accused

-him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road

-would have been plain.  But now that she loved him

-and forgave him of her own sweet generosity, how

-should he smite her pride in the face by telling her

-that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar

-fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly

-despised?  Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected

-snare for his unwary feet.  He had resolved to confess

-his religious devotion with heroic courage, but he

-had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion.  He

-talked about everything else, he temporized, he allowed

-her to turn the conversation as she would, hoping

-vainly that she would allude to his gambling.  But

-she did not.  Could it be that she had not heard of

-it?  Must he then reveal that to her also?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While he was debating the question in his mind,

-Patty, imagining that he was reproaching himself for

-the sin and folly of gambling, began to talk of what

-had happened in the neighborhood&mdash;how Jake Sniger

-"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on

-Tuesday: "that's all this Methodist fuss amounts to,

-you know," she said.  Morton thought it ungracious to

-blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:

-there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal;

-so he sat still while Patty turned all the sobbing and

-sighing, and shouting and loud praying of the

-meetings into ridicule.  And Morton became conscious

-that it was getting every minute more and more difficult

-for him to confess his conversion.  He thought it

-better to return to his gambling for a starting point.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh! yes.  I'm sorry you got into such a bad

-scrape; but don't say any more about it, Morton.

-You're too good for me with all your faults, and you

-won't do it any more."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I want to tell you all about it, and what

-happened while I was gone.  I'm afraid you'll think

-too hard of me&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't

-want to hear about it because it isn't pleasant.  It'll

-all come out right at last: I'd a great deal rather

-have you a little wild at first than a hard Methodist,

-like Kike, for instance."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word.  Not

-one word.  I want you to feel that whatever anybody

-else may say, I know you're all right."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-You think Morton very weak.  But, do you know

-how exceedingly sweet is confidence from one you

-love, when there is only censure, and suspicion, and

-dark predictions of evil from everybody else?  Poor

-Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for

-a moment after so much of storm.  It is not the north

-wind, but the southern breezes that are fatal to the

-ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last he rose to go.  He felt himself a Peter.

-He had denied the Master!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not

-been honest with you.  I meant to tell you something

-when I first came, and I didn't.  It is hard to have

-to give up your love.  But I'm afraid you won't care

-for me when I tell you&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The severity of Morton's penitence only touched

-Patty the more deeply.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done

-anything naughty, I forgive you without knowing it.

-But I don't want to hear any more about it, I tell

-you."  And with that the blushing Patty held her

-cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton,

-trembling with conflicting emotions, had kissed her for

-the first time, she slipped away quickly to prevent his

-making any painful confessions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For a moment Morton stood charmed with her

-goodness.  When he believed himself to have

-conquered, he found himself vanquished.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part

-of the distance home.  He might write to her about

-it.  He might let her hear it from others.  But he

-rejected both as unworthy of a man.  The memory of

-the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw

-away his Methodism and rejoice in the love of Patty,

-now so assured.  But suddenly he seemed to himself

-to be another Judas.  He had not denied the Lord&mdash;he

-had betrayed him; and with a kiss!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back

-toward Captain Lumsden's.  He entered the loom-room,

-but it was vacant.  He went into the living-room,

-and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole

-family.  Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered

-by the opposite door.  Patty was carding wool with

-hand-cards, and she looked up, startled at this

-reappearance of her lover when she thought him happily

-dismissed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into

-any devil's snare by delay, and to atone for his great

-sin by making his profession as public as possible,

-"Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have

-determined to be a Christian, and I have

-joined&mdash;the&mdash;Methodist&mdash;Church."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance

-an unfortunate sound of defiance, and it aroused all

-Patty's combativeness.  It was in fact a death wound

-to her pride.  She had feared sometimes that Morton

-would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should

-join the despised sect without so much as consulting

-her was more than she could bear.  This, then, was the

-way in which her forbearance and forgiveness were

-rewarded!  There stood her father, sneering like a

-Mephistopheles.  She would resent the indignity, and

-at the same time show her power over her lover.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to

-see you again," she said, with lofty pride, and a

-solemn awfulness of passion more terrible than an

-oath.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton,

-stretching his hands out in eager, despairing entreaty.

-But this only gave Patty the greater assurance that a

-little decision on her part would make him give up

-his Methodism.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-181"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-181.jpg" alt="THE CHOICE.">

-<br>

-THE CHOICE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take

-it back."  There was a sternness in the white face

-and a fire in the black eyes that left Morton no

-hope.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But he straightened himself up now to his full six

-feet, and said, with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty,

-since you make me choose, I shall not give up the

-Lord, even for you.  But," he added, with a broken

-voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to

-bear it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in

-armor giving up his ladye love for the sake of

-monastic religiousness, how admirable he would be!  But

-even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest

-of sacrifices.  It is not the garb or the age that

-makes sublime a soul's offering of heart and hope to

-duty.  When Morton was gone Lumsden chuckled

-not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her

-courage; but I have understood that she resented his

-compliments, and poured upon him some severe

-denunciation, in which the Captain heard more truth

-than even Kike had ventured to utter.  Such are

-the inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is

-wounded.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton

-and Patty are in trouble&mdash;but you will want to know

-about Brady.  He was at Colonel Wheeler's that

-evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from lynching,

-when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that

-Morton had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mithodist?  He's no Mithodist."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother

-told me so; and what's more, she said she was glad

-of it."  Then, seeing Brady's discomfiture, she added:

-"You didn't get all the news that time, Mr. Brady."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a

-family intervoo, it's not proper fer me to tell all I

-heerd.  I didn't know the fact was made public yit,

-and so I had to denoy it.  It's the honor of a Oirish

-gintleman, ye know."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-What a journalist he would have made!

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap20"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XX.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-More than two years have passed since Morton

-made his great sacrifice.  You may see him

-now riding up to the Hickory Ridge Church&mdash;a

-"hewed-log" country meeting-house.  He is dressed

-in homespun clothes.  At the risk of compromising him

-forever, I must confess that his coat is

-straight-breasted&mdash;shad-bellied as the profane call it&mdash;and his

-best hat a white one with a broad brim.  The face

-is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one

-year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky,

-and the sickness and exposure of another year in the

-malarious cane-brakes of Western Tennessee.  Perils of

-Indians, perils of floods, perils of alligators, perils of

-bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of robbers, perils

-of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of five

-thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five

-or six hundred preachings in the same time, and the

-care of numberless scattered churches in the wilderness

-have conspired to give sedateness to his countenance.

-And yet there is a youthfulness about the

-sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that

-sort of humor which Western people call "mischief"

-about the eyes, that match but grotesquely with white

-hat and shad-bellied coat.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-185"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-185.jpg" alt="GOING TO CONFERENCE.">

-<br>

-GOING TO CONFERENCE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He has been a preacher almost ever since he

-became a Methodist.  How did he get his theological

-education?  It used to be said that Methodist preachers

-were educated by the old ones telling the young

-ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction

-Morton carried in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple,

-solid sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns, and a Bible.

-Having little of the theory and system of theology, he

-was free to take lessons in the larger school of life

-and practical observation.  For the rest, the free

-criticism to which he was subject from other preachers,

-and the contact with a few families of refinement, had

-obliterated his dialect.  Naturally a gentleman at heart,

-he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he met,

-quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners.  He is

-regarded as a young man of great promise by the older

-brethren; his clear voice is very charming, his strong

-and manly speech and his tender feeling are very

-inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported

-extraordinary revivals.  Some of the old men sagely predict

-that "he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such

-ambitious dreams disturb his sleep.  He has not "gone

-into a decline" on account of Patty.  A healthy

-nature will bear heavy blows.  But there is a pain,

-somewhere&mdash;everywhere&mdash;in his being, when he thinks

-of the girl who stood just above him in the

-spelling-class, and who looked so divine when she was

-spinning her two dozen cuts a day.  He does not like

-this regretful feeling.  He prays to be forgiven for it.

-He acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast

-that he is too much like Lot's wife&mdash;he finds his heart

-prone to look back toward the objects he once loved.

-Often in riding through the stillness of a deep forest&mdash;and

-the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode

-of the Almighty&mdash;his noble voice rings out fervently

-and even pathetically with that stanza:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "The dearest idol I have known,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whate'er that idol be,<br>

-  Help me to tear it from thy throne<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And worship only Thee!"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he,

-and none can tell a story more effectively in a generation

-of preachers who are all good story-tellers.  He

-loves his work; its dangers and difficulties satisfy the

-ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings,

-except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in

-the Hissawachee Bottom.  Then the longing to see

-Patty has seized him and he has been fain to hurry away,

-praying to be delivered from every snare of the enemy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat

-who is approaching the country meeting-house.  It is

-conference-time, and the greetings are hearty and

-familiar.  Everybody is glad to see everybody, and,

-after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand

-on ceremony with anybody else.  Morton has hardly

-alighted before half a dozen preachers have rushed up

-to him and taken him by the hand.  A tall brother,

-with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How do you do, Brother Goodwin?  Glad to see

-the alligators haven't finished you!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but

-suddenly he sees, standing back of the rest and waiting

-his turn, a young man with a solemn, sallow face,

-pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered by

-the straight black hair that falls on each side of it.

-He wears over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes

-cut through, and seems to be perpetually awaiting an

-ague-chill.  Seeing him, Morton pushes the rest aside,

-and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a

-cry: "Kike, God bless you!  How are you, dear old

-fellow?  You look sick."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over

-his shoulder and looked in his face.  "I am sick,

-Mort.  Cast down, but not destroyed, you know.  I

-hope I am ready to be offered up."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not a bit of it.  You've got to get better.  Offered

-up?  Why, you aren't fit to offer to an alligator.

-Where are you staying?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Out there."  Kike pointed to the tents of a

-camp-meeting barely visible through the trees.  The

-people in the neighborhood of the Hickory Ridge

-Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in

-their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up

-a camp-meeting.  It was easier to take care of the

-preachers out of doors than in.  Morton shook his

-head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent

-under which he had been assigned to sleep.  The

-white spot on the end of Kike's nose and the blue

-lines under his finger-nails told plainly of the

-on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some

-better shelter for him than under this thin sheet.  But

-this was hard to do.  The few brethren in the

-neighborhood had already filled their cabins full of guests,

-mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the

-younger men, renowned only for his piety and his

-revivals, had not been thought of for a place elsewhere

-than on the camp-ground.  Finding it impossible to

-get a more comfortable resting place for his friend,

-Morton turned to seek for a physician.  The only

-doctor in the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister,

-retired from the ministry on account of his impaired health.

-To him Morton went to ask for medicine for Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at

-the camp-ground," said Morton, "and&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And you want me to see him," said the doctor,

-in an alert, anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags"

-and donning his hat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike

-was lodged they found a prayer-meeting of a very

-exciting kind going on in the tent adjoining.  There

-were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs

-commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced

-ear of Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly

-doctor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to

-Morton, with great positiveness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've

-done my best to get him out of it, but I cannot.  See

-how thin this tent-cover is."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And the malaria of these woods is awful.

-Camp-meetings, sir, are always bad.  And this fuss is

-enough to drive a patient crazy."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said

-nothing.  They had now reached the corner of the

-tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet, holding his

-hands to his head.  The noise from the prayer-meeting

-was more than his weary brain would bear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor,

-promptly proceeding to lift Kike without even explaining

-to him who he was, or where he proposed to take

-him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but

-the poor fellow was shaking so that he could not sit

-there.  Morton then brought out Dolly&mdash;she was all

-his own now&mdash;and took the slight form of Kike in

-his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man

-in the saddle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own

-horse and spurring off to have a bed made ready for

-Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking

-Kike roused a little and said, "She's the same fine old

-Dolly, Mort."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"A little more sober.  The long rides in the cane-brakes,

-and the responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy,

-have given her the gravity that belongs to the

-ministry."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house!

-After the rude bear-skins upon which he had languished

-in the backwoods cabins, after the musty feather-beds

-in freezing lofts, and the pallets of leaves upon which

-he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and

-musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste

-of heaven.  But Kike was almost too sick to be

-grateful.  The poor frame had been kept up by will so

-long, that now that he was in a good bed and had

-Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick.  What

-had been ague settled into that wearisome disease

-called bilious fever.  Morton staid by him nearly all

-of the time, looking into the conference now and then

-to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to

-a grand speech from McKendree, attending on the

-third day of the session, when, with the others who had

-been preaching two years on probation, he was called

-forward to answer the "Questions" always propounded

-to "Candidates for admission to the conference."  Kike

-only was missing from the list of those who were to

-have heard the bishop's exhortations, full of martial

-fire, and to have answered his questions in regard to

-their spiritual state.  For above all gifts of speech or

-depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early

-Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was

-of account for the ministry who was not "groaning to

-be made perfect in this life."  The question stands

-in the discipline yet, but very many young men who

-assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city

-church with full galleries.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The strange mystery in which appointments were

-involved could not but pique curiosity.  Morton having

-had one year of mountains, and one year of cane-brakes,

-had come to wish for one year of a little more

-comfort, and a little better support.  There is a

-romance about going threadbare and tattered in a

-good cause, but even the romance gets threadbare

-and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a

-little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance,

-charming enough in itself, but dull when it grows

-monotonous.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The awful hour of appointments came on at last.

-The brave-hearted men sat down before the bishop,

-and before God, not knowing what was to be their

-fate.  Morton could not guess where he was going.  A

-miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might

-be his doom, or he might&mdash;but no, he would not hope

-that his lot might fall in Ohio.  He was a young man,

-and a young man must take his chances.  Morton

-found himself more anxious about Kike than about

-himself.  Where would the bishop send the invalid?

-With Kike it might be a matter of life and death, and

-Kike would not hear to being left without work.  He

-meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their

-destiny, sang fervently that fiery hymn of Charles

-Wesley's:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Jesus, the name high over all,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In hell or earth or sky,<br>

-  Angels and men before him fall,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And devils fear and fly.<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "O that the world might taste and see,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The riches of his grace,<br>

-  The arms of love that compass me<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would all mankind embrace."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-And when they reached the last stanzas there was the

-ring of soldiers ready for battle in their martial voices.

-That some of them would die from exposure, malaria,

-or accident during the next year was probable.  Tears

-came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to

-grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they

-approached the climax of the hymn, which the bishop

-read impressively, two lines at a time, for them to

-sing:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "His only righteousness I show,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His saving truth proclaim,<br>

-  'Tis all my business here below<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Happy if with my latest breath<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I may but gasp his name,<br>

-  Preach him to all and cry in death,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and

-the venerable Asbury, with calmness and with a voice

-faltering with age, made them a brief address; tender

-and sympathetic at first, earnest as he proceeded, and

-full of ardor and courage at the close.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted

-some man to take Quebec, they began with the oldest

-General first, asking him: 'General, will you go and

-take Quebec?'  To which he made reply, 'It is a very

-difficult enterprise.'  'You may stand aside,' they said.

-One after another the Generals answered that they

-would, in some more or less indefinite manner, until

-the youngest man on the list was reached.  'General

-Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?'  'I'll

-do it or die,' he replied."  Here the bishop

-paused, looked round about upon them, and added,

-with a voice full of emotion, "He went, and did both.

-We send you first to take the country allotted to you.

-We want only men who are determined to do it or

-die!  Some of you, dear brethren, will do both.  If

-you fall, let us hear that you fell like Methodist

-preachers at your post, face to the foe, and the shout

-of victory on your lips."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The effect of this speech was beyond description.

-There were sobs, and cries of "Amen," "God grant

-it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of the old log

-church.  Every man was ready for the hardest place,

-if he must.  Gravely, as one who trembles at his

-responsibility, the bishop brought out his list.  No man

-looked any more upon his fellow.  Every one kept

-his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop

-read the appointments, until his own name was reached.

-Some showed pleasure when their names were called,

-some could not conceal a look of pain.  When the

-reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton

-heard, with a little start, the words slowly enounced

-as the bishop's eyes fell on him:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Jenkinsville Circuit&mdash;Morton Goodwin."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio.  But it

-was in the wickedest part of Ohio.  Morton half

-suspected that he was indebted to his muscle, his

-courage, and his quick wit for the appointment.  The

-rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the

-alligators of Mississippi.  But he was young, hopeful

-and brave, and rather relished a difficult field than

-otherwise.  He listened now for Kike's name.  It

-came at the bottom of the list:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Pottawottomie Creek&mdash;W. T. Smith, Hezekiah

-Lumsden."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to

-a man so sick as Kike was.  He had, therefore, sent

-him as "second man" or "junior preacher" on a

-circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The last appointment having been announced, a

-simple benediction closed the services, and the brethren

-who had foregone houses and homes and fathers and

-mothers and wives and children for the kingdom of

-heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at

-Dr. Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to

-the sick Kike, and rode away, each in his own

-direction, and all with a self-immolation to the cause

-rarely seen since the Middle-Age.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with

-fever, and Morton, watching by his side.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap21"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXI.</i>

-<br><br>

-CONVALESCENCE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be

-spared.  There is no longer any reason why the

-rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should pine for the

-muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to

-"lick as soon as they lay eyes on to him."  Dolly's

-legs are aching for a gallop.  Morton and Dr. Morgan

-have exhausted their several systems of theology in

-discussion.  So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts

-the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the

-impatient brethren and face the impatient ruffians of

-Jenkinsville Circuit.  Kike is left yet in his quiet

-harbor to recover.  The doctor has taken a strange fancy

-to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward with

-sadness to the time when he will leave.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide

-sets back through the veins!  You have no longer

-any pain; you are not well enough to feel any

-responsibility; you cannot work; there is no obligation

-resting on you but one&mdash;that is rest.  Such perfect

-passivity Kike had never known before.  He could

-walk but little.  He sat the livelong day by the open

-window, as listless as the grass that waved before the

-wind.  All the sense of dire responsibility, all those

-feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of

-his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability,

-were in abeyance.  To eat, to drink, to sleep, to

-wake and breathe, to suffer as a passive instrument

-the play of whatever feeling might chance to come,

-was Kike's life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In this state the severity of his character was

-laid aside.  He listened to the quick and eager

-conversation of Dr. Morgan with a gentle pleasure; he

-answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan with

-quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane

-Morgan, their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as

-a far off spectator.  There were but two things that

-had a real interest for him.  He felt a keen delight

-in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows

-as they went chattering out from under the eaves&mdash;their

-airy vagabondage was so restful.  And he liked

-to watch the quick, careless tread of Henrietta Morgan,

-the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on

-forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the

-swallows themselves.  Though she was eighteen, there

-was in her full child-like cheeks, in her contagious

-laugh&mdash;a laugh most unprovoked, coming of itself&mdash;in

-her playful way of performing even her duties, a

-something that so contrasted with and relieved the

-habitual austerity of Kike's temper, and that so fell in

-with his present lassitude and happy carelessness, that

-he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a pillow, to

-turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.

-So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came

-to talk with her for the sake of hearing them.  He

-was not forgetful of the solemn injunctions

-Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young

-ministers in the presence of women.  With Miss Jane

-he was very careful lest he should in any way

-compromise himself, or awaken her affections.  Jane was

-the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if he were

-to marry.  But Nettie was a child&mdash;a cheerful

-butterfly&mdash;as refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold

-water to a fever-patient.  When she was out of the

-room, Kike was impatient; when she returned, he was

-glad.  When she sewed, he drew the large chair in

-which he rested in front of her, and talked in his

-grave fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a

-hundred fancies.  She seemed to shine all about him

-like sunlight.  Poor Kike could not refuse to enjoy a

-fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's reverence

-for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his

-sickness, grew apace into a love for him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected

-this, the doctor had penetrated it.  Kike's

-whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed the

-ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion,

-talking with eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave

-sentences before he was half through&mdash;seeing and

-hearing everything while he seemed to note nothing.

-He was not averse to this attachment between the

-two.  Provided always, that Kike should give up

-traveling.  It was all but impossible, indeed, for a

-man to be a Methodist preacher in that day and

-"lead about a wife."  A very few managed to

-combine the ministry with marriage, but in most cases

-marriage rendered "location" or secularization imperative.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-199"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-199.jpg" alt="CONVALESCENCE.">

-<br>

-CONVALESCENCE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way

-that is characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie

-Morgan as she sewed and laughed, when Dr. Morgan

-came in, put his pill-bags upon the high bureau,

-glanced quickly at the two, and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother.

-The double-and-twisting is hard work."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nettie laid her sewing down.  Kike watched her

-until she had disappeared through the door; then he

-listened until the more vigorous spinning indicated to

-him that younger hands had taken the wheel.  His

-heart sank a little&mdash;it might be hours before Nettie

-could return.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy

-himself, with his medicines, but he was observing how

-the young preacher's eyes followed his daughter, how

-his countenance relapsed into its habitual melancholy

-when she was gone.  He thought he could not be

-mistaken in his diagnosis.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know

-what we shall do when you get well.  I can't bear to

-have you go away."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You have been too good, doctor.  I am afraid

-you have spoiled me."  The thought of going to

-Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more

-painful to Kike.  He had put all thoughts of the sort

-out of his mind, because the doctor wished him to

-keep his mind quiet.  Now, for some reason, Doctor

-Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future upon

-him.  Why was it unpleasant?  Why had he lost his

-relish for his work?  Had he indeed backslidden?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for

-the fourth time held a large phial, marked <i>Sulph. de

-Quin.</i>, up to the light, as though he were counting

-the grains, the young preacher was instituting an

-inquiry into his own religious state.  Why did he

-shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit?  He had

-braved much harder toil and greater danger.  On

-Pottawottomie Creek he would have a senior colleague

-upon whom all administrative responsibilities would

-devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in

-comparison with the preceding.  On inquiring of

-himself he found that there was no circuit that would be

-attractive to him in his present state of mind, except

-the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house.  At

-first Kike Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his

-own motives, as other men do under like circumstances,

-gave himself much credit for his grateful attachment

-to the family.  Surely gratitude is a generous

-quality, and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another

-denomination, taken him under his roof and given

-him professional attention free of charge?  And

-Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for

-him as though he were a brother?  What could be

-more commendable than that he should find himself

-loth to leave people who were so good?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating

-himself.  He had always dealt hardly with Kike

-Lumsden.  He could not rest now in this subterfuge;

-he would not give himself credit that he did not

-deserve.  So while the doctor walked to the window

-and senselessly examined the contents of one of his

-bottles marked "<i>Hydrarg.</i>," Kike took another and

-closer look at his own mind and saw that the one

-person whose loss would be painful to him was not

-Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent wife, nor the admirable

-Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of whose

-spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to.  The

-consciousness that he was in love came to him

-suddenly&mdash;a consciousness not without pleasure, but with

-a plentiful admixture of pain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic

-alertness, caught the expression of a new self-knowledge

-and of an anxious pain upon the forehead of Lumsden.

-Then the physician seemed all at once satisfied

-with his medicines.  The bottle labelled "<i>Hydrarg.</i>"

-and the "<i>Sulph. de Quin.</i>" were now replaced in the

-saddle bags.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At this moment Nettie herself came into the room

-on some errand.  Kike had heard her wheel stop&mdash;had

-looked toward the door&mdash;had caught her glance

-as she came in, and had, in that moment, become

-aware that he was not the only person in love.  Was

-it, then, that the doctor wished to prevent the

-attachment going further that he had delicately reminded

-his guest of the approach of the time when he must

-leave?  These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude

-of his slow convalescence.  Nettie went back to

-her wheel, and set it humming louder than ever, but

-Kike heard now in its tones some note of anxiety

-that disturbed him.  The doctor came and sat down

-by him and felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had

-fever, really to add yet another link to the chain of

-evidence that his surmise was correct.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much

-impaired as yours cannot recuperate in a few days."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious

-to get to my mother's for a rest there, that I may not

-burden you any longer, and&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you

-think I want to be rid of you.  I wish you would

-stay with me always; I do indeed."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For a moment Kike looked out of the window.  To

-stay with the doctor always would, it seemed to him,

-be a heaven upon earth.  But had he not renounced

-all thought of a heaven on earth?  Had he not said

-plainly that here he had no abiding place?  Having

-put his hand to the plow, should he look back?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I ought not to give up my work."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was not in this tone that Kike would have

-spurned such a temptation awhile before.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I

-am useful here.  I cannot preach a great deal, but I

-think that I have never done so much good as since

-I began to practice medicine.  I need somebody to

-help me.  I cannot take care of the farm and my

-practice too.  You could look after the farm, and

-preach every Sunday in the country twenty miles

-round.  You might even study medicine after awhile,

-and take the practice as I grow older.  You will die,

-if you go on with your circuit-riding.  Come and live

-with me, and be my&mdash;&mdash;assistant."  The doctor had

-almost said "my son."  It was in his mind, and Kike

-divined it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to

-go, "and remember that nobody is obliged to kill

-himself."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and

-tried to see the right; and all day long Nettie found

-occasion to come in on little errands, and as often as

-she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would

-be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as

-often as she went out did he tremble lest he were

-about to betray the trust committed to him.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap22"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXII.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE DECISION.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered

-during his convalescence.  It was wide awake

-now.  He sat that evening in his room trying to see

-the right way.  According to old Methodist custom

-he looked for some inward movement of the spirit&mdash;some

-"impression"&mdash;that should guide him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-During the great religious excitement of the early

-part of this century, Western pietists referred

-everything to God in prayer, and the belief in immmediate

-divine direction was often carried to a ludicrous

-extent.  It is related that one man retired to the hills

-and prayed a week that he might know how he should

-be baptized, and that at last he came rushing out of the

-woods, shouting "Hallelujah!  Immersion!"  Various

-devices were invented for obtaining divine

-direction&mdash;devices not unworthy the ancient augurs.  Lorenzo

-Dow used to suffer his horse to take his own course

-at each divergence of the road.  It seems to have

-been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all ages, that

-God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb

-brute, or impress a blind impulse upon the human

-mind, but could not enlighten or guide the judgment

-itself.  The opening of a Bible at random for a

-directing text became so common during the Wesleyan

-movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought

-it necessary to utter a stout Irish philippic against

-what he called "Bible sortilege."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch

-the direction of heavenly breezes, could not but

-impress so earnest a nature as Kike's.  Now in his

-distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his

-Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any

-intelligible or remotely applicable passage, but upon a

-bead-roll of unpronounceable names in one of the

-early chapters of the Book of Chronicles.  This

-disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith.

-Faith like Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment.

-He prayed again for direction, and opened

-at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest

-thou me more than these?"  The marked trait in

-Kike's piety was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to

-the Lord Jesus Christ.  This question seemed directed

-to him, as it had been to Peter, in reproach.  He

-would hesitate no longer.  Love, and life itself, should

-be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him.  Then he

-prayed once more, and there came to his mind the

-memory of that saying about leaving houses and homes

-and lands and wives, for Christ's sake.  It came to him,

-doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental

-association.  But what did Kike know of the association of

-ideas, or of any other law of mental action?  Wesley's

-sermons and Benson's Life of Fletcher constituted his

-library.  To him it seemed certain that this text of

-scripture was "suggested."  It was a call from Christ

-to give up all for him.  And in the spirit of the

-sublimest self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep

-back nothing!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide

-in the evening often ebb before morning.  Kike

-thought himself strong enough to begin again to rise

-at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those "rules

-for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist

-preacher even yet <i>promises</i> to keep.  Following the

-same rules, he proceeded to set apart the first hour

-for prayer and meditation.  The night before all had

-seemed clear; but now that morning had come and

-he must soon proceed to execute his stern resolve, he

-found himself full of doubt and irresolution.  Such

-vacillation was not characteristic of Kike, but it marked

-the depth of his feeling for Nettie.  Doubtless, too,

-the enervation of convalescence had to do with it.

-Certainly in that raw and foggy dawn the forsaking

-of the paradise of rest and love in which he had

-lingered seemed to require more courage than he

-could muster.  After all, why should he leave?  Might

-he not be mistaken in regard to his duty?  Was he

-obliged to sacrifice his life?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He conducted his devotions in a state of great

-mental distraction.  Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed

-Pastor which belonged to Dr. Morgan lying on the

-window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some light

-from its stimulating pages.  He remembered that

-Wesley spoke well of Baxter; but he could not fix his

-mind upon the book.  He kept listlessly turning the

-leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence in Latin.

-Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that

-very reason his attention was the more readily attracted

-by the sentence in an unknown tongue.  He read

-it, "<i>Nec propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas</i>."  He

-found written in the margin a free rendering: "Let us

-not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth

-living for."  He knelt down now and gave thanks for

-what seemed to him Divine direction.  He had been

-delivered from a temptation to sacrifice the great end

-of living for the sake of saving his life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan

-and his motherly wife and the excellent Jane.  It

-cost him a great pang to say good-bye to Nettie

-Morgan.  Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling.

-She did not venture to come to the door.  Kike

-found her alone in the little porch at the back of the

-house, trying to look unconcerned.  Afraid to trust

-himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand

-coldly for a moment.  But the sight of her

-pain-stricken face touched him to the quick: he seized her

-hand again, and, with eyes full of tears, said huskily:

-"Good-bye, Nettie!  God bless you, and keep you

-forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the

-rest a hasty adieu and riding off eagerly, almost

-afraid to look back.  He was more severe than ever

-in the watch he kept over himself after this.  He

-could never again trust his treacherous heart.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee

-Settlement, "The Forks" had now come to be quite

-a village; the valley was filling with people borne on

-that great wave of migration that swept over the

-Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century.

-The cabin in which his mother lived was very

-little different from what it was when he left it.  The

-old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude; the

-barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a

-little on one side, giving to the cabin, as Kike

-thought, an unpleasant air, as of a man a little

-exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon the

-side of his head to leer at you saucily.  The mother

-received him joyously, and wiped her eyes with her

-apron when she saw how sick he had been.  Brady

-was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the

-fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed

-chairs sat suspiciously close together.  Brady had long

-thought of changing his state, but both Brady and the

-widow were in mortal fear of Kike, whose severity of

-judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.

-"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd

-propose to the widdy.  But what would the lad say

-to sich follies at my toime of loife?  And the widdy's

-more afeard of him than I am.  Did iver anybody

-say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther

-out of courtin' his mother, and his mother out of

-resavin' the attintions of a larnt grammairian loike

-mesilf?  The misfortin' is that Koike don't have no

-wakenisses himsilf.  I wish he had jist one, and thin

-I wouldn't keer.  If I could only foind that he'd iver

-looked jist a little swate loike at iny young girl, I

-wouldn't moind his cinsure.  But, somehow, I kape

-a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould coward

-that I am."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe

-improved, and the thoughtful mother had already made

-him a warm, though not very shapely, suit of jeans.

-It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.  She did

-not think him fit to go.  But she did not dare to say

-so.  How should she venture to advise one who

-seemed to her wondering heart to live in the very

-secrets of the Almighty?  God had laid hands on

-him&mdash;the child was hers no longer.  But still she

-looked her heart-breaking apprehensions as he set

-out from home, leaving her standing disconsolate in

-the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house,

-ventured to give him advice&mdash;partly by way of

-finding out whether Kike had any "wakeniss" or not.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I

-thrust you'll bear with me if I give you some advoice,

-though ye have got to be sich a praycher.  Ye'll not

-take offinse, me lad?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike,

-smiling sadly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as

-shure as ye're born, and it's me own opinion as ye

-ought to git a good wife to nurse ye, and thin you

-could git a home and maybe do more good than ye

-do now."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike's face settled into more than its wonted

-severity.  The remembrance of his recent vacillation

-and the sense of his present weakness were fresh in

-his mind.  He would not again give place to the

-devil.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Brady, there's something more important

-than our own ease or happiness.  We were not made

-to seek comfort, but to give ourselves to the work of

-Christ.  And see! your head is already blossoming

-for eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were

-all."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master

-solemnly and rode away, and Mr. Brady was more

-appalled than ever.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately.

-"Not a wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked

-gloomily into the school-house, took down a switch

-and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the

-worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius,

-often suffered on general principles when the master

-was out of humor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the

-distant Pottawottomie Creek circuit?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed

-the wilds of America at the call of duty as they heard

-it, were unhappy men?  The highest happiness comes

-not from the satisfaction of our desires, but from the

-denial of them for the sake of a high purpose.  I

-doubt not the happiest man that ever sailed through

-Levantine seas, or climbed Cappadocian mountains, was

-Paul of Tarsus.  Do you think that he envied the

-voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of

-Corinth?  Can you believe that one of the idlers in

-the Epicurean gardens, or one of the Stoic loafers in

-the covered sidewalks of Athens, could imagine the

-joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?

-For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice,

-and Kike defied the storms of a northern winter, and all

-the difficulties and dangers of the wilderness, and all

-the hardships of his lonely lot, with one saying often

-on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I have heard that about this time young Lumsden

-was accustomed to electrify his audiences by his

-fervent preaching upon the Christian duty of Glorying

-in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women

-would nod their heads one to another as they went

-home afterward, and say: "He's seed a mighty sight

-o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a young man."  "Yes;

-but he's got the victory; and how powerful

-sweet he talks about it!  I never heerd the beat in all

-my born days."

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap23"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the

-woman.  If Kike is happy in his self-abnegation,

-Patty is not happy in hers.  Pride has no balm in it.

-However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor

-food.  And Patty has little but pride to feed upon.

-The invalid mother has now been dead a year, and

-Patty is almost without companionship, though not

-without suitors.  Land brings lovers&mdash;land-lovers, if

-nothing more&mdash;and the estate of Patty's father is not

-her only attraction.  She is a young woman of a

-certain nobility of figure and carriage; she is not

-large, but her bearing makes her seem quite

-commanding.  Even her father respects her, and all the

-more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds

-opportunity.  Patty is thrifty, and in the early West

-no attraction outweighed this wifely ordering of a

-household.  But Patty will not marry any of the

-suitors who calculate the infirm health of her father

-and the probable division of his estate, and who

-mentally transfer to their future homes the thrift and

-orderliness they see in Captain Lumsden's.  By refusing

-them all she has won the name of a proud girl.

-There are times when out of sight of everybody

-she weeps, hardly knowing why.  And since her

-mother's death she reads the prayer-book more than

-ever, finding in the severe confessions therein framed

-for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of

-the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave

-him, and yet it angers him that she refuses to marry.

-His hatred of Methodists has assumed the intensity

-of a monomania since he was defeated for the legislature

-partly by Methodist opposition.  All his love

-of power has turned to bitterest resentment, and every

-thought that there may be yet the remotest possibility

-of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts him beyond

-measure.  He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate

-rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing

-seriousness and her fondness for the prayer-book.

-Even the prayer-book's earnestness has something

-Methodistic about it.  But Patty has never yet been

-in a Methodist meeting, and with this fact he

-comforts himself.  He has taken pains to buy her jewelry

-and "artificials" in abundance, that he may, by

-dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from

-temptations to become a Methodist.  For in that time,

-when fine dressing was not common and country

-neighborhoods were polarized by the advent of Methodism

-in its most aggressive form, every artificial flower

-and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the

-new sect; a well-dressed woman in a congregation

-was almost a defiance to the preacher.  It seemed to

-Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had prophylactic

-ornaments enough to save her from Methodism.  And to all

-of these he added covert threats that if any child of his

-should ever join these crazy Methodist loons, he would

-turn him out of doors and never see him again.  This

-threat was always indirect&mdash;a remark dropped

-incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown

-quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine,

-but Patty did not fail to comprehend.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-214"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-214.jpg" alt="THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.">

-<br>

-THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door

-that out-cast of

-New England&mdash;a

-tin-peddler.  Western

-people had never

-heard of Yale

-College or any other

-glory of Connecticut

-or New England.

-To them it

-was but a land that

-bred pestilent

-peripatetic peddlers of

-tin-ware and wooden

-clocks.  Western

-rogues would cheat

-you out of your

-horse or your farm

-if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of

-Yankee tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said

-"noo" for new, and talked nasally, would work an

-hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny bit."  The

-tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in

-at Lumsden's door and "made bold" to <i>in</i>quire if he

-could git a night's lodging, which the Captain, like

-other settlers, granted without charge.  Having

-unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse, the

-Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading

-questions about the family and personal history

-of the Lumsdens, collectively and individually.

-Having thus taken the first steps toward acquaintance by

-this display of an aggravating interest in the welfare

-of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate

-and truthful accounts&mdash;with variations&mdash;of his own

-recent adventures, to the boundless amusement of the

-younger Lumsdens, who laughed more heartily at the

-Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at

-his stories.  He said, among other things, that he had

-ben to Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis'

-called a "basket meetin'."  But when he had proceeded

-so far with his narrative, he prudently stopped

-and made bold to <i>in</i>quire what the Captain thought

-of these Methodists.  The Captain was not slow to

-express his opinion, and the man of tins, having thus

-reassured himself by taking soundings, proceeded to

-tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks to that

-meetin'.  And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed

-went forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer.

-Didn't do no pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye,

-ye know.  Well, ye see, the Methodis' they wanted to

-<i>in</i>courage a seeker, and so they all bought some tins.

-Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands!  (And

-here the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and

-then the other at Patty.)  Fer they was seen a dreffle

-lot of folks there.  Come to hear a young preacher

-as is 'mazin' elo'kent&mdash;Parson Goodwin by name, and

-he was a <i>good one</i> to preach, sartain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This startled Patty and the Captain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The identikle," said the peddler.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Raised only half a mile from here," said

-Lumsden, "and we don't think much of him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his

-sails to Lumsden's breezes.  "I calkilate I could

-preach e'en a'most as well as he does, myself, and I

-wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother.  But he's got

-a good v'ice fer singin'&mdash;sich a ring to't, ye see, and

-he's got a smart way thet comes the sympathies over the

-women folks and weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin'

-at a desp'ate rate.  Was brought up here, was he?

-Du tell!  He's powerful pop'lar."  Then, catching the

-Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I

-mean."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said

-the Captain, with a chuckle.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler,

-pleased to have some information to give.  Seeing

-that the Captain and his daughter were interested in

-his communication, the peddler paused a moment.  A

-bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part

-with too quickly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware

-man.  "I heerd say as he was a goin' to splice with a

-gal that could pray like a angel afire.  An' I heerd

-her pray.  She nearly peeled the shingles off the

-skewl-haouse.  Sich another <i>ex</i>citement as she perjuced, I

-never did see.  An' I went up to her after meetin'

-and axed a interest in her prayers.  Don't do no

-harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own side!

-An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for

-preachers ginerally marry purty faces.  Preachers is a

-good deal like other folks, ef they do purtend to be

-better, hey?  Well, naow, that Ann Elizer Meacham <i>is</i>

-purty, sartain.  An' everybody says he's goin' to marry

-her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie

-'em up next Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe.  Then

-they'll divide the work in the middle and go halves.

-She'll pray and he'll preach."  At this the peddler

-broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated

-both the Captain and Patty by his news.  He now

-proposed to sell some tinware, thinking he had worked

-his audience up to the right state of mind.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at

-hearing this bit of intelligence from Jenkinsville.  What

-was Morton Goodwin to her?  She went around the

-house as usual this evening, trying to hide all

-appearance of feeling.  She even persuaded her father to

-buy half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets&mdash;she

-smiled at the peddler for calling them <i>pails</i>.  She was

-not willing to gratify the Captain by showing him how

-much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee."  But when

-she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had

-lost its power to soothe.  She was mortified, vexed,

-humiliated on every hand.  She felt hard and bitter,

-above all, toward the sect that had first made a

-division between Morton and herself, and cordially blamed

-the Methodists for all her misfortunes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It happened that upon the very next Sunday

-Russell Bigelow was to preach.  Far and wide over

-the West had traveled the fame of this great preacher,

-who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in

-his impassioned manner.  "An orator is to be judged

-not by his printed discourses, but by the memory of

-the effect he has produced," says a French writer; and

-if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the fame that

-fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely

-an orator of the highest order.  He is known as the

-"indescribable."  The news that he was to preach had

-set the Hissawachee Settlement afire with eager

-curiosity to hear him.  Even Patty declared her intention

-of going, much to the Captain's regret.  The meeting

-was not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods,

-and she could go for this time without entering the

-house of her father's foe.  She had no other motive

-than a vague hope of hearing something that would

-divert her; life had grown so heavy that she craved

-excitement of any kind.  She would take a back seat

-and hear the famous Methodist for herself.  But Patty

-put on all of her gold and costly apparel.  She was

-determined that nobody should suspect her of any

-intention of "joining the church."  Her mood was one

-of curiosity on the surface, and of proud hatred and

-quiet defiance below.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a

-meeting held in the forest; no forest is so satisfying

-as a forest of beech; the wide-spreading boughs&mdash;drooping

-when they start from the trunk, but well sustained

-at the last&mdash;stretch out regularly and with

-a steady horizontalness, the last year's leaves form

-a carpet like a cushion, while the dense foliage shuts

-out the sun.  To this meeting in the beech, woods

-Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile

-away.*  As she passed through a little cove, she saw a

-man lying flat on his face in prayer.  It was the

-preacher.  Awe-stricken, Patty hurried on to the

-meeting.  She had fully intended to take a seat in

-the rear of the congregation, but being a little

-confused and absent-minded she did not observe at first

-where the stand had been erected, and that she was

-entering the congregation at the side nearest to the

-pulpit.  When she discovered her mistake it was too

-late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full

-of standing people; there was nothing for her but to

-take the only vacant seat in sight.  This put her in

-the very midst of the members, and in this position

-she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other

-settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly

-dressed, for that time, sitting in the very midst of the

-devout sisters&mdash;for the men and women sat apart.  All

-around Patty there was not a single "artificial," or

-piece of jewelry.  Indeed, most of the women wore

-calico sunbonnets.  The Hissawachee people who knew

-her were astounded to see Patty at meeting at all.

-They remembered her treatment of Morton, and they

-looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and Magog

-incarnated in one.  This sense of the conspicuousness

-of her position was painful to Patty, but she presently

-forgot herself in listening to the singing.  There never

-was such a chorus as a backwoods Methodist congregation,

-and here among the trees they sang hymn after

-hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with

-triumphant joy, now with solemn earnestness.  They sang

-"Children of the Heavenly King," and "Come let us

-anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet, blow," and "Arise

-my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of

-grace!"  While they were singing this last, the

-celebrated preacher entered the pulpit, and there ran

-through the audience a movement of wonder, almost

-of disappointment.  His clothes were of that sort of

-cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did

-not fit him.  He was rather short, and inexpressibly

-awkward.  His hair hung unkempt over the best

-portion of his face&mdash;the broad projecting forehead.

-His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones

-and chin large.  His mouth was wide and with a

-sorrowful depression at the corners, his nostrils thin,

-his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile.  He

-took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,&mdash;"Seeking

-a bride for his master," and, according to the

-custom of the time, he first expounded the incident,

-and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by applying

-it to the soul's marriage to Christ.  Notwithstanding

-the ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness

-of his postures, there was a gentlemanliness about

-his address that indicated a man not unaccustomed

-to good society.  His words were well-chosen;

-his pronunciation always correct; his speech

-grammatical.  In all of these regards Patty was

-disappointed.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the

-accompanying incident.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-But the sermon.  Who shall describe "the indescribable"?

-As the servant, he proceeded to set forth

-the character of the Master.  What struck Patty was

-not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of his

-argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that

-every divine trait which he described had reflected

-itself in the life of the preacher himself.  For none

-but the manliest of men can ever speak worthily of

-Jesus Christ.  As Bigelow proceeded he won her

-famished heart to Christ.  For such a Master she

-could live or die; in such a life there was what Patty

-needed most&mdash;a purpose; in such a life there was a

-friend; in such a life she would escape that sense

-of the ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the

-unworthiness of her own pride.  All that he said of

-Christ's love and condescension filled her with a sense

-of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly.

-There were a hundred others as much affected, but

-the eyes of all her neighbors were upon her.  If Patty

-should be converted, what a victory!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy

-of a soul wedded forever to Christ&mdash;living nobly after

-the pattern of His life&mdash;Patty resolved that she would

-devote herself to this life and this Saviour, and rejoiced

-in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the

-sermon.  Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage

-and to pride&mdash;to pride in its best sense.  Who would

-be ashamed of such a Bridegroom?  And as he

-depicted the trials that some must pass through in

-accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally

-made the sacrifice.  As he described the glory of

-renouncing the world, she thought of her jewelry and

-the spirit of defiance in which she had put it on.

-There, in the midst of that congregation, she took out

-her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet.

-We may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an

-over-strained literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn

-renunciation of the world&mdash;the whole-hearted espousal

-of herself, for all eternity, to Him who stands for all

-that is noblest in life.  Of course this action was

-visible to most of the congregation&mdash;most of all to

-the preacher himself.  To the Methodists it was the

-greatest of triumphs, this public conversion of Captain

-Lumsden's daughter, and they showed their joy in

-many pious ejaculations.  Patty did not seek

-concealment.  She scorned to creep into the kingdom of

-heaven.  It seemed to her that she owed this

-publicity.  For a moment all eyes were turned away from

-the orator.  He paused in his discourse until Patty

-had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism.

-Then, turning with tearful eyes to the audience,

-the preacher, with simple-hearted sincerity and

-inconceivable effect, burst out with, "Hallelujah!  I have

-found a bride for my Master!"

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap24"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXIV</i>

-<br><br>

-DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a

-spectator&mdash;having decided to risk a new attack of the

-jerks that he might stand guard over Patty.  But Patty

-was so far forward that he could not see her, except

-now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep

-over the shoulders of some taller man standing in

-front.  It was only when Bigelow uttered these exulting

-words that he gathered from the whispers about him

-that Patty was the center of excitement.  He instantly

-began to swear and to push through the crowd,

-declaring that he would take Patty home and teach her to

-behave herself.  The excitement which he produced

-presently attracted the attention of the preacher and of

-the audience.  But Patty was too much occupied with

-the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give

-any attention to it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She is my daughter, and she's <i>got</i> to learn to

-obey," said Lumsden in his quick, rasping voice,

-pushing energetically toward the heart of the dense

-assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by force.

-Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at

-the moment when her father had forced his way through

-the fringe of standing people that bordered the densely

-packed congregation, and was essaying, in his headlong

-anger, to reach her and drag her forth.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The Methodists of that day generally took pains to

-put themselves under the protection of the law in

-order to avoid disturbance from the chronic rowdyism

-of a portion of the people.  There was a magistrate

-and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in

-penetrating the cordon of standing men, had come directly

-upon the country justice, who, though not a Methodist,

-had been greatly moved by Bigelow's oratory, and who,

-furthermore, was prone, as country justices sometimes

-are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office.  At any

-rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this

-great orator and this assemblage of people had in

-some sense put themselves under the protection of the

-Majesty of the Law as represented in his own

-important self.  And for Captain Lumsden to come

-swearing and fuming right against his sacred person

-was not only a breach of the law, it was&mdash;what the

-justice considered much worse&mdash;a contempt of court.

-Hence ensued a dialogue:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>The Court</i>&mdash;Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate.

-In interrupting the worship of Almighty God by this

-peaceful assemblage you are violating the law.  I do

-not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if

-you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged

-to vindicate the majesty of the law by ordering the

-constable to arrest you for a breach of the peace, as

-against this assembly.  (J. P. here draws himself up

-to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the

-dignity of the law.)

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Outraged Father</i>&mdash;Squire, I'll have you know that

-Patty Lumsden's my daughter, and I have a right to

-control her; and you'd better mind your own business.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Justice of the Peace</i> (lowering his voice to a solemn

-and very judicial bass)&mdash;Is she under eighteen years

-of age?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>By-stander</i> (who doesn't like Lumsden)&mdash;She's

-twenty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-<i>Justice</i>&mdash;If your daughter is past eighteen, she is

-of age.  If you lay hands on her I'll have to take you

-up for a salt and battery.  If you carry her off I'll

-take her back on a writ of replevin.  Now, Captain, I

-could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance;

-and if you don't leave the meeting at once

-I'll do it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever,

-but a stalwart class-leader from another settlement,

-provoked by the interruption of the eloquent sermon

-and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid off

-his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting

-Lumsden, neck and heels, on his own account.  At the

-same moment an old sister near at hand began to

-pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him!

-Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like

-Saul of Tarsus.  O Lord, smite the stiff-necked

-persecutor by almighty power!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This last was too much for the Captain.  He

-might have risked arrest, he might have faced the

-herculean class-leader, but he had already felt the jerks

-and was quite superstitious about them.  This prayer

-agitated him.  He was not ambitious to emulate Paul,

-and he began to believe that if he stood still a

-minute longer he would surely be smitten to the ground

-at the request of the sister with a relish for dramatic

-conversions.  Casting one terrified glance at the old

-sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven,

-Lumsden broke through the surrounding crowd and

-started toward home at a most undignified pace.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted

-during the remainder of the sermon by forebodings.

-But she had a will as inflexible as her father's, and

-now that her will was backed by convictions of duty

-it was more firmly set than ever.  Bigelow announced

-that he would "open the door of the church," and

-the excited congregation made the forest ring with

-that hymn of Watts' which has always been the

-recruiting song of Methodism.  The application to Patty's

-case produced great emotion when the singing reached

-the stanzas:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Must I be carried to the skies<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On flowery beds of ease,<br>

-  While others fought to win the prize<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sailed through bloody seas?<br>

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Are there no foes for me to face?<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must I not stem the flood?<br>

-  Is this vile world a friend to grace<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To help me on to God?"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-At this point Patty slowly rose from the place

-where she had been sitting weeping, and marched

-resolutely through the excited crowd until she reached

-the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in

-token of her desire to become a church-member.

-While she came forward, the congregation sang with

-great fervor, and not a little sensation:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Since I must fight if I would reign,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Increase my courage, Lord;<br>

-  I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,<br>

-  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Supported by thy word."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-After many had followed Patty's example the

-meeting closed.  Every Methodist shook hands with

-the new converts, particularly with Patty, uttering

-words of sympathy and encouragement.  Some offered

-to go home with her to keep her in countenance in

-the inevitable conflict with her father, but, with a true

-delicacy and filial dutifulness, Patty insisted on going

-alone.  There are battles which are fought better

-without allies.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and

-suspense.  As she came up to the house she saw her

-father sitting on the door-step, riding-whip in hand.

-Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying his

-raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted&mdash;a habit

-having its root in a domineering disposition&mdash;she was

-not without apprehension that he would use personal

-violence.  But he was quiet now, from extreme anger.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on

-the spot to give up this infernal Methodism, or you

-can't come in here to bring your praying and groaning

-into my ears.  Are you going to give it up?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty.  "You

-need me.  I can stand it, but what will you do when

-your rheumatism comes on next winter?  Do let me

-stay and take care of you.  I won't bother you about

-my religion."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in

-my house," screamed the father, frantically.  He would

-have said more, but he choked.  "You've disgraced

-the family," he gasped, after a minute.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty stood still, and said no more.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will you give up your nonsense about being

-religious?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty shook her head.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an

-oath he went into the house and pulled the latch-string

-in.  The latch-string was the symbol of hospitality.

-To say that "the latch-string was out" was to

-open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the

-most significant and inhospitable act Lumsden could

-perform.  For when the latch-string is in, the door is

-locked.  The daughter was not only to be a daughter

-no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach

-the latch-string was withdrawn.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty was full of natural affection.  She turned away

-to seek a home.  Where?  She walked aimlessly down

-the road at first.  She had but one thought as she

-receded from the old house that had been her home

-from infancy&mdash;&mdash;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The latch-string was drawn in.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap25"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXV.</i>

-<br><br>

-ANN ELIZA.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-How shall I make you understand this book, reader

-of mine, who never knew the influences that

-surrounded a Methodist of the old sort.  Up to this point

-I have walked by faith; I could not see how the

-present generation could be made to comprehend the

-earnestness of their grandfathers.  But I have hoped

-that, none the less, they might dimly perceive the

-possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in the

-bones.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But now?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-You have never been a young Methodist preacher

-of the olden time.  You never had over you a presiding

-elder who held your fate in his hands; who, more

-than that, was the man appointed by the church to be

-your godly counsellor.  In the olden time especially,

-presiding elders were generally leaders of men, the best

-and greatest men that the early Methodist ministry

-afforded; greatest in the qualities most prized in

-ecclesiastical organization&mdash;practical shrewdness, executive

-force, and a piety of unction and lustre.  How shall

-I make you understand the weight which the words of

-such a man had when he thought it needful to counsel

-or admonish a young preacher?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value

-as an organizer, had been made an "elder," and just

-now he thought it his duty to have a solemn conversation

-with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville

-circuit, upon matters of great delicacy.  Magruder was

-not a man of nice perceptions, and he was dimly

-conscious of his own unfitness for the task before him.

-It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting.  He

-had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would

-like to have a word with him, and they were walking

-side by side through the woods.  Neither of them

-looked at the other.  The "elder" was trying in vain

-to think of a point at which to begin; the young

-preacher was wondering what the elder would say.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother,"

-said Magruder, desperately.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When they had sat down there was a pause.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother

-Goodwin?" he broke out abruptly at last.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly,

-not disposed to help the presiding elder out of his

-difficulty.  Then he added: "But not thinking it a

-profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my

-thoughts to other things."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ahem!  But have you not taken some steps

-toward matrimony without consulting with your

-brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, sir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you

-have done a great wrong to a defenceless girl, who is

-a stranger in a strange land."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"

-asked Morton, startled by the solemnity with which

-the presiding elder spoke.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the

-matter to guess who the person is.  You have

-encouraged her to think that you meant to marry

-her.  If I am correctly informed, you even advised

-Holston, who was her

-lover, not to annoy

-her any more, and

-you assumed to defend

-her rights in the

-lawsuit about a piece

-of land.  Whether you

-meant to marry her or

-not, you have at least

-compromised her.  And

-in such circumstances

-there is but one course

-open to a Christian or

-a gentleman."  The

-elder spoke severely.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-231"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-231.jpg" alt="ANN ELIZA.">

-<br>

-ANN ELIZA.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth,"

-said Morton, rising and speaking with vehemence.  "I

-have been very much struck with the eloquence of Sister

-Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or speaks in

-love-feast.  I did not mean to marry anybody.  I have always

-defended the poor and the helpless.  She told me her

-history one day, and I felt sorry for her.  I

-determined to befriend her."  Here Morton paused in some

-embarrassment, not knowing just how to proceed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Befriend a woman!  That is the most imprudent

-thing in the world for a minister to do, my dear

-brother.  You cannot befriend a woman without doing

-harm."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to

-give it to her.  She told me that she had refused

-Bob Holston five times, and that he kept troubling

-her.  I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated

-with him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the

-country and said that I told him I was engaged

-to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he didn't let

-her alone.  What I did tell him was, that I was Ann

-Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I

-thought, as a gentleman, he ought to take five refusals

-as sufficient, and not wait till he was knocked down

-by refusals."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take

-up a woman's cause that way, you have got to marry

-her or ruin her and yourself, too.  If you were not a

-minister you might have a female friend or two; and

-you might help a woman in distress.  But you are a

-sheep in the midst of&mdash;of&mdash;wolves.  Half the girls on

-this circuit would like to marry you, and if you were

-to help one of them over the fence, or hold her bridle-rein

-for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five

-minutes with her about the turnip crop, she would

-consider herself next thing to engaged.  Now, as to

-Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to gossip

-over the whole circuit."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising

-indignation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why, everybody.  I hadn't more than touched the

-circuit at Boggs' Corners till I heard that you were to

-be married at this very Quarterly Meeting.  And I felt

-a little grieved that you should go so far without any

-consultation with me.  I stopped at Sister Sims's&mdash;she's

-Ann Eliza's aunt I believe&mdash;and told her that I

-supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require

-my aid pretty soon, and she burst into tears.  She said

-that if there had been anything between you and Ann

-Eliza, it must be broken off, for you hadn't stopped

-there at all on your last round.  Now tell me the

-plain truth, brother.  Did you not at one time entertain

-a thought of marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I have thought about it.  She is good-looking and

-I could not be with her without liking her.  Then,

-too, everybody said that she was cut out for a preacher's

-wife.  But I never paid her any attention that could

-be called courtship.  I stopped going there because

-somebody had bantered me about her.  I was afraid of

-talk.  I will not deny that I was a little taken with her,

-at first, but when I thought of marrying her I found that

-I did not love her as one ought to love a wife&mdash;as

-much as I had once loved somebody else.  And then,

-too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry

-have to locate sooner or later, and I don't want to

-give up the ministry.  I think it's hard if a man

-cannot help a girl in distress without being forced to

-marry her."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter

-further," said the elder, who was more than ever

-convinced by Morton's admissions that he had acted

-reprehensibly.  "I have confidence in you.  You have

-done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not.

-There is only one way of making the thing right.  It's

-a bad thing for a preacher to have a broken heart

-laid at his door.  Now I tell you that I don't know

-anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than

-Sister Meacham.  If the case stands as it does now I

-may have to object to the passage of your character

-at the next conference."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This last was an awful threat.  In that time when

-the preachers lived far apart, the word of a presiding

-elder was almost enough to ruin a man.  But instead

-of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly

-stubborn.  If the elder and the conference could be so

-unjust he would bear the consequences, but would never

-submit.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house,

-and the presiding elder accordingly preached in

-the grove.  All the time of his preaching Morton

-Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the zealous

-Ann Eliza were there.  But no Ann Eliza appeared.

-Nothing but grief could thus keep her away from the

-meeting.  The more Morton meditated upon it, the

-more guilty did he feel.  He had acted from the highest

-motives.  He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt&mdash;the

-weak-looking Sister Sims&mdash;had adroitly intrigued

-to give his kindness the appearance of courtship.  How

-could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann Eliza of any

-design?  Old ministers know better than to trust

-implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious

-people.  There are people, pious in their way, in whose

-natures intrigue and fraud are so indigenous that they

-grow all unsuspected by themselves.  Intrigue is one

-of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks&mdash;a small

-but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of

-Mansoul under an alias.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from

-other people.  He was conscious that Magruder's

-confidence in him was weakened, and it seemed to him

-that all the brethren and sisters looked at him askance.

-When he came to make the concluding prayer he had

-a sense of hollowness in his devotions, and he really

-began to suspect that he might be a hypocrite.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and

-in the presence of class-leaders, stewards, local preachers

-and exhorters from different parts of the circuit, the

-once popular preacher felt that he had somehow lost

-caste.  He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which

-the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for

-three months of labor; and small as was the amount,

-the scrupulous and now morbid Morton doubted

-whether he were fairly entitled to it.  Sometimes he

-thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience

-by marrying Ann Eliza with or without love.  But

-his whole proud, courageous nature rebelled against

-submitting to marry under compulsion of Magruder's

-threat.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and

-he got on but poorly.  He looked in vain for Miss

-Ann Eliza Meacham.  She was not there to go through

-the audience and with winning voice persuade those who

-were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's

-bench for prayer.  She was not there to pray audibly

-until every heart should be shaken.  Morton was not

-the only person who missed her.  So famous a "working

-Christian" could not but be a general favorite;

-and the people were not slow to divine the cause

-of her absence.  Brother Goodwin found the faces

-of his brethren averted, and the grasp of their

-hands less cordial.  But this only made him sulky and

-stubborn.  He had never meant to excite Sister

-Meacham's expectations, and he would not be driven to

-marry her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting

-saw all the roads crowded with people.  Everybody

-was on horseback, and almost every horse carried

-"double."  At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast

-began in the large school-house.  No one was admitted

-who did not hold a ticket, and even of those who had

-tickets some were turned away on account of their

-naughty curls, their sinful "artificials," or their wicked

-ear-rings.  At the moment when the love-feast began

-the door was locked, and no tardy member gained

-admission.  Plates, with bread cut into half-inch cubes,

-were passed round, and after these glasses of water,

-from which each sipped in turn&mdash;this meagre provision

-standing ideally for a feast.  Then the speaking was

-opened by some of the older brethren, who were

-particularly careful as to dates, announcing, for instance,

-that it would be just thirty-seven years ago the

-twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke

-peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at

-the mourner's bench in Logan's school-house on the

-banks of the South Fork of the Roanoke River in

-Old Virginny."  This statement the brethren had heard

-for many years, with a proper variation in date as the

-time advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted

-it again with pious ejaculations of thanksgiving.  There

-was a sameness in the perorations of these little

-speeches.  Most of the old men wound up by asking

-an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their

-"last days might be their best days," and that their

-"path might grow brighter and brighter unto the

-perfect day."  Soon the elder sisters began to speak of

-their trials and victories, of their "ups and downs,"

-their "many crooked paths," and the religion that

-"happifies the soul."  With their pathetic voices the

-fire spread, until the whole meeting was at a

-white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!" "Bless

-the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the

-fervor of feeling.  Of course, you, sitting out of the

-atmosphere of it and judging coldly, laugh at this

-indecorous fervor.  Perhaps it is just as well to laugh,

-but for my part I cannot.  I know too well how deep

-and vital were the emotions out of which came these

-utterances of simple and earnest hearts.  I find it hard

-to get over an early prejudice that piety is of more

-consequence than propriety.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza.  If she

-were present he could hardly tell it.  Make the

-bonnets of women cover their faces and make them all

-alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting

-forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a

-uniform of homespun cotton, and there is not much

-individuality left.  If Ann Eliza Meacham were present

-she would, according to custom, speak early; and

-all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and

-eloquent utterances.  So when the speaking and singing

-had gone on for an hour, and the voice of Sister

-Meacham was not heard, Morton sadly concluded that

-she must have remained at home, heart-broken on

-account of disappointment at his neglect.  In this he

-was wrong.  Just at that moment a sister rose in the

-further corner of the room and began to speak in a

-low and plaintive voice.  It was Ann Eliza.  But how

-changed!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She proceeded to say that she had passed through

-many fiery trials in her life.  Of late she had been led

-through deep waters of temptation, and the floods of

-affliction had gone over her soul.  (Here some of the

-brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at

-Brother Goodwin.)  The devil had tempted her to stay

-at home.  He had tempted her to sit silent this morning,

-telling her that her voice would only discourage

-others.  But at last she had got the victory and

-received strength to bear her cross.  With this, her

-voice rose and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph

-to the end.  Morton was greatly affected, not because her

-affliction was universally laid at his door, but because

-he now began to feel, as he had not felt before, that

-he had indeed wrought her a great injury.  As she

-stood there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved

-her.  He pitied her; and Pity lives on the next floor

-below Love.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader

-think too meanly of her.  She had resolved to "catch"

-Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment she saw him.

-But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the

-rights which the highest civilization accords to woman

-is that of "bringing down" the chosen man if she can.

-Ann Eliza was not consciously hypocritical.  Her deep

-religious feeling was genuine.  She had a native genius

-for devotion&mdash;and a genius for devotion is as much a

-natural gift as a genius for poetry.  Notwithstanding

-her eloquence and her rare talent for devotion,

-her gifts in the direction of honesty and truthfulness

-were few and feeble.  A phrenologist would have

-described such a character as possessing "Spirituality

-and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small."  You

-have seen such people, and the world is ever

-prone to rank them at first as saints, afterwards as

-hypocrites; for the world classifies people in gross&mdash;it

-has no nice distinctions.  Ann Eliza, like most people

-of the oratorical temperament, was not over-scrupulous

-in her way of producing effects.  She could sway her

-own mind as easily as she could that of others.  In

-the case of Morton, she managed to believe herself

-the victim of misplaced confidence.  She saw nothing

-reprehensible either in her own or her aunt's

-manœuvering.  She only knew that she had been bitterly

-disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through

-whom the disappointment had come.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards

-of his time.  Such genuine fervor was, in his

-estimation, evidence of a high state of piety.  One "who

-lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist phrase,

-must be honest and pure and good.  So Morton

-reasoned.  He had wounded such an one.  He owed

-reparation.  In marrying Ann Eliza he would be acting

-generously, honestly and wisely, according to the

-opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority

-he knew.  For in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get

-the most saintly of wives, the most zealous of

-Christians, the most useful of women.  So when

-Mr. Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the

-service to put away every sin out of their hearts

-before they ventured to take the communion, Morton,

-with many tears, resolved to atone for all the harm

-he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham,

-and to marry her&mdash;if the Lord should open the

-way.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion.

-His high spirit resented the threat of the

-presiding elder.  He would not be driven into

-marriage.  In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed

-the night.  But Magruder being a shrewd man,

-guessed the state of Morton's feelings, and

-perceived his own mistake.  As he mounted his horse

-on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted

-eyes, ready to bid an official farewell to his presiding

-elder, but not ready to give his usual cordial adieu to

-Brother Magruder.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with

-sincere pity, "forgive me; I ought not to have spoken

-as I did.  I know you will do right, and I had no

-right to threaten you.  Be a man; that is all.  Live

-above reproach and act like a Christian.  I am sorry

-you have involved yourself.  It is better not to marry,

-maybe, though I have always maintained that a married

-man can live in the ministry if he is careful and

-has a good wife.  Besides, Sister Meacham has some

-land."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little

-distance.  Then he turned back and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden

-to take his place on Peterborough circuit till

-Conference.  I suppose some young exhorter can be

-found to take Lumsden's place as second man on

-Pottawottomie Creek, and Peterborough is too

-important a place to be left vacant."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton,

-coldly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh!  I hope he will.  Peterborough isn't much more

-unhealthy than Pottawottomie Creek.  A little more

-intermittent fever, maybe.  But it is the best I can

-do.  The work is everything.  The men are the Lord's.

-Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose

-him, though.  He'll stop and see you as he comes

-through, I suppose.  I think I'd better give you the

-plan of his circuit, which I got the other day."  After

-adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the two

-preachers parted again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton mounted Dolly.  The day was far advanced,

-and he had an appointment to preach that very evening

-at the Salt Fork school-house.  He had never yet

-failed to suffer from a disturbance of some sort when

-he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and

-having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was

-sure of a perilous encounter.  But now the prospect of

-fighting with the wild beasts of Salt Fork was almost

-enchanting.  It would divert him from graver apprehensions.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap26"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXVI.</i>

-<br><br>

-ENGAGEMENT.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of

-mind as he rides toward Salt Fork, weighing

-considerations of right and wrong, of duty and

-disinclination, in the balance.  He is not an epic hero, for

-epic heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by

-intuition just what is right, or they are like Milton's

-Satan, unencumbered with a sense of duty.  But Morton

-was neither infallible nor a devil.  A man of

-sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a

-woman's heart without compunction.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met

-by Burchard, now sheriff of the county, and warned

-that he would be attacked.  Burchard begged him to

-turn back.  Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice

-and time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been

-under such obligations to him, and had not been

-touched by this new evidence of his friendship.  But

-Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his life.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard,"

-he said, "and I will do it or die."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could

-not get rid of his love affair.  He was touched to find

-lying on the desk in the school-house a little unsigned

-billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting, uttering a warning

-similar to that just given by Burchard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was with some tremor that he looked round, in

-the dim light of two candles, upon the turbulent faces

-between him and the door.  His prayer and singing

-were a little faint.  But when once he began to preach,

-his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice

-rose above all the shuffling sounds of disorder.  The

-interruptions, however, soon became so distinct that he

-dared not any longer ignore them.  Then he paused

-in his discourse and looked at the rioters steadily.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You think you will scare me.  It is my business

-to rebuke sin.  I tell you that you are a set of ungodly

-ruffians and law breakers.  I tell your neighbors here

-that they are miserable cowards.  They let lawless men

-trample on them.  I say, shame on them!  They ought

-to organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a

-horse-pistol.  Morton turned pale; but something in his

-warm, Irish blood impelled him to proceed.  "I called

-you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily.  "Now I

-tell you that you are cut-throats.  If you kill me here

-to-night, I will show your neighbors that it is better

-to die like a man than to live like a coward.  The

-law will yet be put in force whether you kill me or not.

-There are some of you that would belong to Micajah

-Harp's gang of robbers if you dared.  But you are afraid;

-and so you only give information and help to those

-who are no worse, only a little braver than you are."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-245"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-245.jpg" alt="FACING A MOB.">

-<br>

-FACING A MOB.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him

-too far.  He now saw that his denunciation had

-degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt had provoked

-his enemies beyond measure.  He had been foolhardy;

-for what good could it do for him to throw away his life

-in a row?  There was

-murder in the eyes of the

-ruffians.  Half-a-dozen

-pistols were cocked in

-quick succession and he

-caught the glitter of

-knives.  A hasty consultation was taking place in the

-back part of the room, and the few Methodists near him

-huddled together like sheep.  If he intended to save his

-life there was no time to spare.  The address and

-presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood

-did not fail him now.  It would not do to seem to quail.

-Without lowering his fiercely indignant tone, he raised

-his right hand and demanded that honest citizens

-should rally to his support and put down the riot.

-His descending hand knocked one of the two candles

-from the pulpit in the most accidental way in the

-world.  Starting back suddenly, he managed to upset,

-and extinguish the other just at the instant when the

-infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon

-him.  The room was thus made totally dark.  Morton

-plunged into the on-coming crowd.  Twice he was

-seized and interrogated, but he changed his voice and

-avoided detection.  When at last the crowd gave up

-the search and began to leave the house, he drifted

-with them into the outer darkness and rain.  Once

-upon Dolly he was safe from any pursuit.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond

-danger, Morton was in better spirits than at any time

-since the elder's solemn talk on the preceding Saturday.

-He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and of

-a sense of triumph.  So bold a speech, and so masterly

-an escape as he had made could not but demoralize

-men like the Salt Forkers.  He laughed a little at

-himself for talking about dying and then running away,

-but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity

-to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression

-of these lawless gangs.  He would himself head a party

-against them if necessary.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression

-as his mind reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's

-writing.  How thoughtful in her to send it!  How

-delicate she was in not signing it!  How forgiving

-must her temper be!  What a stupid wretch he was to

-attract her affection, and now what a perverse soul

-he was to break her devoted heart!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This was the light in which Morton saw the

-situation.  A more suspicious man might have reasoned

-that Ann Eliza probably knew no more of Goodwin's

-peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the

-neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous

-thrusting of herself on his attention.  A suspicious

-person would have reasoned that her delicacy in not

-signing the note was only a pretense, since Morton

-had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in

-the affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her.

-But Morton was not suspicious.  How could he be

-suspicious of one upon whom the Lord had so manifestly

-poured out his Spirit?  Besides, the suspicious

-view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann

-Eliza did love Morton almost to distraction, and had

-entertained the liveliest apprehensions of hie peril at

-Salt Fork.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But with however much gratitude he might regard

-Ann Eliza's action, Morton Goodwin could not quite

-bring himself to decide on marriage.  He could not

-help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had

-discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house,

-nor could he help contrasting that strong love with

-the feebleness of the best affection he could muster for

-the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann Eliza Meacham.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But as he proceeded round the circuit it became

-more and more evident to Morton that he had suffered

-in reputation by his cool treatment of Miss Meacham.

-Elderly people love romance, and they could not

-forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way

-they wished.  They felt that nothing could be so

-appropriate as the marriage of a popular preacher with

-so zealous a woman.  It was a shock to their sense of

-poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the

-only fitting denouement.  So that between people who

-were disappointed at the come-out, and young men

-who were jealous of the general popularity of the

-youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had visibly

-declined.  Nevertheless there was quite a party of

-young women who approved of his course.  He had

-found the minx out at last!

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One of the results of the Methodist circuit system,

-with its great quarterly meetings, was the bringing of

-people scattered over a wide region into a sort of

-organic unity and a community of feeling.  It widened

-the horizon.  It was a curious and, doubtless, also a

-beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of

-half-civilized territory called Jenkinsville circuit there

-was now a common topic for gossip and discussion.

-When Morton reached the very northernmost of his

-forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped

-from the excitement.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat

-at breakfast, "whatever folks may say, I am sure you

-had a perfect right to give up Sister Meacham.  A

-man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her

-out.  <i>I</i> don't think it would take a smart man like

-you long to find out that Sister Meacham isn't all she

-pretends to be.  I have heard some things about her

-standing in Pennsylvania.  I guess you found them

-out."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said

-Morton, as soon as he could recover from the shock,

-and interrupt the stream of Sister Sharp's talk.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Everybody thought you did."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding

-out anything, I can tell you that Sister Meacham is, I

-believe, one of the best and most useful Christians in

-the world."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's what everybody thought," replied the other,

-maliciously, "until you quit off going with her so

-suddenly.  People have thought different since."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This shot took effect.  Morton could bear that

-people should slander him.  But, behold! a crop of

-slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely to grow out

-of his mistake.  In the midst of a most unheroic and,

-as it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and

-perplexity, he came at last to Mount Zion meeting-house.

-It was here that Ann Eliza belonged, and

-here he must decide whether he would still leave her

-to suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of

-his own good name, or make a marriage which, to

-those wiser than he, seemed in every way advisable.

-Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day.  When

-once the benediction was pronounced, Goodwin

-resolved to free himself from remorse and obloquy by

-the only honorable course.  He would ride over to

-Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself

-to Ann Eliza.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister

-Meacham's true character that made him hesitate?

-Or was it that a pure-hearted man always shrinks from

-marriage without love?  He reined his horse at the

-road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed

-the hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion

-class, instead of receiving Sister Sims's welcome.  He

-intended by this means to postpone his decision till

-afternoon.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Out of the frying-pan into the fire!  The leader

-took Brother Goodwin aside and informed him that

-Sister Ann Eliza was very ill.  She might never

-recover.  It was understood that she was slowly dying

-of a broken heart.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton could bear no more.  To have made so

-faithful a person, who had even interfered to save

-his life, suffer in her spirit was bad enough; to have

-brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her

-outright was ingratitude and murder.  He wondered at

-his own stupidity and wickedness.  He rode in haste

-to Sister Sims's.  Ann Eliza, in fact, was not

-dangerously ill, and was ill more of a malarious fever

-than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and

-disappointment had much to do with it.  Morton,

-convinced that he was the author of her woes, felt

-more tenderness to her in her emaciation than he had

-ever felt toward her in her beauty.  He could not

-profess a great deal of love, so he contented himself

-with expressing his gratitude for the Salt Fork

-warning.  Explanations about the past were awkward, but

-fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk

-much on exciting subjects.  Besides, she did not seem

-to be very exacting.  Morton's offer of marriage was

-accepted with a readiness that annoyed him.  When

-he rode away to his next appointment, he did not

-feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he

-had expected to.  He could not get rid of a thought

-that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an

-offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on

-such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted.  And yet, one

-must not expect all qualities in one person.  What

-could be finer than Ann Eliza's lustrous piety?  She

-was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second

-Mrs. Fletcher, maybe.  And how much she must love him

-to pine away thus!  And how forgiving she was!

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap27"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXVII.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE CAMP MEETING.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's

-life did not allow Morton much opportunity for

-the society of the convalescent Ann Eliza.  Fortunately.

-For when he was with her out of meeting he found

-her rather dull.  To all expression of religious

-sentiment and emotion she responded sincerely and with

-unction; to Morton's highest aspirations for a life of

-real self-sacrifice she only answered with a look of

-perplexity.  She could not understand him.  He was

-"so queer," she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But people whose lives are joined ought to make

-the best of each other.  Ann Eliza loved Morton, and

-because she loved him she could endure what seemed

-to her an unaccountable eccentricity.  If Goodwin found

-himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the

-highest qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting

-that all women were probably deficient in these regards.

-For men generalize about women, not from many but

-from one.  And men, being egotists, suffer a woman's

-love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins.  And

-then Morton took refuge in other people's opinions.

-Everybody thought that Sister Meacham was just the

-wife for him.  It is pleasant to have the opinion of

-all the world on your side where your own heart is doubtful.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted

-through the mind of Morton Goodwin and gave him

-a moment of fright.  But Patty was one of the things

-of this world which he had solemnly given up.  Of her

-conversion he had not heard.  Mails were few and

-postage cost a silver quarter on every letter; with

-poor people, correspondence was an extravagance not

-to be thought of except on the occasion of a death

-or wedding.  At farthest, one letter a year was all

-that might be afforded.  As it was, Morton was neither

-very happy nor very miserable as he rode up to the

-New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant midsummer

-afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable

-entertainment.  So earnest and gifted a Christian as she

-was always welcome; and now that she held a mortgage

-on the popular preacher every tent on the ground

-would have been honored by her presence.  Morton

-found a lodging in the preacher's tent, where one bed,

-larger, transversely, than that of the giant Og, was

-provided for the collective repose of the preachers, of

-whom there were half-a-dozen present.  It was always

-a solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping

-of sheets, blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who

-made this bed gave a cross-wise continuity to the

-bed-clothing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-This meeting was held just six weeks after the

-quarterly meeting spoken of in the last chapter.

-Goodwin's circuit lay on the west bank of the Big Wiaki

-River, and this camp-meeting was held on the east

-bank of that stream.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was customary for all the neighboring preachers

-to leave their circuits and lend their help in a

-camp-meeting.  All detached parties were drawn in to make

-ready for a pitched battle.  Morton had, in his ringing

-voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick

-wit, rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and,

-as the nearest preacher, he was, of course, expected to

-help.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to

-Jonesville circuit had gone after the zealous itinerant

-like "an arrow after a wild goose," and he had only

-received it in season to close his affairs on Pottawottomie

-Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on

-his way to his new work.  His emaciated face smote

-Morton's heart with terror.  The old comrade thought

-that the death which Kike all but longed for could

-not be very far away.  And even now the zealous and

-austere young man was so eager to reach his circuit

-of Peterborough that he would only consent to tarry

-long enough to preach on the first evening.  His voice

-was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in the

-uproar of a mob that had come determined to make

-an end of the meeting.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from

-Jenkinsville and Salt Fork that the brethren were

-demoralized.  After the close of the service they

-gathered in groups debating whether or not they should

-give up the meeting.  But two invincible men stood

-in the pulpit looking out over the scene.  Without a

-thought of surrendering, Magruder and Morton Goodwin

-were consulting in regard to police arrangements.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have

-the sheriff here in the morning.  I am afraid he hasn't

-got back-bone enough to handle these fellows.  Do

-you know him?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Burchard?  Yes; I've known him two or three years."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton could not help liking the man who had so

-generously forgiven his gambling debt, but he had

-reason to believe that a sheriff who went to Brewer's

-Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his

-political alliances.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to

-spare you from preaching and exhorting, but you must

-take charge of the police and keep order."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If I am in command there'll be a fight.  I don't

-believe in letting rowdies run over you.  If you put

-me in authority, and give me the law to back me,

-somebody'll be hurt before morning.  The rowdies

-hate me and I am not fond of them.  I've wanted

-such a chance at these Jenkinsville and Salt Fork

-fellows ever since I've been on the circuit."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I wish you <i>would</i> clean them out," said the sturdy

-old elder, the martial fire shining from under his

-shaggy brows.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton soon had the brethren organized into a

-police.  Every man was to carry a heavy club; some

-were armed with pistols to be used in an emergency.

-Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot.

-Goodwin said that his father had fought King George,

-and he would not be ruled by a mob.  By such

-fannings of the embers of revolutionary patriotism he

-managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and

-sent out scouts.  Platforms of poles, six feet high and

-covered with earth, stood on each side of the stand

-or pulpit.  On these were bright fires which threw

-their light over the whole space within the circle of

-tents.  Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons

-covered with cotton cloth, in which slept people from a

-distance who had no other shelter.  In this outer

-darkness Morton, as military dictator, had ordered

-other platforms erected, and on these fires were now

-kindling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The returning scouts reported at midnight that the

-ruffians, seeing the completeness of the preparations,

-had left the camp-ground.  Goodwin was the only man

-who was indisposed to trust this treacherous truce.  He

-immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away

-than before on every road leading to the ground, with

-instructions to let him know instantly, if any body of

-men should be seen approaching.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-From Morton's previous knowledge of the people,

-he was convinced that in the mob were some men

-more than suspected of belonging to Micajah Harp's

-gang of thieves.  Others were allies of the gang&mdash;of that

-class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and

-a wholesome fear of the law, but whose protection and

-assistance is the right foot upon which every form of

-brigandage stands.  Besides these there were the

-reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from

-a love of mischief for its own sake; men who were

-not yet thieves, but from whose ranks the bands of

-thieves were recruited.  With these last Morton's

-history gave him a certain sympathy.  As the classes

-represented by the mob held the balance of power

-in the politics of the county, Morton knew that he had

-not much to hope from a trimmer such as Burchard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-About four o'clock in the morning one of the

-mounted sentinels who had been posted far down the

-road came riding in at full speed, with intelligence that

-the rowdies were coming in force from the direction

-of Jenkinsville.  Goodwin had anticipated this, and he

-immediately awakened his whole reserve, concentrating

-the scattered squads and setting them in ambush on

-either side of the wagon track that led to the

-camp-ground.  With a dozen mounted men well armed with

-clubs, he took his own stand at a narrow place where

-the foliage on either side was thickest, prepared to

-dispute the passage to the camp.  The men in ambush

-had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as

-soon as the fight should begin in front.  It was a

-simple piece of strategy learned of the Indians.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders,

-coming round a curve, caught sight of Morton and

-his right hand man.  Then there was a surprised reining

-up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge

-on the other.  At the first blow Goodwin felled his

-man, and the riderless horse ran backward through

-the ranks.  The mob was taken by surprise, and before

-the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to his

-men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both

-flanks.  The rowdies fought hard, but from the

-beginning the victory of the guard was assured by the

-advantage of ambush and surprise.  The only question

-to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had

-ordered the arrest of every man that the guard could

-bring in.  But so sturdy was the fight that only three

-were taken.  One of the guard received a bad flesh

-wound from a pistol shot.  Goodwin did not give up

-pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash

-into the river opposite Jenkinsville.  He then rode

-back, and as it was getting light threw himself upon

-one side of the great bunk in the preachers' tent, and

-slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the

-pulpit for the eight o'clock preaching.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that

-day he was evidently frightened at the earnestness of

-Morton's defence.  Burchard was one of those

-politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a

-compromise with a typhoon.  He was in a strait

-between his fear of the animosity of the mob and

-his anxiety to please the Methodists.  Goodwin, taking

-advantage of this latter feeling, got himself appointed

-a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he

-secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those

-whom he knew to be leaders.  Then he summoned

-his guard as a posse, and, having thus put law on his

-side, he announced that if the ruffians came again

-the guard must follow him until they were entirely

-subdued.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly

-that such extreme measures would cost his life.

-Some of these men belonged to Harp's band, and he

-would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of

-the gang.  "Don't throw away your life," entreated

-Burchard.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's what life is for," said Morton.  "If a

-man's life is too good to throw away in fighting the

-devil, it isn't worth having."  Goodwin said this in a

-way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice.

-But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could

-not help thinking that if Patty were in place of Ann

-Eliza, Morton might think life good for something

-else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As there was every sign of an approaching riot

-during the evening service, and as no man could

-manage the tempest so well as Brother Goodwin,

-he was appointed to preach.  A young theologian of

-the present day would have drifted helpless on the

-waves of such a mob.  When one has a congregation

-that listens because it ought to listen, one can afford

-to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen

-when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in

-the world for an orator.  It will teach him methods of

-homiletic arrangement which learned writers on Sacred

-Rhetoric have never dreamed of.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's

-tall figure appeared in the stand.  Frontier-men

-are very susceptible to physical effects, and there was

-a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well calculated

-to impress them.  Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power

-of his mind and body was at its best in the presence

-of a storm.  He knew better than to take a text.  He

-must surprise the mob into curiosity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"There is a man standing back in the crowd

-there," he began, pointing his finger in a certain

-direction where there was much disorder, and pausing

-until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny

-story I once heard."  At this point the turbulent sons

-of Belial, who loved nothing so much as a funny

-story, concluded to postpone their riot until they

-should have their laugh.  Laugh they did, first at one

-funny story, and then at another&mdash;stories with no

-moral in particular, except the moral there is in a

-laugh.  Brother Mellen, who sat behind Morton, and

-who had never more than half forgiven him for not

-coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a

-meeting, was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the

-pulpit, but Magruder, the presiding elder, was

-delighted.  He laughed at each story, and laughed loud

-enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the

-senior's approval of his drollery.  But somehow&mdash;the

-crowd did not know how,&mdash;at some time in his

-discourse&mdash;the Salt Fork rowdies did not observe

-when,&mdash;Morton managed to cease his drollery without

-detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of

-laughter.  The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping

-their curiosity perpetually excited, Goodwin did not

-give them time to rally at all.  Whenever an

-interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the

-ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so

-gain the sympathy of the rough crowd who were

-habituated to laugh on the side of the winner in all

-rude tournaments of body or mind.  Knowing

-perfectly well that he would have to fight before the

-night was over, Morton's mind was stimulated to its

-utmost.  If only he could get the religious interest

-agoing, he might save some of these men instead of

-punishing them.  His soul yearned over the people.

-His oratory at last swept out triumphant over

-everything; there was weeping and sobbing; some fell in

-uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in terror.

-Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton

-described how, step by step, a young man was led

-from bad to worse, and then recited his own experience.

-At last there was the utmost excitement.  As

-soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the

-point of confusion, the rioters broke the spell of

-Morton's speech and began their disturbance.  Goodwin

-immediately invited the penitents into the enclosed

-pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space

-was filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and

-groans made the woods resound.  But at the same

-moment the rioters increased their noisy demonstrations,

-and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell

-them, descended from the pulpit and took command

-of his camp-meeting police.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway

-enough to have necessitated the severest measures if

-it had not been for Mr. Mellen.  As soon as he

-detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the

-effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it.  He did

-not ask permission of the presiding elder, as he was in

-duty bound to do, but as soon as there was a pause in

-the singing he began to exhort.  His style was violently

-aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob.  He

-began with the true old Homeric epithets of early

-Methodism, exploding them like bomb-shells.  "You

-are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to

-the infinite amusement of the rest.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-262"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-262.jpg" alt="&quot;HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN.&quot;">

-<br>

-&quot;HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN.&quot;

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind

-of religious aqua fortis

-upon the turbulent

-crowd, which grew

-more and more

-turbulent under his

-inflammatory treatment.

-Finding himself likely

-to be defeated, he

-turned toward Goodwin

-and demanded

-that the camp-meeting

-police should

-enforce order.  But

-Morton was

-contemplating a

-master-stroke that should

-annihilate the disorder in one battle, and he was not to

-be hurried into too precipitate an attack.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as

-small doses of nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation,

-he thought it necessary to administer stronger

-ones.  "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and when you

-get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to

-roast your souls in!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled

-ruffians, and Brother Mellen gave up the fight,

-reproaching Morton hotly for not suppressing the mob.  "I

-thought you was a man," he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said

-Goodwin, savagely.  "Do you get a club and ride by

-my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am sure you are a

-man."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all

-the while at Morton's tardiness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt

-internal maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should

-report to him the first attempt at concentration on the

-part of the rowdies.  He had not been deceived by

-their feints in different parts of the camp, but had

-drawn his men together.  He knew that there was some

-directing head to the mob, and that the only effectual

-way to beat it was to beat it in solid form.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last a young man came running to where Goodwin

-stood, saying: "They're tearing down a tent."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting

-deliberately.  "Catch all you can, boys.  Don't shoot

-if you can help it.  Keep close together.  We have

-got to ride all night."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had increased his guard by mustering in every

-able-bodied man, except such as were needed to conduct

-the meetings.  Most of these men were Methodists,

-but they were all frontiermen who knew that peace and

-civilization have often to be won by breaking heads.

-By the time this guard started the camp was in extreme

-confusion; women were running in every direction,

-children were crying and men were stoutly denouncing

-Goodwin for his tardiness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two

-parts, he sent one half round the outside of the

-camp-ground in one direction, while he rode with the other

-to attack the mob on the other side.  The foot-police

-were sent through the circle to attack them in a third

-direction.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw

-the mob off their guard.  They had demolished one

-tent and, in great exultation, had begun on another,

-when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two sides,

-dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their

-ironwood and hickory clubs.  Then the footmen charged

-them in front, and the mob were forced to scatter and

-mount their horses as best they could.  As Morton had

-captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback

-and attempted a rescue.  For two or three minutes

-the fight was a severe one.  The roughs made several

-rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the savage

-blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader

-from falling into their hands.  At last, however, after

-firing several shots, and wounding one of the guard, they

-retreated, Goodwin vigorously persuading his men to

-continue the charge.  When the rowdies had been driven

-a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform

-torch, the same strangely dressed man who had taken

-the money from his hand that day near Brewer's Hole.

-This man, in his disguise of long beard and wolf-skin

-cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp

-by creeping through the bushes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen.

-"I know him&mdash;he's a thief."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him,

-and but for the intervening brush-wood, which broke

-the force of the blow, it might have killed him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton

-to his men; but the other side now made a strong

-rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then they fled, and this time, letting the less

-guilty rowdies escape, Morton pursued the well-known

-thieves and their allies into and through Jenkinsville,

-and on through the country, until the hunted

-fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods

-on foot.  For two days more Morton harried them,

-arresting one of them now and then until he had

-captured eight or ten.  He chased one of these into

-Brewer's Hole itself.  The shoes had been torn from

-his feet by briers in his rough flight, and he left

-tracks of blood upon the floor.  The orderly citizens

-of the county were so much heartened by this boldness

-and severity on Morton's part that they combined

-against the roughs and took the work into their own

-hands, driving some of the thieves away and terrifying

-the rest into a sullen submission.  The camp-meeting

-went on in great triumph.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Burchard had disappeared&mdash;how, nobody knew.

-Weeks afterward a stranger passing through

-Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such a man on a

-keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi, and

-it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found

-a home in New Orleans, that refuge of broken

-adventurers.  Why he had fled no one could guess.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap28"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXVIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-PATTY AND HER PATIENT.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-We left Patty standing irresolute in the road.

-The latch-string of her father's house was

-drawn in; she must find another home.  Every

-Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course;

-Colonel Wheeler would be only too glad to receive

-her.  But Colonel Wheeler and all the Methodist people

-were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy

-forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's

-foes.  She did not want to foreclose every door to a

-reconciliation.  Mrs. Goodwin's was not to be thought

-of.  There was but one place, and that was with Kike's

-mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative, was

-naturally her first resort in exile.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she

-found the schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow,

-though neither he nor she dared think of marriage

-with Kike's awful displeasure in the back-ground.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty

-had received permission to stay in the cabin of her

-aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how sthrange things comes to

-pass, Miss Lumsden.  You turned Moirton off yersilf

-fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits

-sint adrift."  Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish

-Moirton noo, now don't oi?  Revinge is swate, and

-this sort of revinge would be swater on many

-accounts."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady

-looked out of the window and continued, in a sort of

-soliloquy: "Moirton would be <i>that</i> glad.  Ha! ha!

-He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better thrick

-than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out.  It'll

-simplify matters fer Moirton.  A sum's aisier to do

-when its simplified, loike.  An' now it'll be as aisy to

-Moirton when he hears about it, as twice one is two&mdash;as

-simple as puttin' two halves togither to make a

-unit."  Here the master rubbed his hands in glee.

-He was pleased with the success of his illustration.

-Then he muttered: "They'll agree in ginder, number

-and parson!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Make fun of ye!  Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint

-in yer ould schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've

-done yer dooty.  I was only throyin' to congratilate

-ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate the whole

-thing whin he hears about it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up

-with her old pride, "I know there will be those who

-will say that I joined the church to get Morton back,

-I want you to say that Morton is to be married&mdash;was

-probably married to-day&mdash;and that I knew of it some

-days ago."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Brady's countenance fell.  "Things niver come out

-roight," he said, as he absently put on his hat.  "They

-talk about spicial providinces," he soliloquized, as he

-walked away, "and I thought as I had caught one at

-last.  But it does same sometoimes as if a bluntherin'

-Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better

-if he had aholt of the stairin' oar.  But, psha!  Oi've

-only got one or two pets of me own to look afther.

-God has to git husbands fer ivery woman ixcipt the old

-maids.  An' some women has to have two, of which I

-hope is the Widdy Lumsden!  But Mithodism upsets

-iverything.  Koike's so religious that he can't love

-anybody but God, and he don't know how to pity thim

-that does.  And Koike's made us both mortally afeard

-of his goodness.  I wish he'd fall dead in love himself

-once; thin he'd know how it fales!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty soon found that her father could not brook

-her presence in the neighborhood, and that the widow's

-hospitality to her was resented as an act of hostility to

-him.  She accordingly set herself to find some means

-of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the

-same time of earning her living.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder

-to a quarterly meeting on the circuit to which

-Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing of Patty's case, he

-proposed to get her employment as a teacher.  He had

-heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood

-of the Hickory Ridge church, where the conference

-had met.  So Patty was settled as a teacher.  For ten

-hours a day she showed children how to "do sums,"

-heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them

-droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic"

-department of the old English Reader, and taught

-them spelling from the "a-b abs" to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty"

-and its octopedal companions.  And she

-boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian

-ex-minister, when he learned that she was Kike's

-cousin, and a sufferer for her religion, insisted that

-her Sundays should be passed in his house.  And

-being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the

-people, he soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors

-among the poor and the sick.  Something of

-good-breeding and refinement there was in her manner that

-made her seem a being above the poor North

-Carolinans who had moved into the hollows, and her

-kindness was all the more grateful on account of her

-dignity.  She was "a grand lady," they declared, and

-besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in

-her way of tendin' folks what's sick."  They loved to

-tell how "she nussed Bill Turner's wife through the

-awfulest spell of the yaller janders you ever seed;

-an' toted <i>Miss</i> Cole's baby roun' all night the night

-her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm

-with his own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness.  She's

-better'n forty doctors, root or calomile."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-270"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-270.jpg" alt="THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.">

-<br>

-THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house

-door just as the long spelling-class had broken up,

-and Patty was getting ready to send the children home.

-The doctor sat on his horse while each of the boys,

-with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other,

-walked to the door, and, after the fashion of those good

-old days, turned round and bowed awkwardly at the

-teacher.  Some bobbed their heads forward on their

-breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more

-respectful, bent their bodies into crescents.  Each

-seemed alike glad when he was through with this

-abominable bit of ceremony, the only bit of ceremony

-in the whole round of their lives.  The girls, in short

-linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes,

-came after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would

-have bewildered a dancing-master.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher

-appeared, "I am sorry to see you so tired.  I want

-you to go home with me.  I have some work for you

-to do to-morrow."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There were no buggies in that day.  The roads

-were mostly bridle-paths, and those that would admit

-wagons would have shaken a buggy to pieces.  Patty

-climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor rode as

-close as possible to the fence where she stood.  Then

-she dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two

-rode off together.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange

-man was lying wounded at the house of a family

-named Barkins, on Higgins's Run.  The man refused

-to give his name, and the family would not tell what

-they knew about him.  As Barkins bore a bad reputation,

-it was quite likely that the stranger belonged to

-some band of thieves who lived by horse-stealing and

-plundering emigrants.  He seemed to be in great mental

-anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor.  The

-doctor therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at

-Barkins's, and do what she could for the patient.  "It

-is our business to do the man good," said Doctor

-Morgan, "not to have him arrested.  Gospel is always

-better than Law."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled

-with a side-saddle for Patty, and he and she rode

-to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky glen, where once

-lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its

-name, and where now resided a man who was suspected

-of giving much indirect assistance to the gangs

-of thieves that infested the country, though he was too

-lame to be actively engaged in any bold enterprises.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty

-as she crossed the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a

-square-shouldered, raw-boned woman, looked half

-inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over her

-door-sill.  Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her

-frame at the thought of staying in such a place all

-day; but Doctor Morgan had an authoritative way

-with such people.  When called to attend a patient,

-he put the whole house under martial law.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better.  He

-needs a good deal done for him to-day, and I brought

-the school-mistress to help you, knowing you had a

-houseful of children and plenty of work."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan,

-but you had orter know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss

-in to spy out a body's housekeepin' 'thout givin'

-folks half a chance to bresh up a little.  I 'low she

-haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth

-ten of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled

-ole man."  She sulkily brushed off a stool with

-her apron and offered it to Patty.  But Patty, with

-quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while

-the doctor went into the only other room of the house

-to see the patient, she seized upon the woman's

-dish-towel and went to wiping the yellow crockery as

-Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the crabbed

-remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell

-how she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little,

-and how she had upset the table and spilt everything

-on the floor.  She looked into Mrs. Barkins's face with

-so much friendly confidence, her laugh had so much

-assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the

-square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded

-to show her increasing friendliness by boxing

-"Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too closte to the lady and

-starrin at her that a-way."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and

-beckoned to Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I've brought you the only medicine that will do

-you any good," he said, rapidly, to the sick man.

-"This is Miss Lumsden, our school-mistress, and the

-best hand in sickness you ever saw.  She will stay

-with you an hour."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The patient turned his wan face over and looked

-wearily at Patty.  He seemed to be a man of forty,

-but suffering and his unshorn beard had given him

-a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger.

-He had evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he

-looked about the room for a seat for Patty.  "I'll take

-care of myself," said Patty, cheerfully&mdash;seeing his

-anxious desire to be polite.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I will write down some directions for you," said

-Dr. Morgan, taking out pencil and paper.  When he

-handed the directions to Patty they read:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I leave you a lamb among wolves.  But the Shepherd

-is here!  It is the only chance to save the poor

-fellow's life or his soul.  I will send Nettie over in an

-hour with jelly, and if you want to come home with

-her you can do so.  I will stop at noon."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-With that he bade her good-bye and was gone.

-Patty put the room in order, wiped off the sick man's

-temples, and he soon fell into a sleep.  When he awoke

-she again wiped his face with cold water.  "My mother

-used to do that," he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I think not.  I have been a bad man, and it is a

-wonder that I didn't break her heart.  I would like to

-see her!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where is she?" asked Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's

-the use of bringing my disgrace home to her door?"

-he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I think she would bear your disgrace and

-everything else for the sake of wiping your face as I

-do."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I believe she would," said the wounded man,

-tremulously.  "I would like to go to her, and ever

-since I came away I have meant to go as soon as I

-could get in the way of doing better.  But I get worse

-all the time.  I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care

-how soon.  The sooner the better;" and he sighed

-wearily.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty had the tact not to contradict him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and

-I used to run away to keep from hearing it.  I'd give

-everything to hear her read now."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Shall I read to you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you please."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?"

-said Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How do you know which that is?&mdash;I don't!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't you think one woman knows how another

-woman feels?" asked Patty.  And she sat by the little

-four-light window and took out her pocket Testament

-and read the three immortal parables in the fifteenth

-of Luke.  The man's curiosity was now wide awake;

-he listened to the story of the sheep lost and found,

-but when Patty glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied;

-he hearkened to the story of the coin that was lost

-and found, and still he looked at her with faint eagerness,

-as if trying to guess why she should call that his

-mother's favorite chapter.  Then she read slowly, and

-with sincere emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale

-of the prodigal son and his hunger, and his good

-resolution, and his tattered return, and the old father's joy.

-And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed could

-not hide his tears.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he

-asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively.

-"And you'll notice that this prodigal son didn't wait

-to make himself better, or even until he could get a

-new suit of clothes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The sick man said nothing.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at

-that moment and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient,

-anxiously.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks,

-was standing timidly at the outside door.  Patty took

-the jelly from her hand and sent a note to the Doctor:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in

-the safest place in the world&mdash;doing my duty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And when the doctor read it he said, in his

-nervously abrupt fashion: "Perfect angel!"

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap29"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXIX.</i>

-<br><br>

-PATTY'S JOURNEY.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when

-the heart is cheered, and as Patty, after spending

-Saturday and Sunday with the patient, found time

-to come in and give him his breakfast every morning

-before she went to school, he grew more and more

-cheerful, and the doctor announced in his sudden style

-that he'd "get along."  In all her interviews Patty

-was not only a woman but a Methodist.  She read

-the Bible and talked to the man about repentance;

-and she would not have been a Methodist of that day

-had she neglected to pray with him.  She could not

-penetrate his reserve.  She could not guess whether

-what she said had any influence on him or not.  Once

-she was startled and lost faith in any good result of

-her labors when she happened, in arranging things

-about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap

-and some heavy false-whiskers.  She had more than

-suspected all along that her patient was a highwayman,

-but upon seeing the very disguises in which his

-crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked

-herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable

-of theft&mdash;perhaps of murder&mdash;could ever be any better.

-She found herself, after that, trying to imagine how

-the wounded man would look in so fierce a mask.

-But she soon remembered all that she had learned of

-the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit

-working in the worst of sinners, and she got her

-testament and read aloud to the highwayman the story

-of the crucified thief.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him

-take his breakfast&mdash;he was sitting propped up in

-bed&mdash;that he startled her most effectually.  Lifting his

-eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare

-that comes of feebleness, he asked:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit

-rider named Goodwin?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret.

-She turned away to hide her face, and said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I used to go to school with him when we were

-children."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said

-the patient, "that made me tremble all over.  He's a

-great preacher.  I wish I was as good as he is."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty made some remark about his having been a

-good boy.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used

-to hear that he had been a little hard&mdash;swore and

-drank and gambled, to say nothing of dancing and

-betting on horses.  But they said some girl jilted him

-in that day.  I suppose he got into bad habits because

-she jilted him, or else she jilted him because he was

-bad.  Do you know anything about it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it.

-She was going to defend herself&mdash;he must know that

-she was the person&mdash;but how?  Then she remembered

-that he was only repeating what had been a matter of

-common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness

-led her to answer:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She acted badly&mdash;turned him off because he became

-a Methodist."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But there was trouble before that, I thought.

-When he gambled away his coat and hat one night."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty,

-casting about in her own mind how she might change

-the conversation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Is she alive yet?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet,"

-said the man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty now plead that she must hasten to school.

-She omitted reading the Bible and prayer with the

-patient for that morning.  It was just as well.  There are

-states of mind not favorable to any but the most

-private devotions.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the

-cabin a moment, but on coming near she saw horses

-tied in front of it, and her heart failed her.  She

-reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the

-gang and she could not bring herself to plunge into

-their midst in the dusk of the evening.  But on

-Saturday morning she found the strangers not yet gone, and

-heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey."  "Too

-soft! too soft! altogether," said one.  "We ought to

-have shipped him&mdash;&mdash;"  Here the conversation was

-broken off.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she

-found very uneasy.  He was glad to see her, and told

-her she must stay by him.  He seemed anxious for

-the men to go away, which at last they did.  Then

-he listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became

-sufficiently uproarious to warrant him in talking.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I want you to save a man's life."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Whose?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Preacher Goodwin's."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty turned pale.  She had not the heart to ask

-a question.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll

-tell you all about it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty promised.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat

-Woods on Sunday afternoon.  He preaches in Jenkinsville

-at eleven, and at Salt Fork at three.  Between

-the two he will be killed.  You must go yourself.

-They'll never suspect you of such a ride.  If any man

-goes out of this settlement, and there's a warning given,

-he'll be shot.  You must go through the woods to-night.

-If you go in the daytime, you and I will both

-be killed, maybe.  Will you do it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty had her full share of timidity.  But in a

-moment she saw a vision of Morton Goodwin slain.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I will go."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You must not tell the doctor a word about where

-you're going; you must not tell Goodwin how you got

-the information."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He may not believe me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Anybody would believe you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But he will think that I have been deceived, and

-he cannot bear to look like a coward."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's true," said Pinkey.  "Give me a piece of

-paper.  I will write a word that will convince him."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word

-and folded it.  "I can trust you; you must not open

-this paper," he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I will not," said Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And now you must leave and not come back

-here until Monday or Tuesday.  Do not leave the

-settlement until five o'clock.  Barkins will watch you

-when you leave here.  Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till

-afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion.  Take

-the east road when you start, and then if anybody is

-watching they will think that you are going to the

-lower settlement.  Turn round at Wright's corner.  It

-will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom,

-but there is only one trail through the woods.  You

-must ride through to-night or you cannot reach

-Jenkinsville to-morrow.  God will help you, I suppose, if

-He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than

-half believe."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty went away bewildered.  The journey did not

-seem so dreadful as the long waiting.  She had to

-appear unconcerned to the people with whom she

-boarded.  Toward evening she told them she was

-going away until Monday, and at five o'clock she was

-at the doctor's door, trembling lest some mishap should

-prevent her getting a horse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated

-face sharply.  "I didn't find you at Barkins's as I

-expected when I got there this morning.  Sick man

-did not say much.  Anything wrong?  What scared

-you away?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You shall have anything you ask."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and

-ask me no questions and make no objections."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I will trust you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I must have a horse at once for a journey."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"This evening?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"This evening."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to

-go away so late, unless it is a matter of life and

-death&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It is a matter of life and death."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And you can't trust me?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It is not my secret.  I promised not to tell you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask

-questions.  Are you certain you are not deceived?

-Mayn't there be some plot?  Mayn't I go with you?

-Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in

-saving the life of the person you speak of?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty looked a little startled.  "I may be deceived,

-but I feel so sure that I ought to go that I

-will try to go on foot, if I cannot get a horse."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty, I don't like this.  But I can only trust

-your judgment.  You ought not to have been bound

-not to tell me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go.

-It is a matter of life and death to another that it

-shall not be known that I went.  It is a matter of life

-and death to you and me both that you shall not

-go with me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Is the life you are going to save worth risking

-your own for?  Is it only the life of a robber?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"It is a life worth more than mine.  Ask me no

-more questions, but have Bob saddled for me."  Patty

-spoke as one not to be refused.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted,

-half eagerly and half timidly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"When will you come back?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"In time for school, Monday."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty, think again before you start," called the

-doctor.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode

-away.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered

-to himself half a hundred times in the next

-forty-eight hours.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When she had ridden a mile on the road that led

-to the "lower settlement" she turned an acute angle,

-and came back on the hypothenuse of a right-angled

-triangle, if I may speak so geometrically.  She thus

-went more than two miles to strike the main trail

-toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from

-her starting-place.  She reached the woods in Long

-Bottom just as Pinkey told her she would, at dark.

-She was appalled at the thought of riding sixteen miles

-through a dense forest of beech trees in the night

-over a bridle-path.  She reined up her horse, folded

-her hands, and offered a fervent prayer for courage

-and help, and then rode into the blackness ahead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very

-valley in Ohio in regard to this dark ride of Patty's.

-I know it will be thought incredible, but in that day

-marvelous things were not yet out of date.  This

-legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood

-of the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved

-herself for her lonely and perilous ride by prayer, there

-came to her, out of the darkness of the forest, two

-beautiful dogs.  One of them started ahead of her

-horse and one of them became her rear-guard.

-Protected and comforted by her dumb companions, Patty

-rode all those lonesome hours in that wilderness

-bridle-path.  She came, at midnight, to a settler's house on

-the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found

-lodging.  The dogs lay in the yard.  In the early

-morning the settler's wife came out and spoke to them

-but they gave her no recognition at all.  Patty came a

-few moments later, when they arose and greeted her

-with all the eloquence of dumb friends, and then,

-having seen her safely through the woods and through

-the night, the two beautiful dogs, wagging a friendly

-farewell, plunged again into the forest and went&mdash;no

-man knows whither.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to

-me well avouched.  Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or

-Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all away and show

-how there was only one dog, and that he was not

-beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail.  Or

-that the whole thing is but a "solar myth."  The

-middle-ages have not a more pleasant story than this

-of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy a brave

-lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest.

-At any rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians

-were answers to her prayer.  She bade them good-by

-as they disappeared in the mystery whence they came,

-and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's

-favor to her enterprise.  Sometimes her heart was sorely

-troubled at the thought of Morton's being already the

-husband of another, and all that Sunday morning she

-took lessons in that hardest part of Christian living&mdash;the

-uttering of the little petition which gives all the

-inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the

-accomplishment of His will.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven.

-Meeting had already begun.  She knew the Methodist

-church by its general air of square ugliness, and near

-it she hitched old Bob.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When she entered the church Morton was preaching.

-Her long sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise,

-and she sat upon the back seat listening to the voice

-whose music was once all her own.  Morton was

-preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions

-to his own trials when he became a Christian which

-deeply touched the audience, but which moved none

-so much as Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The congregation was dismissed but the members

-remained to "class," which was always led by the

-preacher when he was present.  Most of the members

-sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had

-gone Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a

-large space between her and the rest.  Morton asked

-each one to speak, exhorting each in turn.  At last,

-when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where

-Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and

-thus addressed her:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with

-you to-day?  Do you feel that you have an interest

-in the Savior?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of

-melancholy Patty spoke.  There was that in her superior

-diction and in her delicacy of expression that won

-upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the brethren

-and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord

-bless our strange sister," and so on.  But Morton?

-From the first word he was thrilled with the familiar

-sound of the voice.  It could not be Patty, for why

-should Patty be in Jenkinsville?  And above all, why

-should she be in class-meeting?  Of her conversion

-he had not heard.  But though it seemed to

-him impossible that it could be Patty, there was yet

-a something in voice and manner and choice of words

-that had almost overcome him; and though he was

-noted for the freshness of the counsels that he gave

-in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the sense

-of having known the speaker, that he could not think

-of anything to say.  He fell hopelessly into that trite

-exhortation with which the old leaders were wont to

-cover their inanity.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Sister," he said, "you know the way&mdash;walk in it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then the brethren and sisters sang:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "O brethren will you meet me<br>

-  On Canaan's happy shore?"<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-And the meeting was dismissed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The members thought themselves bound to speak

-to the strange sister.  She evaded their kindly

-questions as they each shook hands with her, only

-answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin.

-The preacher was eager and curious to converse with

-her, but one of the old brethren had button-holed him

-to complain that Brother Hawkins had 'tended a

-barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had

-ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession.

-When the old brother had finished his complaint and

-had left the church, Morton was glad to see the strange

-sister lingering at the door.  He offered his hand and

-said:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"A stranger here, I suppose?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not quite a stranger, Morton."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty for her part was pleased and silent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Are you a Methodist then?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said,

-greatly agitated.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To save your life.  I am glad I can make you

-some amend for the way I treated you the last time I

-saw you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To save my life!  How?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this

-afternoon you will be killed on the way."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How do you know?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You must not ask any questions.  I cannot tell

-you anything more."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody

-who wanted to scare me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of

-paper which Pinkey had given her.  She handed it to

-Morton, saying:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't know what is in this, but the person who

-sent the message said that you would understand."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton opened the paper and started.  "Where is

-he?" he asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling

-faintly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to

-tell me?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not at all.  When I joined the church Father

-pulled the latch-string in.  I am teaching school at

-Hickory Ridge."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner."  Morton

-led her horse to the house of one of the members,

-introduced her as an old schoolmate, who had

-brought him an important warning, and asked that she

-receive some dinner.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He then asked Patty to let him go back with her

-or send an escort, both of which she firmly refused.

-He left the house and in a minute sat on his Dolly

-before the gate.  At sight of Dolly Patty could have

-wept.  He called her to the gate.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you won't let me go with you I must go to

-Salt Fork.  These men must understand that I am not

-afraid.  I shall ride ten miles farther round and they

-will never know how I did it.  Dolly can do it, though.

-How shall I thank you for risking your life for me?

-Patty, if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll

-die for you.  I would rather die for you than not."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Thank you, Morton.  You are married, I hear."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not married, but I am to be married."  He

-spoke half bitterly, but Patty was too busy suppressing

-her own emotion to observe his tone.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I hope you'll be happy."  She had determined to

-say so much.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till

-I die.  I am marrying one I never chose.  I am

-utterly miserable.  Why didn't you leave me to be

-waylaid and killed?  My life isn't worth the saving.

-But God bless you, Patty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and

-was soon gone away around the Wolf Creek road&mdash;a

-long hard ride, with no dinner, and a sermon to

-preach at three o'clock.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in

-Jenkinsville, her hostess entertained her with accounts of

-Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, whom Brother Goodwin

-was to marry.  She heard how eloquent was Sister

-Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and

-what a model preacher's wife she would be.  But the

-good sister added slyly that she didn't more than half

-believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at all.  He'd tried

-his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do it.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon

-she did her best, as a good Christian, to feel sorry

-that Morton could not love the one he was to marry.

-In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in her

-heart she was a woman.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap30"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXX.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as

-we related, it was not difficult to forecast his fate.

-Everybody saw that he was going into a consumption.

-One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to

-live, but not longer.  Nobody knew this so well as

-Kike himself.  He rejoiced in it.  He was one of

-those rare spirits to whom the invisible world is not

-a dream but a reality, and to whom religious duty is

-a voice never neglected.  That he had sacrificed his

-own life to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and

-he had no regrets except that he had not been more

-zealous.  What was life if he could save even one

-soul?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are

-wrong, Kike.  If you had taken care of yourself you

-might have lived to save so many more."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man

-drowning," replied Kike, "and you thought you could

-save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn't stop

-to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live

-long enough to save many others.  When God puts a

-soul before me I save that one if il costs my life.

-When I am gone God will find others.  It is glorious

-to work for God, but it is awful.  What if by some

-neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell?  O!

-Morton, I am oppressed with responsibility!  I will be

-glad when God shall say, It is enough."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike.  He

-was but fulfilling the Methodist ideal; they admired

-him while most of them could not quite emulate him.

-Read the minutes of the old conferences and you will

-see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones

-in memory of young men who laid down their lives as

-Kike was doing.  Men were nothing&mdash;the work was

-everything.  Methodism let the dead bury their dead;

-it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the

-grave of one of its own heroes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild,

-and it had paid Kike only five dollars for his whole

-nine months' work.  Two of this he had spent for

-horse-shoes, and two he had given away.  The other

-one had gone for quinine.  Now he had no clothes

-that would long hold together.  He would ride to

-Hissawachee and get what his mother had carded and

-spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom

-she loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be

-entirely hers.  He could come back in three days.

-Two days more would suffice to reach Peterborough

-circuit.  So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his

-appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee.

-But he did not get back to camp-meeting.  An attack

-of fever held him at home for several weeks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At last he was better and had set the day for his

-departure from home.  His mother saw what everybody

-saw, that if Kike ever lived to return to his home it

-would only be to die.  And as this was, perhaps, his

-last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him

-of her intention to marry Brady.  While Brady thought

-to do the handsome thing by secretly getting a

-marriage license, intending, whenever the widow should

-mention the subject to Kike, to immediately propose

-that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage.

-It was quite contrary to the custom of that day for a

-minister to officiate at a wedding of one of his own

-family; Brady defied custom, however.  But whenever

-Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her

-heart failed her.  He was so wrapped up in heavenly

-subjects, so full of exhortations and aspirations, that she

-despaired beforehand of making him understand her

-feelings.  Once she began by alluding to her loneliness,

-upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust

-in the Lord he would be with her.  What was she to

-do?  How make a rapt seer like Kike understand the

-wants of ordinary mortals?  And that, too, when he

-was already bidding adieu to this world?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The last morning had come, and Brady was urging

-on the weeping widow that she must go into the room

-where Kike was stuffing his small wardrobe into his

-saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Oh, I can't bear to," said she.  "I won't never

-see him any more and I might hurt him, and&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do

-it, Mrs. Lumsden.  If I do it, it'll same jist loike

-axin' the b'y's consint to marry his mother."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I can't noways do it," said the widow.  "If

-you love me you might take that load offen me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady

-marched into the sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted

-by his slight exertion, was resting in the shuck-bottom

-rocking-chair.  Brady took a seat opposite to him on

-a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and reached

-up his iron gray hair uneasily.  To his surprise Kike

-began the conversation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very

-wisely, I think," said Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To be sure I have."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'.

-Ye're pecooliar loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize

-with other folks because ye're livin' roight up

-in hiven all the toime."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why don't you live more in heaven?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help

-me," said Brady, adroitly.  "But I'm one of the koind

-that's lonesome, and in doire nade of company.  I

-was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd niver

-be a fool agin.  But ye see ye ain't niver been in

-love in all yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a

-strange softness coming into his voice.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did ye iver!  Who'd a thought it?"  And Brady

-made large eyes at him.  "Thin ye ought to fale fer the

-infarmities of others," he added with some exultation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I do.  That's why I said you and mother were

-very foolish."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Fwy, now; there it is agin.  Fwat do ye mane?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why this.  When I was here before I saw that

-you and mother had taken a liking to each other.  I

-thought by this time you'd have been married.  And

-I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't.  But you're

-as far away as ever.  Here's mother's land that needs

-somebody to take care of it.  I am going away never

-to come back.  If I could see you married the only

-earthly care I have would be gone, and I could die in

-peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes.

-"Fwy didn't you say that before?  Ye're a prophet

-and a angel, I belave.  I wish I was half as good, or a

-quarther.  God bliss ye, me boy.  I wish&mdash;I wish ye

-would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and

-your mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to

-spake to ye about this, and ye samed so hivenly we

-thought ye would be displased.  Now, will ye marry

-us before ye go?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I haven't got any license."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Here 'tis, in me pocket."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where's a witness or two?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye

-to ye in the other room."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike.  "I must

-get away in an hour."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And he married them.  They wept over him, and

-he made no concealment that he was going away

-for the last time.  He rode out from Hissawachee

-never to come back.  Not sad, but exultant, that he

-had sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to

-enter into the life everlasting.  For, faithless as we are

-in this day, let us never hide from ourselves the fact

-that the faith of a martyr is indeed a hundred fold

-more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife

-and children.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap31"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXXI.</i>

-<br><br>

-KIKE.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through

-Morton's great diocese of Jenkinsville Circuit.

-He could not ride far.  Even so intemperate a zealot

-as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his

-calculations.  He must save his strength in journeying

-or he could not reach his circuit, much less preach

-when he got there.  At the close of his second day

-he inquired for a Methodist house at which to stop,

-and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located"

-preacher&mdash;one who had been a "travelling" preacher,

-but, having married, was under the necessity of entangling

-himself with the things of this world that he might

-get bread for his children.  As he rode up to the

-house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the

-fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in

-progress.  He was in Morton's circuit; who could tell

-that he should not meet him here?

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the

-door between the two rooms preaching, with the back

-of a "split-bottomed" chair for a pulpit.  For a

-moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten with

-death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton

-never spoke better on that favorite theme of the early

-Methodist evangelist&mdash;the rest in heaven&mdash;than while

-drawing his inspiration from the pallid countenance of

-his comrade.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ah!  Kike!" he said, when the meeting was

-dismissed, "I wish you had my body."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for,

-Mort?  Let God have his way," said Kike, smiling

-contentedly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay

-awake.  He could not let the poor fellow go off alone.

-So in the morning he arranged with the located brother

-to take his appointments for awhile and let him ride

-one day with Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the

-ex-preacher.  "The corn's laid by and I've got nothing to

-do, and I'm spoiling for a preach."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of

-Hickory Ridge, and Morton, persuaded that Kike was

-unfit to preach, endeavored to induce him to turn aside

-and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his

-road.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength

-left.  I cannot spend it better than in trying to save

-souls.  There's Peterborough vacant three months since

-Brother Jones was first taken sick.  I want to make

-one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the

-heart I have.  Then I'll cease at once to work and

-live, and who knows but that I may slay more in my

-death than in my life?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Morton feared that he would not be able to

-make one round.  He thought he had an overestimate

-of his strength, and that the final break-down might

-come at any moment.  So, on the morning of the

-second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to

-return.  He would see him safe among the members

-on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Now it happened that they missed the trail and

-wandered far out of their way.  It rained all the

-afternoon, and Kike got drenched in crossing a stream.

-Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter.

-He stopped at a cabin.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler,

-as soon as he saw them.  "I 'low ye're preachers.

-Brother Goodwin I know.  Heerd him down at

-camp-meetin' last fall,&mdash;time conference met on the

-Ridge.  And this brother looks mis'rable.  Got the

-shakes, I 'low?  Your name, brother, is&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Lumsden?  Wy, that air's the very name of our

-school-miss, and she's stayin' here jes' now.  I kinder

-recolleck that you was sick up at Dr. Morgan's,

-conference time.  Hey?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton looked bewildered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low.

-Ain't it, Sister Lumsden?"  This last to Patty, who at

-that moment appeared from the bedroom, and without

-answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike with

-a cry of joy.  Patty was "boarding round," and it was

-her time to stay here.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"How did we get here?  We aimed at Lanham's

-Ferry," said Morton, bewildered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low.  You

-should've gone by Hanks's Mills."

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-300"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-300.jpg" alt="THE REUNION.">

-<br>

-THE REUNION.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother,

-Morton was determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's.

-Kike was just sick enough to be passive, and he

-suffered himself to be put back into the saddle to ride

-to the doctor's.  Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields

-and gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed

-away in the bed he had occupied before.  Thus do

-men try to run away from fate, and rush into her arms

-in spite of themselves.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-It did not require very great medical skill to

-understand what must be the result of Kike's sickness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked

-Morton, next morning.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the

-physician, in his abrupt manner.  "There's not water

-enough left in the branch to run the mill seven days.

-Wasted life, sir, wasted life.  It is a pity but you

-Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every

-minute that he might see Nettie come in.  But she did

-not come.  He had wished to avoid her father's house

-for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to

-be thus near her and not see her.  Toward evening

-he called Patty to him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Lean down here!" he said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why don't she come in to see me?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty;

-"she seems to be crying half the time."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening.

-But Nettie did not come.  To have come into Kike's

-room would have been to have revealed her love for

-one who had never declared his love for her.  The

-mobile face of Nettie disclosed every emotion.  No

-wonder she was fain to keep away.  And yet the desire

-to see him almost overcame her fear of seeing him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast

-the next morning, the patient looked at him wistfully.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth.  Will I ever

-get up?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the

-physician, huskily.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A smile of relief spread over Kike's face.  At that

-word the awful burden of his morbid sense of responsibility

-for the world's salvation, the awful burden of

-a self-sacrifice that was terrible and that must be

-life-long, slipped from his weary soul.  There was then

-nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's

-release.  He shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!"

-and lay for minutes, motionless.  As the doctor made a

-movement to leave him, Kike opened his eyes and

-looked at him eagerly.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the

-straight black hair off Kike's forehead, and petting him

-as though he were a child.  "What do you want?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Doctor&mdash;&mdash;" said Kike, and then closed his eyes

-again.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart,

-dear boy."  The tears were in the doctor's eyes.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you think it best&mdash;if you think it best,

-mind&mdash;I would like to see Nettie."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Of course it is best.  I am glad you mentioned

-it.  It will do her good, poor soul."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"If you think it best&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated.

-"Speak out."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"All alone."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, you shall see her alone.  That is best."  The

-doctor's utterance was choked as he hastened out.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door.  It seemed

-a long time after the doctor went before Nettie came

-in.  It was only three minutes&mdash;three minutes in which

-Nettie vainly strove to wipe away tears that flowed

-faster than she could remove them.  At last her hand

-was on the latch.  She gained a momentary self-control.

-But when she opened the door and saw his emaciated

-face, and his black eyes looking so eagerly for her, it

-was too much for the poor little heart.  The next

-moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing

-violently.  And Kike put out his feeble hands and

-drew the golden head up close to his bosom, and spoke

-tenderer words than he had ever heard spoken in his

-life.  And then he closed his eyes, and for a long time

-nothing was said.  It came about after Nettie's tears

-were spent that they talked of all that they had felt;

-of the life past and of the immortal life to come.

-Hours went by and none intruded upon this betrothal

-for eternity.  Patty had waited without, expecting

-to be called to take her place again by her cousin's

-bedside.  But she did not like to remain in

-conversation with Morton.  It could bring nothing but

-pain to them both.  It occurred to her that she had

-not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike

-came.  She started immediately, glad to escape from

-the regrets excited by the presence of Morton, and

-touched with remorse that she had so long neglected a

-man on whose heart she thought she had been able to

-make some religious impression.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap32"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXXII.</i>

-<br><br>

-PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Pinkey was grum.  He didn't like to be neglected,

-if he was a highwayman.  He had gotten out of

-bed and drawn on his boots.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"So you couldn't come to see me because there

-was a young preacher sick at the doctor's?" he said,

-when Patty entered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty,

-"and he is going to die."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little.

-"But Goodwin is there, too.  I hope you didn't tell

-him anything about me?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not a word."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"He seems to be."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And people that are grateful are very likely to

-have other feelings after awhile."  There was a

-significance in Pinkey's manner that Patty greatly

-disliked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You should not talk in that way.  Mr. Goodwin

-is engaged to be married."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Is he?  Do you mind telling me her name?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What?&mdash;Who?&mdash;To Ann Eliza?  How did it

-happen that I have never heard of that?  To Ann

-Eliza!  Confound her; what a witch that girl is!  I

-wish I could spoil her game this time.  Goodwin's too

-good for her and she sha'n't have him."  Then he sat

-still as if in meditation.  After a moment he resumed:

-"Now, Miss Lumsden, you've done one good turn for

-him, you must do another.  I want to send a note to

-this Ann Eliza."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"<i>I</i> cannot take it," said Patty, trembling.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You saved his life, and now you are unwilling to

-save him from a worse evil.  You ought not to refuse."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You ought not to ask it.  The circumstances of

-the case are peculiar.  I will not take it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will you take a note to Goodwin?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not on this business."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Pinkey was startled at the emotion she showed, and

-looked at her inquiringly: "You were a schoolmate

-of Morton's&mdash;of Goodwin's, I mean&mdash;and a body would

-think that you might be the identical sweetheart that

-sent him adrift for joining the Methodists&mdash;and then

-joined the Methodists herself, eh?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty said nothing, but turned away.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"By the holy Moses," said Pinkey, in a half-soliloquy,

-"if that's the case, I'll break the net of

-that fisherwoman this time or drown myself a-trying."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty had intended to read the Bible to her patient,

-but her mind was so disturbed that she thought best

-to say good-morning.  Pinkey roused himself from a

-reverie to call her back.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Will you answer me one question?" he asked.

-"Does Goodwin want to marry this girl?  Is he happy

-about it, do you think?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am sure he isn't," said Patty, reproaching

-herself in a moment that she had said so much.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty made some kindly remark to Mrs. Barkins as

-she went out, walked briskly to the fence, halted, looked

-off over the field a moment, turned round and came

-back.  When she re-entered Pinkey's room he had put

-on his great false-whiskers and wolf-skin cap, and she

-trembled at the transformation.  He started, but said:

-"Don't be afraid, Miss Lumsden, I am not meditating

-mischief.  I will not hurt you, certainly, and you must

-not betray me.  Now, what is it?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Don't do anything wrong in this matter," said

-Patty.  "Don't do anything that'll lie heavy on your

-soul when you come to die.&mdash;I'm afraid you'll do

-something wrong for Mr. Goodwin's sake, or&mdash;mine."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No.  But if I was able to ride I'd do one

-thunderin' good thing.  But I am too weak to do

-anything, plague on it!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I wish you would put these deceits in the fire and

-do right," she said, indicating his disguises.  "I am

-disappointed to see that you are going back to your

-old ways."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He made no reply, but laid off his disguises and

-lay down on the bed, exhausted.  And Patty departed,

-grieved that all her labors were in vain, while Pinkey

-only muttered to himself, "I'm too weak, confound

-it!"

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap33"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXXIII.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any

-one venture to open the door of Kike's room.

-He found the patient much better.  But the improvement

-could not be permanent, the sedative of mental

-rest and the tonic of joy had come too late.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one

-more service.  Nettie will explain to you what it is."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away,

-leading Kike's horse with him.  The doctor thought

-he could guess what Morton went for, but, even in

-melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children, are fond

-of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that

-which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to

-themselves.  At ten o'clock that night Morton came

-back without Kike's horse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown

-visibly weaker.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton nodded.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And you sent the message?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank

-into a satisfied sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate

-to Doctor Morgan and Patty that he had seen in the

-moonlight a notorious highwayman.  "His nickname is

-Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes

-from or goes to.  He got a hard blow in a fight with

-the police force of the camp meeting.  It's a wonder

-it didn't break his head.  I searched for him

-everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared.  If I had

-been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him,

-for he was alone."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Our patient, Patty."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Patty did not say a word.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You must have got that information through him!"

-said Morton, with surprise.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Patty only kept still.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had

-killed my deliverer!  Strange that he should be the

-bearer of a message to me, though.  I should rather

-expect him to kill me than to save me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away

-while yet so weak, and found in herself the flutterings

-of a hope for which she knew there was no

-satisfactory ground.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking.

-"Doctor Morgan," he said, "do not leave me long.

-Nettie and I want to be married before I die."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to

-suspect Kike's secret.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Morton got it the other day.  And I am looking

-for my mother to-day.  I don't want to be married

-till she comes.  Morton took my horse and sent for

-her."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived.

-On Sunday morning he was almost past speaking.

-Nettie had gone out of the room, and Kike was

-apparently asleep.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to

-Morton, pointing to the dying man.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, indeed.  What a pity he had no care for

-himself," answered Morton.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty got the Bible.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the

-seventh verse to the thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke

-as if he were announcing a text.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Then, when Patty was about to read, he said:

-"Stop.  Call Nettie."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she

-read all about the alabaster box of ointment, very

-precious, that was broken over the head of Jesus,

-and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's

-reply.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan,

-with effusion, "what is spent for love is never wasted.

-It is a very precious box of ointment that you have

-broken upon Christ's head, my son.  The Lord will

-not forget it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the

-door on Sunday morning, the people had already

-begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the expectation

-that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge

-church.  Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous

-all the country over, was dying, they filled Doctor

-Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad, silent groups

-on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the

-shade of the yard trees.  As the dying preacher's

-mother passed through, the crowd of country people

-fell back and looked reverently at her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Kike was already far gone.  He was barely able to

-greet his mother and the good-hearted Brady, whose

-demonstrative Irish grief knew no bounds.  Then Kike

-and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all.  This

-sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than

-a funeral.  After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's

-side, and he rallied for a moment and solemnly

-pronounced a benediction on her.  Then he lifted up

-his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord!  I have kept back

-nothing.  Amen."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie.  The

-people had crowded into the hall and stood at the

-windows.  For awhile all thought him dead.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and

-lighted upon the bed of the dying man.  The early

-Western people believed in marvels, and Kike was to

-them a saint.  At sight of the snow-white dove pluming

-itself upon his breast they all started back.  Was it

-a heavenly visitant?  Kike opened his eyes and gazed

-upon the dove a moment.  Then he looked significantly

-at Nettie, then at the people.  The dove plumed itself

-a moment longer, looked round on the people out of

-its mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the

-window again and disappeared in the sunlight.  A smile

-overspread the dying man's face, he clasped his hands

-upon his bosom, and it was a full minute before

-anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of

-Hezekiah Lumsden had gone to its rest.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He had requested that no name should be placed

-over his grave.  "Let God have any glory that may

-come from my labors, and let everybody but Nettie

-forget me," he said.  But Doctor Morgan had a slab

-of the common blue limestone of the hills&mdash;marble was

-not to be had&mdash;cut out for a headstone.  The device

-upon it was a dove, the only inscription: "An alabaster

-box of very precious ointment."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Death is not always matter for grief.  If you have

-ever beheld a rich sunset from the summit of a

-lofty mountain, you will remember how the world was

-transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent

-light, and how, long after the light had faded from

-the cloud-drapery, and long after the hills had begun

-to lose themselves in the abyss of darkness, there

-lingered a glory in the western horizon&mdash;a joyous

-memory of the splendid pomp of the evening.  Even

-so the glory of Kike's dying made all who saw it feel

-like those who have witnessed a sublime spectacle,

-which they may never see again.  The memory of

-it lingered with them like the long-lingering glow

-behind the western mountains.  Sorry that the

-suffering life had ended in peace, one could not be; and

-never did stormy day find more placid sunset than

-his.  Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to

-her.  When he was gone she was as one whom an

-angel of God had embraced.  She regretted his absence,

-but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and she had

-not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The only commemoration his name received was in

-the conference minutes, where, like other such heroes,

-he was curtly embalmed in the usual four lines:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely

-gave up his life for his work.  He was tireless in

-labor, patient in suffering, bold in rebuking sin, holy

-in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-The early Methodists had no time for eulogies.

-A handful of earth, a few hurried words of tribute,

-and the bugle called to the battle.  The man who

-died was at rest, the men who staid had the more

-work to do.

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="footnote">

-NOTE.  In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's

-bed, I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.&mdash;E.E.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap34"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXXIV.</i>

-<br><br>

-THE BROTHERS.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a

-letter from her father, asking her to come home.

-Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote penitently

-and asked Patty's forgiveness.  Captain Lumsden never

-did anything otherwise than meanly.  He wrote that

-he was now bedridden with rheumatism, and it seemed

-hard that he should be forsaken by his oldest daughter,

-who ought to be the stay of his declining years.  He

-did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so

-religious and yet leave him to suffer without the

-comfort of her presence.  The other children were

-young, and the house was in hopeless confusion.  If

-the Methodists had not quite turned her heart away

-from her poor afflicted father, she would come at once

-and help him in his troubles.  He was ready to forgive

-the past, and as for her religion, if she did not trouble

-him with it, she could do as she pleased.  He did not

-think much of a religion that set a daughter against

-her father, though.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that

-it set before her to feel the sting very keenly.  There

-was another pain that had grown worse with every day

-she had spent with Morton.  Beside her own sorrow

-she felt for him.  There was a strange restlessness in

-his eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he

-was doing, that indicated how fearfully the tempest

-raged within.  For Morton's old desperation was upon

-him, and Patty was in terror for the result.  About the

-time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul

-also.  He had mastered himself, and the restless

-wildness had given place to a look of constraint and

-suffering that was less alarming but hardly less

-distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding

-her own agony.  But the disappearance of Pinkey had

-awakened some hope in her.  Not one jot of this

-trembling hopefulness did she dare impart to Morton,

-who for his part had but one consolation&mdash;he would

-throw away his life in the battle, as Kike had done

-before him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-So eager was Patty to leave her school now and

-hasten to her father, that she could not endure to stay

-the weeks that were necessary to complete her term.

-She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the possibility

-of getting some one to take her place, and both had

-concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane

-Morgan being too much out of health.  But to their

-surprise Nettie offered her services.  She had not been

-of much more use in the world than a humming-bird,

-she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would

-be better pleased that she should make herself useful.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and

-Morton, who could not reach the distant part of his

-circuit, upon which his supply was now preaching, in

-time to resume his work at once, concluded to set out

-for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents

-fared.  But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who

-departed in company with Brady and his wife.  Morton

-would not trust himself in her society longer.  He

-therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks

-to Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-I may not describe the enthusiasm with which

-Morton was received at home.  Scarcely had he kissed

-his mother and shaken hands with his father, who was

-surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had

-been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting

-up into manhood, when his mother whispered to him

-that his brother Lewis was alive and had come

-home.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What!  Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I

-thought he was killed in Pittsburg ten years ago."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That was a false report.  He had been doing

-badly, and he did not want to return, and so he let

-us believe him dead.  But now he has come back and

-he is afraid you will not receive him kindly.  I suppose

-he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard

-on his evil ways.  But you won't be too hard, will you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I?  God knows I have been too great a sinner

-myself for that.  Where is Lew?  I can just remember

-how he used to whittle boats for me when I was a

-little boy.  I remember the morning he ran off, and

-how after that you always wanted to move West.

-Poor Lew!  Where has he gone?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-His mother opened the door of the little bed-room

-and led out the brother.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What!  Burchard?" cried Morton.  "What does

-this mean?  Are you Lewis Goodwin?"

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-316"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-316.jpg" alt="THE BROTHERS.">

-<br>

-THE BROTHERS.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I am!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun

-when you found out who I was.  That's how you

-saved me that day at Brewer's Hole.  And that's why

-you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other

-warning.  Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you

-anyhow, but I ought to be not only glad as a brother,

-but glad that I can thank you for saving my life."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What of that?  God forgives, and I am sure that

-it is not for such a sinner as I am to condemn you.

-If you knew what desperate thoughts have tempted me

-in the last week you would know how much I am

-your brother."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed

-it open, with a "Howdy, Misses Goodwin?  Howdy,

-Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady.  We thought

-he was dead."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Heigh-ho!  The prodigal's come back agin, eh?

-Mrs. Goodwin, I congratilate ye."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis.

-Patty, who stood behind, came forward, and Morton

-said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother Lewis."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis.  "She

-knows me already.  If it hadn't been for her I might

-have been dead, and in perdition, I suppose.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable

-of the Prodigal Son, and told me that it was my

-mother's favorite chapter."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it

-every day for years.  But how did you know that,

-Patty?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman

-knew how another woman felt.  But you don't know

-how good Miss Lumsden is.  She did not know me as

-Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different

-character.  I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast

-of it, Mort, at once.  Then there'll be no surprises

-afterward.  And if you hate me when you know it all,

-I can't help it."  With that he stepped into the

-bedroom and came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What!  Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to

-knock down, and then hunted all over the country to

-find."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery

-of his brother's bad character, Patty added adroitly:

-"The Pinkey that saved your life, Morton."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton got up and stood before his brother.  "Give

-me your hand again, Lewis.  I am so glad you came

-home at last.  God bless you."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands.

-"I have been a very wicked man, Morton, but I never

-committed a murder.  I am guilty of complicity.  I got

-tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band.  I helped

-them because they had a hold on me, and I was too

-weak to risk the consequences of breaking with them.

-That complicity has spoiled all my life.  But the

-crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly committed by

-others.  Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all

-sins were laid."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I must hurry home," said Patty.  "I only stopped

-to shake hands," and she rose to go.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to

-destroy these lies.  You shall have them to do what

-you like with.  I wish you could take my sins, too."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty put the disguises into the fire.  "Only God

-can take your sins," she said.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis,

-with bitterness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Patty went home in anxiety.  Lewis Goodwin

-seemed to have forgotten the resolution he had made

-as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of

-present duty crowd out thoughts of possible happiness.

-She bore the peculiar paternal greetings of her father;

-she installed herself at once, and began, like a good

-genius, to evolve order out of chaos.  By the time

-evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress

-again.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap35"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-CHAPTER XXXV.

-<br><br>

-PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother

-Lewis strolled into the woods together.  It was

-not safe for Lewis to walk about in the day time.

-The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah

-Harp's band, perhaps, on the other.  But in the

-twilight he told Morton something which interested

-the latter greatly, and which increased his gratitude

-to Lewis.  That you may understand what this

-communication was, I must go back to an event that

-happened the week before&mdash;to the very last adventure

-that Lewis Goodwin had in his character of Pinkey.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed.  She

-had ridden ten miles to Mount Tabor Church, one

-of Morton's principal appointments.  No doubt Ann

-Eliza persuaded herself&mdash;she never had any trouble in

-persuading herself&mdash;that zeal for religious worship was

-the motive that impelled her to ride so far to church.

-But why, then, did she wish she had not come, when

-instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother

-Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located

-brother who was supplying his place in his absence

-at Kike's bedside?  Why did she not go on to the

-afternoon appointment as she had intended?  Certain

-it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log

-church&mdash;called Mount Tabor because it was built in a hollow,

-perhaps&mdash;she felt unaccountably depressed.  She

-considered it a spiritual struggle, a veritable hand to

-hand conflict with Satan.  She told the brethren and

-sisters that she must return home, she even declined

-to stay to dinner.  She led the horse up to a log

-and sprang into the saddle, riding away toward home

-as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer would

-carry her.  She was vexed that Morton should stay

-away from his appointments on this part of his

-circuit to see anybody die.  He might know that it

-would be a disappointment to her.  She satisfied

-herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination

-the half-coldness with which she would treat Brother

-Goodwin when she should meet him.  She inly

-rehearsed the scene.  But with most people there is a

-more secret self, kept secret even from themselves.

-And in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that

-she would not dare treat Brother Goodwin coolly.

-She had a sense of insecurity in her hold upon him.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Riding thus through the great forests of beech and

-maple Ann Eliza had reached Cherry Run, only half

-a mile from her aunt's house, and the old horse,

-scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture ahead

-of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the

-"run," when what should she see ahead but a man

-in wolf-skin cap and long whiskers.  She had heard of

-Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this must be he.

-Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the

-highwayman advanced.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I haven't anything to give you.  What do you want?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do

-your duty," he said, seating himself by the side of

-the trail on a stump.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-322"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-322.jpg" alt="AN ACCUSING MEMORY.">

-<br>

-AN ACCUSING MEMORY.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened,

-starting her horse.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want

-to talk to you."  And he sat down again, holding fast

-to her bridle-rein.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense

-of helplessness.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a

-canting tone, "that you are doing just right?  Is not

-there something in your life that is wrong?  With all

-your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a

-wicked woman."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire.  "Who are

-you, that talk in this way?  You are a robber, and

-you know it!  If you don't repent you will be lost!

-Seek religion now.  You will soon sin away your day

-of grace, and what an awful eternity&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein,

-partly because it was habitual with her, and

-consequently easier in a moment of confusion than any

-other, and partly because it was her forte and she

-thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations

-were her best weapons.  But when she reached the

-words "awful eternity," Pinkey cried out sneeringly:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Hold up, Ann Eliza!  You don't run over me

-that way.  I'm bad enough, God knows, and I'm

-afraid I shall find my way to hell some day.  But if

-I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on

-my arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do.

-You see I know all about you, and it's no use for

-you to glory-hallelujah me."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate

-to the occasion, and so she remained silent.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your

-hooks, now, and that you mean to marry him against

-his will.  Is that so?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"No, it isn't.  He proposed to me himself."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"O, yes!  I suppose he did.  You made him!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I didn't."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I suppose not.  You never did.  Not even in

-Pennsylvania.  How about young Harlow?  Who made

-him?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza changed color.  "Who are you?" she asked.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name?

-The one you danced with down at Stevens's one

-night."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"What do you bring up all my old sins for?"

-asked Ann Eliza, weeping.  "You know I have

-repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to

-lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my

-sins and let me see the light of his reconciled

-countenance&mdash;&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey.  "You sha'n't

-glory-hallelujah me in that style, confound you!  Maybe

-God has forgiven you for driving Harlow to drink

-himself into tremens and the grave, and for sending

-that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing,

-you know.  You wouldn't like me to mention it.

-You've got a very pretty face, Ann Eliza,&mdash;you know

-you have.  But Brother Goodwin don't love you.  You

-entangled him; you know you did.  Has God forgiven

-you for that, yet?  Don't you think you'd better go

-to the mourners' bench next time yourself, instead of

-talking to the mourners as if you were an angel?

-Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can

-sing glory-hallelujah.  Hey?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Not yet, you angelic creature.  Now that I come

-to think of it, piety suits your style of feature.  Ann

-Eliza, I want to ask you one question before we part,

-to meet down below, perhaps.  If you are so pious,

-why can't you be honest?  Why can't you tell Preacher

-Goodwin what you left Pennsylvania for?  Why the

-devil don't you let him know beforehand what sort of a

-horse he's getting when he invests in you?  Is it pious

-to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he

-wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth?  Come

-now, you talk a good deal about the 'bar of God,'

-what do you think will become of such a swindle as

-you are, at the bar of God?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up

-the sins that I have put behind my back.  Why

-should I talk with&mdash;with Brother Goodwin or anybody

-about them?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by

-reasoning that God's forgiveness had made the

-unpleasant facts of her life as though they were not.  It

-was very unpleasant, when she had put down her

-memory entirely upon certain points, to have it march

-up to her from without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and

-false whiskers, and speaking about the most

-disagreeable subjects.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience,

-but you don't seem to have any.  You are totally

-depraved, I believe, if you do love to sing and shout

-and pray.  Now, when a preacher cannot get a man

-to be good by talking at his conscience, he talks

-damnation to him.  But you think you have managed

-to get round on the blind side of God, and I don't

-suppose you are afraid of hell itself.  So, as conscience

-and perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else.

-You are going to write a note to Preacher Goodwin

-and let him off.  I am going to carry it."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You aren't afraid of gunpowder.  You think

-you'd sail into heaven straight, by virtue of your

-experiences.  I am not going to shoot you, but here

-is a pencil and a piece of paper.  You may write to

-Goodwin, or I shall.  If I write I will put down a

-truthful history of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and

-I shall be quite particular to tell him why you left

-Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize the

-wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly

-blue eyes.  But, if you write, I'll keep still."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious

-tormentor, leading the horse up to the stump.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the

-pencil.  Her ingenious mind immediately set itself to

-devising some way by which she might satisfy the man

-who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and yet

-keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher.  But the

-man stood behind her and said, as she began, "Now

-write what I say.  I don't care how you open.  Call

-him any sweet name you please.  But you'd better

-say 'Dear Sir.'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken

-off.  It is my fault, not yours.'"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"I won't write that."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Yes, you will, my pious friend.  Now, Ann Eliza,

-you've got a nice face; when a man once gets in love

-with you he can't quite get out.  I suppose I will feel

-tender toward you when we meet to part no more,

-down below.  I was in love with you once."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Who are you?"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"O, that don't matter!  I was going to say that if

-I hadn't been in love with your blue eyes once I

-wouldn't have taken the trouble to come forty miles

-to get you to write this letter.  I was only a mile

-away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I

-heard that you had victimized him.  I could have sent

-him a note.  I came over here to save you from the

-ruin you deserve.  I would have told him more than

-the people in Pennsylvania ever knew.  Come, my dear,

-scribble away as I say, or I will tell him and

-everybody else what will take the music out of your

-love-feast speeches in all this country."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting

-that she could send another note after this and tell

-Brother Goodwin that a highwayman who entertained

-an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot

-and extorted this from her.  She handed the note to

-Pinkey.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive

-this sin, too.  You may pray and shout till you die.

-I'll never say anything&mdash;unless you open

-communication with preacher Goodwin again.  Do that, and I'll

-blow you sky-high."

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and&mdash;"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter

-names than that, and you don't look half so fascinating

-when you're mad as when you are talking heavenly.

-Good by, Miss Meacham."  And with that Pinkey went

-into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and

-rode away, not on the road but through the woods.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her

-many lovers this might be she would have set about

-forming some plan for circumventing him.  But the

-mystery was too much for her.  She sincerely loved

-Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others

-had now come back to her own lips.  And with it

-came a little humility.  She could not again forget

-her early sins so totally.  She looked to see them start

-out of the bushes by the wayside at her.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-After this recital it is not necessary that I should

-tell you what Lewis Goodwin told his brother that

-night as they strolled in the woods.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not

-stay longer with safety.  The war with Great Britain

-had broken out and he joined the army at Chillicothe

-under his own name, which was his best disguise.  He

-was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that

-he was trying to wipe the stain off his name.  He

-afterward moved West and led an honest life, but the

-memory of his wild youth never ceased to give him

-pain.  Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed

-sinner as forgetfulness.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br></p>

-

-<p><a id="chap36"></a></p>

-

-<h3>

-<i>CHAPTER XXXVI.</i>

-<br><br>

-GETTING THE ANSWER.

-</h3>

-

-<p>

-When Patty went down to strain the milk on the

-morning after her return, the hope of some

-deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had well-nigh died

-out.  If he had had anything to communicate, Morton

-would not have delayed so long to come to see her.

-But, standing there as of old, in the moss-covered

-spring-house, she was, in spite of herself, dreaming

-dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she could

-have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin,

-while he was yet Pinkey, had dropped.  By the time

-the first crock was filled with milk and adjusted to its

-place in the cold current, she had recalled that

-morning of nearly three years before, when she had

-resolved to forsake father and mother and cleave to

-Morton; by the time the second crock had been neatly

-covered with its clean block she thought she could

-almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on

-that morning:

-</p>

-

-<p class="poem">

-  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,<br>

-  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,<br>

-  Nocht of ill may come thee near,<br>

-  My bonnie dearie."<br>

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance

-with the Book of Discipline, given up "singing those

-songs that do not tend to the glory of God," but she

-felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again, assuring

-her of his strong

-protection, as it had on

-that morning three

-years ago.  Meanwhile,

-she had filled all the

-crocks, and now turned to pass out of the low door

-when she saw, standing there as he had stood on that

-other morning, Morton Goodwin.  He was more manly,

-more self-contained, than then.  Years of discipline

-had ripened them both.  He stepped back and let her

-emerge into the light; he handed her that note which

-Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty

-read:

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Dear Sir&mdash;The engagement between us is broken off.  It is

-my fault and not yours.

-</p>

-

-<p class="noindent">

-"ANN E. MEACHAM."

-</p>

-

-<p><br></p>

-

-<p>

-"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty,

-in pity.  Morton loved her better for her first unselfish

-thought.

-</p>

-

-<p class="capcenter">

-<a id="img-330"></a>

-<br>

-<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-330.jpg" alt="AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.">

-<br>

-AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-He told her frankly the history of the engagement;

-and then he and Patty sat and talked in a happiness

-so great that it made them quiet, until some one

-came to call her, when Morton walked up to the

-house to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and

-mollified Captain Lumsden.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he

-came to understand how matters stood, "you've got

-the answer in the book.  It's quare enough.  Now,

-'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and

-one is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to

-anybody.  You've got it, and I'm glad of it.  May ye

-niver conjugate the varb 'to love' anyways excipt

-prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural

-number, 'we love.'  I don't keer ef ye add the futur'

-tinse, and say, 'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the

-parfect and say, 'we have loved,' but may ye always

-stick fast to first parson, plural number, prisint tinse,

-indicative mood, active v'ice!"

-</p>

-

-<p>

-Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some

-trepidation.  He feared that the old brethren would

-blame him more than ever.  But this time he found

-himself the object of much sympathy.  Ann Eliza had

-forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement

-with the very willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a

-great deal to think how he had "cut out" the

-preacher, after all.  And when Brother Magruder came

-to understand that he had not understood Morton's

-case at all, and to understand that he never should be

-able to understand it, he thought to atone for any

-mistake he might have made by advising the bishop

-to send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included

-Hissawachee.  And Morton liked the appointment

-better than Magruder had expected.  Instead of living

-with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon

-installed himself for the year at the house of Captain

-Lumsden, in the double capacity of general supervisor

-of the moribund man's affairs and son-in-law.

-</p>

-

-<p>

-There rise before me, as I write these last lines,

-visions of circuits and stations of which Morton was

-afterward the preacher-in-charge, and of districts of

-which he came to be presiding elder.  Are not all of

-these written in the Book of the Minutes of the

-Conferences?  But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of

-Patty and her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded

-nowhere but in the Book of God's Remembrance.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br></p>

-

-<p class="t3">

-THE END.

-</p>

-

-<p><br><br><br><br></p>

-

-<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***</div>

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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Circuit Rider, 
+by Edward Eggleston
+</title>
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***</div>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-front"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-front.jpg" alt="SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  <i>See page 56.</i>">
+<br>
+SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE.  <i><a href="#p56">See page 56.</a></i>
+</p>
+
+<h1>
+<br><br>
+  THE<br>
+  CIRCUIT RIDER<br>
+</h1>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  A Tale of the Heroic Age,<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  BY<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+  EDWARD EGGLESTON,<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  <i>Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the<br>
+  World," etc.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  "The voice of one crying in the wilderness."&mdash;<i>Isaiah.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  "&mdash;&mdash;Beginners of a better time,<br>
+  And glorying in their vows."&mdash;<i>Tennyson.</i><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  NEW YORK:<br>
+  J. B. FORD & COMPANY<br>
+  1874.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t4">
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by<br>
+  J. B. FORD & COMPANY,<br>
+  in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+  TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,<br>
+<br>
+  THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE<br>
+  HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,<br>
+<br>
+  THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  CONTENTS.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+  CHAPTER<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent smcap" style="line-height: 1.5">
+  I.&mdash;<a href="#chap01">The Corn Shucking</a><br>
+  II.&mdash;<a href="#chap02">The Frolic</a><br>
+  III.&mdash;<a href="#chap03">Going to Meeting</a><br>
+  IV.&mdash;<a href="#chap04">A Battle</a><br>
+  V.&mdash;<a href="#chap05">A Crisis</a><br>
+  VI.&mdash;<a href="#chap06">The Fall Hunt</a><br>
+  VII.&mdash;<a href="#chap07">Treeing a Preacher</a><br>
+  VIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap08">A Lesson in Syntax</a><br>
+  IX.&mdash;<a href="#chap09">The Coming of the Circuit Rider</a><br>
+  X.&mdash;<a href="#chap10">Patty in the Spring-House</a><br>
+  XI.&mdash;<a href="#chap11">The Voice in the Wilderness</a><br>
+  XII.&mdash;<a href="#chap12">Mr. Brady Prophesies</a><br>
+  XIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap13">Two to One</a><br>
+  XIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap14">Kike's Sermon</a><br>
+  XV.&mdash;<a href="#chap15">Morton's Retreat</a><br>
+  XVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap16">Short Shrift</a><br>
+  XVII.&mdash;<a href="#chap17">Deliverance</a><br>
+  XVIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap18">The Prodigal Returns</a><br>
+  XIX.&mdash;<a href="#chap19">Patty</a><br>
+  XX.&mdash;<a href="#chap20">The Conference at Hickory Ridge</a><br>
+  XXI.&mdash;<a href="#chap21">Convalescence</a><br>
+  XXII.&mdash;<a href="#chap22">The Decision</a><br>
+  XXIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap23">Russell Bigelow's Sermon</a><br>
+  XXIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap24">Drawing the Latch-String in</a><br>
+  XXV.&mdash;<a href="#chap25">Ann Eliza</a><br>
+  XXVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap26">Engagement</a><br>
+  XXVII.&mdash;<a href="#chap27">The Camp-Meeting</a><br>
+  XXVIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap28">Patty and her Patient</a><br>
+  XXIX.&mdash;<a href="#chap29">Patty's Journey</a><br>
+  XXX.&mdash;<a href="#chap30">The Schoolmaster and the Widow</a><br>
+  XXXI.&mdash;<a href="#chap31">Kike</a><br>
+  XXXII.&mdash;<a href="#chap32">Pinkey's Discovery</a><br>
+  XXXIII.&mdash;<a href="#chap33">The Alabaster Box Broken</a><br>
+  XXXIV.&mdash;<a href="#chap34">The Brother</a><br>
+  XXXV.&mdash;<a href="#chap35">Plnkey and Ann Eliza</a><br>
+  XXXVI.&mdash;<a href="#chap36">Getting the Answer</a><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+  ILLUSTRATIONS.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent smcap" style="line-height: 1.5">
+  1. <a href="#img-front">Spinning-wheel and Rifle</a> ... Frontispiece<br>
+  2. <a href="#img-012">Captain Lumsden</a><br>
+  3. <a href="#img-016">Mort Goodwin</a><br>
+  4. <a href="#img-024">Homely S'manthy</a><br>
+  5. <a href="#img-025">Patty and Jemima</a><br>
+  6. <a href="#img-028">Little Gabe's Discomfiture</a><br>
+  7. <a href="#img-036">In the Stable</a><br>
+  8. <a href="#img-044">Mort, Dolly and Kike</a><br>
+  9. <a href="#img-051">Good Bye!</a><br>
+  10. <a href="#img-059">The Altercation</a><br>
+  11. <a href="#img-064">The Irish Schoolmaster</a><br>
+  12. <a href="#img-070">Electioneering</a><br>
+  13. <a href="#img-077">Patty in her Chamber</a><br>
+  14. <a href="#img-089">Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard</a><br>
+  15. <a href="#img-096">Patty in the Spring-House</a><br>
+  16. <a href="#img-112">Job Goodwin</a><br>
+  17. <a href="#img-118">Two to One</a><br>
+  18. <a href="#img-133">Gambling</a><br>
+  19. <a href="#img-152">A Last Hope</a><br>
+  20. <a href="#img-181">The Choice</a><br>
+  21. <a href="#img-185">Going to Conference</a><br>
+  22. <a href="#img-199">Convalescence</a><br>
+  23. <a href="#img-214">The Connecticut Peddler</a><br>
+  24. <a href="#img-231">Ann Eliza</a><br>
+  25. <a href="#img-245">Facing a Mob</a><br>
+  26. <a href="#img-262">"Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"</a><br>
+  27. <a href="#img-270">The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge</a><br>
+  28. <a href="#img-300">The Reunion</a><br>
+  29. <a href="#img-316">The Brothers</a><br>
+  30. <a href="#img-322">An Accusing Memory</a><br>
+  31. <a href="#img-330">At the Spring-House Again</a><br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+PREFACE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever is incredible in this story is true.
+The tale I have to tell will seem strange to
+those who know little of the social life of the West at the
+beginning of this century.  These sharp contrasts of
+corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed
+by wild revivals; these contacts of highwayman and
+preacher; this <i>mélange</i> of picturesque simplicity,
+grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of abandoned
+wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those
+who know the country now.  But the books of biography
+and reminiscence which preserve the memory of that
+time more than justify what is marvelous in these pages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where
+my grandfather&mdash;brave old Indian-fighter!&mdash;had
+defended his family in a block-house built in a wilderness
+by his own hands, I grew up familiar with this strange
+wild life.  At the age when other children hear fables
+and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with
+traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen.
+Instead of imaginary giant-killers, children then heard
+of real Indian-slayers; instead of Blue-Beards, we
+had Murrell and his robbers; instead of Little Red
+Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring
+adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with
+wild beasts on the very road we traveled to school.  In
+many households the old customs still held sway; the
+wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut and made up in
+the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,
+apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet
+fallen into disuse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor
+the hunter is the center-piece, but the circuit-rider.
+More than any one else, the early circuit preachers
+brought order out of this chaos.  In no other class was
+the real heroic element so finely displayed.  How do I
+remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the
+old preachers, whose constitutions had conquered starvation
+and exposure&mdash;who had survived swamps, alligators,
+Indians, highway robbers and bilious fevers!  How
+was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of
+rude experience&mdash;how was my imagination wrought upon
+by the recital of their hair-breadth escapes!  How was
+my heart set afire by their contagious religious
+enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I bestrode the
+saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the
+heavy burden of emulating their toils!  Surely I have a
+right to celebrate them, since they came so near being
+the death of me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men
+without enthusiasm.  But nothing has been further from
+my mind than the glorifying of a sect.  If I were capable
+of sectarian pride, I should not come upon the platform
+of Christian union* to display it.  There are those,
+indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I
+have frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of
+early Methodism.  I beg they will remember the solemn
+obligations of a novelist to tell the truth.  Lawyers and
+even ministers are permitted to speak entirely on one
+side.  But no man is worthy to be called a novelist
+who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce
+the higher form of history, by writing truly of men as
+they are, and dispassionately of those forms of life
+that come within his scope.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in
+<i>The Christian Union</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie,
+I could not treat the early religious life of the West
+otherwise than with the most cordial sympathy and
+admiration.  And yet this is not a "religious novel,"
+one in which all the bad people are as bad as they can
+be, and all the good people a little better than they
+can be.  I have not even asked myself what may be
+the "moral."  The story of any true life is wholesome,
+if only the writer will tell it simply, keeping impertinent
+preachment of his own out of the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with
+some good people by confessing in the start that, from
+the first chapter to the last, this is a love-story.  But it
+is not my fault.  It is God who made love so universal
+that no picture of human life can be complete where
+love is left out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+E. E.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+BROOKLYN, <i>March</i>, 1874.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap01"></a></p>
+
+<p class="t2">
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+</p>
+
+<p class="t3b">
+A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER I.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE CORN-SHUCKING.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the
+book.  Fifty or sixty years off the date at the
+head of your letter is easy enough to the "organ of
+number," but a severe strain on the imagination.  It
+is hard to go back to the good old days your
+grandmother talks about&mdash;that golden age when people were
+not roasted alive in a sleeping coach, but gently tipped
+over a toppling cliff by a drunken stage-driver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grand old times were those in which boys politely
+took off their hats to preacher or schoolmaster,
+solacing their fresh young hearts afterward by making
+mouths at the back of his great-coat.  Blessed days! in
+which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked
+with starched dignity, and yet were not too good to
+drink peach-brandy and cherry-bounce with folks;
+when Congressmen were so honorable that they scorned
+bribes, and were only kept from killing one another
+by the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms.  It was in
+those old times of the beginning of the reign of
+Madison, that the people of the Hissawachee settlement, in
+Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the corn-shuckin'
+down at Cap'n Lumsden's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment
+that opens the gayeties of the season.  The
+shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage of being
+set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and
+quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that
+were to follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and
+simple&mdash;parties alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown
+ridge five or six feet high.  The Captain was
+not insensible to considerations of economy.  He
+knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long
+run to have it husked by his own farm hands; the
+expense of an entertainment in whiskey and other
+needful provisions, and the wasteful handling of the
+corn, not to mention the obligation to send a hand
+to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the
+gratuitous labor.  But who can resist the public
+sentiment that requires a man to be a gentleman
+according to the standard of his neighbors?  Captain
+Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which
+were oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his
+own corn would have been to forfeit his respectability
+entirely.  It would have placed him on the Pariah
+level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who
+had bought a place farther up the creek, and who
+dared to husk his own corn, practise certain forbidden
+economies, and even take pay for such trifles as
+butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf which he
+had killed.  The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee
+had been a matter of serious debate.  A man "as
+tight as the bark on a beech tree," and a Yankee
+besides, was next door to a horse-thief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's.
+The "women-folks" turned the festive occasion into
+farther use by stretching a quilt on the frames, and
+having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in
+quilting and gossiping&mdash;the younger women blushing
+inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, with hope and
+fear, as the names of certain young men were mentioned.
+Who could tell what disclosures the evening frolic
+might produce?  For, though "circumstances alter
+cases," they have no power to change human nature;
+and the natural history of the delightful creature
+which we call a young woman was essentially the same
+in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago, that
+it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern
+times.  Difference enough of manner and
+costume&mdash;linsey-woolsey, with a rare calico now and then for
+Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite young
+girls&mdash;but these things are only outward.  The dainty
+girl that turns away from my story with disgust, because
+"the people are so rough," little suspects how entirely
+of the cuticle is her refinement&mdash;how, after all, there
+is a touch of nature that makes Polly Ann and Sary
+Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and Blanche,
+and Mabel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was just dark&mdash;the rising full moon was blazing
+like a bonfire among the trees on Campbell's Hill,
+across the creek&mdash;when the shucking party gathered
+rapidly around the
+Captain's ridge of
+corn.  The first
+comers waited for the
+others, and spent the
+time looking at the
+heap, and speculating
+as to how many
+bushels it would
+"shuck out."  Captain
+Lumsden, an
+active, eager man,
+under the medium
+size, welcomed his
+neighbors cordially,
+but with certain reserves.
+That is to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth
+to each new comer, but brought his voice up at the last
+like a whip-cracker; there was a something in what
+Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his enunciation,
+which reminded the person addressed that Captain
+Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with
+politeness, as became an old Virginia gentleman, was
+not a man whose supremacy was to be questioned for
+a moment.  He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,
+Bill?"  "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin',
+eh?" and "Hello, Bob, I thought you had the shakes&mdash;got
+out at last, did you?"  Under this superficial
+familiarity a certain reserve of conscious superiority and
+flinty self-will never failed to make itself appreciated.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-012"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-012.jpg" alt="CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.">
+<br>
+CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us understand ourselves.  When we speak of
+Captain Lumsden as an old Virginia gentleman, we
+speak from his own standpoint.  In his native state
+his hereditary rank was low&mdash;his father was an
+"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good
+blood," had made money by doubtful means.  But
+such is the advantage of emigration that among
+outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole
+Virginny" was credential enough.  Was not the Old
+Dominion the mother of presidents, and of
+gentlemen?  And so Captain Lumsden was accustomed to
+tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip,
+while he alluded to his relationships to "the old
+families," the Carys, the Archers, the Lees, the Peytons,
+and the far-famed William and Evelyn Bird; and he
+was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to
+that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled
+"Enroughty," while it is mysteriously and inexplicably
+pronounced "Darby," and to the "Tolivars," whose
+name is spelled "Taliaferro."  Nothing smacks more
+of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling
+and pronouncing.  In all the Captain's strutting talk
+there was this shade of truth, that he was related to
+the old families through his wife.  For Captain Lumsden
+would have scorned a <i>prima facie</i> lie.  But, in his
+fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal&mdash;little acorns
+of fact grew to great oaks of fable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How quickly a crowd gathers!  While I have been
+introducing you to Lumsden, the Captain has been
+shaking hands in his way, giving a cordial grip, and
+then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as
+if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while
+calling out, "Ho, Tom!  Howdy, Stevens?  Hello,
+Johnson! is that you?  Did come after all, eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When once the company was about complete, the
+next step was to divide the heap.  To do this, judges
+were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield, a slow-speaking
+man, who was believed to know a great deal because
+he said little, and looked at things carefully; and
+Jake Sniger, who also had a reputation for knowing
+a great deal, because he talked glibly, and was good
+at off-hand guessing.  Butterfield looked at the corn,
+first on one side, and then on the end of the heap.
+Then he shook his head in uncertainty, and walked
+round to the other end of the pile, squinted one eye,
+took sight along the top of the ridge, measured its
+base, walked from one end to the other with long strides
+as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings
+with one eye shut, while the young lads stared at
+him with awe.  Jake Sniger strode away from the
+corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who
+scorned to examine anything minutely.  He pointed to
+the left, and remarked to his admirers that he "'low'd
+they was a heap sight more corn in the left hand
+eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,
+and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz
+the leetle, flint, hominy corn, and had a right smart
+sprinklin' of nubbins."  He "'low'd whoever got aholt
+of them air nubbins would git sucked in.  It was
+neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own
+part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even,
+and had orter be divided in the middle of the pile."  Strange
+to say, Butterfield, after all his sighting, and
+pacing, and measuring, arrived at the same difficult
+and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence
+served to confirm the popular confidence in the
+infallibility of the two judges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided
+exactly in the middle.  A fence rail, leaning against
+either side, marked the boundary between the territories
+of the two parties.  The next thing to be done
+was to select the captains.  Lumsden, as a prudent
+man, desiring an election to the legislature, declined
+to appoint them, laughing his chuckling kind of laugh,
+and saying, "Choose for yourselves, boys, choose for
+yourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was
+no better husker.  He wanted to be captain on one
+side, but somebody in the crowd objected that there
+was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to
+Bill's shuckin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's
+the one they say kin lick me.  I'd like to lay him out
+wunst."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He ain't yer."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks,
+I 'low," said Jake Sniger, as a tall, well-built young
+man came striding hurriedly through the stripped corn
+stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail fence, and
+cleared it at a bound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a
+nephew of Captain Lumsden.  "Couldn't many fellers
+do that eight-rail fence so clean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came
+up taking off his wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping
+his forehead.  "We thought you wuzn't a comin'.
+Here, you and Conkey choose up."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-016"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-016.jpg" alt="MORT GOODWIN.">
+<br>
+MORT GOODWIN.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy,
+and ready to give up such a distinction to others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of it," said Mort.  "You don't
+appreciate kindness; where's your stick?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then
+passing the hand of one above that of the other, it
+was soon decided that Bill McConkey should have the
+first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the first
+choice of corn.  The shuckers were thus all divided
+into two parts.  Captain Lumsden, as host, declining
+to be upon either side.  Goodwin chose the end of
+the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a desp'rate
+sight of nubbins."  Then, at a signal, all hands
+went to work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The corn had to be husked and thrown into a
+crib, a mere pen of fence-rails.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden,
+as he started the whiskey bottle on its encouraging
+travels along the line of shuckers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey.  "Pull away,
+my sweats! work like dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em
+all to thunder, er bust a biler, by jimminy!  Peel 'em
+off!  Thunder and blazes!  Hurrah!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This loud hallooing may have cheered his own
+men, but it certainly stimulated those on the other
+side.  Morton was more prudent; he husked with all
+his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,
+"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the
+breath he spends in noise we'll spend in gittin' the
+corn peeled.  Here, you! don't you shove that corn
+back in the shucks!  No cheats allowed on this side!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his
+own men, where he could overlook them and husk,
+without intermission, himself; knowing that his own
+dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of
+two men.  When one or two boys on his side began
+to run over to see how the others were getting along,
+he ordered them back with great firmness.  "Let them
+alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work hard
+at first, everybody will work hard at the last."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping
+husks with unremitting eagerness; the heap of
+unshucked corn had grown smaller, the crib was nearly
+full of the white and yellow ears, and a great billow
+of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who
+sat next to Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty
+Lumsden," said Ben North, with a chuckle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never
+knew how near he came to getting a whipping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers.
+McConkey had drunk rather freely, and his "Pull
+away, sweats!" became louder than ever.  Morton found
+it necessary to run up and down his line once or
+twice, and hearten his men by telling them that they
+were "sure to beat if they only stuck to it well."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the
+side led by Goodwin would have given it up once if
+it had not been for his cheers; the others were so
+near to victory that they began to shout in advance,
+and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the
+battle,&mdash;for Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work
+in a way that set them wild by contagion, and for
+the last minute they made almost superhuman exertions,
+sending a perfect hail of white corn into the
+crib, and licking up the last ear in time to rush with
+a shout into the territory of the other party, and seize
+on one or two dozen ears, all that were left, to show
+that Morton had clearly gained the victory.  Then
+there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a
+general expression of good feeling.  But Bill McConkey
+vowed that he "knowed what the other side done with
+their corn," pointing to the husk pile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can
+find more corn in your shucks than you kin in
+mine."  But Bill did not accept the wager.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After husking the corn that remained under the
+rails, the whole party adjourned to the house, washing
+their hands and faces in the woodshed as they passed
+into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the other
+half block-house fortification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial
+supper was set in the apartment which was commonly
+used for parlor and sitting room, and which was now
+pressed into service for a dining room.  The ladies
+stood around against the wall with a self-conscious
+air of modesty, debating, no doubt, the effect of their
+linsey-woolsey dresses.  For what is the use of carding
+and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting and sewing
+to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap02"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER II.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE FROLIC.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers
+eating with awkward embarrassment, as frontiermen
+always do in company,&mdash;even in the company of each
+other.  To eat with decency and composure is the
+final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of
+Hissawachee Bottom got through with the disagreeable
+performance as hurriedly as possible, the more so that
+their exciting strife had given them vigorous relish for
+Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and batter-cakes,
+and "punkin-pies."  The quilters had taken their
+supper an hour before, the table not affording room
+for both parties.  When supper was over the "things"
+were quickly put away, the table folded up and
+removed to the kitchen&mdash;and the company were then
+ready to enjoy themselves.  There was much gawky
+timidity on the part of the young men, and not a
+little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of the young
+women; but the most courageous presently got some of
+the rude, country plays a-going.  The pawns were sold
+over the head of the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as
+the wit of the company, devised all manner of penalties
+for the owners.  Susan Tomkins had to stand up
+in the corner, and say,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Here I stand all ragged and dirty,<br>
+  Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+These lines were supposed to rhyme.  When Aleck
+Tilley essayed to comply with her request, she tried to
+run like a turkey, but was stopped in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The good taste of people who enjoy society novels
+will decide at once that these boisterous, unrefined
+sports are not a promising beginning.  It is easy
+enough to imagine heroism, generosity and courage in
+people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great
+heroes, the world's demigods, grew in just such rough
+social states as that of Ohio in the early part of this
+century.  There is nothing more important for an
+over-refined generation than to understand that it has
+not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity,
+and that it must not only tolerate rude folk, but
+sometimes admire in them traits that have grown
+scarce as refinement has increased.  So that I may
+not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took
+the place of another until the excitement and
+merriment reached a pitch which would be thought not
+consonant with propriety by the society that loves
+round-dances with <i>roués</i>, and "the German"
+untranslated&mdash;though, for that matter, there are people
+old-fashioned enough to think that refined deviltry is not
+much better than rude freedom, after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of
+his time of life into the boisterous sport; but there
+was one drawback to his pleasure&mdash;Patty Lumsden
+would not play.  He was glad, indeed, that she did
+not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his
+companions.  But, then, did Patty like the part he was
+taking in the rustic revel?  He inly rejoiced that his
+position as the blindfold Justice, meting out punishment
+to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some
+extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of
+kissing.  True, it was quite possible that the severest
+prescription he should make might fall on his own
+head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he was
+saved by his good luck and the penetration which
+enabled him to guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the
+seller, when the offered pawn was his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull
+for the growing mirth of the company.  They ranged
+themselves round the room on benches and chairs,
+and began to sing the old song:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow&mdash;<br>
+  Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow&mdash;<br>
+  You nor I, but the farmers, know<br>
+  Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Thus the farmer sows his seed,<br>
+  Thus he stands and takes his ease,<br>
+  Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,<br>
+  And whirls around and views his lands.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Sure as grass grows in the field,<br>
+  Down on this carpet you must kneel,<br>
+  Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,<br>
+  And rise again upon your feet."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+It is not very different from the little children's
+play&mdash;an old rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed
+in England from immemorial time.  McConkey took
+the handkerchief first, and, while the company were
+singing, he pretended to be looking around and puzzling
+himself to decide whom he would favor with his
+affection.  But the girls nudged one another, and
+looked significantly at Jemima Huddlestone.  Of course,
+everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima.  That
+was fore-ordained.  Everybody knew it except Bill and
+Jemima!  Bill fancied that he was standing in entire
+indecision, and Jemima&mdash;radiant peony!&mdash;turned her
+large, red-cheeked face away from Bill, and studied
+meditatively a knot in a floor-board.  But her averted
+gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and
+the significant titter of the company deepened the hue
+and widened the area of red in her cheeks.  Attempts
+to seem unconscious generally result disastrously.  But
+the tittering, and nudging, and looking toward Jemima,
+did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now
+the singers have reached the line which prescribes the
+kneeling.  Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and
+with a sudden effort recovers from his vacant and
+wandering stare, wheels about, spreads the "handkercher"
+at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently
+kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance
+with the order of the play, and with reluctance
+only apparent, also drops upon her knees on the
+handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her
+red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it
+awakens laughter and applause.  Bill now arises with
+the air of a man who has done his whole duty under
+difficult circumstances.  Jemima lifts the handkerchief,
+and, while the song repeats itself, selects some gentleman
+before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss
+in the same fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to
+spread before some new divinity.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-024"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-024.jpg" alt="HOMELY S'MANTHY.">
+<br>
+HOMELY S'MANTHY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This alternation had gone on for some time.  Poor,
+sanguine, homely
+Samantha Britton
+had looked smilingly
+and expectantly
+at each successive
+gentleman who bore
+the handkerchief;
+but in vain.  "S'manthy"
+could never
+understand why her
+seductive smiles
+were so unavailing.
+Presently, Betty
+Harsha was chosen
+by somebody&mdash;Betty
+had a pretty,
+round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be
+chosen, sooner or later.  Everybody knew whom she
+would choose.  Morton Goodwin was the desire of
+her heart.  She dressed to win him; she fixed her
+eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in
+his way; she compelled him to escort her home
+against his will; and now that she held the
+handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin.  Morton, for
+his part, was too young to be insensible to the
+charms of the little round, impulsive face, the twinkling
+eyes, the red, pouting lips; and he was not averse
+to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright, linsey
+frock, single him but for her admiration.  But just
+at this moment he wished she might choose some
+one else.  For Patty Lumsden, now that all her guests
+were interested in the play, was relieved from her
+cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the
+exciting amusement.
+She stood
+behind Jemima
+Huddleston, and
+never was there
+finer contrast
+than between the
+large, healthful,
+high-colored
+Jemima, a typical
+country belle, and
+the slight, intelligent,
+fair-skinned
+Patty, whose
+black hair and
+eyes made her complexion seem whiter, and whose
+resolute lips and proud carriage heightened the refinement
+of her face.  Patty, as folks said, "favored" her
+mother, a woman of considerable pride and much
+refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude
+customs of the neighborhood, had about as bad a
+reputation as one can have in a frontier community.  She
+was regarded as excessively "stuck up."  This stigma
+of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain.  His
+family was part of himself, and he liked to believe
+them better than anybody's else.  But he heartily
+wished that Patty would sacrifice her dignity, at this
+juncture, to further his political aspirations.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-025"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-025.jpg" alt="PATTY AND JEMIMA.">
+<br>
+PATTY AND JEMIMA.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her
+bright new calico&mdash;an extraordinary bit of finery in
+those days&mdash;Goodwin wished that Betty would attack
+somebody else, for once.  But Betty Harsha bore
+down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness,
+did not wait for the appropriate line to come&mdash;she did
+not give the farmer time to "stomp" his foot, and
+clap his hands, much less to whirl around and view
+his lands&mdash;but plumped down upon the handkerchief
+before Morton, who took his own time to kneel.  But
+draw it out as he would, he presently found himself,
+after having been kissed by Betty, standing foolishly,
+handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended for
+Betty were not yet finished.  Betty's precipitancy,
+and her inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set
+all the players laughing, and the laugh seemed to
+Goodwin to be partly at himself.  For, indeed, he was
+perplexed.  To choose any other woman for his "true
+love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more
+than he could do; to offer to kneel before her was
+more than he dared to do.  He hesitated a moment;
+he feared to offend Patty; he must select some one.
+Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face
+of S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had
+been to the others, with an anxious smile.  Morton
+saw a way out.  Patty could not be jealous of S'manthy.
+He spread the handkerchief before the delighted
+girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the
+right to choose a partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to
+say, Gabriel Powers, junior.  His father was "Old
+Gabe," the most miserly farmer of the neighborhood.
+But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and had
+been over the mountains, had made some money,
+nobody could tell how, and had invested his entire
+capital in "store clothes."  He wore a mustache, too, which,
+being an unheard-of innovation in those primitive times,
+marked him as a man who had seen the world.  Everybody
+laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired
+him.  None of the girls had yet dared to select
+Little Gabe.  To bring their linsey near to store-cloth&mdash;to
+venture to salute his divine mustache&mdash;who could
+be guilty of such profanity?  But S'manthy was
+morally certain that she would not soon again have a
+chance to select a "true love," and she determined to
+strike high.  The players did not laugh when she
+spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little Gabe.
+They were appalled.  But Gabe dropped on one knee,
+condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the
+handkerchief with a delicate flourish of the hand
+which wore a ring with a large jewel, avouched by
+Little Gabe to be a diamond&mdash;a jewel that was at
+least transparent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once
+a question of solemn import to every young woman
+of the company; for even girls in linsey are not free
+from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies
+better dressed.  In her heart nearly every young woman
+wished that Gabe would choose herself.  But Gabe
+was one of those men who, having done many things
+by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing can
+be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be
+sufficiently transcendent.  He knew that Miss Lumsden
+held herself aloof from the kissing-plays, and he
+knew equally that she looked favorably on Morton
+Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he
+had already marked out his own line of action.  He
+stood in quiet repose while the first two stanzas were
+sung.  As the third began, he stepped quickly round
+the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood
+before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath.
+Patty's cheeks did not grow red, but pale, she turned
+suddenly and called out toward the kitchen:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you want?
+I am coming," and then
+walked quietly out, as
+if unconscious of Little
+Gabe's presence or
+purpose.  But poor Little
+Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far
+to recover himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got
+up immediately, but not in time to escape the general
+chorus of laughter and jeers.  He sneered at the
+departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could
+make her run."  But he could not conceal his
+discomfiture.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-028"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-028.jpg" alt="LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.">
+<br>
+LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed
+to have a word with Patty.  He found her standing
+in the deserted kitchen, and his heart beat quick with
+the thought that she might be waiting for him.  The
+ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place
+made the logs of the kitchen walls bright, and gave
+a tint to Patty's white face.  But just as Morton was
+about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky tread
+sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his
+aggravating metallic little laugh, and saying,
+"Morton, where's your manners?  There's nobody to go
+home with Betty Harsha."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not
+loud enough for the Captain to hear.  And he escorted
+Betty home.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap03"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER III.</i>
+<br><br>
+GOING TO MEETING.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Every history has one quality in common with
+eternity.  Begin where you will, there is always a
+beginning back of the beginning.  And, for that
+matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the
+ending.  Only because we may not always begin, like
+Knickerbocker, at the foundation of the world, is it
+that we get courage to break somewhere into the
+interlaced web of human histories&mdash;of loves and
+marriages, of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of
+successes and disappointments, of gettings and havings,
+and spendings and losings.  Yet, break in where we
+may, there is always just a little behind the beginning,
+something that needs to be told.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I find it necessary that the reader should understand
+how from childhood Morton had rather worshiped
+than loved Patty Lumsden.  When the long
+spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its
+numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative
+standing, Patty was always "one," and Morton "two."  On
+one memorable occasion, when the all but infallible
+Patty misspelled a word, the all but infallible
+Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and
+went down with her.  When she afterward regained
+her place, he took pains to stand always "next to
+head."  Bulwer calls first love a great "purifier of
+youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting,
+horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that
+were prevalent among the young men of that day,
+Morton was kept from worse vices by his devotion to
+Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had he worshiped her less, he might long since
+have proposed to her, and thus have ended his
+suspense; but he had an awful sense of Patty's nobility?
+and of his own unworthiness.  Moreover, there was a
+lion in the way.  Morton trembled before the face of
+Captain Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was
+by far the largest land-owner in the settlement.  In
+that day of long credit, he had managed to place
+himself in such a way that he could make his power felt,
+directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within
+twenty miles of him.  The very judges on the bench
+were in debt to him.  On those rare occasions when
+he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck so
+ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or
+consequences, that he had become a terror to
+everybody.  Two or three families had been compelled
+to leave the settlement by his vindictive persecutions,
+so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal
+authority.  Morton Goodwin's father was but a small
+farmer on the hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had
+lost the greater part of a considerable patrimony.
+How could Morton, therefore, make direct advances to
+so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of
+refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her
+father?  Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but
+disillusion&mdash;Morton preferred to cherish his hopeless
+hope, living in vain expectation of some improbable
+change that should place him at better advantage in
+his addresses to Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in
+regard to his own disposition in the matter.  He had
+frowned upon Goodwin's advances by treating him
+with that sort of repellant patronage which is so
+aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for
+knocking down the author of the insult.  But of late,
+having observed the growing force and independence
+of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over the
+men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the
+necessity of attaching such a person to himself, particularly
+for the election which was to take place in the
+autumn.  Not that he had any intention of suffering
+Patty to marry Morton.  He only meant to play fast
+and loose a while.  Had he even intended to give his
+approval to the marriage at last, he would have played
+fast and loose all the same, for the sake of making
+Patty and her lover feel his power as long as possible.
+At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope
+to bind the ardent young man to his interest.  Morton,
+on his part, reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness
+should continue to increase in the future as it had
+in the three weeks past, it would become even cordial,
+after a while.  To young men in love, all good
+things are progressive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the Sunday morning following the shucking,
+Morton rose early, and went to the stable.  Did you
+ever have the happiness to see a quiet autumn
+Sunday in the backwoods?  Did you ever observe the
+stillness, the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the
+gentleness of wind, the chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks
+of blackbirds getting ready for migration, the lazy
+cawing of crows, softened by distance, the half-laughing
+bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped
+beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at
+you the while, as if to say, "Don't you wish you
+might guess?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that Morton saw aught of these things.  He
+never heard voices, or saw sights, out of the common,
+and that very October Sunday had been set apart for
+a horse-race down at "The Forks."  The one piece
+of property which our young friend had acquired
+during his minority was a thorough-bred filley, and he
+felt certain that she&mdash;being a horse of the first
+families&mdash;would be able to "lay out" anything that could
+be brought against her.  He was very anxious about
+the race, and therefore rose early, and went out into
+the morning light that he might look at his mare, and
+feel of her perfect legs, to make sure that she was in
+good condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All right, Dolly?" he said&mdash;"all right this morning,
+old lady? eh?  You'll beat all the scrubs; won't
+you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation,
+Morton came to breakfast, only to have his
+breath taken away.  His mother asked him to ride to
+meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny
+her as it was to give up the race at "The Forks."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rough associations had made young Goodwin a
+rough man.  His was a nature buoyant, generous, and
+complaisant, very likely to take the color of his
+surroundings.  The catalogue of his bad habits is
+sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of
+Sunday-school morality.  He often swore in a way
+that might have edified the army in Flanders.  He
+spent his Sundays in hunting, fishing, and riding
+horse-races, except when he was needed to escort his
+mother to meeting.  He bet on cards, and I am afraid he
+drank to intoxication sometimes.  Though he was too
+proud and manly to lie, and too pure to be unchaste,
+he was not a promising young man.  The chances
+that he would make a fairly successful trip through
+life did not preponderate over the chances that he
+would wreck himself by intemperance and gambling.
+But his roughness was strangely veined by nobleness.
+This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow
+had a chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held
+him always ready to devote himself in any way to her
+service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of
+reverence.  Her father had been one of those fine old
+Irish gentlemen, with grand manners, extravagant habits,
+generous impulses, brilliant wit, a ruddy nose, and
+final bankruptcy.  His daughter, Jane Morton, had
+married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the
+Revolution&mdash;a man who was "a poor manager."  He lost
+his patrimony, and, what is worse, lost heart.  Upon
+his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens.  But
+her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when
+anchored back to a great tuck-comb, showed an errant,
+Irish tendency to curl.  Morton's hung in waves about
+his neck, and he cherished his curls, proud of the
+resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very
+queen, to be served right royally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was hard&mdash;when he had been training the
+filley from a colt&mdash;when he had looked forward for
+months to this race as a time of triumph&mdash;to have so
+severe a strain put upon his devotion to his mother.
+When she made the request, he did not reply.  He
+went to the barn and stroked the filley's legs&mdash;how
+perfect they were!&mdash;and gave vent to some very old
+and wicked oaths.  He was just making up his mind
+to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks,
+when his decision was curiously turned by a word from
+his brother Henry, a lad of twelve, who had followed
+Morton to the stable, and now stood in the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you.
+I wouldn't stand it.  You go and run Doll, and lick
+Bill Conkey's bay fer him.  He'll think you're afeard,
+ef you don't.  The old lady hain't got no right to
+make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a
+purty day as this."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up
+from the meditative scratching of Dolly's fetlocks,
+"don't you talk that away about mother.  She's every
+inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's had to
+foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin'
+and Lew's bad end&mdash;and you and me not promisin'
+much better.  It's mighty little I kin do to make
+things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to meetin'
+every day in the week, ef she says so."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-036"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-036.jpg" alt="IN THE STABLE.">
+<br>
+IN THE STABLE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see
+ef she don't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nary Presbyterian.  They's no Presbyterian in
+me.  I'm a hard nut.  I would like to be a elder, or
+a minister, if it was in me, though, just to see the
+smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think
+about it.  Looky here, Hen!  I'll tell you something.
+Mother's about forty times too good for us.  When I
+had the scarlet fever, and was cross, she used to set
+on the side of the bed, and tell me stories, about
+knights and such like, that she'd read about in
+grandfather's books when she was a girl&mdash;jam up good
+stories, too, you better believe.  I liked the knights,
+because they rode fine horses, and was always ready
+to fight anything that come along, but always fair and
+square, you know.  And she told me how the knights
+fit fer their religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody
+that had got tromped down by somebody else.  I
+wished I'd been a knight myself.  I 'lowed it would be
+some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin'
+good.  But then it seemed as if I couldn't find
+nothin' worth the fightin' fer.  One day I lay a-thinkin',
+and a-lookin' at mother's white lady hands, and face
+fit fer a queen's.  And in them days she let her hair
+hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was
+bright like as if they had a light <i>inside</i> of 'em, you
+know.  She was a queen, <i>I</i> tell you!  And all at wunst
+it come right acrost me, like a flash, that I mout as
+well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and
+I've been at it ever since.  I 'low I've give her a
+sight of trouble, with my plaguey wild ways, and I
+come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this mornin', dogged
+ef I didn't.  But here goes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless
+Dolly, while Henry put the side-saddle on old Blaze,
+saying, as he drew the surcingle tight, "For my part,
+I don't want to fight for nobody.  I want to do as I
+dog-on please."  He was meditating the fun he would
+have catching a certain ground-hog, when once his
+mother should be safely off to meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped
+his mother to mount, gallantly put her foot in the
+stirrup, arranged her long riding-skirt, and then mounted
+his own mare.  Dolly sprang forward prancing and
+dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly
+pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting
+would be a dull affair, if it were not for the fun of
+letting Dolly know who was her master.  The ride
+to church was a long one, for there had never been
+preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than
+ten miles away.  Morton found the sermon rather
+more interesting than usual.  There still lingered in
+the West at this time the remains of the controversy
+between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians,
+that dated its origin before the Revolution.  Parson
+Donaldson belonged to the Old side.  With square,
+combative face, and hard, combative voice, he made
+war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and
+the grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in
+particular upon the exciting meetings of the Methodists.
+The great Cane Ridge Camp-meeting was yet fresh in
+the memories of the people, and for the hundredth
+time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian
+ministers who had originated this first of
+camp-meetings, and set agoing the wild excitements now
+fostered by the Methodists.  He said that Presbyterians
+who had anything to do with this fanaticism
+were led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right
+in driving some of them out.  As for Methodists, they
+denied "the Decrees."  What was that but a denial
+of salvation by grace?  And this involved the overthrow
+of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification
+by Faith.  This is rather the mental process by which
+the parson landed himself at his conclusions, than his
+way of stating them to his hearers.  In preaching, he
+did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the
+decrees logically involved the rest.  He translated his
+conclusions into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted
+that these crazy, illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit
+riders were traitors to Protestantism, denying the
+doctrine of Justification, and teaching salvation by the
+merit of works.  There were many divines, on both
+sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed
+justified any amount of unfairness.  (But all that is past!)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this
+discourse, and when they were again in the saddle to
+ride the ten miles home, he assured his mother that
+he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often, rain or
+shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody
+every time.  He thought it wouldn't be hard to be
+good, if a body could only have something bad to
+fight.  "Don't you remember, mother, how you used
+to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress,"
+and show me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon
+till his hide wouldn't hold shucks?  If I could fight
+the devil that way, I wouldn't mind being a Christian."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton felt especially pleased with the minister
+to-day, for Mr. Donaldson delighted to have the young
+men come so far to meeting; and imagining that he
+might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had hospitably
+urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment
+before starting on their homeward journey.  It
+is barely possible that the stimulus of the good
+parson's cherry-bounce had quite as much to do with
+Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of his
+discourse.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap04"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER IV.</i>
+<br><br>
+A BATTLE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The fight so much desired by Morton came soon
+enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut,"
+little traveled, Morton found time to master Dolly's
+fiery spirit and yet to scan the woods with the habitual
+searching glance of a hunter.  He observed on
+one of the trees a notice posted.  A notice put up in
+this out-of-the-way place surprised him.  He endeavored
+to make his restless steed approach the tree, that
+he might read, but her wild Arabian temper took fright
+at something&mdash;a blooded horse is apt to see visions&mdash;and
+she would not stand near the tree.  Time after
+time Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied
+away.  At last, Mrs. Goodwin begged him to give over
+the attempt and come on; but Morton's love of
+mastery was now excited, and he said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question
+between Dolly and me will have to be discussed and
+settled right here.  Either she will stand still by this
+sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or t'other lays
+down to rest."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze
+browse by the road-side, and with shaping her thoughts
+into a formal regret that Morton should spend the
+holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her maternal
+heart she admired his will and courage.  He was so
+like her own father, she thought&mdash;such a gentleman!
+And she could not but hope that he was one of God's
+elect.  If so, what a fine Christian he would be when
+he should be converted!  And, quiet as she was without,
+her heart was in a moment filled with agony and
+prayer and questionings.  How could she live in heaven
+without Morton?  Her eldest son had already died
+a violent death in prodigal wanderings from home.
+But Morton would surely be saved!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less
+for anything in heaven than he did to master the
+rebellious Dolly.  He rode her all round the tree; he
+circled that maple, first in one direction, then in
+another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly
+see.  Then he held her while he read the notice,
+saying with exultation, "Now, my lady, do you think you
+can stand still?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity,
+Morton had not cared to know the contents of the paper.
+Even curiosity had been forgotten in his combat with
+Dolly.  But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch
+Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah
+Lumsden, deceased," he forgot his victory over his
+horse in his interest in the document itself.  It was
+therein set forth that, by order of the probate court in
+and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden,
+administrator, would sell at public auction all that
+parcel of land belonging to the estate of the said
+Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known and described as
+follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode
+away (I am afraid he swore by thunder instead of by
+something else, out of a filial regard for his mother).
+"By thunder! if that ain't too devilish mean!  I
+s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat
+little Kike&mdash;he has gone to robbing him.  He means
+to buy that land himself; or, what's the same thing,
+git somebody to do it for him.  That's what he put
+that notice in this holler fer.  The judge is afraid of
+him; and so's everybody else.  Poor Kike won't have
+a dollar when he's a man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin.
+"It's a shame for a whole settlement to be
+cowards, and to let one man rule them.  It's worse
+than having a king."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain
+Lumsden; and this appeal to the anti-monarchic
+feeling of the time moved him.  He could not bear that
+his mother, of all, should think him cowardly.  His
+pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension,
+and his provoking way of keeping Patty and himself
+apart.  Why should he not break with him, and have
+done with it, rather than stand by and see Kike
+robbed?  But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put
+Patty Lumsden farther away from him.  He was a
+knight who had suddenly come in sight of his
+long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied.  And
+so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely
+spoke a word to his mother all the rest of his ride.
+For here were his friendship for little Kike, his
+innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden, and his strong
+sense of justice, on one side; his love for Patty&mdash;stronger
+than all the rest&mdash;on the other.  In the stories
+of chivalry which his mother had told, the love of
+woman had always been a motive to valiant deeds for
+the right.  And how often had he dreamed of doing
+some brave thing while Patty applauded!  Now, when
+the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side.
+This unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him,
+as such embarrassment always does a person disposed
+to act impulsively and in right lines.  And so it
+happened that he rode on in moody silence, while the
+mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the
+son, mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain
+endeavor to recall some passages that might have
+"found a lodgment in his mind."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton,
+he might even then have chosen Patty, letting the
+interests of his friends take care of themselves.  But he
+did not decide it squarely.  He began by excusing
+himself to himself:&mdash;What could he do for Kike?  He
+had no influence with the judge; he had no money to
+buy the land, and he had no influential friends.  He
+might agitate the question and sacrifice his own hope,
+and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike.  No doubt
+all these considerations of futility had their weight
+with him; nevertheless he had an angry consciousness
+that he was not acting bravely in the matter.  That
+he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed that he
+would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his
+eyes to Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of
+one day getting his consent to marry his daughter!
+It was this anger with himself that made Morton
+restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks
+that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or
+three times, in spite of his good resolution not to drink
+more than once.  It was this restlessness that carried
+him at last to the cabin of the widow Lumsden, that
+evening, to see her son Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-044"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-044.jpg" alt="MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.">
+<br>
+MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys
+with straight black hair that one sees so often in
+southern latitudes.  He was called "Little Kike" only to
+distinguish him from his father, who had also borne
+the name of Hezekiah.  Delicate in health and quiet
+in manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his
+emotions were not only profound but persistent.
+Dressed in buck-skin breeches and homespun cotton
+overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came
+up.  The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face
+relaxed a little, as with a smile deeper than it was broad
+he lifted himself up and said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came
+round and stroked her fine neck, and expressed his
+regret that she hadn't run at the Forks and beat Bill
+McConkey's bay horse.  He wished he owned such "a
+beast."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little
+stronger, I will open that crick bottom, and then I
+shall make some money and be able to buy a blooded
+horse like Dolly.  Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's;
+who knows?"  And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness
+at the vision of his impending prosperity.  But
+Morton could not smile, nor could he bear to tell
+Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that
+very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike
+had built upon it.  Morton had made up his mind not
+to tell Kike.  Why should he?  Kike would hear of
+his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his part
+would only destroy his own hopes without doing
+anything for Kike.  But if Morton meant to be prudent
+and keep silence, why had he not staid at home?
+Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender
+frame was a constant provocation to speech?  Was
+there a self contending against a self?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly.
+"I was nearly well when I went down to Uncle
+Enoch's to work; and he made me work in the rain.
+'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and
+throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain.
+It'll do you good.  Your mother has ruined you, keeping
+you over the fire.  You want hardening.  Rain is
+good for you, water makes you grow; you're a perfect
+baby.'  I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a
+finishment to me, though."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks
+had not increased his prudence.  As usual in such
+cases, the prudent Morton and the impulsive Morton
+stood the one over against the other; and, as always
+the imprudent self is prone to spring up without
+warning, and take the other by surprise, so now the young
+man suddenly threw prudence and Patty behind, and
+broke out with&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some
+maledictions for emphasis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was not exactly telling what he had resolved
+not to tell, but it rendered it much more difficult to
+keep the secret; for Kike grew a little red in the face,
+and was silent a minute.  He himself was fond of
+roundly denouncing his uncle.  But abusing one's
+relations is a luxury which is labeled "strictly private,"
+and this savage outburst from his friend touched Kike's
+family pride a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know that as well as you do," was all he said,
+however.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He would swindle his own children," said Morton,
+spurred to greater vehemence by Kike's evident
+disrelish of his invective.  "He will chisel you out of
+everything you've got before you're of age, and then
+make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake
+your head."  And Morton looked off down the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What's the matter, Mort?  What set you off on
+Uncle Nuck to-night?  He's bad enough, Lord knows;
+but something must have gone wrong with you.  Did
+he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, he didn't," said Morton.  And now that Patty
+was recalled to his mind, he was vexed to think that
+he had gone so far in the matter.  His tone provoked
+Kike in turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mort, you've been drinking!  What brought you
+down here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand
+again.  Patty and prudence were out of sight at once,
+and the young man swore between his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said
+Kike, alarmed.  "What's up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly.  "Nothing,
+only your affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in
+Jackson's holler&mdash;on the side of the tree furthest from
+the road&mdash;advertising your crick bottom for sale.
+That's all.  Old Virginia gentleman!  Old Virginia
+<i>devil</i>!  Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?"  And
+then he added something about hell and damnation.
+These two last words had no grammatical relation
+with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of
+Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with
+Captain Lumsden and the subject under discussion.
+Nobody is quite a Universalist in moments of indignation.
+Every man keeps a private and select perdition
+for the objects of his wrath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Morton had thus let out the secret he had
+meant to retain, Kike trembled and grew white about
+the lips.  "I'll never forgive him," he said, huskily.
+"I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I
+ain't!"  He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless
+air that belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can you ride her?  Where are you going?" Morton
+was loth to commit himself by lending his horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that
+sale; and I've got a right to choose a gardeen.  I
+mean to take one that will make Uncle Enoch open
+his eyes.  I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he hates
+Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done.  As for ridin'
+Dolly, you know I can back any critter with four legs."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton,
+reluctantly.  He knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the
+Captain would hear of it; and then, farewell to Patty!
+But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and wrath,
+he could not quite refuse.  Dolly went home at a
+tremendous pace, and Morton, commonly full of good
+nature, was, for once, insufferably cross at supper-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry,
+provokingly.  "You're cross as a coon when it's
+cornered."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin.
+The fond mother still hoped that the struggle
+in his mind was the great battle of Armageddon that
+should be the beginning of a better life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a
+contempt for himself.  He tried in vain to acquit himself
+of cowardice&mdash;the quality which a border man considers
+the most criminal.  Early in the morning he fed
+Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came.
+After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on
+the other side of the creek.  Could it be Kike?  Was
+he going to walk to Jonesville, twenty miles away?
+And with his ague-shaken body?  How roundly Morton
+cursed himself for the fear that made him half
+refuse the horse!  For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a
+half refusal was equivalent to the most positive denial.
+It was not too late.  Morton threw the saddle and
+bridle on Dolly, and mounted.  Dolly sprang forward,
+throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen
+minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way!  Take
+Dolly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, I won't, Morton.  I oughtn't to have axed you
+to let me have her.  I know how you feel about Patty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Confound&mdash;no, I won't say confound Patty&mdash;but
+confound me, if I'm mean enough to let you walk to
+Jonesville.  I was a devlish coward yesterday.  Here,
+take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you," and
+Morton laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm
+goin' to walk."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you look like it!  You'll die before you git
+half-way, you blamed little fool you!  If you won't
+take Dolly, then I'll go along to bury your bones.
+They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such bones,
+though."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable
+for his servility to Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No ways jest now," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?"
+asked Sniger, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place,"
+said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now
+Kike, the fat's all in the fire.  When the Captain finds
+out what you've done, Sniger is sure to tell that he
+see us together.  I've got to fight it out now anyhow,
+and you've got to take Dolly."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, Morton, I can't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness
+of his knees would have persuaded him to relent.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-051"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-051.jpg" alt="GOOD-BYE!">
+<br>
+GOOD-BYE!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said
+Morton, dismounting.  As soon as Kike had obligingly
+taken hold of the bridle, Morton started toward home,
+singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of his
+rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till
+he had finished the song, and reached the summit of
+the hill.  Then he had the satisfaction of seeing Kike
+in the saddle, laughing to think how his friend had
+outwitted him.  Morton waved his hat heartily, and
+Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she
+plunged forward, carrying him out of sight in a few
+minutes.  Morton's mother was disappointed, when he came
+in late to breakfast, to see that his brow was clear.  She
+feared that the good impressions of the day before had
+worn away.  How little does one know of the real
+nature of the struggle between God and the devil, in the
+heart of another!  But long before Kike had brought
+Dolly back to her stall, the exhilaration of self-sacrifice
+in the mind of Morton had worn away, and the possible
+consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap05"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER V.</i>
+<br><br>
+A CRISIS.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Work, Morton could not.  After his noonday dinner
+he lifted his flint-lock gun from the forked
+sticks upon the wall where it was laid, and set out to
+seek for deer,&mdash;rather to seek forgetfulness of the
+anxiety that preyed upon him.  Excitement was almost a
+necessity with him, even at ordinary times; now, it
+seemed the only remedy for his depression.  But
+instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot everything but
+Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it
+impossible to absorb himself in hunting.  For when a
+frontierman loves, he loves with his whole nature.
+The interests of his life are few, and love, having
+undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.  After
+two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he
+started a deer, but did not see at in time to shoot.
+He had tramped through the brush without caution or
+vigilance.  He now saw that it would be of no avail
+to keep up this mockery of hunting.  He was seized
+with an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her
+once more before the door should be closed against
+him.  He might strike the trail, and reach the settlement
+in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the
+Captain was away from the house.  His only chance
+was to see her in the absence of her father, who would
+surely contrive some interruption if he were present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return
+was about half accomplished he ran headlong into the
+very midst of a flock of wild turkeys.  They ran
+swiftly away in two or three directions, but not until
+the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down
+two glossy young gobblers.  Tying their legs together
+with a strip of paw-paw bark, he slung them across
+his gun, and laid his gun over his shoulder, pleased
+that he would not have to go home quite empty-handed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn
+afternoon, he is such a man as one likes to see:
+quite six feet high, well made, broad, but not too
+broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose litheness
+indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled
+away somewhere for an emergency.  His walk is direct,
+elastic, unflagging; he is like his horse, a clean
+stepper; there is neither slouchiness, timidity, nor
+craftiness in his gait.  The legs are as much a test of
+character as the face, and in both one can read
+resolute eagerness.  His forehead is high rather than
+broad, his blue eye and curly hair, and a certain
+sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his Scotch-Irish
+mother.  His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him
+the look of a hunter.  The homespun "hunting shirt"
+hangs outside his buckskin breeches, and these
+terminate below inside his rawhide boots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well
+enough by this time, but, like a policeman on duty,
+Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect his
+function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at
+the gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air
+of surly vigilance.  The young man hails him with a
+friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old fellow smooths
+his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed
+tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical
+enough if Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the
+old cabin portion of the building, used for a kitchen
+and loom-room.  The monotonous rise and fall of the
+wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder and
+louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then
+slacking, then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new
+climax&mdash;this cadenced hum, as he hears it, is made
+rhythmical by the tread of feet that run back across
+the room after each climax of sound.  He knows the
+quick, elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead
+entrance to the house, and passes round to the
+kitchen door.  It is Patty, as he thought, and, as his
+shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very act of
+urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it
+till it roars, and at the same time nods merrily at
+Morton over the top of it; then she trips back across
+the room, drawing the yarn with her left hand, which
+she holds stretched out; when the impulse is somewhat
+spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty
+catches the wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle,
+and turns to the door.  She changes her spinning stick
+to the left hand, and extends her right with a genial
+"Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, one for you and one for mother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill,
+doffing his coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead
+with his red handkerchief.  "Go on with your spinning,
+Patty, I like to see you spin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I will.  I mean to spin two dozen cuts
+to-day.  I've been at it since five o'clock."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin.  He
+was, in his present perplexed state, willing to avoid all
+conversation except such broken talk as might be
+carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the
+spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure
+as did the old spinning-wheel.  Patty's perfect form
+was disfigured by no stays, or pads, or paniers&mdash;her
+swift tread backwards with her up-raised left hand, her
+movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her
+agile figure in lithe action.  If plastic art were not an
+impossibility to us Americans, our stone-cutters might
+long since have ceased, like school-boys, to send us
+back from Rome imitation Venuses, and counterfeit
+Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and
+stagey Washingtons on stage-horses;&mdash;they would by
+this time have found out that in our primitive life
+there are subjects enough, and that in mythology and
+heroics we must ever be dead copyists.  But I do not
+believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat
+there in the October evening sun and watched the little
+feet, yet full of unexhausted energy after traveling to
+and fro all day.  He did not know, or care, that Patty,
+with her head thrown back and her left arm half
+outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject
+for a statue.  He had never seen marble, and had
+never heard of statues except in the talk of the old
+schoolmaster.  How should her think to call her
+statuesque?  Or how should he know that the wide old
+log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast
+fireplace, wherein sit the two huge, black andirons, and
+wherein swings an iron crane on which hang pot-hooks
+with iron pots depending&mdash;the old kitchen, with
+its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are
+festooned strings of drying pumpkins&mdash;how should
+Morton Goodwin know that this wide old kitchen,
+with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,
+fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two
+dozen cuts of yarn in a day, would make a <i>genre</i>
+piece, the subject of which would be good enough for
+one of the old Dutch masters?  He could not know
+all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet
+treading swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and
+as he saw the fine face, ruddy with the vigorous
+exercise, looking at him over the top of a whirling wheel
+whose spokes were invisible&mdash;he did know that Patty
+Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he
+shuddered when he remembered that to-morrow, and
+indefinitely afterward, he might be shut out from her
+father's house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<a id="p56"></a>
+It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's
+broken patches of sprightly talk and the monotonous
+symphony of her wheel, that Captain Lumsden came
+into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his
+boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around
+to the kitchen door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Morton! here, eh?  Been hunting?  This
+don't pay.  A young man that is going to get on in
+the world oughtn't to set here in the sunshine talking
+to the girls.  Leave that for nights and Sundays.  I'm
+afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and
+late.  Eh?"  And the captain chuckled his hard little
+laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon
+vanish, as he rose to go.  He laid the turkey
+destined for Patty inside the door, took up the other,
+and was about to leave.  Meantime the captain had
+lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his
+thirst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary
+way, between his sips of water&mdash;and Morton felt his
+face color at the first mention of Kike.  "I saw Kike
+crossing the creek on your mare.  You oughtn't to let
+him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet.  Here
+comes Kike himself.  I wonder where he's been to?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he
+opened the gate, evidence of deep passion; but
+Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking for anything
+remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat
+him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached,
+while Watch faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've
+you been cavorting on that filley to-day?  I told Mort
+he was a fool to let a snipe like you ride that
+she-devil.  She'll break your blamed neck some day, and
+then there'll be one fool less."  And the captain
+chuckled triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting
+the thing.  "Don't kick the dog!  What an ill-natured
+ground-hog you air!  If I had the training of you, I'd
+take some of that out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You haven't got the training of me, and you never
+will have."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man,"
+chuckled Captain Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what you call impudence," said
+Kike, stretching his slender frame up to its full height,
+and shaking as if he had an ague-chill; "but you are
+a tyrant and a scoundrel!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tut! tut!  Kike, you're crazy, you little brute.
+What's up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You know what's up.  You want to cheat me out
+of that bottom land; you have got it advertised on
+the back side of a tree in North's holler, without
+consulting mother or me.  I have been over to Jonesville
+to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my
+gardeen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Colonel Wheeler?  Why, that's an insult to me!"  And
+the captain ceased to laugh, and grew red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope it is.  I couldn't get the judge to take
+back the order for the sale of the land; he's afeard of
+you.  But now let me tell you something, Enoch
+Lumsden!  If you sell my land by that order of the
+court, you'll lose more'n you'll make.  I ain't afeard
+of the devil nor none of his angels; and I recken
+you're one of the blackest.  It'll cost you more burnt
+barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and sheep
+than what you make will pay for.  You cheated pappy,
+but you shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike.
+I'll turn Ingin, and take Ingin law onto you, you old
+thief and&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-059"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-059.jpg" alt="THE ALTERCATION.">
+<br>
+THE ALTERCATION.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised
+his cowhide.  "I'll teach you some manners, you
+impudent little brat!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or
+foot.  "Hit me if you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and
+they'll be blood betwixt us then.  You hit me wunst,
+and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year.  You
+or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all
+about her two dozen a day, and stood frightened in
+the door, near Morton.  Morton advanced and took
+hold of Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, Kike!  Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike,
+shaking loose.  "I've got an account to settle, and ef
+he tetches a thread of my coat with a cowhide, it'll be
+a bad day fer both on us.  We'll settle with blood
+then."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled
+the captain.  "I know well enough who put Kike up
+to this.  I'll settle with both of you, some day."  Then,
+with an oath, the captain went into the house,
+while the two young men moved away down the road,
+Morton not daring to look at Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What Morton dreaded most had come upon him.
+As for Kike, when once they were out of sight of
+Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame was
+terrible.  He sat down on a log and cried with grief and
+anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances,
+Mort," said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Morton did not reply.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap06"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER VI.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE FALL HUNT.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Morton led Kike home in silence, and then
+returned to his father's house, deposited his turkey
+outside the door, and sat down on a broken chair by
+the fire-place.  His father, a hypochondriac, hard of
+hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at
+him steadily a moment, and then said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sick, Mort?  Goin' to have a chill?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as
+he stuffed his pipe full of leaf tobacco which he had
+chafed in his hand, and sat down on the other side of
+the fire-place.  "I feel a kind of all-overishness
+myself.  I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this
+year.  Hey?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I said I didn't know."  Morton found it hard to
+answer his father with decency.  The old man said
+"Oh," when he understood Morton's last reply; and
+perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he
+devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on
+the awful consequences that might result if "the fever,"
+which was rumored to have broken out at Chilicothe,
+should spread to the Hissawachee bottom.  Mrs. Goodwin
+took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence
+of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and
+she began to hope more than ever that he might
+prove to be one of the elect.  Indeed, she thought it
+quite probable that a boy so good to his mother would
+be one of the precious few; for though she knew that
+the election was unconditional, and of grace, she could
+not help feeling that there was an antecedent probability
+of Morton's being chosen.  She went quietly and
+cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin corn-meal
+dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a
+griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the
+hoe in its place before the fire, setting the sassafras
+tea to draw, skimming the milk, and arranging the
+plates&mdash;white, with blue edges&mdash;and the yellow cups
+and saucers on the table, and all the while praying
+that Morton might be found one of those chosen before
+the foundation of the world to be sanctified and
+saved to the glory of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible
+breaking out of the fever, and the meditation of his
+wife about the hopeful state of her son, and the
+painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break
+with Captain Lumsden&mdash;all three set agoing primarily
+by one cause&mdash;were all three simultaneously interrupted
+by the appearance of the younger son, Henry, at
+the door, with a turkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father.  "Well,
+the captain's feeling clever, I 'low."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said
+it was with Miss Patty's somethin' or other&mdash;couplements,
+Bob called 'em."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton,
+smiling.  "Well, you're gettin' on there mighty
+fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to send a
+turkey?"  The mother looked anxiously at her son,
+seeing he did not evince any pleasure at so singular a
+present from Patty.  Morton was obliged to explain
+the state of affairs between himself and the captain,
+which he did in as few words as possible.  Of course,
+he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the
+turkey was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional
+pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe
+again, after supper.  "Quarreled with Lumsden!  He'll
+drive us off.  We'll all take the fever"&mdash;for every evil
+that Job Goodwin thought of immediately became
+inevitable, in his imagination&mdash;"we'll all take the fever,
+and have to make a new settlement in winter time."  Saying
+this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth,
+rested his elbow on his knee, and his head on his
+hand, diligently exerting his imagination to make real
+and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from
+this new and improved stand-point of despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the wise mother set herself to planning; and
+when eight o'clock had come, and Job Goodwin had
+forgotten the fever, having fallen into a doze in his
+shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that
+the best thing for him and Kike would be to get out
+of the settlement until the captain should have time
+to cool off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything
+desperate.  We want some meat for winter; and
+though it's a little early yet, you'd better start off with
+Kike in the morning," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown
+pain and forebodings in some excitement, Morton did
+not need a second suggestion from his mother.  He
+feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he
+had little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he
+had an eager desire to forget his trouble in a chase
+after bears and deer.  He seized his cap, saddled and
+mounted Dolly, and started at once to the house of
+Kike's mother.  Soon after Morton went, his father
+woke up, and, finding his son gone out, complained,
+as he got ready for bed, that the boy would "ketch the
+fever, certain, runnin' 'round that away at night."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-064"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-064.jpg" alt="THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.">
+<br>
+THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton found Kike
+in a state of
+exhaustion&mdash;pale, angry, and
+sick.  Mr. Brady, the
+Irish school-master,
+from whom the boys
+had received most of
+their education and
+many a sound whipping,
+was doing his
+best to divert Kike
+from his revengeful
+mood.  It is a singular
+fact in the history
+of the West, that so
+large a proportion of the first school-masters were
+Irishmen of uncertain history.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ha!  Moirton, is it you?" said Brady.  "I'm
+roight glad to see ye.  Here's this b'y says hay'd a
+shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a toiched him
+with his roidin'-fwhip.  An' I've been a-axin ov him
+fwoi hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times,
+sayin' oive lathered him with baich switches.  I didn't
+guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay wuz, sure.  Else I'd a
+had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd a
+venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was
+the bayginnin'.  Hay moight a busted me impty pate
+for tellin' him that A wusn't B."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling
+at the good old fellow's banter.  Brady was bent on
+mollifying Kike, who was one of his brightest and
+most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and
+Morton in scholarship though much younger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was
+much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion.
+"I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair
+madam?" asked the Irishman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I
+could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't
+be sich a fool.  Boys is allers powerful troublesome
+when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween&mdash;nary man nor
+boy.  They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n
+they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and
+talk about shootin', and all sich like.  Deliver me from
+a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap,
+and larnt what's what.  Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's
+been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y
+he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like
+his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't
+turn.  An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I <i>would</i> be glad ef
+he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike
+to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden.  Nobody
+but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an'
+it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the
+Jedgment-day.  Nothin' does my heart so much good,
+like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle
+<i>then</i>, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake
+a mortgage in <i>his</i> face.  It's the on'y rale nice thing
+about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'.
+I mean to call his attention to some things then.  He
+won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust
+families thar, I 'low."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of
+Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little,
+partly at his mother's way of putting things, and
+partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he
+and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the
+fall hunt.  Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on
+him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his
+uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the
+opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a
+rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant
+to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want to run away from him.  He'll think
+I've backed out," he said, hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you
+put out and git some bear's ile for your noice black
+hair.  If the cap'n makes so bowld as to sell ye out
+of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile ye're
+gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git
+back.  The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit.
+It'll burn a dale better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad.
+An', as for the shootin' part, practice on the bears fust!
+'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the captain, and
+him ye're own dair uncle, ye know.  He'll keep till ye
+come back.  If I say anybody a goin' to crack him
+owver, I'll jist spake a good word for ye, an' till him
+as the captin's own affictionate niphew has got the
+fust pop at him, by roight of bayin' blood kin, sure."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation
+of the matter; and while he hesitated, his mother
+said he should go.  She'd bundle him off in the
+early morning.  And long before daylight, the two
+boys, neither of whom had slept during the night,
+started, with guns on their shoulders, and with the
+venerable Blaze for a pack-horse.  Dolly was a giddy
+young thing, that could not be trusted in business so
+grave.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap07"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER VII.</i>
+<br><br>
+TREEING A PREACHER.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Had I but bethought myself in time to call this
+history by one of those gentle titles now in vogue,
+as "The Wild Hunters of the Far West," or even by one
+of the labels with which juvenile and Sunday-school
+literature&mdash;milk for babes&mdash;is now made attractive, as,
+for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter."  I might
+here have entertained the reader with a vigorous description
+of the death of Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands
+of the triumphant Kike, and of the exciting chase after
+deer under the direction of Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After two weeks of such varying success as hunters
+have, they found that it would be necessary to forego the
+discomforts of camp-life for a day, and visit the nearest
+settlement in order to replenish their stock of ammunition.
+Wilkins' store, which was the center of a settlement,
+was a double log-building.  In one end the proprietor
+kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets,
+cheap ribbons, and artificial flowers, a small stock of
+earthenware, and cheap crockery, a little homespun cotton
+cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks of yarn
+and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco
+for "chawing," a little "store-tea"&mdash;so called in
+contra-distinction to the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in
+general use&mdash;with a plentiful stock of whisky, and
+some apple-brandy.  The other end of this building
+was a large room, festooned with strings of drying
+pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted
+by one small window with four lights of glass.  In this
+room, which contained three beds, and in the loft
+above, Wilkins and his family lived and kept a
+first-class hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to
+Diana and Bacchus.  Our young friends visited the
+settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not because they
+wished to rest, but because they had begun to get
+lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to
+find some frolic in progress, and in making new
+acquaintances, fifty miles from home, they would be
+able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games
+at cards, and other social enjoyments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined
+store and tavern at ten o'clock in the morning, and
+found the expected crowd of loafers.  The new-comers
+"took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the
+foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the
+target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and
+were soon accepted as clever fellows.  A frontierman
+could bestow no higher praise&mdash;to be a clever fellow
+in his sense was to know how to lose at cards, without
+grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to
+be always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks
+for the crowd," and to be able to hit a three-inch
+"mark" at two hundred paces without bragging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a
+little, there walked up to the tavern door a man in
+homespun dress, carrying one of his shoes in his hand,
+and yet not seeming to be a plain backwoodsman.
+He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an
+acute observer might have guessed from his face that
+his life had been one of daring adventure, and many
+vicissitudes.  There were traces also of conflicting
+purposes, of a certain strength, and a certain weakness of
+character; the melancholy history of good intentions
+overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations
+was written in his countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-070"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-070.jpg" alt="ELECTIONEERING.">
+<br>
+ELECTIONEERING.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of
+Morton's companions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke
+to each one as though he had known him always.  He
+proposed "the drinks" as the surest road to an
+acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger paid
+the score, not in skins but in silver coin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously,
+"you're mighty clever, by hokey.  What are you
+running fer?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time.  I
+'low to run for sheriff next heat," said the stranger,
+who affected dialect for the sake of popularity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home.
+I live at Jenkinsville.  I sot out in life a poor boy.
+I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that my shoes hurts
+my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand
+most of the time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the
+stranger with perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well,
+Mr. Burchard, I never heard that speech so well done
+before.  We're all goin' to vote for you, without t'other
+man happens to do it up slicker'n you do.  I don't
+believe he can, though.  That was got off very nice."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh
+which this sally produced, and to make friends with
+Morton, who was clearly the leader of the party, and
+whose influence was worth securing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and
+play, and as evening drew on, the crowd tired even
+of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of funny
+anecdotes&mdash;little stories that had been aired in the same
+order at every other tavern and store in the county.
+From sheer <i>ennui</i> it was proposed that they should
+attend Methodist preaching at a house two miles away.
+They could at least get some fun out of it.  Burchard,
+foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself.  He wished
+he might enjoy the sport, but he must push on.  And
+"push on" he did.  In a closely contested election
+even Methodist votes were not to be thrown away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton and Kike relished the expedition.  They
+had heard that the Methodists were a rude, canting,
+illiterate race, cloaking the worst practices under an
+appearance of piety.  Mr. Donaldson had often
+fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt
+almost sure that they could count on his apostolic
+approval in their laudable enterprise of disturbing a
+Methodist meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest
+type.  His speech was full of dialectic forms and
+ungrammatical phrases.  His illustrations were
+exceedingly uncouth.  It by no means followed that he was
+not an effective preacher.  All these defects were rather
+to his advantage,&mdash;the backwoods rhetoric was suited
+to move the backwoods audience.  But the party from
+the tavern were in no mood to be moved by anything.
+They came for amusement, and set themselves
+diligently to seek it.  Morton was ambitious to lead
+among his new friends, as he did at home, and on
+this occasion he made use of his rarest gift.  The
+preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up"
+with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude
+metaphors to the right and left, and the audience was
+fast coming under his influence, when Morton Goodwin,
+who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the
+diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of
+Mr. Brady's school, now began to squeak like a rat
+in a trap, looking all the while straight at the preacher,
+as if profoundly interested in the discourse.  The
+women were startled and the grave brethren turned
+their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the
+young men.  In a moment the squeaking ceased, and
+there began the shrill yelping of a little dog, which
+seemed to be on the women's side of the room.  Brother
+Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request
+that the dog should be removed, when he began to
+suspect from the sensation among the young men that
+the disturbance was from them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies
+will bark, even when they walk on two legs instid of
+four."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no
+permanent advantage to the preacher, for Morton, being
+a stranger, did not care for the good opinion of the
+audience, but for the applause of the young revelers
+with whom he had come.  He kept silence now, until
+the preacher again approached a climax, swinging his
+stalwart arms and raising his voice to a tremendous
+pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem
+sufficiently terrible to his hearers.  At last, when he
+got to the terror of the wicked, he cried out
+dramatically, "What are these awful sounds I hear?"  At
+this point he made a pause, which would have been
+very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a
+crow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung
+and breeze-shaken over that pit that has no
+bottom."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming
+to come from nowhere in particular.  Mr. Mellen now
+ceased preaching, and started toward the part of the
+room in which the young men sat, evidently intending
+to deal out summary justice to some one.  He was
+a man of immense strength, and his face indicated
+that he meant to eject the whole party.  But they all
+left in haste except Morton, who staid and met the
+preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence.
+Mr. Mellen was perplexed.  A disembodied voice
+wandering about the room would have been too much
+for Hercules himself.  When the baffled orator turned
+back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in
+an aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of
+Mr. Mellen's inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon
+him, the scoffer was already fleeing through the door.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap08"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER VIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+A LESSON IN SYNTAX.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The young men were gone until the latter part of
+November.  Several persons longed for their
+return.  Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to feel a
+strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and
+died in the woods.  He was also very sure that each
+succeeding day would witness some act of hostility
+toward himself on the part of Captain Lumsden; and
+as each day failed to see any evil result from the
+anger of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any
+tidings of disaster to Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully
+carried forward the dark foreboding with compound
+interest to the next day.  He abounded in quotations
+of such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's
+days were few and full of trouble.  The book of
+Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial fountain of misery&mdash;he
+delighted to found his despairing auguries upon
+the superior wisdom of Solomon.  He looked for
+Morton's return with great anxiety, hoping to find
+that nothing worse had happened to him than the
+shooting away of an arm.  Mrs. Goodwin, for her
+part, dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of
+hunting.  She feared lest Morton should fall into the
+bad habits that had carried away from home an older
+brother, for whose untimely death in an affray she
+had never ceased to mourn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Patty!  When her father had on that angry
+afternoon discovered the turkey that Morton had given
+her, and had sent it home with a message in her
+name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that
+she was.  She held her head aloft; she neither indicated
+pleasure nor displeasure at her father's course;
+she would not disclose any liking for Morton, nor
+any complaisance toward her father.  This air of
+defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired.  It showed
+her mettle, he said to himself.  Patty would almost
+have finished that two dozen cuts of yarn if it had
+cost her life.  She even managed to sing, toward the
+last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine
+o'clock, she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,&mdash;drawing
+a sigh of relief when the reel snapped,&mdash;and hung her
+twelve hanks up together, she seemed as blithe as
+ever.  Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand,
+with wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked
+approvingly on Patty's achievement.  Patty showed her
+good blood, was the mother's reflection.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-077"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-077.jpg" alt="PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.">
+<br>
+PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Patty?  She did not hurry.  She put everything
+away carefully.  She was rather slow about
+retiring.  But when at last she went aloft into her room
+in the old block-house part of the building, and shut
+and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the
+high, old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she
+looked at herself in the little looking-glass and did
+not see there the face she had been able to keep
+while the eyes of others were upon her.  She saw
+weariness, disappointment, and dejection.  Her strong
+will held her up.  She undressed herself with habitual
+quietness.  She even stopped to look again in self-pity
+at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on her
+night-cap.  But
+when at last she
+had blown out the
+candle, and carefully
+extinguished
+the wick, and had climbed
+into the great, high,
+billowy feather-bed under
+the rafters, she
+buried her tired head in
+the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once
+admitting to herself what she was crying about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as the days wore on, and her father ceased
+to speak of Kike or Morton, and she heard that they
+were out of the settlement, she found in herself an
+ever-increasing desire to see Morton.  The more she
+tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied
+to herself the existence of the feeling, the more intense
+did it become.  Whenever hunters passed the gate, going
+after or returning laden with game, she stopped
+involuntarily to gaze at them.  But she never failed, a
+moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of
+countenance and to rebuke herself for curiosity so
+idle.  What were hunters to her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one evening the travelers whom she looked for
+went by.  They were worse for wear; their buckskin
+pantaloons were torn by briers; their tread was
+heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,
+peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse,
+did not fail to recognize old Blaze, burdened
+as he was with venison, bear-meat and skins, nor to
+note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at
+Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse
+of herself.  That look of Morton's sent a blush of
+pleasure over her face, which she could not quite
+conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a younger
+brother a minute later.  But when she saw her father
+gallop rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the
+young men, her sense of pleasure changed quickly to
+foreboding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part,
+to throw off their troubles in the excitement of
+hunting.  But when at last they had accumulated all the
+meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they
+could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home.
+And with the turning of their steps toward home had
+come the inevitable turning of their thoughts toward
+old perplexities.  Morton then confided to Kike his
+intention of leaving the settlement and leading the
+life of a hermit in the wilderness in case it should
+prove to be "all off" between him and Patty.  And
+Kike said that his mind was made up.  If he found
+that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be
+revenged in some way and then run off and live with
+the Indians.  It is not uncommon for boys now-a-days
+to make stern resolutions in moments of wretchedness
+which they never attempt to carry out.  But the
+rude life of the West developed deep feeling and a
+hardy persistence in a purpose once formed.  Many a
+young man crossed in love or incited to revenge had
+already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a
+morose hermit or a desperado among the savages.
+At the period of life when the animal fights hard for
+supremacy in the soul of man, destiny often hangs
+very perilously balanced.  It was at that day a
+question in many cases whether a young man of force
+would become a rowdy or a class-leader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When once our hunters had entered the settlement
+they became more depressed than ever.  Morton's eyes
+searched Captain Lumsden's house and yard in vain
+for a sight of Patty.  Kike looked sternly ahead of
+him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded
+of his uncle's existence.  And when, five minutes later,
+they heard horse-hoofs behind them, and, looking back,
+saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping after them on
+his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat
+fast with excitement.  Morton wondered what the Captain
+could want with them, seeing it was not his way
+to carry on his conflicts by direct attack; and Kike
+contented himself with looking carefully to the
+priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking
+straight forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, boys!  Howdy?  Got a nice passel of furs,
+eh?  Had a good time?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished
+at the greeting, but eager enough to be on good
+terms again with Patty's father.  Kike said not a
+word, but grew white with speechless anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain
+tapped it with his cow-hide whip.  "Killed a bar,
+too; who killed it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Kike," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Purty good fer you, Kike!  Got over your pout
+about that land yet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could
+not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss
+about nothing!  I didn't sell it, of course, when you
+didn't want me to, but you ought to have a little
+manners in your way of speaking.  Come to me next
+time, and don't go running to the judge and old
+Wheeler.  If you won't be a fool, you'll find your
+own kin your best friends.  Come over and see me
+to-morry, Mort.  I've got some business with you.
+Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty
+looked at his face to see what had been the nature
+of his interview with the boys.  With a characteristic
+love of exerting power over the moods of another, he
+said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest
+little brute I ever did see."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Patty spent most of her time during the
+night in trying to guess what this saying indicated.
+It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the
+Captain's cordiality might signify.  Kike was pleased
+that his land had not been sold, but he was not in
+the least mollified by that fact.  He was glad of his
+victory and hated his uncle all the more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly
+enjoyed the warm hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the
+milk and butter, that he got at his mother's table.
+His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and
+sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them
+all before Christmas or Noo Years.  Morton told of
+his meeting with the Captain in some elation, but Job
+Goodwin shook his head.  He "knowed what that
+meant," he said.  "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep.
+He'd hit sometime when you didn't know whar the
+lick come from.  And he'd hit powerful hard when he
+<i>did</i> hit, you be shore."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the supper was over, who should come in
+but Brady.  He had heard, he said, that Morton had
+come home, and he was dayloighted to say him agin.
+Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all
+the gossip of the settlement, and having a most
+miscellaneous and disordered lot of information besides,
+Brady was always welcome; he filled the place of a
+local newspaper.  He was a man of much reading, but
+with no mental discipline.  He had treasured all the
+strange and delightful things he had ever heard or
+read&mdash;the bloody murders, the sudden deaths, the
+wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups and
+downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of
+humorous stories.  He had so many of these at command
+that it was often surmised that he manufactured
+them.  He "boarded 'round" during school-time, and
+sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a man
+can be said to sponge who paid for his board so
+amply in amusement, information, flattery, and a
+thousand other good offices.  Good company is scarcer
+and higher in price in the back settlements than in
+civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing
+of <i>ennui</i>, has declared that the genial Brady's
+"company wuz worth his keep,"&mdash;an opinion in which
+husbands and children always coincided.  For
+welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes
+another's reception sure until he is pretty certain of his
+wife's disposition toward the guest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with
+right good will, and Brady catechised "Moirton"
+about his adventures.  The story of Kike's first bear
+roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when
+Morton told of his encounter with the circuit-rider,
+Brady laughed merrily.  Nothing was too bad in his
+eyes for "a man that undertook to prache afore hay
+could parse."  Brady's own grammatical knowledge,
+indeed, had more influence on his parsing than on
+his speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to
+the strangest of all his adventures&mdash;the meeting with
+Captain Lumsden; and while he told it, the schoolmaster's
+eyes were brimming full of fun.  By the time
+the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that
+Brady knew more about it than he affected to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you
+could tell something about this thing.  What made the
+coon come down so easy?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair
+father-in-law (that is to bay) a coun.  Ye ought to
+have larn't some manners agin this toime, with all the
+batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer supayriors.
+An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling
+the ears of a sleepy dog with a straw, saw an
+infinite deal of fun in this rig on Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady.
+How did you fetch the Captain round?  For
+I think you did it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under
+his eyebrows with his face all a-twinkle with fun.
+"I jist parsed the sintince in sich a way as to put
+the Captin in the nominative case.  He loikes to be
+put in the nominative case, does the Captin.  If iver
+yer goin' to win the devoine craycher that calls him
+father ye'll hev to larn to parse with Captin Lumsden
+for the nominative."  Here Brady gave the whole
+party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his
+head reflectively upon his bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of
+parsing.  You left that rule of syntax out last winter."
+said Morton, seeking to draw out the master by
+humoring his fancy.  "How did you parse the sentence
+with him, while Kike and I were gone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs
+the varb, and thin the varb governs 'most all the
+rist of the sintince."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the
+same time the pompous air and authoritative voice
+with which Brady was accustomed to make such a
+demand of a pupil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton.  But ye must all
+be quiet about it.  I wint to say the Captin soon
+afther yerself and Koike carried yer two impty skulls
+into the woods.  An' I looked koind of confidintial-loike
+at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to
+riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,'
+siz I, 'till the folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz
+I; 'ye've got more interest in the county,' siz I, 'than
+the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've got the brains to exart an
+anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I.  Will, ye see,
+Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,'
+siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he.  An'
+I saw I had 'im.  I'd jist put 'im in the nominative
+case governin' the varb.  And I was the varb.  An' I
+mint to govern, the rist."  Here Brady stopped to smile
+complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I,
+'ye must be moighty keerful not to give the inimy any
+handle onto ye,' siz I.  An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll
+be keerful,' siz he.  An' I siz, 'Captin, be pertik'ler
+keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may make so
+bowld,' siz I.  'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere.
+They're a-talkin' about it now.'  An' the Captin siz,
+'Will, Brady, I say I kin thrust ye,' siz he.  An' I
+siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye kin thrust
+the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I.  'Brady,'
+siz he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me,
+since the little brat's gone and brought ole Whayler
+into it,' siz he.  'Ye bitter belave it is, Captin,' siz I.
+'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he.  'Spoike the guns,
+Captin,' siz I.  'How?' siz he.  'Make it all roight
+with Koike and Moirton,' siz I.  'As fer Moirton,' siz
+I, 'he's the smartest <i>young</i> man,' siz I (puttin'
+imphasis on '<i>young</i>,' you say), he's the smartest young
+man,' siz I, 'in the bottoms; and if ye kin make an
+alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got the smartest old
+man managin' the smartest young man.  An' if ye kin
+make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi
+at 'im, 'atwixt that devoine young craycher, yer
+charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and Moirton, ye've got him
+tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,' siz I.  An'
+he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all.
+I'll think about it,' siz he.  An' that's how I made
+Captin Lumsden the nominative case governin' the
+varb&mdash;that's myself&mdash;and thin the varb rigilates the
+rist.  But I must go and say Koike, or the little
+black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid
+the captin.  Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin,
+it's meself as has got a hard sum in the rule of
+thray.  This toime I hope the answer'll come out all
+roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on
+the shoulder and went out.  Then he put his head
+into the door again to say that the answer set down
+in the book was: "Misthress Patty Goodwin."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap09"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER IX.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the
+flag of independence in the Hissawachee bottom.
+He had been a Captain in the Revolution; but
+Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to
+grow during the quarter of a century that followed
+the close of the war.  An ex-officer's neighbors
+carried him forward with his advancing age; a sort of
+ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of
+military titles as the Revolution passed into history
+and heroes became scarcer.  And emigration always
+advanced a man several degrees&mdash;new neighbors, in
+their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give
+him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as
+possible the lustre which the new-comer conferred upon
+the settlement.  Thus Captain Wheeler in Maryland
+was Major Wheeler in Western Pennsylvania, and a
+full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his
+second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek.
+And yet I may be wrong.  Perhaps it was not the
+transplanting that did it.  Even had he remained on
+the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through a
+process of canonization as he advanced in life that
+would have brought him to a colonelcy: other men
+did.  For what is a Colonel but a Captain gone to seed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression;
+and, as a conscientious writer, far be it from me
+to use slang.  And I take great credit to myself for
+avoiding it just now, since nothing could more
+perfectly describe Wheeler.  His hair was grizzling, his
+shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded
+in an expression of perpetual resistance, and his
+prominent chin and brow seemed to have been jammed
+together; the space between was too small.  He had an
+air of defense; his nature was always in a
+"guard-against-cavalry" attitude.  He had entered into the
+spirit of colonial resistance from childhood; he was
+born in antagonism to kings and all that are in
+authority; it was a family tradition that he had been
+flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into
+the face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of
+course looked about for the power that was to be
+resisted, and was not long in finding it in his neighbor,
+Captain Lumsden.  He was the one opponent whom
+Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure.
+To Wheeler this fight against Lumsden was the
+one delightful element of life in the Bottoms.  He had
+now the comfortable prospect of spending his declining
+years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful
+foe, whose encroachments on the rights and privileges
+of his neighbors would afford him an inexhaustible
+theme for denunciation, and a delightful incitement
+to the exercise of his powers of resistance.  And
+thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better
+relish because of his contest with Lumsden.  Mordecai
+could not have had half so much pleasure in staring
+stiffly at the wicked Haman as Isaiah Wheeler found
+in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without so
+much as a nod of recognition.  And Haman's feelings
+were not more deeply wounded than Lumsden's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married;
+for at home he could find no encroachments to resist.
+The perfect temper of his wife disarmed even his
+opposition.  He had begun his married life by fighting
+his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the
+Hissawachee and found Methodism unpopular, he took up
+arms in its defense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was the man whom Kike had selected as
+guardian&mdash;a man who, with all his disagreeableness,
+was possessed of honesty, a virtue not inconsistent
+with oppugnancy.  But Kike's chief motive in choosing
+him was that he knew that the choice would be a
+stab to his uncle's pride.  Moreover, Wheeler was the
+only man who would care to brave Lumsden's anger
+by taking the trust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and
+to this house, on the day after the return of Morton
+and Kike, there rode a stranger.  He was a broad-shouldered,
+stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five, with a
+serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white
+hat, a coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted
+and buttoned to the chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey"
+leggings tied about his legs below the knees.  He
+rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of saddlebags.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double
+cabin, he shouted, after the Western fashion, "Hello!
+Hello the house!"
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-089"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-089.jpg" alt="COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.">
+<br>
+COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous
+barking, ranging in key all the way from the
+contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice" to the deep
+baying of a huge bull-dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler,
+opening the door, and shouting to the dogs, "You,
+Bull, come here!  Git out, pup!  Clear out, all of
+you!"  And he accompanied this command by threateningly
+lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs
+scampered away, and a third sneakingly retreated; but the
+bull-dog turned with reluctance, and, without smoothing
+his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the
+house, protesting with surly growls against this
+authoritative interruption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler,
+advancing with caution, but without much cordiality.
+He would not commit himself to a welcome too rashly;
+strangers needed inspection.  "'Light, won't you?"
+he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to
+dismount, while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who
+came out at that moment to "put up the stranger's
+horse, and give him some fodder and corn."  Then
+turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment,
+and said: "A preacher, I reckon, sir?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard
+that your wife was a member of the Methodist Church,
+and that you were very friendly; so I came round
+this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for
+preaching.  I have one or two vacant days on my
+round, and thought maybe I might as well take
+Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I didn't find
+anything to prevent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time the colonel and his guest had reached
+the door, and the former only said, "Well, sir, let's go
+in, and see what the old woman says.  I don't agree
+with you Methodists about everything, but I do think
+that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody
+to say anything against circuit riders without
+taking it up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly
+religious face&mdash;a countenance in which scruples are
+balanced by evenness of temperament&mdash;was at the
+moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue dye that
+stood in a great iron kettle by the fire.  She made
+haste to wash and dry her hands, that she might have
+a "good, old-fashioned Methodist shake-hands" with
+Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist preacher she
+had seen since she left Pittsburg."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder
+should preach in his house.  Methodists had just
+the same rights in a free country that other people
+had.  He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement didn't
+belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of
+England in his time, and was jist as ready to fight
+aginst the King of Hissawachee Bottom."  The Colonel
+almost relaxed his stubborn lips into a smile when
+he said this.  Besides, he proceeded, his wife was a
+Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose.
+He was friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a
+professor.  If his wife didn't want to wear rings or
+artificials, it was money in his pocket, and nobody had
+a right to object.  Colonel Wheeler plumed himself
+before the new preacher upon his general friendliness
+toward religion, and really thought it might be set down
+on the credit side of that account in which he imagined
+some angelic book-keeper entered all his transactions.
+He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain,"
+as he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin'
+for he got from <i>such</i> a wife as his, and his own
+gineral friendliness to the preachers and the Methodis'
+meetings, he would be saved at the last, <i>somehow or
+nother</i>."  It was not in the man to reflect that his
+"gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin
+in a gineral spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the
+settlement to inform everybody that there would be
+preaching in his house that evening.  The news was
+told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of
+loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home
+that afternoon, called a "Hello!" at every house he
+passed; and when the salutation from within was
+answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they
+had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel
+Wheeler's."  And then the eager listener, generally the
+woman of the house, would cry out, "Laws-a-massy!
+You don't say!  A Methodis'?  One of the shoutin'
+kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches!
+What will the Captin' do?  They do say he <i>does</i> hate
+the Methodis' worse nor copperhead snakes, now.
+Some old quarrel, liker'n not.  Well, I'm agoin', jist to
+see how <i>red</i>ikl'us them Methodis' <i>does</i> do!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The news was sent to Brady's school, which had
+"tuck up" for the winter, and from this centre also it
+soon spread throughout the neighborhood.  It reached
+Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his
+little crowing chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the
+Methodists in!  We'll have to see about that.  A man that
+brings such people to the settlement ought to be
+lynched.  But I'll match the Methodists.  Where's
+Patty?  Patty!  O, Patty!  Bob, run and find Miss
+Patty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty!
+O' Miss Patty!  Whah is ye?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran
+down toward the barn, shouting, "Miss Patty!  O!
+Miss Patty!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where was Patty?
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap10"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER X.</i>
+<br><br>
+PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house,
+as usual, to strain the milk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not
+know what a spring-house is?  A little log cabin six
+feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where
+the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold
+from beneath the hill.  The little cabin-like
+spring-house sits always in the hollow; as you approach it
+you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which
+Western people call "clapboards," you see the green
+moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see
+the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs
+that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and
+open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges,
+you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly
+from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear
+cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and
+in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the
+presence of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues
+of poetry which you can never turn into words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in just such a spring-house that Patty
+Lumsden had hidden herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She brought clean crocks&mdash;earthenware milk pans&mdash;from
+the shelf outside, where they had been airing
+to keep them sweet; she held the strainer in her left
+hand and poured the milk through it until each crock
+was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places
+among the stones, so that they stood half immersed in
+the cold current of spring water; she laid the smooth
+pine cover on each crock, and put a clean stone atop
+that to secure it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While she was thus putting away the milk her
+mind was on Morton.  She wondered what her father
+had said to him yesterday.  In the heart of her heart
+she resolved that if Morton loved her she would
+marry him in the face of her father's displeasure.  She
+had never rebelled against the iron rule, but she felt
+herself full of power and full of endurance.  She could
+go off into the wilderness with Morton; they would
+build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with
+puncheon floor and stick chimney; they would sleep,
+like other poor settlers, on beds of dry leaves, and they
+would subsist upon the food which Morton's unerring
+rifle would bring them from the forest.  These were
+the humble cabin castles she was building.  All girls
+weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight
+wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and
+brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy,
+but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat
+to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out
+of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked
+her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great
+fire-place.  I know it sounds old-fashioned and
+sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to
+a heart like Patty's what may be the scenery on the
+tapestry, if love be the warp and faith the woof?
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-096"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-096.jpg" alt="PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.">
+<br>
+PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring
+to plan his own and Patty's partnership future,
+but he drew a more cheerful picture than she did,
+for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain
+Lumsden's displeasure.  He was at the moment
+going to meet the
+Captain, walking
+down the foot-path
+through the woods,
+kicking the dry
+beech leaves into
+billows before him
+and singing a Scotch love-song of Burns's which he
+had learned from his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He planned one future, she another; and in after
+years they might have laughed to think how far wrong
+were both guesses.  The path which Morton followed
+led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on the
+stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone
+voice as he approached, singing tender words that
+made her heart stand still:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;<br>
+  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear<br>
+  Nocht of ill shall come thee near,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My bonnie dearie."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And as he came right by the spring-house, he
+sang, now in a lower tone lest he should be heard at
+the house, but still more earnestly, and so audibly
+that the listening Patty could hear every word, the
+last stanza:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Fair and lovely as thou art,<br>
+  Thou hast stown my very heart;<br>
+  I can die&mdash;but cannot part,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My bonnie dearie."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And even as she listened to the last line, Morton
+had discovered that the spring-house door was ajar,
+and turned, shading his eyes, to see if perchance Patty
+might not be within.  He saw her and reached out
+his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet
+unaccustomed to the imperfect light did not see how
+full of blushes was her face&mdash;for she feared that he
+might guess all that she had just been dreaming.  But
+she was resolved at any rate to show him more
+kindness than she would have shown had it not been for
+the displeasure which she supposed her father had
+manifested.  And so she covered the last crock and
+came and stood by him at the door of the spring-house,
+and he talked right on in the tender strain of
+his song.  And she did not protest, but answered
+back timidly and almost as warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that is how little negro Bob at last found
+Patty at the spring-house and found Morton with her.
+"Law's sake!  Miss Patty, done look for ye mos'
+every whah.  Yer paw wants ye."  And with that Bob
+rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips
+into a broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap11"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XI.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain.
+"You've been keeping Patty down at the spring-house
+when she should have been at the loom by this
+time.  In my time young men and women didn't
+waste their mornings.  Nights and Sundays are good
+enough for visiting.  Now, see here, Patty, there's one
+of them plagued Methodist preachers brought into the
+settlement by Wheeler.  These circuit riders are worse
+than third day fever 'n' ager.  They go against dancing
+and artificials and singing songs and reading
+novels and all other amusements.  They give people
+the jerks wherever they go.  The devil's in 'em.  Now
+I want you to go to work and get up a dance to-night,
+and ask all you can get along with.  Nothing'll
+make the preacher so mad as to dance right under
+his nose; and we'll keep a good many people away
+who might get the jerks, or fall down with the power
+and break their necks, maybe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty was always ready to dance, and she only
+said: "If Morton will help me send the invitations."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of
+the discomfiture he had wrought in a Methodist
+meeting while he was gone.  And he had the satisfaction
+of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased
+Captain Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh,
+Mort?" said the Captain, chuckling interrogatively.
+Morton did not like this proposition, for, notwithstanding
+theological, differences about election, Mrs. Wheeler
+was a fast friend of his mother.  He evaded
+an answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her
+mother concerning the guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and
+reels nearly all night.  Morton danced with Patty to
+his heart's content, and in the happiness of Morton's
+assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions
+she was a queen indeed.  She wore the antique
+earrings that were an heir-loom in her mother's
+family, and a showy breast-pin which her father had
+bought her.  These and her new dress of English
+calico made her the envy of all the others.  Pretty
+Betty Harsha was led out by some one at almost
+every dance, but she would have given all of these
+for one dance with Morton Goodwin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching.  Behold
+in Hissawachee Bottom the world's evils in miniature!
+Here are religion and amusement divorced&mdash;set over
+the one against the other as hostile camps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the
+widow Lumsden, went to the meeting with Kike and
+his mother, explaining his views as he went along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden.  Me father
+was a Catholic and me mother a Prisbytarian, and
+they compromised on me by making me a mimber of
+the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me
+for orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything
+else but a school taycher in these haythen backwoods.
+But it does same to me that the Mithodists air the
+only payple that can do any good among sich pagans
+as we air.  What would a parson from the ould
+counthry do here?  He moight spake as grammathical as
+Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody would be the
+better of it.  What good does me own grammathical
+acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement?
+With all me grammar I can't kape me boys from
+makin' God's name the nominative case before very bad
+words.  Hey, Koike?  Now, the Mithodists air a narry
+sort of a payple.  But if you want to make a strame
+strong you hev to make it narry.  I've read a good
+dale of history, and in me own estimation the ould
+Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both torrents,
+because they're both shet up by narry banks.  The
+Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and
+dancin' and singin' songs, which is all vairy foolish in me
+own estimation.  But it's kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race
+that turns the whale that fades the worruld to
+git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its
+toime among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's
+grist.  But the brook ain't so bad afther all.  Hey,
+Mrs. Lumsden?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it
+was.  It was very good for watering stock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the
+schoolmaster, with a laugh.  "And to me own oi the
+wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it chooses and doin'
+what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at than, the
+sthraight-travelin' mill-race.  But I wish these
+Mithodists would convart the souls of some of these
+youngsters, and make 'em quit their gamblin' and swearin'
+and bettin' on horses and gettin' dthrunk.  And maybe
+if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't
+be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles.  Hey,
+Koike?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for
+by this time they were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's
+house.  Despite the dance there were present,
+from near and far, all the house would hold.  For
+those who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double
+motive for going to meeting; a disposition to resent
+the slight was added to their curiosity to hear the
+Methodist preacher.  The dance had taken away those
+who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people
+left out did not feel under any obligation to gratify
+Captain Lumsden by raising a row.  Kike had been
+invited, but had disdained to dance in his uncle's
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were
+crowded with people.  A little open space was left at
+the door between the rooms for the preacher, who
+presently came edging his way in through the crowd.
+He had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the
+early Methodist preacher, the forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders,
+powerful arms, shaggy brows, and bristling black
+hair.  He read the hymn, two lines at a time, and led
+the singing himself.  He prayed with the utmost
+sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows
+and gave the simple people a deeper reverence for the
+dreadfulness of the preacher's message.  He prayed as
+a man talking face to face with the Almighty Judge of
+the generations of men; he prayed with an undoubting
+assurance of his own acceptance with God, and
+with the sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of
+his unforgiven hearers.  It is not argument that reaches
+men, but conviction; and for immediate, practical
+purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder out of
+a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute
+writers of ingenious apologies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve
+not the Holy Spirit of God," he seemed to his hearers
+a prophet come to lay bare their hearts.  Magruder
+had not been educated for his ministry by years
+of study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and
+Systematics; but he knew what was of vastly more
+consequence to him&mdash;how to read and expound the hearts
+and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among
+whom he labored.  He was of their very fibre.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain
+Lumsden's dance, which was prompted, he said, by the
+devil, to keep men out of heaven.  With half a dozen
+quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish
+arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the
+audience fluttered with sensation.  Magruder had a
+vicarious conscience; but a vicarious conscience is good
+for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.  Whitefield
+said that he never preached a sermon to others till
+he had first preached it to George Whitefield; and
+Magruder's severities had all the more effect that his
+audience could see that they had full force upon himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If is hard for us to understand the elements that
+produced such incredible excitements as resulted from
+the early Methodist preaching.  How at a camp-meeting,
+for instance, five hundred people, indifferent
+enough to everything of the sort one hour before,
+should be seized during a sermon with terror&mdash;should
+cry aloud to God for mercy, some of them falling in
+trances and cataleptic unconsciousness; and how, out
+of all this excitement, there should come forth, in very
+many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems to us
+a puzzle beyond solution.  But the early Westerners
+were as inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate,
+they were swept into most of their decisions by
+contagious excitements.  And never did any class of men
+understand the art of exciting by oratory more
+perfectly than the old Western preachers.  The simple
+hunters to whom they preached had the most absolute
+faith in the invisible.  The Day of Judgment, the
+doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the righteous
+were as real and substantial in their conception
+as any facts in life.  They could abide no refinements.
+The terribleness of Indian warfare, the relentlessness
+of their own revengefulness, the sudden lynchings, the
+abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the ruthlessness
+of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon
+which they founded the most materialistic conception
+of hell and the most literal understanding of the Day
+of Judgment.  Men like Magruder knew how to handle
+these few positive ideas of a future life so that they
+were indeed terrible weapons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this evening he seized upon the particular sins
+of the people as things by which they drove away the
+Spirit of God.  The audience trembled as he moved
+on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.  Every
+man found himself in turn called to the bar of his
+own conscience.  There was excitement throughout
+the house.  Some were angry, some sobbed aloud, as
+he alluded to "promises made to dying friends,"
+"vows offered to God by the new-made graves of
+their children,"&mdash;for pioneer people are very susceptible
+to all such appeals to sensibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike,
+who had listened intently from the first, found himself
+breathing hard.  The preacher showed how the
+revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had
+already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in
+the leaves of the woods where none but the wolf could
+ever find him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At these words he turned to the part of the room
+where Kike sat, white with feeling.  Magruder, looking
+always for the effect of his arrows, noted Kike's
+emotion and paused.  The house was utterly still,
+save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten
+soul.  The people were sitting as if waiting their
+doom.  Kike already saw in his imagination the
+mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the leaves
+and scented by hungry wolves.  He waited to hear
+his own sentence.  Hitherto the preacher had spoken
+with vehemence.  Now, he stopped and began again
+with tears, and in a tone broken with emotion,
+looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O,
+young man, there are stains of blood on your hands!
+How dare you hold them up before the Judge of all?
+You are another Cain, and God sends his messenger
+to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have
+already killed in your heart.  <i>You are a murderer</i>!
+Nothing but God's mercy can snatch you from hell!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt all this is rude in refined ears.  But is
+it nothing that by these rude words he laid bare
+Kike's sins to Kike's conscience?  That in this
+moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his
+sins, and trembled?  Can you do a man any higher
+service than to make him know himself, in the light
+of the highest sense of right that he capable of?
+Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher
+as to the rebuke of God.  His frail frame shook
+with fear and penitence, as it had before shaken with
+wrath.  "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried he,
+hiding his face in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank God for showing it to you, my young
+friend," responded the preacher.  "What a wonder
+that your sins did not drive away the Holy Ghost,
+leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as
+good as damned already!"  And with this he turned
+and appealed yet more powerfully to the rest, already
+excited by the fresh contagion of Kike's penitence,
+until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the
+house.  Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their
+feeling, while many fell upon their knees and prayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The preacher now thought it time to change, and
+offer some consolation.  You would say that his view
+of the atonement was crude, conventional and
+commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in Scripture
+for general and formulated postulates.  But however
+imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known
+to his hearers the mercy of God.  And surely that is
+the main thing.  The figure of speech is but the vessel;
+the great truth that God is merciful to the guilty,
+what is this but the water of life?&mdash;not less refreshing
+because the jar in which it is brought is rude!  The
+preacher's whole manner changed.  Many weeping and
+sobbing people were swept now to the other extreme,
+and cried aloud with joy.  Perhaps Magruder
+exaggerated the change that had taken place in them.
+But is it nothing that a man has bowed his soul in
+penitence before God's justice, and then lifted his face
+in childlike trust to God's mercy?  It is hard for one
+who has once passed through this experience not
+to date from it a revolution.  There were many who
+had not much root in themselves, doubtless, but among
+Magruder's hearers this day were those who, living
+half a century afterward, counted their better living
+from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's
+antagonism to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner.
+It was not in Kike to change quickly.  Smitten
+with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his seat and
+slowly knelt, quivering with feeling.  When the preacher
+had finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and
+joy, he began to sing, to an exquisitely pathetic tune,
+Watts' hymn:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,<br>
+  Let a repenting rebel live.<br>
+  Are not thy mercies large and free?<br>
+  May not a sinner trust in thee?"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The meeting was held until late.  Kike remained
+quietly kneeling, the tears trickling through his fingers.
+He did not utter a word or cry.  In all the confusion
+he was still.  What deliberate recounting of his own
+misdoings took place then, no one can know.  Thoughtless
+readers may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in
+his trouble.  But who of us would not be better if
+we could be brought thus face to face with our own
+souls?  His simple penitent faith did more for him
+than all our philosophy has done for us, maybe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the meeting was dismissed.  Brady, who
+had been awe-stricken at sight of Kike's agony of
+contrition, now thought it best that he and Kike's
+mother should go home, leaving the young man to
+follow when he chose.  But Kike staid immovable
+upon his knees.  His sense of guilt had become an
+agony.  All those allowances which we in a more
+intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the
+defects of education, Kike knew nothing about.  He
+believed all his revengefulness to be voluntary; he
+had a feeling that unless he found some assurance of
+God's mercy then he could not live till morning.  So
+the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three
+brethren that had come from adjoining settlements
+staid and prayed and talked with the distressed youth
+until after midnight.  The early Methodists regarded
+this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and
+asked "Sister Wheeler" to pray.  There was nothing
+in the old Methodist meetings so excellent as the
+audible prayers of women.  Women oftener than men
+have a genius for prayer.  Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly,
+penitently to confess, not Kike's sins, but the
+sins of all of them; her penitence fell in with Kike's;
+she confessed the very sins that he was grieving over.
+Then slowly&mdash;slowly, as one who waits for another to
+follow&mdash;she began to turn toward trustfulness.  Like a
+little child she spoke to God; under the influence of
+her praying Kike sobbed audibly.  Then he seemed to
+feel the contagion of her faith; he, too, looked to God
+as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The great struggle was over.  Kike was revengeful
+no longer.  He was distrustful and terrified no
+longer.  He had "crept into the heart of God" and
+found rest.  Call it what you like, when a man passes
+through such an experience, however induced, it separates
+the life that is passed from the life that follows
+by a great gulf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose
+up at the close of the prayer, and with a peaceful
+face shook hands with the preacher and the brethren,
+rejoicing in this new fellowship.  He said nothing,
+but when Magruder sang
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Oh! how happy are they<br>
+  Who their Saviour obey,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And have laid up their treasure above!<br>
+  Tongue can never express<br>
+  The sweet comfort and peace<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of a soul in its earliest love,"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them
+good-night, and went home about the time that his
+friend Morton, flushed and weary with dancing and
+pleasure, laid himself down to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap12"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XII.</i>
+<br><br>
+MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The Methodists had actually made a break in the
+settlement.  Dancing had not availed to keep them
+out.  It was no longer a question of getting "shet"
+of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating
+the contagion.  There would now be a "class" formed,
+a leader appointed, a regular preaching place
+established; Hissawachee would become part of that
+great wheel called a circuit; there would be revivals
+and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be
+destroyed.  For now one might never again dance at
+a "hoe-down," drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race
+"hosses" on Sunday, without a lecture from somebody.
+It might be your own wife, too.  Once let the
+Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences.
+By his opposition, he had unfortunately spoken
+for the enmity of the Methodists in advance.  The
+preacher had openly defied him.  Kike would join the
+class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his
+ascendancy.  No concession on his part short of
+absolute surrender would avail.  He resolved therefore
+that the Methodists should find out "who they were
+fighting."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brady was pleased.  Gossips are always delighted
+to have something happen out of the usual course.  It
+gives them a theme, something to exercise their wits
+upon.  Let us not be too hard upon gossip.  It is one
+form of communicative intellectual activity.  Brady,
+under different conditions, might have been a journalist,
+writing relishful leaders on "topics of the time."  For
+what is journalism but elevated and organized
+gossip?  The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way
+neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for
+good-natured gossip.  Such an one averts absolute mental
+stagnation, diffuses intelligence, and keeps alive a
+healthful public opinion on local questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's
+"ry-al hoe-cake."  That was the reason he assigned for
+his visit on the evening after the meeting.  He was
+always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had
+happened about which he wanted to talk.  But on this
+evening Job Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at
+first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to
+us all?  These Methodis' sets people crazy with the
+jerks, I've hearn tell.  Hey?  I hear dreadful things
+about 'em.  Oh dear, it seems like as if everything
+come upon folks at once.  Hey?  The fever's spreadin'
+at Chilicothe, they tell me.  And then, if we should
+git into a war with England, you know, and the
+Indians should come and skelp us, they'd be precious
+few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that
+got skelped.  Precious few, <i>I</i> tell you.  Hey?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his
+pipe and laid it away, and punched the fire meditatively,
+endeavoring to discover in his imagination some
+new and darker pigment for his picture of the future.
+But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than
+Methodists, Indians,
+and fever, he
+set the tongs in the
+corner, heaved a
+sigh of discouragement,
+and looked at
+Brady inquiringly.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-112"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-112.jpg" alt="JOB GOODWIN.">
+<br>
+JOB GOODWIN.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ye're loike the
+hootin' owl,
+Misther Goodwin; it's
+the black side ye're
+afther lookin' at all
+the toime.  Where's
+Moirton?  He aint
+been to school yet
+since this quarter
+took up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton?  He's
+got to stay out, I
+expect.  My rheumatiz is mighty bad, and I'm powerful
+weak.  I don't think craps'll be good next year, and
+I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we
+all have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their
+excitement and driving people crazy with jerks, and
+war breaks out with England, and the Indians come on
+us.  But here's Mort now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ha!  Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight?
+Ye heerd fwat a toime we had.  Most iverybody got
+struck harmless, excipt mesilf and a few other
+hardened sinners.  Ye heerd about Koike?  I reckon the
+Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a
+warrantee on the Captain's skull, maybe.  Fwat would
+ye do for a crony now, Moirton, if Koike come to be
+a praycher?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with
+whom Kike's "getting religion" was an unpleasant
+topic.  "It'll all wear off with Kike soon enough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be too shore, Moirton.  Things wear off
+with you, sometoimes.  Ye swear ye'll niver swear no
+more, and ye're willin' to bet that ye'll niver bet agin,
+and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife; but the
+flesh is ferninst ye.  When Koike's bad, he's bad all
+over; lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it
+mesilf.  Now he's got good, the divil'll have as hard
+a toime makin' him bad as I had makin' him good.
+I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his
+school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad.  Got
+ivery lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of
+the school!  What do you say to that, Moirton?  The
+divil's got his hands full thair.  Hey, Moirton?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher.  He wants to
+get rich just to spite the Captain."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton.
+And he'll be a praycher yit.  Didn't he give me a
+talkin' to this mornin', at breakfast?  Think of the
+impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to tell his ould
+masther that he ought to repint of his sins!  He talked
+to his mother, too, till she croid.  He'll make her
+belave she is a great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit,
+excipt in her grammar, which couldn't be worse.  I've
+talked to her about that mesilf.  Now, Moirton, I'll
+tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the
+Mithodists.  Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a
+body, you needn't be afeard of.  But those that git it
+bad, and are throublesome, and middlesome, and
+aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out praychers.  The lad
+that'll tackle his masther and his mother at breakfast
+the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's
+yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed,
+two to one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the
+faild to be a praycher of the worst sort; one of the
+kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other
+people alone?  That meddling is just what I don't
+like," growled Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel
+thought about ould Elijy!  We don't any of us loike to
+have our wickedness or laziness middled with.  'Twas
+middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to; and if
+the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he
+wouldn't niver a been crucified."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said
+Mr. Job Goodwin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin.  I'm rale lazy.
+This lookin' at the state of me moind's insoides, and
+this chasin' afther me sins up hill and down dale all
+the toime, would niver agray with me frail constitootion.
+This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery
+wake in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin',
+aren't for sich oidlers as me.  I'm too good-natered to
+trate mesilf that way, sure.  Didn't you iver notice
+that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a rale
+good-nater'd man?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe
+in front of the fire, and found it well browned.
+Supper was ready, and the conversation drifted to
+Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden
+to cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers."  Morton's
+father shook his head ominously.  Didn't believe the
+Captain was in 'arnest.  Ef he was, Mort mout git the
+fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up.  'Twouldn't
+do to depend on no sech promises, no way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton
+did hold to the Captain's promise, and to the hope
+of Patty.  To the Captain's plans for mobbing Wheeler
+he offered a strong resistance.  But he was ready
+enough to engage in making sport of the despised
+religionists, and even organized a party to interrupt
+Magruder with tin horns when he should preach
+again.  But all this time Morton was uneasy in
+himself.  What had become of his dreams of being a
+hero?  Here was Kike bearing all manner of persecution
+with patience, devoting himself to the welfare of
+others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly
+living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse
+circumstances.  One of Morton's temperament must
+either grow better or worse, and, chafing under these
+embarassments, he played and drank more freely than
+ever.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap13"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+TWO TO ONE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Magruder had been so pleased with his success
+in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement
+that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday
+sermon on his next round.  He was accustomed to
+preach twice every week-day and three times on every
+Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider
+of his time.  And since he expected to leave
+Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for
+his next appointment, he determined to reach the
+settlement before breakfast that he might have time to
+confirm the brethren and set things in order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon
+drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of
+Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt
+the preacher with a serenade.  But Lumsden had
+other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should
+rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in
+reading, meditation and prayer.  Five o'clock found
+Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,
+reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach.
+When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping
+himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came
+suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the
+Hissawachee valley.  The gray dawn was streaking
+the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked
+forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features
+in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field
+before the engagement begins.  Then he dismounted,
+and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic
+fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the
+devil."  When at last he got into the saddle again
+the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams
+into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze.
+Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe
+to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the
+hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's
+hymn, which might have been composed in the
+presence of such a scene:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "O sun of righteousness, arise<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With healing in thy wing;<br>
+  To my diseased, my fainting soul,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Life and salvation bring.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "These clouds of pride and sin dispel,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;By thy all-piercing beam;<br>
+  Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With holy hopes inflame."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+By the time he had finished the second stanza, the
+bridle-path that he was following brought him into a
+dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking
+toward him two stout men, none other than our old
+acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's
+horse by the bridle: "you git down!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What for?" said Magruder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go
+back and never stick your head into the Hissawachee
+Bottom agin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I won't promise."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are two to one.  Will you give me time to
+draw my coat?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-118"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-118.jpg" alt="TWO TO ONE.">
+<br>
+TWO TO ONE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation,
+tied his bridle to a beech limb, offering a mental
+prayer to the God of Samson, and then laid his coat
+across the saddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you.
+I advise you now to let me alone.  As an American
+citizen, I have a right to go where I please.  My
+father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to
+fight for my rights."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and
+approaching the preacher from one side, while Bill came
+up on the other.  Magruder was one of those short,
+stocky men who have no end of muscular force and
+endurance.  In his unregenerate days he had been
+celebrated for his victories in several rude encounters.
+Never seeking a fight even then, he had, nevertheless,
+when any ambitious champion came from afar for the
+purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to
+"give him what he came after."  He had now greatly
+the advantage of the two bullies in his knowledge of
+the art of boxing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary
+swearing the preacher had surprised him by delivering
+a blow that knocked him down.  But Bill had taken
+advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the
+cheek.  Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's
+fist, was a little slow in coming to time, and the
+preacher had a chance to give Bill a most polemical
+blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he rushed
+like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one
+tremendous blow that fractured two of his ribs and felled
+him to the earth.  But Bill struck Magruder behind,
+knocked him over, and threw himself upon him after
+the fashion of the Western free fight.  Nothing saved
+Magruder but his immense strength.  He rose right up
+with Bill upon him, and then, by a deft use of his
+legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled him to the
+ground.  He did not dare take advantage of his fall,
+however, for Jake had regained his feet and was
+coming up on him cautiously.  But when Sniger saw
+Magruder rushing at him again, he made a speedy retreat
+into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it out with
+Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again
+ready.  But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating
+slowly backward and calling out, "Come up on him
+behind, Jake!  Come up behind!"  But the demoralized
+Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the
+preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having
+as many arms as a Hindoo deity.  Bill kept backing
+until he tripped and fell over a bit of brush, and then
+picked himself up and made off, muttering:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone!  He
+must have the very devil into him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning,
+the Irish school-master, who was now boarding at
+Goodwin's, and who had just made an early visit to the
+Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An' did ye
+hear the nooze, Moirton?  Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger
+hev had a bit of Sunday morning ricreation.  They
+throid to thrash the praycher as he was a-comin'
+through North's Holler, this mornin'; but they didn't
+make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's
+got in him.  He larruped 'em both single-handed,
+and Jake's ribs are cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's
+nose!  Captain must 'a' had some proivate intherest
+in that muss; hey, Moirton?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men
+on one, and him a preacher; and all I've got to say
+is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain?
+Hey, Moirton?  But fwat did I tell ye about Koike?
+The praycher's jaw is lamed by a lick Bill gave him,
+and Koike's to exhort in his place.  I tould ye he
+had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The manliness in a character like Morton's must
+react, if depressed too far; and he now notified those
+who were to help him interrupt the meeting that if
+any disturbance were made, he should take it on himself
+to punish the offender.  He would not fight alongside
+Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like
+seeking a quarrel with Lumsden, for the sake of
+justitifying himself to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap14"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XIV.</i>
+<br><br>
+KIKE'S SERMON.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+During the time that had intervened between
+Kike's conversion and Magruder's second visit
+to the settlement, Kike had developed a very
+considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings.
+In that day every influence in Methodist association
+contributed to make a preacher of a man of force.
+The reverence with which a self-denying preacher was
+regarded by the people was a great compensation for
+the poverty and toil that pertained to the office.  To
+be a preacher was to be canonized during one's
+lifetime.  The moment a young man showed zeal and
+fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and
+sisters as one whose duty it was to preach the
+Gospel; he was asked whether he did not feel that he
+had a divine call; he was set upon watching the
+movements within him to see whether or not he
+ought to be among the sons of the prophets.  Oftentimes
+a man was made to feel, in spite of his own
+better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah,
+slinking from duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in
+the shape of some providential disaster.  Kike, indeed,
+needed none of these urgings to impel him toward
+the ministry.  He was a man of the prophetic
+temperament&mdash;one of those men whose beliefs take hold
+of them more strongly than the objects of sense.  The
+future life, as preached by the early Methodists, with
+all its joys and all its awful torments, became the
+most substantial of realities to him.  He was in
+constant astonishment that people could believe these
+things theoretically and ignore them in practice.  If
+men were going headlong to perdition, and could be
+saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by
+preaching, then what nobler work could there be than
+that of saving them?  And, let a man take what view
+he may of a future life, Kike's opinion was the right
+one&mdash;no work can be so excellent as that of helping
+men to better living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist
+biography which he had borrowed, and the sublimated
+life of Fletcher was the only one that fulfilled
+his ideal.  Methodism preached consecration to its
+disciples.  Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler,
+who was the class-leader at Hissawachee settlement,
+and from Methodist literature, that he must "keep all
+on the altar."  He must be ready to do, to suffer, or
+to perish, for the Master.  The sternest sayings of
+Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating
+one's own life and kindred, he heard often repeated in
+exhortations.  Most people are not harmed by a literal
+understanding of hyperbolical expressions.  Laziness
+and selfishness are great antidotes to fanaticism, and
+often pass current for common sense.  Kike had no
+such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel
+with the dry literalness of statutory enactments, he was
+too honest to evade their force, too earnest to slacken
+his obedience.  He was already prepared to accept
+any burden and endure any trial that might be given
+as a test of discipleship.  All his natural ambition,
+vehemence, and persistence, found exercise in his
+religious life; and the simple-hearted brethren, not
+knowing that the one sort of intensity was but the
+counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation as a
+"beautiful conversion," a standing miracle.  So it was,
+indeed, and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in
+the direction of individuality, not in opposition to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a grievous disappointment to the little band
+of Methodists that Brother Magruder's face was so
+swollen, after his encounter, as to prevent his preaching.
+They had counted much upon the success of this
+day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch
+the victory.  Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended
+Kike as a substitute, and Magruder sent for him
+in haste.  Kike was gratified to hear that the preacher
+wanted to see him personally.  His sallow face flushed
+with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before
+the messenger of God.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you
+ready to do and to suffer for Christ?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the
+preacher could mean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the
+Lord's work to-day.  My lip is swelled, and my jaw
+so stiff that I can hardly speak.  Are you ready to do
+the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike trembled from head to foot.  He had often
+fancied himself preaching his first sermon in a strange
+neighborhood, and he had even picked out his text;
+but to stand up suddenly before his school-mates,
+before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,
+before Morton, was terrible.  And yet, had he not that
+very morning made a solemn vow that he would not
+shrink from death itself!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three
+hundred people hungry for the bread of life.  The
+Master has fed you; he offers you the bread to
+distribute among your friends and neighbors.  Now, will
+you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed
+Lord who has taken you out of a horrible pit and set
+your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will
+do whatever you say, if you will pray for me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do that, my brother.  And now take your
+Bible, and go into the woods and pray.  The Lord will
+show you the way, if you put your whole trust in
+him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave
+Kike his subject, and he soon gathered a few thoughts
+which he wrote down on a fly-leaf of the Bible, in the
+shape of a skeleton.  But it occurred to him that he
+had not one word to say on the subject of the bread
+of life beyond the sentences of his skeleton.  The
+more this became evident to him, the greater was his
+agony of fear.  He knelt on the brown leaves by a
+prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself;
+he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own
+feelings were involved; he reminded the Lord of his
+promises to be with them he had sent; and then there
+came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For it
+shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall
+speak."  Taking it, after the manner of the early
+Methodist mysticism, that the text had been supernaturally
+"suggested" to him, he became calm; and finding,
+from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour
+for meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel
+Wheeler, and was appalled at the sight that met his
+eyes.  All the settlement, and many from other
+settlements, had come.  The house, the yard, the fences,
+were full of people.  Kike was seized with a tremor.
+He did not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a
+throng.  He made a detour, and crept in at the back
+door like a criminal.  For stage-fright&mdash;this fear of
+human presence&mdash;is not a thing to be overcome by the
+will.  Susceptible natures are always liable to it, and
+neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A chair had been placed in the front door of the
+log house, for Kike, that he might preach to the
+congregation indoors and the much larger one outdoors.
+Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden
+bench just outside.  Kike crept into the empty chair
+in the doorway with the feeling of one who intrudes
+where he does not belong.  The brethren were singing,
+as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn tune of
+"Kentucky," the hymn which begins:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "A charge to keep I have,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A God to glorify;<br>
+  A never-dying soul to save<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And fit it for the sky."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to
+him, said: "If you get confused, tell your own
+experience."  The early preacher's universal refuge was his
+own experience.  It was a sure key to the sympathies
+of the audience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike got through the opening exercises very well.
+He could pray, for in praying he shut his eyes and
+uttered the cry of his trembling soul for help.  He
+had been beating about among two or three texts,
+either of which would do for a head-piece to the
+remarks he intended to make; but now one fixed itself
+in his mind as he stood appalled by his situation in
+the presence of such a throng.  He rose and read,
+with a tremulous voice:
+</p>
+
+<p style="font-size: 85%">
+<br>
+"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two
+small fishes; but what are they among so many?"
+<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The text arrested the attention of all.  Magruder,
+though unable to speak without pain, could not refrain
+from saying aloud, after the free old Methodist fashion:
+"The Lord multiply the loaves!  Bless and break
+to the multitude!"  "Amen!" responded an old brother
+from another settlement, "and the Lord help the
+lad!"  But Kike felt that the advantage which the text
+had given him would be of short duration.  The novelty
+of his position bewildered him.  His face flushed;
+his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on
+the audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the
+few friends in the house: the old brethren leaned their
+heads upon their hands and began to pray.  Whatever
+spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,
+their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible
+prayers of "Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably,
+and kept the precipice on which he stood
+constantly present to him.  He tried in succession each
+division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the
+Bible, and found little to say on any of them.  At last,
+he could not see the audience distinctly for
+confusion&mdash;there was a dim vision of heads swimming before
+him.  He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him
+to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should
+kill him.  The Philistines meanwhile were laughing at
+Kike's evident discomfiture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Kike had no notion of sitting down.  The
+laughter awakened his combativeness, and his combativeness
+restored his self-control.  Persistent people
+begin their success where others end in failure.  He was
+through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six
+minutes.  The lad's scanty provisions had not been
+multiplied.  But he felt relieved.  The sermon over,
+there was no longer necessity for trying to speak
+against time, nor for observing the outward manner of
+a preacher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that
+I cannot preach worth a cent.  When David went out
+to fight, he had the good sense not to put on Saul's
+armor.  I was fool enough to try to wear Brother
+Magruder's.  Now, I'm done with that.  The text and
+sermon are gone.  But I'm not ashamed of Jesus
+Christ.  And before I sit down, I am going to tell
+you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like
+me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike told the story with sincere directness.  His
+recital of his own sins was a rebuke to others; with a
+trembling voice and a simple earnestness absolutely
+electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and of the
+effect of Magruder's preaching on him.  And now that
+the flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation
+departed, and there came instead the fine glow of
+martial courage.  He could have faced the universe.
+From his own life the transition to the lives of those
+around him was easy.  He hit right and left.  The
+excitable crowd swayed with consternation as, in a
+rapid and vehement utterance, he denounced their sins
+with the particularity of one who had been familiar
+with them all his life.  Magruder forgot to respond;
+he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with
+open eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious
+excitement was fast setting the whole audience
+ablaze.  Slowly the people pressed forward off the
+fences.  All at once there was a loud bellowing cry
+from some one who had fallen prostrate outside the
+fence, and who began to cry aloud as if the portals
+of an endless perdition were yawning in his face.
+Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the
+fallen man was his antagonist of the morning&mdash;Bill
+McConkey!  Bill had concealed his bruised nose behind
+a tree, but had been drawn forth by the fascination of
+Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the effect
+of his own terror.  This outburst of agony from
+McConkey was fuel to the flames, and the excitement now
+spread to all parts of the audience.  Kike went from
+man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each one in
+particular.  Brady, not wishing to hear a public
+commentary on his own life, waddled away when he saw
+Kike coming; his mother wept bitterly under his
+exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the fence
+listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's
+public recital of his sins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain
+Lumsden had come on purpose to enjoy Morton's
+proposed interruption.  He listened a minute to Kike's
+exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at
+the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's
+impudence contended within him until he started for
+his horse and was seized with that curious nervous
+affection which originated in these religious
+excitements and disappeared with them.*  He jerked
+violently&mdash;his jerking only adding to his excitement, which
+in turn increased the severity of his contortions.  This
+nervous affection was doubtless a natural physical
+result of violent excitement; but the people of that day
+imagined that it was produced by some supernatural
+agency, some attributing it to God, others to the devil,
+and yet others to some subtle charm voluntarily
+exercised by the preachers.  Lumsden went home jerking
+all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly
+than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing
+disease" which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap15"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XV.</i>
+<br><br>
+MORTON'S RETREAT.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which
+Morton had listened to Kike's hot exhortation.  In
+vain he argued with himself that a man need not be
+a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all over
+the country," in order to be good.  He knew that
+Kike's life was better than his own, and that he had
+not force enough to break his habits and associations
+unless he did so by putting himself into direct
+antagonism with them.  He inwardly condemned himself
+for his fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for
+telling him the blunt truth about himself.  But ever
+as there came the impulse to close the conflict and
+be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly
+on the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought
+of Patty, whose aristocratic Virginia pride would
+regard marriage with a Methodist as worse than death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to
+his emotions so far as to compromise himself, he
+rushed out of the crowd, hurried home, took down
+his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out
+of the excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he rode away from home he met Captain
+Lumsden hurrying from the meeting with the jerks,
+and leading his horse&mdash;the contortions of his body
+not allowing him to ride.  With every step he took
+he grew more and more furious.  Seeing Morton, he
+endeavored to vent his passion upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why didn't&mdash;you&mdash;blow&mdash;why didn't&mdash;why didn't
+you blow your tin horns, this&mdash;&mdash;" but at this point
+the jerks became so violent as to throw off his hat
+and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his
+teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home,
+leaving Morton to gauge the degree of the Captain's
+wrath by the involuntary distortion of his visage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither
+he went; endeavoring only to allay the excitement,
+of his conscience, and to imagine some sort of future in
+which he might hope to return and win Patty in spite
+of Lumsden's opposition.  Night found him in front
+of the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of
+Jonesville; and he was rejoiced to find there, on
+some political errand, Mr. Burchard, whom he had
+met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a
+candidate for sheriff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you do, Mr. Morton?  Howdy do?"
+said Burchard, cordially, having only heard Morton's
+first name and mistaking it for his last.  "I'm lucky
+to meet you in this town.  Do you live over this
+way?  I thought you lived in our county and
+'lectioneered you&mdash;expecting to get your vote."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-133"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-133.jpg" alt="GAMBLING.">
+<br>
+GAMBLING.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a
+Sunday evening (or any other) meant a game at cards,
+and as Burchard was the more skillful and just now
+in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents
+of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves
+to Burchard's, the more that Morton in his contending
+with the religious excitement of the morning
+rushed easily into the opposite excitement of gambling.
+The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp
+polarity&mdash;it has sent many a man headlong to the
+devil.  When Morton had frantically bet and lost all
+his money, he proceeded to bet his rifle, then his
+grandfather's watch&mdash;an ancient time-piece, that
+Burchard examined with much curiosity.  Having lost
+this, he staked his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and
+offered to put up his boots, but Burchard refused
+them.  The madness of gambling was on the young
+man, however.  He had no difficulty in persuading
+Burchard to take his mare as security for a hundred
+dollars, which he proceeded to gamble away by the
+easy process of winning once and losing twice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the last dollar was gone, his face was very
+white and calm.  He leaned back in the chair and
+looked at Burchard a moment or two in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose.
+I don't know whether I've got any brains or not.
+But if you'll lend me the rifle you won long enough
+for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out what's
+inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burchard was not without generous traits, and he
+was alarmed.  "Come, Mr. Morton, don't be desperate.
+The luck's against you, but you'll have better
+another time.  Here's your hat and coat, and you're
+welcome.  I've been flat of my back many a time,
+but I've always found a way out.  I'll pay your
+bill here to-morrow morning.  Don't think of doing
+anything desperate.  There's plenty to live for yet.
+You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself,
+maybe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This thrust hurt Morton keenly.  But Burchard
+was determined to divert him from his suicidal impulse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, old fellow, you're excited.  Come out into
+the air.  Now, don't kill yourself.  You looked
+troubled when you got here.  I take it, there's some
+trouble at home.  Now, if there is"&mdash;here Burchard
+hesitated&mdash;"if there is trouble at home, I can put
+you on the track of a band of fellows that have
+been in trouble themselves.  They help one another.
+Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but
+they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like
+you, that's a good shot and not afraid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to
+Morton, so utterly had hope died out of his heart.
+But only for a moment; then his moral sense recoiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody
+else.  I can't take that road, Mr. Burchard."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to
+laugh.  "I knew you wouldn't.  But I wanted to turn
+your thoughts away from bullets and all that.  Now,
+Mr. Morton&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My name's not Morton.  My last name is
+Goodwin&mdash;Morton Goodwin."  This correction was made
+as a man always attends to trifles when he is trying
+to decide a momentous question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at
+him keenly, as the two stood together in the
+moonlight.  Then, after pausing a moment, he added: "I
+had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once.
+Devilish hard case he was, but good-hearted.  Got
+killed in a fight in Pittsburg."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He was my brother," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your brother? thunder!  You don't mean it.
+Let's see; he told me once his father's name was
+Moses&mdash;no; Job.  Yes, that's it&mdash;Job.  Is that your
+father's name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry
+hard.  Didn't kill 'em, did it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Both alive yet?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing
+suicide.  You ought to think a little of your
+mother&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely
+on Burchard; for he suddenly saw a vision of the
+agony his mother must suffer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! don't get mad.  I'm going to let you have
+back your horse and gun, only you must give me a
+bill of sale so that I may be sure you won't gamble
+them away to somebody else.  You must redeem them
+on your honor in six months, with a hundred and
+twenty-five dollars.  I'll do that much for the sake of my
+old friend, Lew Goodwin, who stood by me in many
+a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow after all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard
+left the tavern.  As it was now past midnight, Goodwin
+did not go to bed.  At two o'clock he gave Dolly
+corn, and before daylight he rode out of the village.
+But not toward home.  His gambling and losses
+would be speedily reported at home and to Captain
+Lumsden.  And moreover, Kike would persecute him
+worse than ever.  He rode out of town in the direction
+opposite to that he would have taken in returning
+to Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was
+opposite.  He was trying what so many other men
+have tried in vain to do&mdash;to run away from himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest
+lightning express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a
+disagreeable self behind.  The wise man knows better,
+and turns round and faces it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure
+and circuitous trail of which he knew nothing, drew
+near to a low log-house with deer's horns over the
+door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel
+purposes&mdash;a place where a stranger might get a little
+food, a place to rest on the floor, and plenty of
+whiskey.  There were a dozen horses hitched to trees
+about it, and Goodwin got down and went in from a
+spirit of idle curiosity.  Certainly the place was not
+attractive.  The landlord had a cut-throat way of
+looking closely at a guest from under his eye-brows;
+the guests all wore black beards, and Morton soon
+found reason to suspect that these beards were not
+indigenous.  He was himself the object of much
+disagreeable scrutiny, but he could hardly restrain a
+mischievous smile at thought of the disappointment to
+which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt
+to rob him in his present penniless condition.
+The very worst that could happen would be the loss
+of Dolly and his rifle.  It soon occurred to him that
+this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's
+Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's
+noted band of desperadoes, a place into which few
+honest men ever ventured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the men presently stepped to the window,
+rested his foot upon the low sill, and taking up a
+piece of chalk, drew a line from the toe to the top
+of his boot.*  Several others imitated him; and
+Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure,
+took the chalk and marked his right boot in the same
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is
+yet told in the neighborhood.  It does not seem that chalking
+one's boot is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of
+a secret band, but I do not suppose that men who follow a
+highwayman's life are very wise people.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you drink?" said the man who had first
+chalked his boot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood
+near together, Morton could plainly discover the
+falseness of his companion's beard.  Presently the man
+fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an indifferent
+tone: "Cut or carry?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning
+of the lingo, but finding himself in a predicament
+from which there was no escape but by drifting with
+the current.  A few minutes later a bag, which seemed
+to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into
+his hand, and Morton, not knowing what to do with
+it, thought best to "carry" it off.  He mounted his
+mare and rode away in a direction opposite to that in
+which he had come.  He had not gone more than
+three miles when he met Burchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I came by a short cut."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in
+the night, to avoid observation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello!  Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got
+chalk on your boot!  I hope you haven't joined
+the&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come.  I
+found the greatest set of disguised cut-throats you ever
+saw, at this little hole back here.  You hadn't better
+go there, if you don't want to be relieved of all the
+money you got last night.  I saw them chalking their
+boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would
+come of it.  And here's what come of it;" and with
+that, Morton showed his bag of money.  "Now," he
+said, "if I could find the right owner of this money,
+I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some
+holler, without nary coffin or grave-stone.  I 'low to
+pay you what I owe you, and take the rest out to
+Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use it for a nest-egg.
+'Finders, keepers,' you know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burchard looked at him darkly a moment.  "Look
+here, Morton&mdash;Goodwin, I mean.  You'll lose your
+head, if you fool with chalk that way.  If you don't
+give that money up to the first man that asks for it,
+you are a dead man.  They can't be fooled for long.
+They'll be after you.  There's no way now but to
+hold on to it and give it up to the first man that
+asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky.  I'm
+going down this trail a way.  I want to see old
+Brewer.  He's got a good deal of political influence.
+Good-bye!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a
+place two miles farther on, where another trail joined
+the one he was traveling.  Here there stood a man
+with a huge beard, a blanket over his shoulders, holes
+cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a belt
+with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap.  The
+stranger stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and
+saying nothing.  Morton was only too glad to give up
+the money.  And he set Dolly off at her best pace,
+seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters
+of the cut-or-carry gang.  He could not but wonder
+how Burchard should seem to know them so well.  He
+did not much like the thought that Burchard's forbearance
+had bound him to support that gentleman's
+political aspirations when he had opportunity.  This
+friendly relation with thieves was not what he would
+have liked to see in a favorite candidate, but a cursed
+fatality seemed to be dragging down all his high
+aspirations.  It was like one of those old legends he had
+heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by
+little bargains with the devil, and had presently found
+themselves involved in evil entanglements on every
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap16"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XVI.</i>
+<br><br>
+SHORT SHRIFT.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+But Morton had no time to busy himself now with
+nice scruples.  Bread and meat are considerations
+more imperative to a healthy man than conscience.
+He had no money.  He might turn aside from the
+trail to hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to
+do when he started.  But ever, as he traveled, he had
+become more and more desirous of getting away from
+himself.  He was now full sixty or seventy miles from
+home, but he could not make up his mind to stop and
+devote himself to hunting.  At four o'clock the valley
+of the Mustoga lay before him, and Morton, still
+purposeless, rode on.  And now at last the habitual
+thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon
+him, and he began to be hesitant about going on.
+After all, his flight seemed foolish.  Patty might not
+yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why should he
+yield to it, unless he chose?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and
+crave a night's lodging at the crossing of the river.
+He was the more disposed to this that Dolly, having
+been ridden hard all day without food, showed
+unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing.
+He would give her a night's rest, and then perhaps
+take the road back to the Hissawachee, or go into the
+wilderness and hunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello the house!" he called.  "Hello!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the
+door, and responded with a "Hello!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can I get to stay here all night?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger.  Kinder full
+to-night.  You mout git a place about a mile furder on
+whar you could hang up for the night, mos' likely;
+but I can't keep you, no ways."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep
+anywhere," plead Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed
+if she don't!  Whar did you git her?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Raised her," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whar abouts?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hissawachee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't say!  How far you rid her to-day?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From Jonesville."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads!  Mighty
+purty critter, that air.  Powerful clean legs.  She's
+number one.  Is she your'n, did you say?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, not exactly mine.  That is&mdash;".  Here Morton
+hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up
+here, no ways.  I tuck in one of your sort a month
+ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off in the middle of
+the night.  I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever set
+eyes on him."  And the man had disappeared in the
+house before Morton could reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant;
+to be refused a lodging and to be mistaken for
+a horse-thief filled the cup of Morton's bitterness.  He
+reluctantly turned his horse's head toward the river.
+There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen
+that he must needs swim Dolly across.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately,
+with a feeling that she was the only friend he
+had left.  "Well, Dolly," he said, "it's too bad to make
+you swim, after such a day; but you must.  If we
+drown, we'll drown together."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek
+in a dumb trustfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a road cut through the steep bank on
+the other side, so that travelers might ride down to
+the water's edge.  Knowing that he would have to
+come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the
+water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable
+place.  Then, turning the mare's head upward, he
+started across.  Dolly swam bravely enough until she
+reached the middle of the stream; then, finding her
+strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and
+under the burden of her master, she refused his guidance,
+and turned her head directly toward the road, which
+offered the only place of exit.  The rapid current
+swept horse and rider down the stream; but still Dolly
+fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the
+road.  Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged
+Dolly to greater exertions, and the well-bred creature,
+rousing all the remains of her magnificent force,
+succeeded in reaching the road.  Then the young man
+got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the
+water, wondered why he should have struggled to
+preserve a life that he was not able to regulate, and
+that promised him nothing but misery and embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton
+pushed his tired filley on another mile.  Again he
+hallooed.  This time he was welcomed by an old woman,
+who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the
+mare in the stable.  She didn't ginerally keep no
+travelers, but it was too orful a night fer a livin' human
+bein' to be out in.  Her son Jake would be in
+thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody out
+in sech a night.  'Twuz good ten miles to the next
+house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her,
+and to take his place by the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the son came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton
+suspiciously.  "Is that air your mar in the stable?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether
+he could call Dolly his or not, seeing she had been
+transferred to Burchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whar did you come from?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"From Hissawachee."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whar you makin' fer?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't exactly know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"See here, mister!  Akordin' to my tell, that air's
+a mighty peart sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what
+don' know, to save his gizzard, whar he mout be a
+travelin'.  We don't keep no sich people as them what
+rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of
+theirselves.  Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up
+yer mar and putt.  It mout gin us trouble to keep you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You ain't going to send me out such a night as
+this, when I've rode fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer?
+Yer health, I reckon.  Now, stranger, I've jist got one
+word to say to you, and that is this ere: <i>Putt</i>!  PUTT
+THIRECKLY!  Clar out of these 'ere diggin's!  That's
+all.  Jist putt!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man pronounced the vowel in "put"
+very flat, as it is sounded in the first syllable of
+"putty," and seemed disposed to add a great many words
+to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much
+Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth.
+"Putt out, I say!  I ain't afeard of none of yer gang.
+I hain't got nary 'nother word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word&mdash;<i>I
+won't</i>!  You haven't got any right to turn a stranger
+out on such a night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten
+you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew
+nearer the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strapping young fellow straightened himself up
+and looked at Morton in wonder, more and more
+convinced that nobody but an outlaw would venture on a
+move so bold, and less and less inclined to attempt to
+use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate
+character increased.  Goodwin, for his part, was not a little
+amused; the old mischievous love of fun reasserted
+itself in him as he saw the decline of the young man's
+courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band,
+why don't you be careful how you treat me?  The
+band might give you trouble.  Let's have something
+to eat.  I haven't had anything since last night; I am
+starving."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'.
+He's tuck the house and we can't help ourselves."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours,
+and in his amusement at the success of his ruse and
+in the comfortable enjoyment of food after his long
+fast his good spirits returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed
+in the loft, he became aware that there were a
+number of men in the room below, and he could gather
+that they were talking about him.  He dressed quickly
+and came down-stairs.  The first thing he noticed was
+that the settler who had refused him lodging the night
+before was the centre of the group, the next that they
+had taken possession of his rifle.  This settler had
+roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the
+creek in a flat-boat some miles below and come up
+the stream determined to capture this young horse-thief.
+It is a singular tribute to the value of the
+horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples
+horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious
+than homicide.  In such a community to steal a man's
+horse is the grandest of larcenies&mdash;it is to rob him of
+the stepping-stone to civilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For such philosophical reflections as this last, however,
+Morton had no time.  He was in the hands of
+an indignant crowd, some of whom had lost horses
+and other property from the depredations of the
+famous band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were
+bent on exacting the forfeit from this indifferently
+dressed young man who rode a horse altogether too
+good for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton was conducted three miles down the river
+to a log tavern, that being a public and appropriate
+place for the rendering of the decisions of Judge
+Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient
+refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might
+become exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf
+of public justice.  There was no formal trial.  The
+evidence was given in in a disjointed and spontaneous
+fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd,
+and what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting"
+was gathered from the general outcry.  Educated in
+Indian wars and having been left at first without any
+courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come to
+believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with
+the enemies of peace and order much superior to the
+prolix method of the lawyers and judges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer
+than that he was one of the gang.  The settler who
+had refused him a lodging first spoke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that
+that feller didn't own the hoss.  He looked kinder
+sheepish.  Well, I poked a few questions at him and
+I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions in
+this neck of timber.  I axed him whar he come from,
+and he let it out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles.
+And I kinder blazed away at praisin' his hoss tell I
+got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst to him,
+I treed him suddently.  I jest axed him ef the hoss
+was his'n and he hemmed and hawed and says, says
+he: 'Well, not exactly mine.'  Then I tole him to putt
+out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?"
+put in the youth whose unwilling hospitality Morton
+had enjoyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's
+sartain shore.  He tole me she wuz.  And when I axed
+him whar he was agoin', he tole me he didn' know.  I
+suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out; and
+he wouldn'.  Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun
+and blow his brains out; but marm got skeered and
+didn' want me to, and I 'lowed it was better to let
+him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe come
+over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come
+along and inquire arter that air mar.  Then he ups
+and says ef the ole woman don' give him sompin' to
+eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band.  He
+said as how he was a member of that gang.  An' he
+said he hadn't had nothin' to eat sence the night
+before, havin' rid fer twenty-four hours."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't say&mdash;&mdash;" began Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done.  Haint you
+got no manners?  I tole him as how I didn't keer
+three continental derns* fer his whole band weth
+Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole
+woman wuz kinder sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a
+rale hoss-thief and she gin him a little sompin' to eat.
+And he did gobble it, I tell <i>you</i>!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness
+of the paper money issued by the Continental Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Young rawbones had repeated this statement a
+dozen times already since leaving home with the
+prisoner.  But he liked to tell it.  Morton made the
+best defense he could, and asked them to send to
+Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that
+this was only a ruse to gain time, and that if they
+delayed his execution long, Micajah Harp and his
+whole band would be upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging.
+The cry of "Come on, boys, let's string him
+up," was raised several times, and "rushes" at him
+were attempted, but these rushes never went further
+than the incipient stage, for the very good reason
+that while many were anxious to have him hung,
+none were quite ready to adjust the rope.  The law
+threatened them on one side, and a dread of the
+vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them
+on the other.  The predicament in which the crowd
+found themselves was a very embarrassing one, but
+these administrators of impromptu justice consoled
+themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till
+night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the rawboned young man, who had given
+such eager testimony that he "warn't afeard of the
+whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the top,"
+concluded about noon that he had better go home&mdash;the
+ole woman mout git skeered, you know.  She wuz
+powerful skeery and mout git fits liker'n not, you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The weary hours of suspense drew on.  However
+ready Morton may have been to commit suicide in a
+moment of rash despair, life looked very attractive to
+him now that its duration was measured by the
+descending sun.  And what a quickener of conscience is
+the prospect of immediate death!  In these hours the
+voice of Kike, reproving him for his reckless living,
+rang in his memory ceaselessly.  He saw what a
+distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a
+chance to try it over again.  But unless help should
+come from some unexpected quarter, he saw that his
+probation was ended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is barely possible that the crowd might have
+become so demoralized by waiting as to have let Morton
+go, or at least to have handed him over to the
+authorities, had there not come along at that moment
+Mr. Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist
+preacher of whom Morton had made so much sport
+in Wilkins's Settlement.  Having to preach at
+fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat
+itinerant, and was now hastening to a preaching place
+near by.  One of the crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen,
+suggested that Morton had orter be allowed to see a
+preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died.  Some of
+the others disagreed.  They warn't nothin' in the nex'
+world too bad fer a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes.
+They warn't a stringin' men up to send 'em to heaven,
+but to t' other place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mellen was called in, however, and at once
+recognized Morton as the ungodly young man who had
+insulted him and disturbed the worship of God.  He
+exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the
+owner of the horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready
+to forgive even the dying thief upon the cross.  In
+vain Morton protested his innocence.  Mellen told him
+that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd
+to hand him over to the sheriff.  But Mellen's
+additional testimony to Morton's bad character had
+destroyed his last chance of being given up to the
+courts.  As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the
+arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take
+definite shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in
+full sight of the condemned man.  Mr. Mellen used
+with telling effect, at every one of the fifty-eight places
+upon his next round, the story of the sad end of this
+hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and
+ended as an impenitent thief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun
+descending toward the horizon.  He heard the rude
+voices of the mob about him.  But he thought of Patty
+and his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the mob was thus waiting for night, and
+Morton waiting for death, there passed upon the road
+an elderly man.  He was just going out of sight, when
+Morton roused himself enough to observe him.  When
+he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the
+notion that it must be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian
+preacher, whose sermons he had so often heard
+at the Scotch Settlement.  Could it be that thoughts
+of home and mother had suggested Donaldson?  At
+least, the faintest hope was worth clutching at in a
+time of despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Call him back!" cried Morton.  "Won't
+somebody call that old man back?  He knows me."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-152"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-152.jpg" alt="A LAST HOPE.">
+<br>
+A LAST HOPE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit.  The
+leaders looked knowingly the one at the other, and
+shrugged their shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you don't call him back you will be a set of
+murderers!" cried the despairing Goodwin.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap17"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XVII.</i>
+<br><br>
+DELIVERANCE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Parson Donaldson was journeying down to
+Cincinnati&mdash;at that time a thriving village of
+about two thousand people&mdash;to attend Presbytery
+and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of
+some of his brethren in the matters of doctrine and
+revivals.  In previous years Mr. Donaldson had been
+beaten a little in his endeavors to have carried through
+the extremest measures against his more progressive
+"new-side" brethren.  He considered the doctrines of
+these zealous Presbyterians as very little better than
+the crazy ranting of the ungrammatical circuit riders.
+At the moment of passing the tavern where Morton
+sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in
+"laying out" a speech with which he intended to
+rout false doctrines and annihilate forever incipient
+fanaticism.  His square head had fallen forward, and
+he only observed that there was a crowd of
+godless and noisy men about the tavern.  He could
+not spare time to note anything farther, for the fate
+of Zion seemed to hang upon the weight and cogency
+of the speech which he meant to deliver at Cincinnati.
+He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first
+caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding
+that no one would go after him, set up a vigorous
+calling of his name, Mr. Donaldson did not hear it,
+or at least did not think for an instant that anybody
+in that crowd could be calling his own name.  How
+should he hear Morton's cry?  For just at that
+moment he had reached the portion of his argument
+in which he triumphantly proved that his new-side
+friends, however unconscious they might be of the
+fact, were of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of
+fatal error.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of
+the crowd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him.
+'Pears like as ef he's a-lyin' any how.  I don't 'low
+as he knows the ole coon, or the ole coon knows
+him&mdash;liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't won't
+do no harm to call him back."  Saying which, he
+mounted his gaunt horse and rode away after
+Mr. Donaldson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hello, stranger!  I say, there!  Mister!  O, mister!
+Hello, you ole man on horseback!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the polite manner of address with which
+the messenger interrupted the theological meditations
+of the worthy Mr. Donaldson at the moment of his
+most triumphant anticipations of victory over his
+opponents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning
+round on the messenger a little tartly; much as one
+would who is suddenly awakened and not at all pleased
+to be awakened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a
+hoss-thief, and we had three-quarters of a notion of
+stringin' on him up; but he says as how as he knows
+you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll
+do it, for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's
+sartain shore."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the
+parson, not yet fairly awake to the situation.  "Indeed?
+I'm in a great hurry.  What does he want?  Wants
+me to pray with him, I suppose.  Well, it is never
+too late.  God's election is of grace, and often he
+seems to select the greatest sinners that he may
+thereby magnify his grace and get to himself a great name.
+I'll go and see him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern,
+endeavoring to turn his thoughts out of the polemical
+groove in which they had been running all day, that
+he might think of some fitting words to say to a
+malefactor.  But when he stood before the young man
+he started with surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!  Morton Goodwin!  Have you taken to
+stealing horses?  I should have thought that the
+unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut short in
+God's righteousness, would have been a warning to
+you.  My dear young man, how could you bring such
+disgrace and shame on the gray hairs&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a
+murmur of excitement went through the crowd.  They
+believed that the prisoner's own witness had turned
+against him and that they had a second quasi sanction
+from the clergy for the deed of violence they were
+meditating.  Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the
+minister with some impatience, crying out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged
+me too quick.  These folks are going to hang me
+without any evidence at all, except that I was riding
+a good horse.  Now, I want you to tell them whose
+filley yon is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared
+to the crowd that he had seen this young man riding
+that colt for more than a year past, and that if they
+were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing
+that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had,
+and whar he was a-goin'?" said the man from the
+other side of the river.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know.  How did you come here, Morton?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'll tell you a straight story.  I was
+gambling on Sunday night&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in
+the minister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I
+had&mdash;horse and gun and all&mdash;I seemed clean crazy.  I
+lost a hundred dollars more'n I had, and I give the
+man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and
+gun.  Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased
+and keep 'em for six months and I was ashamed
+to go home; so I rode off, like a fool, hoping to find
+some place where I could make the money to redeem
+my colt with.  That's how I didn't give straight
+answers about whose horse it was, and where I was
+going."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll
+have to let the young man go.  You ought to be
+thankful that God in his good providence has saved
+you from the guilt of those who shed innocent blood.
+He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and
+often attends church with his mother.  I am sorry he
+has got into bad habits."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said
+one of the party; and as the rest offered no objection,
+he cut the cords that bound Morton's arms and let
+him go.  The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed her,
+hoping that some accident would leave her in his
+hands; the man from the other side of the creek had
+taken possession of the rifle as "his sheer, considerin'
+the trouble he'd tuck."  The horse and gun were now
+reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to
+disperse, each one having suddenly remembered some
+duty that demanded immediate attention.  In a little
+while Morton sat on his horse listening to some very
+earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of
+gambling and Sabbath-breaking.  But Mr. Donaldson,
+having heard of the Methodistic excitement in the
+Hissawachee settlement, slipped easily to that, and
+urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do
+with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night
+and withered in a day.  In fact the old man delivered
+to Morton most of the speech he had prepared for
+the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.
+Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise
+that he would go directly home, and, with a few
+seasonable words on God's mercy in rescuing him from
+a miserable death, he parted from the young man.
+Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well
+with his speech.  After all, was it not better, perhaps,
+that this young man should be drawn into the whirlpool
+of a Methodist excitement than that he should
+become a gambler?  After thinking over it a while,
+however, the logical intellect of the preacher luckily
+enabled him to escape this dangerous quicksand, in
+reaching the sound conclusion that a religious
+excitement could only result in spiritual pride and
+Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these
+would be lost as certainly as a gambler or a thief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present
+day should be a little too severe on our good friend
+Mr. Donaldson, I must express my sympathy for the
+worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward the
+scene of conflict.  Dear, genteel, and cultivated
+Methodist reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of
+Methodism, though you have so far departed from the
+standard of the fathers as to wear gold and costly
+apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not too
+hard upon our good friend Donaldson.  Had you,
+fastidious Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs,
+and refined preachers, as you sit in your cushioned
+pew&mdash;had you lived in Ohio sixty years ago, would you
+have belonged to the Methodists, think you?  Not at
+all! your nerves would have been racked by their
+shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by
+their ditties, your grammatical knowledge shocked
+beyond recovery by their English; you could never have
+worshiped in an excitement that prostrated people in
+religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and
+obstinate sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks.
+It is easy to build the tombs of the prophets while
+you reap the harvest they sowed, and after they have
+been already canonized.  It is easy to build the tombs
+of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets
+of our own time, maybe.  Permit me, Methodist brother,
+to believe that had you lived in the days of Parson
+Donaldson, you would have condemned these rude
+Tishbites as sharply as he did.  But you would have
+been wrong, as he was.  For without them there must
+have been barbarism, worse than that of Arkansas and
+Texas.  Methodism was to the West all that Puritanism
+was to New England.  Both of them are sublime
+when considered historically; neither of them were very
+agreeable to live with, maybe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, alas!  I am growing as theological as
+Mr. Donaldson himself.  Meantime Morton has forded the
+creek at a point more favorable than his crossing of
+the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and
+ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and
+approaches his home, do the embarrassments of his
+situation become more appalling.  If he could only be
+sure of himself in the future, there would be hope.
+But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action
+possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a
+"trace" that led him toward home by a much nearer
+way than he had come.  After riding twenty miles, he
+emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just as
+the sun was sitting.  It happened that the house where
+he found a hospitable supper and lodging was already
+set apart for Methodist preaching that evening.  After
+supper the shuck-bottom chairs and rude benches
+were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate
+space was left to be filled by seats which should be
+brought in by friendly neighbors.  Morton gathered
+from the conversation that the preacher was none other
+than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was held in
+such esteem that it was even believed that he had a
+prophetic inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing.
+This "class" had been founded by his preaching, in
+the days of his vigor.  He had long since given up
+"traveling," on account of his health.  He was now a
+teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most
+scholarly of the Western itinerants.  He had set out on a
+journey among the churches with whom he had labored,
+seeking to strengthen the hands of the brethren,
+who were like a few sheep in the wilderness.  The
+old Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome
+the final visit of Paul the Aged than did the backwoods
+churches this farewell tour of Valentine Cook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a
+Methodist meeting, Morton felt no little agitation.
+His mother had heard Cook in his younger days, in
+Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame
+as a man and as a preacher.  Morton was not only
+curious to hear him; he entertained a faint hope that
+the great preacher might lead him out of his
+embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees
+trying to collect his thoughts; determined at one
+moment to become a Methodist and end his struggles,
+seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance
+against the sermon that he must hear.  Having walked
+some distance from the house into the bushes, he
+came suddenly upon the preacher himself, kneeling in
+earnest audible prayer.  So rapt was the old man in
+his devotion that he did not note the approach of
+Goodwin, until the latter, awed at sight of a man
+talking face to face with God, stopped, trembling,
+where he stood.  Cook then saw him, and, arising,
+reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a
+voice tremulous with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto
+death, and I will give thee a crown of life."  Morton
+endeavored, in a few stammering words, to explain
+his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed
+almost at once to have forgotten his presence, for
+he had taken his seat upon a log and appeared
+absorbed in thought.  Morton retreated just in time
+to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full.  The
+members of the church, men and women, as they
+entered, knelt in silent prayer before taking their seats.
+Hardly silent either, for the old Methodist could do
+nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in
+what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth,
+continually in audible ejaculations of "Ah&mdash;ah!"  "O
+my Lord, help!"  "Hah!" and other groaning expressions
+of his inward wrestling&mdash;groanings easily uttered,
+but entirely without a possible orthography.  With
+most, this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and
+unreserved nature; in later times the ostentatious and
+hypocritical did not fail to cultivate it as an evidence
+of superior piety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now the room is full.  People are crowding
+the doorways.  The good old-class leader has shut his
+eyes and turned his face heavenward.  Presently he
+strikes up lustily, leading the congregation in singing:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "How tedious and tasteless the hours<br>
+  When Jesus no longer I see!"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+When he reached the stanza that declares:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "While blest with a sense of his love<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A palace a toy would appear;<br>
+  And prisons would palaces prove,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If Jesus would dwell with me there."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!"
+and so forth.  At the last quatrain, which runs,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thy soul-cheering presence restore;<br>
+  Or take me to thee up on high,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Where winter and clouds are no more!"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must
+have been spoken in a poetic sense.  I cannot believe
+that any of the excellent brethren, even in that
+moment of exaltation, would really have desired
+translation to the world beyond the clouds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his
+congregation&mdash;a very common bit of absent-mindedness
+with Valentine Cook; and so, when this hymn
+was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated
+soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian
+Philosopher," that inspiring song which begins:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Come on, my partners in distress,<br>
+  My comrades in this wilderness,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who still your bodies feel;<br>
+  Awhile forget your griefs and tears,<br>
+  Look forward through this vale of tears<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To that celestial hill."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed
+the preacher, having suddenly come to himself,
+entered hurriedly, and pushed forward to the place
+arranged for him.  The festoons of dried pumpkin
+hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head;
+a tallow dip, sitting in the window, shed a feeble
+light upon his face as he stood there, tall, gaunt,
+awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,
+hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse
+black hair resisting yet the approach of age, and a
+<i>tout ensemble</i> unpromising, but peculiar.  He began
+immediately to repeat his hymn:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "I saw one hanging on a tree<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In agony and blood;<br>
+  He fixed his languid eye on me,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As near the cross I stood."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have
+a fascination, and the pathos of his voice, quivering
+with suppressed emotion, was indescribable.  Before
+his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic Morton felt
+that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He repeated his text: "<i>Behold, the day cometh</i>," and
+launched at once into a strongly impressive introduction
+about the all-pervading presence of God, until the
+whole house seemed full of God, and Morton found
+himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's
+presence and ineffable holiness.  Then he took up that
+never-failing theme of the pioneer preacher&mdash;the
+sinfulness of sin&mdash;and there were suppressed cries of
+anguish over the whole house.  Morton could hardly
+feel more contempt for himself than he had felt for
+two days past; but when the preacher advanced to
+his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness of
+Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood.
+In that hour, with God around, above, beneath, without
+and within&mdash;with a feeling that since his escape he
+held his life by a sort of reprieve&mdash;with the inspiring
+and persuasive accents of this weird prophet ringing
+in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all
+ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological
+puzzles, and set himself to a self-denying life.  With one
+final battle he closed his conflict about Patty.  He
+would do right at all hazards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton never had other conversion than this.  He
+could not tell of such a struggle as Kike's.  All he
+knew was that there had been conflict.  When once
+he decided, there was harmony and peace.  When
+Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting
+the whole house ablaze with feeling, and then
+proceeded to "open the doors of the church" by singing,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Am I a soldier of the Cross,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A follower of the Lamb,<br>
+  And shall I fear to own his cause,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or blush to speak his name?"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+it was with a sort of military exaltation&mdash;a defiance
+of the world, the flesh, and the devil&mdash;that Morton
+went forward and took the hand of the preacher, as
+a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among those
+who meant to
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "&mdash;&mdash;conquer though they die."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+He was accustomed to say in after years, using
+the Methodist phraseology, that "God spoke peace
+to his soul the moment he made up his mind to give
+up all."  That God does speak to the heart of man
+in its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works
+with, and not against, the laws of mind.  When Morton
+ceased to contend with his highest impulses there
+was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and
+objective a temperament to have subjective fights with
+fanciful Apollyons.  When peace came he accepted it.
+One of the old brethren who crowded round him that
+night and questioned him about his experience was
+"afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion.  They wuzn't
+wras'lin' and strugglin' enough."  But the wise
+Valentine Cook said, when he took Morton's hand to say
+good-bye, and looked into his clear blue eye, "Hold
+fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap18"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XVIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+At last the knight was in the saddle.  Much as
+Morton grieved when he thought of Patty, he
+rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral purpose.
+Vacillation was over.  He was ready to fight, to
+sacrifice, to die, for a good cause.  It had been the
+dream of his boyhood; it had been the longing of
+his youth, marred and disfigured by irregularities as
+his youth had been.  In the early twilight of the
+winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle
+field, and, as was his wont in moments of cheerfulness,
+he sang.  But not now the "Highland Mary," or
+"Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of
+Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night
+before, some stanzas of which had strongly impressed
+him and accorded exactly with his new mood, and
+his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,
+perhaps, from his religious life:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "In hope of that immortal crown<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I now the Cross sustain,<br>
+  And gladly wander up and down,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And smile at toil and pain;<br>
+  I suffer on my threescore years,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Till my Deliv'rer come<br>
+  And wipe away his servant's tears,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And take his exile home.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  * * * * * * * *<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "O, what are all my sufferings here<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If, Lord, thou count me meet<br>
+  With that enraptured host to appear<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And worship at thy feet!<br>
+  Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Take life or friends away,<br>
+  But let me find them all again<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In that eternal day."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had
+ceased to sing.  He was painfully endeavoring to
+imagine how he would be received at home and at
+Captain Lumsden's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter
+twilight, trying to keep her heart from fainting
+entirely.  The story of Morton's losses at cards had
+quickly reached the settlement&mdash;with the easy addition
+that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor,
+and had carried off the horse and gun which
+another had won from him in gambling.  This last,
+the mother steadily refused to believe.  It could not
+be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses
+of his youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal
+brother, Lewis.  For Morton was such a boy as Lewis
+had never been, and the thought of his deserting his
+home and falling finally into bad practices, had brought
+to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to
+heart-break.  Job Goodwin had abandoned all work
+and taken to his congenial employment of sighing
+and croaking in the chimney-corner, building
+innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend.
+"I am sure, Mrs. Goodwin," she said, "Morton will
+yet be saved; I have been enabled to pray for him
+with faith."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not
+help thinking that it was very inconsistent for an
+Arminian to believe that God would convert a man
+in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to
+believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he
+pleased.  Willing, however, to lay the blame of her
+misfortune on anybody but Morton, she said, half
+peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had never
+come to the settlement.  Morton had been in a hopeful
+state of mind, and they had driven him to wickedness.
+Otherwise he would doubtless have been a
+Christian by this time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought&mdash;but
+did not say&mdash;that it was most absurd for
+Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having driven
+Morton away from salvation, since, according to her
+Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he
+were elected.  It is so easy to be inconsistent when
+we try to reason about God's relation to his creatures;
+and so easy to see absurdity in any creed but our
+own!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable
+now to endure the darkness, lit her candle.  Then
+there was a knock at the door.  Ever since Sunday
+the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had
+turned pale at every sound of footsteps without.  Now
+she called out, "Come in!" in a broken voice, and
+Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed his school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can
+give comfort.  I'm sure to say something not intoirely
+proper to the occasion, whiniver I talk to anybody in
+throuble&mdash;something that jars loike a varb that
+disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I
+may say.  But I thought I ought to come and say
+you, and till you as I don't belave Moirton would do
+anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be home afore
+the wake's out.  I've soiphered it out by the Rule of
+Thray.  As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other
+throubles&mdash;comin' out all roight&mdash;so is Moirton Goodwin to
+his present dif<i>fic</i>culties.  If the first term and the third
+is the same, then the sicond and the fourth has got
+to be idintical.  Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but
+you're an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you
+can say that me dimonsthration's entoirely corrict.
+Moirton'll fetch the answer set down in the book
+ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake.  Thair's
+no vulgar fractions about him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin,
+who had held his hand up to his best ear, to hear
+what Brady was saying.  "No, I don't 'low he was
+fractious, fer the mos' part.  But he's gone now, and
+he'll git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the
+fever, and then they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and
+the Injuns'll be on us, and it 'pears like as if they
+wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'.  Hey?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that very moment the latch was jerked up and
+Henry came bursting into the room, gasping from
+excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?  Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting
+to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Henry gasped again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Spake!" said Brady.  "Out wid it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mort's&mdash;a-puttin'&mdash;Dolly&mdash;in the stable!" said the
+breathless boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job
+Goodwin, sitting down again hopelessly.  "Then
+somebody&mdash;Injuns, robbers, or somebody&mdash;'s killed Mort,
+and she's found her way back!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler
+slipped out of the open door, that she might not
+intrude upon the meeting; but Brady&mdash;oral newspaper
+that he was&mdash;waited, with the true journalistic spirit,
+for an interview.  Hardly had Job Goodwin finished
+his doleful speech, when Morton himself crossed the
+threshold and reached out his hand to his mother,
+while she reached out both hands and&mdash;did what
+mothers have done for returning prodigals since the
+world was made.  Her husband stood by bewildered,
+trying to collect his wits enough to understand how
+Morton could have been murdered by robbers or
+Indians and yet stand there.  Not until the mother
+released him, and Morton turned and shook hands
+with his father, did the father get rid of the illusion
+that his son was certainly dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the
+shadow, "I'm roight glad to see ye back.  I tould 'em
+ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe.  I soiphered it out
+by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about
+this toime.  One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin'
+to run away from yersilf, one day for repintance, and
+the nixt the prodigal son falls on his mother's neck
+and confisses his sins."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a
+safeguard against too much of a scene.  And to avoid
+speaking of subjects more unpleasant, he plunged at
+once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's
+Hole, and of his arrest for stealing his own horse.
+Then he told how he had escaped by the good offices
+of Mr. Donaldson.  Mrs. Goodwin was secretly
+delighted at this.  It was a new bond between the young
+man and the minister, and now at last she should see
+Morton converted.  The religious experience Morton
+reserved.  He wanted to break it to his mother alone,
+and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to Patty.
+And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he
+supposed, a full account of Morton's adventures, and
+being eager to tell so choice and fresh a story, found
+himself unable to stay longer.  But just as he reached
+the door, it occurred to him that if he did not tell
+Morton at once what had happened in his absence,
+some one else would anticipate him.  He had sole
+possession of Morton's adventure anyhow; so he
+straightened himself up against the door and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the
+whoile ye was gone, Moirton?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to
+be good, as ye plase.  Ye know how Koike was bilin'
+over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went away in the
+fall.  Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met
+Koike in the road, and gives him some hard words fer
+sayin' what he did to him last Sunthay.  An' fwat
+does Koike do but bowldly begins another exhortation,
+tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go
+to hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about
+and take the other thrack.  An' fwat does the Captin
+do but up wid the flat of his hand and boxes Koike's
+jaw.  An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him as
+Magruder did Jake Sniger.  But not a bit of it!  He
+fired up rid, and thin got pale immajiately.  Thin he
+turned round t'other soide of his face, and, wid a
+thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't want to
+slap that chake too?  An' the Captin swore at him
+fer a hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the
+jerks; an' he's been a-lookin' loike a sintince that
+couldn' be parsed iver sence."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wonder Kike bore it.  I don't think I could,"
+said Morton, meditatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Av coorse ye couldn't.  Ye're not a convarted
+Mithodist, But I must be goin'.  I'm a-boardin' at
+the Captin's now."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap19"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XIX.</i>
+<br><br>
+PATTY.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride,
+and in Patty's circumstances pride was conservative;
+it saved her from possible assimilation with the
+vulgarity about her.  She was a lily among hollyhocks.
+Her mother had come of an "old family"&mdash;in truth,
+of two or three old families.  All of them had
+considered that attachment to the Established Church was
+part and parcel of their gentility, and most of them
+had been staunch Tories in the Revolution.  Patty
+had inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and
+a certain lofty inflexibility of disposition.  In this
+congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden had planted traditional
+prejudices.  Patty read her Prayer-book, and wished that
+she might once attend the stately Episcopal service;
+she disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song
+of the Baptist preacher and the rant of the Methodist
+itinerant were equally distasteful.  She had never seen
+a clergyman in robes, but she tried, from her mother's
+descriptions, to form a mental picture of the long-drawn
+dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country
+church.  Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her
+age; but her ideals were ruled by the pride in which
+she had been cradled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar
+aversion.  Methodism was new, and, like everything new,
+lacked traditions, picturesqueness, mustiness, and all
+the other essentials of gentility in religious matters.
+The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the preachers
+were illiterate, and often rough in voice and
+speech; they made war on dancing and jewelry, and
+dancing and jewelry appertained to good-breeding.
+Ever since her father had been taken with that strange
+disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the
+Methodists worse than ever.  They had made a direct
+attack on her pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached
+the ears of Patty.  The thoughtful unkindness of her
+father could not leave her without so delectable a
+morsel of news.  He felt sure that Patty's pride
+would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he
+omitted nothing from the tale&mdash;the loss of horse and
+gun, the offer to stake his hat and coat, the proposal
+to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited horse&mdash;such
+were the items of Captain Lumsden's story.  He
+told it at the table in order to mortify Patty as much
+as possible in the presence of her brothers and sisters
+and the hired men.  But the effect was quite different
+from his expectations.  With that inconsistency
+characteristic of the most sensible women when they are
+in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes.  She
+saw him, in her imagination, a hapless and homeless
+wanderer.  She would not abandon him in his
+misfortunes.  He should have one friend at least.  She
+was sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not
+inconsistent with gentlemanliness.  She had often
+heard that her mother would have inherited a plantation
+if her grandfather had been able to let cards
+alone.  Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a
+generous and impulsive weakness.  Then, too, she laid
+the blame on her favorite scape-goat.  If it had not
+been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the
+inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's
+misfortune would not have befallen him.  Patty forgave
+in advance.  Love condones all sins except sins
+against love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was with more than his usual enjoyment of
+gossip that the school-master hurried home to the
+Captain's that evening to tell the story of Morton's
+return, and to boast that he had already soiphered it
+out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would
+come out roight.  The Captain, as he ate his waffles
+with country molasses, slurred the whole thing, and
+wanted to know if he was going to refuse to pay a
+debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly
+lost her gambling with Burchard.  But Patty inly
+resolved to show her lover more affection than ever.
+She would make him feel that her love would be
+constant when the friendship of others failed.  She
+liked to flatter herself, as other young women have to
+their cost, that her love would reform her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty knew he would come.  She went about her
+work next morning, humming some trifling air, that
+she might seem nonchalant.  But after awhile she
+happened to think that her humming was an indication
+of pre-occupation.  So she ceased to hum.  Then
+she remembered that people would certainly interpret
+silence as indicative of meditation; she immediately
+fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the
+younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so
+much?"  Upon which, Patty ceased to talk and went
+to work harder than ever; but, being afraid that the
+eagerness with which she worked would betray her,
+she tried to work more slowly until that was observed.
+The very devices by which we seek to hide mental
+pre-occupation generally reveal it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the
+loom-room, where she could think without having her
+thoughts guessed at.  Here, too, she would be alone
+when Morton should come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious
+change, found it hard indeed to tell Patty.  But
+he counted certainly that she would censure him for
+gambling, which would make it so much easier for
+him to explain to her that the only way for him to
+escape from vice was to join the Methodists, and thus
+give up all to a better life.  He shaped some
+sentences founded upon this supposition.  But after all
+his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to
+help him to "confess Christ before men," he found
+the cross exceedingly hard to bear; and when he set
+his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room, his
+heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with
+guilty blushes.  Ah, weak nature!  He was not
+blushing for his sins, but for his repentance!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make
+him feel how full of forgiveness love was.  She saw
+nobleness in his very shame, and she generously
+resolved that she would not ask, that she would not
+allow, a confession.  She extended her hand cordially
+and beamed upon him, and told him how glad she
+was that he had come back, and&mdash;and&mdash;well&mdash;; she
+couldn't find anything else to say, but she urged him
+to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair,
+and tried for the life of her to think of something to
+say&mdash;the silence was so embarrassing.  But talking for
+talk's sake is always hard.  One talks as one
+breathes&mdash;best when volition has nothing to do with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not
+half so much so as Patty's talk.  For he had not
+expected this sort of an opening.  If she had accused
+him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road
+would have been plain.  But now that she loved him
+and forgave him of her own sweet generosity, how
+should he smite her pride in the face by telling her
+that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar
+fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly
+despised?  Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected
+snare for his unwary feet.  He had resolved to confess
+his religious devotion with heroic courage, but he
+had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion.  He
+talked about everything else, he temporized, he allowed
+her to turn the conversation as she would, hoping
+vainly that she would allude to his gambling.  But
+she did not.  Could it be that she had not heard of
+it?  Must he then reveal that to her also?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was debating the question in his mind,
+Patty, imagining that he was reproaching himself for
+the sin and folly of gambling, began to talk of what
+had happened in the neighborhood&mdash;how Jake Sniger
+"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on
+Tuesday: "that's all this Methodist fuss amounts to,
+you know," she said.  Morton thought it ungracious to
+blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:
+there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal;
+so he sat still while Patty turned all the sobbing and
+sighing, and shouting and loud praying of the
+meetings into ridicule.  And Morton became conscious
+that it was getting every minute more and more difficult
+for him to confess his conversion.  He thought it
+better to return to his gambling for a starting point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh! yes.  I'm sorry you got into such a bad
+scrape; but don't say any more about it, Morton.
+You're too good for me with all your faults, and you
+won't do it any more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I want to tell you all about it, and what
+happened while I was gone.  I'm afraid you'll think
+too hard of me&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't
+want to hear about it because it isn't pleasant.  It'll
+all come out right at last: I'd a great deal rather
+have you a little wild at first than a hard Methodist,
+like Kike, for instance."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word.  Not
+one word.  I want you to feel that whatever anybody
+else may say, I know you're all right."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You think Morton very weak.  But, do you know
+how exceedingly sweet is confidence from one you
+love, when there is only censure, and suspicion, and
+dark predictions of evil from everybody else?  Poor
+Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for
+a moment after so much of storm.  It is not the north
+wind, but the southern breezes that are fatal to the
+ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he rose to go.  He felt himself a Peter.
+He had denied the Master!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not
+been honest with you.  I meant to tell you something
+when I first came, and I didn't.  It is hard to have
+to give up your love.  But I'm afraid you won't care
+for me when I tell you&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The severity of Morton's penitence only touched
+Patty the more deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done
+anything naughty, I forgive you without knowing it.
+But I don't want to hear any more about it, I tell
+you."  And with that the blushing Patty held her
+cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton,
+trembling with conflicting emotions, had kissed her for
+the first time, she slipped away quickly to prevent his
+making any painful confessions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment Morton stood charmed with her
+goodness.  When he believed himself to have
+conquered, he found himself vanquished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part
+of the distance home.  He might write to her about
+it.  He might let her hear it from others.  But he
+rejected both as unworthy of a man.  The memory of
+the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw
+away his Methodism and rejoice in the love of Patty,
+now so assured.  But suddenly he seemed to himself
+to be another Judas.  He had not denied the Lord&mdash;he
+had betrayed him; and with a kiss!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back
+toward Captain Lumsden's.  He entered the loom-room,
+but it was vacant.  He went into the living-room,
+and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole
+family.  Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered
+by the opposite door.  Patty was carding wool with
+hand-cards, and she looked up, startled at this
+reappearance of her lover when she thought him happily
+dismissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into
+any devil's snare by delay, and to atone for his great
+sin by making his profession as public as possible,
+"Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have
+determined to be a Christian, and I have
+joined&mdash;the&mdash;Methodist&mdash;Church."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance
+an unfortunate sound of defiance, and it aroused all
+Patty's combativeness.  It was in fact a death wound
+to her pride.  She had feared sometimes that Morton
+would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should
+join the despised sect without so much as consulting
+her was more than she could bear.  This, then, was the
+way in which her forbearance and forgiveness were
+rewarded!  There stood her father, sneering like a
+Mephistopheles.  She would resent the indignity, and
+at the same time show her power over her lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to
+see you again," she said, with lofty pride, and a
+solemn awfulness of passion more terrible than an
+oath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton,
+stretching his hands out in eager, despairing entreaty.
+But this only gave Patty the greater assurance that a
+little decision on her part would make him give up
+his Methodism.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-181"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-181.jpg" alt="THE CHOICE.">
+<br>
+THE CHOICE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take
+it back."  There was a sternness in the white face
+and a fire in the black eyes that left Morton no
+hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he straightened himself up now to his full six
+feet, and said, with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty,
+since you make me choose, I shall not give up the
+Lord, even for you.  But," he added, with a broken
+voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to
+bear it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in
+armor giving up his ladye love for the sake of
+monastic religiousness, how admirable he would be!  But
+even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest
+of sacrifices.  It is not the garb or the age that
+makes sublime a soul's offering of heart and hope to
+duty.  When Morton was gone Lumsden chuckled
+not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her
+courage; but I have understood that she resented his
+compliments, and poured upon him some severe
+denunciation, in which the Captain heard more truth
+than even Kike had ventured to utter.  Such are
+the inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is
+wounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton
+and Patty are in trouble&mdash;but you will want to know
+about Brady.  He was at Colonel Wheeler's that
+evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from lynching,
+when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that
+Morton had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mithodist?  He's no Mithodist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother
+told me so; and what's more, she said she was glad
+of it."  Then, seeing Brady's discomfiture, she added:
+"You didn't get all the news that time, Mr. Brady."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a
+family intervoo, it's not proper fer me to tell all I
+heerd.  I didn't know the fact was made public yit,
+and so I had to denoy it.  It's the honor of a Oirish
+gintleman, ye know."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a journalist he would have made!
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap20"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XX.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+More than two years have passed since Morton
+made his great sacrifice.  You may see him
+now riding up to the Hickory Ridge Church&mdash;a
+"hewed-log" country meeting-house.  He is dressed
+in homespun clothes.  At the risk of compromising him
+forever, I must confess that his coat is
+straight-breasted&mdash;shad-bellied as the profane call it&mdash;and his
+best hat a white one with a broad brim.  The face
+is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one
+year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky,
+and the sickness and exposure of another year in the
+malarious cane-brakes of Western Tennessee.  Perils of
+Indians, perils of floods, perils of alligators, perils of
+bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of robbers, perils
+of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of five
+thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five
+or six hundred preachings in the same time, and the
+care of numberless scattered churches in the wilderness
+have conspired to give sedateness to his countenance.
+And yet there is a youthfulness about the
+sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that
+sort of humor which Western people call "mischief"
+about the eyes, that match but grotesquely with white
+hat and shad-bellied coat.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-185"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-185.jpg" alt="GOING TO CONFERENCE.">
+<br>
+GOING TO CONFERENCE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He has been a preacher almost ever since he
+became a Methodist.  How did he get his theological
+education?  It used to be said that Methodist preachers
+were educated by the old ones telling the young
+ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction
+Morton carried in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple,
+solid sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns, and a Bible.
+Having little of the theory and system of theology, he
+was free to take lessons in the larger school of life
+and practical observation.  For the rest, the free
+criticism to which he was subject from other preachers,
+and the contact with a few families of refinement, had
+obliterated his dialect.  Naturally a gentleman at heart,
+he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he met,
+quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners.  He is
+regarded as a young man of great promise by the older
+brethren; his clear voice is very charming, his strong
+and manly speech and his tender feeling are very
+inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported
+extraordinary revivals.  Some of the old men sagely predict
+that "he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such
+ambitious dreams disturb his sleep.  He has not "gone
+into a decline" on account of Patty.  A healthy
+nature will bear heavy blows.  But there is a pain,
+somewhere&mdash;everywhere&mdash;in his being, when he thinks
+of the girl who stood just above him in the
+spelling-class, and who looked so divine when she was
+spinning her two dozen cuts a day.  He does not like
+this regretful feeling.  He prays to be forgiven for it.
+He acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast
+that he is too much like Lot's wife&mdash;he finds his heart
+prone to look back toward the objects he once loved.
+Often in riding through the stillness of a deep forest&mdash;and
+the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode
+of the Almighty&mdash;his noble voice rings out fervently
+and even pathetically with that stanza:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "The dearest idol I have known,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Whate'er that idol be,<br>
+  Help me to tear it from thy throne<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And worship only Thee!"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he,
+and none can tell a story more effectively in a generation
+of preachers who are all good story-tellers.  He
+loves his work; its dangers and difficulties satisfy the
+ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings,
+except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in
+the Hissawachee Bottom.  Then the longing to see
+Patty has seized him and he has been fain to hurry away,
+praying to be delivered from every snare of the enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat
+who is approaching the country meeting-house.  It is
+conference-time, and the greetings are hearty and
+familiar.  Everybody is glad to see everybody, and,
+after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand
+on ceremony with anybody else.  Morton has hardly
+alighted before half a dozen preachers have rushed up
+to him and taken him by the hand.  A tall brother,
+with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you do, Brother Goodwin?  Glad to see
+the alligators haven't finished you!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but
+suddenly he sees, standing back of the rest and waiting
+his turn, a young man with a solemn, sallow face,
+pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered by
+the straight black hair that falls on each side of it.
+He wears over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes
+cut through, and seems to be perpetually awaiting an
+ague-chill.  Seeing him, Morton pushes the rest aside,
+and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a
+cry: "Kike, God bless you!  How are you, dear old
+fellow?  You look sick."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over
+his shoulder and looked in his face.  "I am sick,
+Mort.  Cast down, but not destroyed, you know.  I
+hope I am ready to be offered up."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a bit of it.  You've got to get better.  Offered
+up?  Why, you aren't fit to offer to an alligator.
+Where are you staying?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Out there."  Kike pointed to the tents of a
+camp-meeting barely visible through the trees.  The
+people in the neighborhood of the Hickory Ridge
+Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in
+their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up
+a camp-meeting.  It was easier to take care of the
+preachers out of doors than in.  Morton shook his
+head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent
+under which he had been assigned to sleep.  The
+white spot on the end of Kike's nose and the blue
+lines under his finger-nails told plainly of the
+on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some
+better shelter for him than under this thin sheet.  But
+this was hard to do.  The few brethren in the
+neighborhood had already filled their cabins full of guests,
+mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the
+younger men, renowned only for his piety and his
+revivals, had not been thought of for a place elsewhere
+than on the camp-ground.  Finding it impossible to
+get a more comfortable resting place for his friend,
+Morton turned to seek for a physician.  The only
+doctor in the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister,
+retired from the ministry on account of his impaired health.
+To him Morton went to ask for medicine for Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at
+the camp-ground," said Morton, "and&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you want me to see him," said the doctor,
+in an alert, anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags"
+and donning his hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike
+was lodged they found a prayer-meeting of a very
+exciting kind going on in the tent adjoining.  There
+were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs
+commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced
+ear of Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly
+doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to
+Morton, with great positiveness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've
+done my best to get him out of it, but I cannot.  See
+how thin this tent-cover is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And the malaria of these woods is awful.
+Camp-meetings, sir, are always bad.  And this fuss is
+enough to drive a patient crazy."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said
+nothing.  They had now reached the corner of the
+tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet, holding his
+hands to his head.  The noise from the prayer-meeting
+was more than his weary brain would bear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor,
+promptly proceeding to lift Kike without even explaining
+to him who he was, or where he proposed to take
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but
+the poor fellow was shaking so that he could not sit
+there.  Morton then brought out Dolly&mdash;she was all
+his own now&mdash;and took the slight form of Kike in
+his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man
+in the saddle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own
+horse and spurring off to have a bed made ready for
+Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking
+Kike roused a little and said, "She's the same fine old
+Dolly, Mort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A little more sober.  The long rides in the cane-brakes,
+and the responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy,
+have given her the gravity that belongs to the
+ministry."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house!
+After the rude bear-skins upon which he had languished
+in the backwoods cabins, after the musty feather-beds
+in freezing lofts, and the pallets of leaves upon which
+he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and
+musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste
+of heaven.  But Kike was almost too sick to be
+grateful.  The poor frame had been kept up by will so
+long, that now that he was in a good bed and had
+Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick.  What
+had been ague settled into that wearisome disease
+called bilious fever.  Morton staid by him nearly all
+of the time, looking into the conference now and then
+to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to
+a grand speech from McKendree, attending on the
+third day of the session, when, with the others who had
+been preaching two years on probation, he was called
+forward to answer the "Questions" always propounded
+to "Candidates for admission to the conference."  Kike
+only was missing from the list of those who were to
+have heard the bishop's exhortations, full of martial
+fire, and to have answered his questions in regard to
+their spiritual state.  For above all gifts of speech or
+depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early
+Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was
+of account for the ministry who was not "groaning to
+be made perfect in this life."  The question stands
+in the discipline yet, but very many young men who
+assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city
+church with full galleries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strange mystery in which appointments were
+involved could not but pique curiosity.  Morton having
+had one year of mountains, and one year of cane-brakes,
+had come to wish for one year of a little more
+comfort, and a little better support.  There is a
+romance about going threadbare and tattered in a
+good cause, but even the romance gets threadbare
+and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a
+little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance,
+charming enough in itself, but dull when it grows
+monotonous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The awful hour of appointments came on at last.
+The brave-hearted men sat down before the bishop,
+and before God, not knowing what was to be their
+fate.  Morton could not guess where he was going.  A
+miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might
+be his doom, or he might&mdash;but no, he would not hope
+that his lot might fall in Ohio.  He was a young man,
+and a young man must take his chances.  Morton
+found himself more anxious about Kike than about
+himself.  Where would the bishop send the invalid?
+With Kike it might be a matter of life and death, and
+Kike would not hear to being left without work.  He
+meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their
+destiny, sang fervently that fiery hymn of Charles
+Wesley's:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Jesus, the name high over all,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In hell or earth or sky,<br>
+  Angels and men before him fall,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And devils fear and fly.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "O that the world might taste and see,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The riches of his grace,<br>
+  The arms of love that compass me<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would all mankind embrace."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And when they reached the last stanzas there was the
+ring of soldiers ready for battle in their martial voices.
+That some of them would die from exposure, malaria,
+or accident during the next year was probable.  Tears
+came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to
+grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they
+approached the climax of the hymn, which the bishop
+read impressively, two lines at a time, for them to
+sing:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "His only righteousness I show,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;His saving truth proclaim,<br>
+  'Tis all my business here below<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Happy if with my latest breath<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I may but gasp his name,<br>
+  Preach him to all and cry in death,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and
+the venerable Asbury, with calmness and with a voice
+faltering with age, made them a brief address; tender
+and sympathetic at first, earnest as he proceeded, and
+full of ardor and courage at the close.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted
+some man to take Quebec, they began with the oldest
+General first, asking him: 'General, will you go and
+take Quebec?'  To which he made reply, 'It is a very
+difficult enterprise.'  'You may stand aside,' they said.
+One after another the Generals answered that they
+would, in some more or less indefinite manner, until
+the youngest man on the list was reached.  'General
+Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?'  'I'll
+do it or die,' he replied."  Here the bishop
+paused, looked round about upon them, and added,
+with a voice full of emotion, "He went, and did both.
+We send you first to take the country allotted to you.
+We want only men who are determined to do it or
+die!  Some of you, dear brethren, will do both.  If
+you fall, let us hear that you fell like Methodist
+preachers at your post, face to the foe, and the shout
+of victory on your lips."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect of this speech was beyond description.
+There were sobs, and cries of "Amen," "God grant
+it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of the old log
+church.  Every man was ready for the hardest place,
+if he must.  Gravely, as one who trembles at his
+responsibility, the bishop brought out his list.  No man
+looked any more upon his fellow.  Every one kept
+his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop
+read the appointments, until his own name was reached.
+Some showed pleasure when their names were called,
+some could not conceal a look of pain.  When the
+reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton
+heard, with a little start, the words slowly enounced
+as the bishop's eyes fell on him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Jenkinsville Circuit&mdash;Morton Goodwin."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio.  But it
+was in the wickedest part of Ohio.  Morton half
+suspected that he was indebted to his muscle, his
+courage, and his quick wit for the appointment.  The
+rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the
+alligators of Mississippi.  But he was young, hopeful
+and brave, and rather relished a difficult field than
+otherwise.  He listened now for Kike's name.  It
+came at the bottom of the list:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Pottawottomie Creek&mdash;W. T. Smith, Hezekiah
+Lumsden."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to
+a man so sick as Kike was.  He had, therefore, sent
+him as "second man" or "junior preacher" on a
+circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last appointment having been announced, a
+simple benediction closed the services, and the brethren
+who had foregone houses and homes and fathers and
+mothers and wives and children for the kingdom of
+heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at
+Dr. Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to
+the sick Kike, and rode away, each in his own
+direction, and all with a self-immolation to the cause
+rarely seen since the Middle-Age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with
+fever, and Morton, watching by his side.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap21"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXI.</i>
+<br><br>
+CONVALESCENCE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be
+spared.  There is no longer any reason why the
+rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should pine for the
+muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to
+"lick as soon as they lay eyes on to him."  Dolly's
+legs are aching for a gallop.  Morton and Dr. Morgan
+have exhausted their several systems of theology in
+discussion.  So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts
+the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the
+impatient brethren and face the impatient ruffians of
+Jenkinsville Circuit.  Kike is left yet in his quiet
+harbor to recover.  The doctor has taken a strange fancy
+to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward with
+sadness to the time when he will leave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide
+sets back through the veins!  You have no longer
+any pain; you are not well enough to feel any
+responsibility; you cannot work; there is no obligation
+resting on you but one&mdash;that is rest.  Such perfect
+passivity Kike had never known before.  He could
+walk but little.  He sat the livelong day by the open
+window, as listless as the grass that waved before the
+wind.  All the sense of dire responsibility, all those
+feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of
+his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability,
+were in abeyance.  To eat, to drink, to sleep, to
+wake and breathe, to suffer as a passive instrument
+the play of whatever feeling might chance to come,
+was Kike's life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this state the severity of his character was
+laid aside.  He listened to the quick and eager
+conversation of Dr. Morgan with a gentle pleasure; he
+answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan with
+quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane
+Morgan, their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as
+a far off spectator.  There were but two things that
+had a real interest for him.  He felt a keen delight
+in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows
+as they went chattering out from under the eaves&mdash;their
+airy vagabondage was so restful.  And he liked
+to watch the quick, careless tread of Henrietta Morgan,
+the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on
+forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the
+swallows themselves.  Though she was eighteen, there
+was in her full child-like cheeks, in her contagious
+laugh&mdash;a laugh most unprovoked, coming of itself&mdash;in
+her playful way of performing even her duties, a
+something that so contrasted with and relieved the
+habitual austerity of Kike's temper, and that so fell in
+with his present lassitude and happy carelessness, that
+he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a pillow, to
+turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.
+So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came
+to talk with her for the sake of hearing them.  He
+was not forgetful of the solemn injunctions
+Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young
+ministers in the presence of women.  With Miss Jane
+he was very careful lest he should in any way
+compromise himself, or awaken her affections.  Jane was
+the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if he were
+to marry.  But Nettie was a child&mdash;a cheerful
+butterfly&mdash;as refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold
+water to a fever-patient.  When she was out of the
+room, Kike was impatient; when she returned, he was
+glad.  When she sewed, he drew the large chair in
+which he rested in front of her, and talked in his
+grave fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a
+hundred fancies.  She seemed to shine all about him
+like sunlight.  Poor Kike could not refuse to enjoy a
+fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's reverence
+for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his
+sickness, grew apace into a love for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected
+this, the doctor had penetrated it.  Kike's
+whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed the
+ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion,
+talking with eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave
+sentences before he was half through&mdash;seeing and
+hearing everything while he seemed to note nothing.
+He was not averse to this attachment between the
+two.  Provided always, that Kike should give up
+traveling.  It was all but impossible, indeed, for a
+man to be a Methodist preacher in that day and
+"lead about a wife."  A very few managed to
+combine the ministry with marriage, but in most cases
+marriage rendered "location" or secularization imperative.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-199"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-199.jpg" alt="CONVALESCENCE.">
+<br>
+CONVALESCENCE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way
+that is characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie
+Morgan as she sewed and laughed, when Dr. Morgan
+came in, put his pill-bags upon the high bureau,
+glanced quickly at the two, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother.
+The double-and-twisting is hard work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nettie laid her sewing down.  Kike watched her
+until she had disappeared through the door; then he
+listened until the more vigorous spinning indicated to
+him that younger hands had taken the wheel.  His
+heart sank a little&mdash;it might be hours before Nettie
+could return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy
+himself, with his medicines, but he was observing how
+the young preacher's eyes followed his daughter, how
+his countenance relapsed into its habitual melancholy
+when she was gone.  He thought he could not be
+mistaken in his diagnosis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know
+what we shall do when you get well.  I can't bear to
+have you go away."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You have been too good, doctor.  I am afraid
+you have spoiled me."  The thought of going to
+Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more
+painful to Kike.  He had put all thoughts of the sort
+out of his mind, because the doctor wished him to
+keep his mind quiet.  Now, for some reason, Doctor
+Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future upon
+him.  Why was it unpleasant?  Why had he lost his
+relish for his work?  Had he indeed backslidden?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for
+the fourth time held a large phial, marked <i>Sulph. de
+Quin.</i>, up to the light, as though he were counting
+the grains, the young preacher was instituting an
+inquiry into his own religious state.  Why did he
+shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit?  He had
+braved much harder toil and greater danger.  On
+Pottawottomie Creek he would have a senior colleague
+upon whom all administrative responsibilities would
+devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in
+comparison with the preceding.  On inquiring of
+himself he found that there was no circuit that would be
+attractive to him in his present state of mind, except
+the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house.  At
+first Kike Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his
+own motives, as other men do under like circumstances,
+gave himself much credit for his grateful attachment
+to the family.  Surely gratitude is a generous
+quality, and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another
+denomination, taken him under his roof and given
+him professional attention free of charge?  And
+Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for
+him as though he were a brother?  What could be
+more commendable than that he should find himself
+loth to leave people who were so good?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating
+himself.  He had always dealt hardly with Kike
+Lumsden.  He could not rest now in this subterfuge;
+he would not give himself credit that he did not
+deserve.  So while the doctor walked to the window
+and senselessly examined the contents of one of his
+bottles marked "<i>Hydrarg.</i>," Kike took another and
+closer look at his own mind and saw that the one
+person whose loss would be painful to him was not
+Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent wife, nor the admirable
+Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of whose
+spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to.  The
+consciousness that he was in love came to him
+suddenly&mdash;a consciousness not without pleasure, but with
+a plentiful admixture of pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic
+alertness, caught the expression of a new self-knowledge
+and of an anxious pain upon the forehead of Lumsden.
+Then the physician seemed all at once satisfied
+with his medicines.  The bottle labelled "<i>Hydrarg.</i>"
+and the "<i>Sulph. de Quin.</i>" were now replaced in the
+saddle bags.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment Nettie herself came into the room
+on some errand.  Kike had heard her wheel stop&mdash;had
+looked toward the door&mdash;had caught her glance
+as she came in, and had, in that moment, become
+aware that he was not the only person in love.  Was
+it, then, that the doctor wished to prevent the
+attachment going further that he had delicately reminded
+his guest of the approach of the time when he must
+leave?  These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude
+of his slow convalescence.  Nettie went back to
+her wheel, and set it humming louder than ever, but
+Kike heard now in its tones some note of anxiety
+that disturbed him.  The doctor came and sat down
+by him and felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had
+fever, really to add yet another link to the chain of
+evidence that his surmise was correct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much
+impaired as yours cannot recuperate in a few days."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious
+to get to my mother's for a rest there, that I may not
+burden you any longer, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you
+think I want to be rid of you.  I wish you would
+stay with me always; I do indeed."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment Kike looked out of the window.  To
+stay with the doctor always would, it seemed to him,
+be a heaven upon earth.  But had he not renounced
+all thought of a heaven on earth?  Had he not said
+plainly that here he had no abiding place?  Having
+put his hand to the plow, should he look back?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I ought not to give up my work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not in this tone that Kike would have
+spurned such a temptation awhile before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I
+am useful here.  I cannot preach a great deal, but I
+think that I have never done so much good as since
+I began to practice medicine.  I need somebody to
+help me.  I cannot take care of the farm and my
+practice too.  You could look after the farm, and
+preach every Sunday in the country twenty miles
+round.  You might even study medicine after awhile,
+and take the practice as I grow older.  You will die,
+if you go on with your circuit-riding.  Come and live
+with me, and be my&mdash;&mdash;assistant."  The doctor had
+almost said "my son."  It was in his mind, and Kike
+divined it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to
+go, "and remember that nobody is obliged to kill
+himself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and
+tried to see the right; and all day long Nettie found
+occasion to come in on little errands, and as often as
+she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would
+be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as
+often as she went out did he tremble lest he were
+about to betray the trust committed to him.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap22"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXII.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE DECISION.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered
+during his convalescence.  It was wide awake
+now.  He sat that evening in his room trying to see
+the right way.  According to old Methodist custom
+he looked for some inward movement of the spirit&mdash;some
+"impression"&mdash;that should guide him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the great religious excitement of the early
+part of this century, Western pietists referred
+everything to God in prayer, and the belief in immmediate
+divine direction was often carried to a ludicrous
+extent.  It is related that one man retired to the hills
+and prayed a week that he might know how he should
+be baptized, and that at last he came rushing out of the
+woods, shouting "Hallelujah!  Immersion!"  Various
+devices were invented for obtaining divine
+direction&mdash;devices not unworthy the ancient augurs.  Lorenzo
+Dow used to suffer his horse to take his own course
+at each divergence of the road.  It seems to have
+been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all ages, that
+God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb
+brute, or impress a blind impulse upon the human
+mind, but could not enlighten or guide the judgment
+itself.  The opening of a Bible at random for a
+directing text became so common during the Wesleyan
+movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought
+it necessary to utter a stout Irish philippic against
+what he called "Bible sortilege."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch
+the direction of heavenly breezes, could not but
+impress so earnest a nature as Kike's.  Now in his
+distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his
+Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any
+intelligible or remotely applicable passage, but upon a
+bead-roll of unpronounceable names in one of the
+early chapters of the Book of Chronicles.  This
+disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith.
+Faith like Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment.
+He prayed again for direction, and opened
+at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
+thou me more than these?"  The marked trait in
+Kike's piety was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to
+the Lord Jesus Christ.  This question seemed directed
+to him, as it had been to Peter, in reproach.  He
+would hesitate no longer.  Love, and life itself, should
+be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him.  Then he
+prayed once more, and there came to his mind the
+memory of that saying about leaving houses and homes
+and lands and wives, for Christ's sake.  It came to him,
+doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental
+association.  But what did Kike know of the association of
+ideas, or of any other law of mental action?  Wesley's
+sermons and Benson's Life of Fletcher constituted his
+library.  To him it seemed certain that this text of
+scripture was "suggested."  It was a call from Christ
+to give up all for him.  And in the spirit of the
+sublimest self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep
+back nothing!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide
+in the evening often ebb before morning.  Kike
+thought himself strong enough to begin again to rise
+at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those "rules
+for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist
+preacher even yet <i>promises</i> to keep.  Following the
+same rules, he proceeded to set apart the first hour
+for prayer and meditation.  The night before all had
+seemed clear; but now that morning had come and
+he must soon proceed to execute his stern resolve, he
+found himself full of doubt and irresolution.  Such
+vacillation was not characteristic of Kike, but it marked
+the depth of his feeling for Nettie.  Doubtless, too,
+the enervation of convalescence had to do with it.
+Certainly in that raw and foggy dawn the forsaking
+of the paradise of rest and love in which he had
+lingered seemed to require more courage than he
+could muster.  After all, why should he leave?  Might
+he not be mistaken in regard to his duty?  Was he
+obliged to sacrifice his life?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He conducted his devotions in a state of great
+mental distraction.  Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed
+Pastor which belonged to Dr. Morgan lying on the
+window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some light
+from its stimulating pages.  He remembered that
+Wesley spoke well of Baxter; but he could not fix his
+mind upon the book.  He kept listlessly turning the
+leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence in Latin.
+Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that
+very reason his attention was the more readily attracted
+by the sentence in an unknown tongue.  He read
+it, "<i>Nec propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas</i>."  He
+found written in the margin a free rendering: "Let us
+not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth
+living for."  He knelt down now and gave thanks for
+what seemed to him Divine direction.  He had been
+delivered from a temptation to sacrifice the great end
+of living for the sake of saving his life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan
+and his motherly wife and the excellent Jane.  It
+cost him a great pang to say good-bye to Nettie
+Morgan.  Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling.
+She did not venture to come to the door.  Kike
+found her alone in the little porch at the back of the
+house, trying to look unconcerned.  Afraid to trust
+himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand
+coldly for a moment.  But the sight of her
+pain-stricken face touched him to the quick: he seized her
+hand again, and, with eyes full of tears, said huskily:
+"Good-bye, Nettie!  God bless you, and keep you
+forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the
+rest a hasty adieu and riding off eagerly, almost
+afraid to look back.  He was more severe than ever
+in the watch he kept over himself after this.  He
+could never again trust his treacherous heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee
+Settlement, "The Forks" had now come to be quite
+a village; the valley was filling with people borne on
+that great wave of migration that swept over the
+Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century.
+The cabin in which his mother lived was very
+little different from what it was when he left it.  The
+old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude; the
+barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a
+little on one side, giving to the cabin, as Kike
+thought, an unpleasant air, as of a man a little
+exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon the
+side of his head to leer at you saucily.  The mother
+received him joyously, and wiped her eyes with her
+apron when she saw how sick he had been.  Brady
+was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the
+fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed
+chairs sat suspiciously close together.  Brady had long
+thought of changing his state, but both Brady and the
+widow were in mortal fear of Kike, whose severity of
+judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.
+"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd
+propose to the widdy.  But what would the lad say
+to sich follies at my toime of loife?  And the widdy's
+more afeard of him than I am.  Did iver anybody
+say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther
+out of courtin' his mother, and his mother out of
+resavin' the attintions of a larnt grammairian loike
+mesilf?  The misfortin' is that Koike don't have no
+wakenisses himsilf.  I wish he had jist one, and thin
+I wouldn't keer.  If I could only foind that he'd iver
+looked jist a little swate loike at iny young girl, I
+wouldn't moind his cinsure.  But, somehow, I kape
+a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould coward
+that I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe
+improved, and the thoughtful mother had already made
+him a warm, though not very shapely, suit of jeans.
+It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.  She did
+not think him fit to go.  But she did not dare to say
+so.  How should she venture to advise one who
+seemed to her wondering heart to live in the very
+secrets of the Almighty?  God had laid hands on
+him&mdash;the child was hers no longer.  But still she
+looked her heart-breaking apprehensions as he set
+out from home, leaving her standing disconsolate in
+the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house,
+ventured to give him advice&mdash;partly by way of
+finding out whether Kike had any "wakeniss" or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I
+thrust you'll bear with me if I give you some advoice,
+though ye have got to be sich a praycher.  Ye'll not
+take offinse, me lad?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike,
+smiling sadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as
+shure as ye're born, and it's me own opinion as ye
+ought to git a good wife to nurse ye, and thin you
+could git a home and maybe do more good than ye
+do now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike's face settled into more than its wonted
+severity.  The remembrance of his recent vacillation
+and the sense of his present weakness were fresh in
+his mind.  He would not again give place to the
+devil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Brady, there's something more important
+than our own ease or happiness.  We were not made
+to seek comfort, but to give ourselves to the work of
+Christ.  And see! your head is already blossoming
+for eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were
+all."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master
+solemnly and rode away, and Mr. Brady was more
+appalled than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately.
+"Not a wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked
+gloomily into the school-house, took down a switch
+and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the
+worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius,
+often suffered on general principles when the master
+was out of humor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the
+distant Pottawottomie Creek circuit?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed
+the wilds of America at the call of duty as they heard
+it, were unhappy men?  The highest happiness comes
+not from the satisfaction of our desires, but from the
+denial of them for the sake of a high purpose.  I
+doubt not the happiest man that ever sailed through
+Levantine seas, or climbed Cappadocian mountains, was
+Paul of Tarsus.  Do you think that he envied the
+voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of
+Corinth?  Can you believe that one of the idlers in
+the Epicurean gardens, or one of the Stoic loafers in
+the covered sidewalks of Athens, could imagine the
+joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?
+For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice,
+and Kike defied the storms of a northern winter, and all
+the difficulties and dangers of the wilderness, and all
+the hardships of his lonely lot, with one saying often
+on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have heard that about this time young Lumsden
+was accustomed to electrify his audiences by his
+fervent preaching upon the Christian duty of Glorying
+in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women
+would nod their heads one to another as they went
+home afterward, and say: "He's seed a mighty sight
+o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a young man."  "Yes;
+but he's got the victory; and how powerful
+sweet he talks about it!  I never heerd the beat in all
+my born days."
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap23"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the
+woman.  If Kike is happy in his self-abnegation,
+Patty is not happy in hers.  Pride has no balm in it.
+However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor
+food.  And Patty has little but pride to feed upon.
+The invalid mother has now been dead a year, and
+Patty is almost without companionship, though not
+without suitors.  Land brings lovers&mdash;land-lovers, if
+nothing more&mdash;and the estate of Patty's father is not
+her only attraction.  She is a young woman of a
+certain nobility of figure and carriage; she is not
+large, but her bearing makes her seem quite
+commanding.  Even her father respects her, and all the
+more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds
+opportunity.  Patty is thrifty, and in the early West
+no attraction outweighed this wifely ordering of a
+household.  But Patty will not marry any of the
+suitors who calculate the infirm health of her father
+and the probable division of his estate, and who
+mentally transfer to their future homes the thrift and
+orderliness they see in Captain Lumsden's.  By refusing
+them all she has won the name of a proud girl.
+There are times when out of sight of everybody
+she weeps, hardly knowing why.  And since her
+mother's death she reads the prayer-book more than
+ever, finding in the severe confessions therein framed
+for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of
+the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave
+him, and yet it angers him that she refuses to marry.
+His hatred of Methodists has assumed the intensity
+of a monomania since he was defeated for the legislature
+partly by Methodist opposition.  All his love
+of power has turned to bitterest resentment, and every
+thought that there may be yet the remotest possibility
+of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts him beyond
+measure.  He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate
+rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing
+seriousness and her fondness for the prayer-book.
+Even the prayer-book's earnestness has something
+Methodistic about it.  But Patty has never yet been
+in a Methodist meeting, and with this fact he
+comforts himself.  He has taken pains to buy her jewelry
+and "artificials" in abundance, that he may, by
+dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from
+temptations to become a Methodist.  For in that time,
+when fine dressing was not common and country
+neighborhoods were polarized by the advent of Methodism
+in its most aggressive form, every artificial flower
+and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the
+new sect; a well-dressed woman in a congregation
+was almost a defiance to the preacher.  It seemed to
+Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had prophylactic
+ornaments enough to save her from Methodism.  And to all
+of these he added covert threats that if any child of his
+should ever join these crazy Methodist loons, he would
+turn him out of doors and never see him again.  This
+threat was always indirect&mdash;a remark dropped
+incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown
+quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine,
+but Patty did not fail to comprehend.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-214"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-214.jpg" alt="THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.">
+<br>
+THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door
+that out-cast of
+New England&mdash;a
+tin-peddler.  Western
+people had never
+heard of Yale
+College or any other
+glory of Connecticut
+or New England.
+To them it
+was but a land that
+bred pestilent
+peripatetic peddlers of
+tin-ware and wooden
+clocks.  Western
+rogues would cheat
+you out of your
+horse or your farm
+if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of
+Yankee tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said
+"noo" for new, and talked nasally, would work an
+hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny bit."  The
+tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in
+at Lumsden's door and "made bold" to <i>in</i>quire if he
+could git a night's lodging, which the Captain, like
+other settlers, granted without charge.  Having
+unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse, the
+Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading
+questions about the family and personal history
+of the Lumsdens, collectively and individually.
+Having thus taken the first steps toward acquaintance by
+this display of an aggravating interest in the welfare
+of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate
+and truthful accounts&mdash;with variations&mdash;of his own
+recent adventures, to the boundless amusement of the
+younger Lumsdens, who laughed more heartily at the
+Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at
+his stories.  He said, among other things, that he had
+ben to Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis'
+called a "basket meetin'."  But when he had proceeded
+so far with his narrative, he prudently stopped
+and made bold to <i>in</i>quire what the Captain thought
+of these Methodists.  The Captain was not slow to
+express his opinion, and the man of tins, having thus
+reassured himself by taking soundings, proceeded to
+tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks to that
+meetin'.  And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed
+went forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer.
+Didn't do no pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye,
+ye know.  Well, ye see, the Methodis' they wanted to
+<i>in</i>courage a seeker, and so they all bought some tins.
+Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands!  (And
+here the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and
+then the other at Patty.)  Fer they was seen a dreffle
+lot of folks there.  Come to hear a young preacher
+as is 'mazin' elo'kent&mdash;Parson Goodwin by name, and
+he was a <i>good one</i> to preach, sartain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This startled Patty and the Captain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The identikle," said the peddler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Raised only half a mile from here," said
+Lumsden, "and we don't think much of him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his
+sails to Lumsden's breezes.  "I calkilate I could
+preach e'en a'most as well as he does, myself, and I
+wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother.  But he's got
+a good v'ice fer singin'&mdash;sich a ring to't, ye see, and
+he's got a smart way thet comes the sympathies over the
+women folks and weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin'
+at a desp'ate rate.  Was brought up here, was he?
+Du tell!  He's powerful pop'lar."  Then, catching the
+Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I
+mean."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said
+the Captain, with a chuckle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler,
+pleased to have some information to give.  Seeing
+that the Captain and his daughter were interested in
+his communication, the peddler paused a moment.  A
+bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part
+with too quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware
+man.  "I heerd say as he was a goin' to splice with a
+gal that could pray like a angel afire.  An' I heerd
+her pray.  She nearly peeled the shingles off the
+skewl-haouse.  Sich another <i>ex</i>citement as she perjuced, I
+never did see.  An' I went up to her after meetin'
+and axed a interest in her prayers.  Don't do no
+harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own side!
+An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for
+preachers ginerally marry purty faces.  Preachers is a
+good deal like other folks, ef they do purtend to be
+better, hey?  Well, naow, that Ann Elizer Meacham <i>is</i>
+purty, sartain.  An' everybody says he's goin' to marry
+her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie
+'em up next Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe.  Then
+they'll divide the work in the middle and go halves.
+She'll pray and he'll preach."  At this the peddler
+broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated
+both the Captain and Patty by his news.  He now
+proposed to sell some tinware, thinking he had worked
+his audience up to the right state of mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at
+hearing this bit of intelligence from Jenkinsville.  What
+was Morton Goodwin to her?  She went around the
+house as usual this evening, trying to hide all
+appearance of feeling.  She even persuaded her father to
+buy half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets&mdash;she
+smiled at the peddler for calling them <i>pails</i>.  She was
+not willing to gratify the Captain by showing him how
+much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee."  But when
+she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had
+lost its power to soothe.  She was mortified, vexed,
+humiliated on every hand.  She felt hard and bitter,
+above all, toward the sect that had first made a
+division between Morton and herself, and cordially blamed
+the Methodists for all her misfortunes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened that upon the very next Sunday
+Russell Bigelow was to preach.  Far and wide over
+the West had traveled the fame of this great preacher,
+who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in
+his impassioned manner.  "An orator is to be judged
+not by his printed discourses, but by the memory of
+the effect he has produced," says a French writer; and
+if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the fame that
+fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely
+an orator of the highest order.  He is known as the
+"indescribable."  The news that he was to preach had
+set the Hissawachee Settlement afire with eager
+curiosity to hear him.  Even Patty declared her intention
+of going, much to the Captain's regret.  The meeting
+was not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods,
+and she could go for this time without entering the
+house of her father's foe.  She had no other motive
+than a vague hope of hearing something that would
+divert her; life had grown so heavy that she craved
+excitement of any kind.  She would take a back seat
+and hear the famous Methodist for herself.  But Patty
+put on all of her gold and costly apparel.  She was
+determined that nobody should suspect her of any
+intention of "joining the church."  Her mood was one
+of curiosity on the surface, and of proud hatred and
+quiet defiance below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a
+meeting held in the forest; no forest is so satisfying
+as a forest of beech; the wide-spreading boughs&mdash;drooping
+when they start from the trunk, but well sustained
+at the last&mdash;stretch out regularly and with
+a steady horizontalness, the last year's leaves form
+a carpet like a cushion, while the dense foliage shuts
+out the sun.  To this meeting in the beech, woods
+Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile
+away.*  As she passed through a little cove, she saw a
+man lying flat on his face in prayer.  It was the
+preacher.  Awe-stricken, Patty hurried on to the
+meeting.  She had fully intended to take a seat in
+the rear of the congregation, but being a little
+confused and absent-minded she did not observe at first
+where the stand had been erected, and that she was
+entering the congregation at the side nearest to the
+pulpit.  When she discovered her mistake it was too
+late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full
+of standing people; there was nothing for her but to
+take the only vacant seat in sight.  This put her in
+the very midst of the members, and in this position
+she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other
+settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly
+dressed, for that time, sitting in the very midst of the
+devout sisters&mdash;for the men and women sat apart.  All
+around Patty there was not a single "artificial," or
+piece of jewelry.  Indeed, most of the women wore
+calico sunbonnets.  The Hissawachee people who knew
+her were astounded to see Patty at meeting at all.
+They remembered her treatment of Morton, and they
+looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and Magog
+incarnated in one.  This sense of the conspicuousness
+of her position was painful to Patty, but she presently
+forgot herself in listening to the singing.  There never
+was such a chorus as a backwoods Methodist congregation,
+and here among the trees they sang hymn after
+hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with
+triumphant joy, now with solemn earnestness.  They sang
+"Children of the Heavenly King," and "Come let us
+anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet, blow," and "Arise
+my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of
+grace!"  While they were singing this last, the
+celebrated preacher entered the pulpit, and there ran
+through the audience a movement of wonder, almost
+of disappointment.  His clothes were of that sort of
+cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did
+not fit him.  He was rather short, and inexpressibly
+awkward.  His hair hung unkempt over the best
+portion of his face&mdash;the broad projecting forehead.
+His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones
+and chin large.  His mouth was wide and with a
+sorrowful depression at the corners, his nostrils thin,
+his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile.  He
+took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,&mdash;"Seeking
+a bride for his master," and, according to the
+custom of the time, he first expounded the incident,
+and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by applying
+it to the soul's marriage to Christ.  Notwithstanding
+the ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness
+of his postures, there was a gentlemanliness about
+his address that indicated a man not unaccustomed
+to good society.  His words were well-chosen;
+his pronunciation always correct; his speech
+grammatical.  In all of these regards Patty was
+disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the
+accompanying incident.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+But the sermon.  Who shall describe "the indescribable"?
+As the servant, he proceeded to set forth
+the character of the Master.  What struck Patty was
+not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of his
+argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that
+every divine trait which he described had reflected
+itself in the life of the preacher himself.  For none
+but the manliest of men can ever speak worthily of
+Jesus Christ.  As Bigelow proceeded he won her
+famished heart to Christ.  For such a Master she
+could live or die; in such a life there was what Patty
+needed most&mdash;a purpose; in such a life there was a
+friend; in such a life she would escape that sense
+of the ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the
+unworthiness of her own pride.  All that he said of
+Christ's love and condescension filled her with a sense
+of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly.
+There were a hundred others as much affected, but
+the eyes of all her neighbors were upon her.  If Patty
+should be converted, what a victory!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy
+of a soul wedded forever to Christ&mdash;living nobly after
+the pattern of His life&mdash;Patty resolved that she would
+devote herself to this life and this Saviour, and rejoiced
+in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the
+sermon.  Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage
+and to pride&mdash;to pride in its best sense.  Who would
+be ashamed of such a Bridegroom?  And as he
+depicted the trials that some must pass through in
+accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally
+made the sacrifice.  As he described the glory of
+renouncing the world, she thought of her jewelry and
+the spirit of defiance in which she had put it on.
+There, in the midst of that congregation, she took out
+her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet.
+We may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an
+over-strained literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn
+renunciation of the world&mdash;the whole-hearted espousal
+of herself, for all eternity, to Him who stands for all
+that is noblest in life.  Of course this action was
+visible to most of the congregation&mdash;most of all to
+the preacher himself.  To the Methodists it was the
+greatest of triumphs, this public conversion of Captain
+Lumsden's daughter, and they showed their joy in
+many pious ejaculations.  Patty did not seek
+concealment.  She scorned to creep into the kingdom of
+heaven.  It seemed to her that she owed this
+publicity.  For a moment all eyes were turned away from
+the orator.  He paused in his discourse until Patty
+had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism.
+Then, turning with tearful eyes to the audience,
+the preacher, with simple-hearted sincerity and
+inconceivable effect, burst out with, "Hallelujah!  I have
+found a bride for my Master!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap24"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXIV</i>
+<br><br>
+DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a
+spectator&mdash;having decided to risk a new attack of the
+jerks that he might stand guard over Patty.  But Patty
+was so far forward that he could not see her, except
+now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep
+over the shoulders of some taller man standing in
+front.  It was only when Bigelow uttered these exulting
+words that he gathered from the whispers about him
+that Patty was the center of excitement.  He instantly
+began to swear and to push through the crowd,
+declaring that he would take Patty home and teach her to
+behave herself.  The excitement which he produced
+presently attracted the attention of the preacher and of
+the audience.  But Patty was too much occupied with
+the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give
+any attention to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She is my daughter, and she's <i>got</i> to learn to
+obey," said Lumsden in his quick, rasping voice,
+pushing energetically toward the heart of the dense
+assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by force.
+Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at
+the moment when her father had forced his way through
+the fringe of standing people that bordered the densely
+packed congregation, and was essaying, in his headlong
+anger, to reach her and drag her forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Methodists of that day generally took pains to
+put themselves under the protection of the law in
+order to avoid disturbance from the chronic rowdyism
+of a portion of the people.  There was a magistrate
+and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in
+penetrating the cordon of standing men, had come directly
+upon the country justice, who, though not a Methodist,
+had been greatly moved by Bigelow's oratory, and who,
+furthermore, was prone, as country justices sometimes
+are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office.  At any
+rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this
+great orator and this assemblage of people had in
+some sense put themselves under the protection of the
+Majesty of the Law as represented in his own
+important self.  And for Captain Lumsden to come
+swearing and fuming right against his sacred person
+was not only a breach of the law, it was&mdash;what the
+justice considered much worse&mdash;a contempt of court.
+Hence ensued a dialogue:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Court</i>&mdash;Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate.
+In interrupting the worship of Almighty God by this
+peaceful assemblage you are violating the law.  I do
+not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if
+you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged
+to vindicate the majesty of the law by ordering the
+constable to arrest you for a breach of the peace, as
+against this assembly.  (J. P. here draws himself up
+to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the
+dignity of the law.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Outraged Father</i>&mdash;Squire, I'll have you know that
+Patty Lumsden's my daughter, and I have a right to
+control her; and you'd better mind your own business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Justice of the Peace</i> (lowering his voice to a solemn
+and very judicial bass)&mdash;Is she under eighteen years
+of age?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>By-stander</i> (who doesn't like Lumsden)&mdash;She's
+twenty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Justice</i>&mdash;If your daughter is past eighteen, she is
+of age.  If you lay hands on her I'll have to take you
+up for a salt and battery.  If you carry her off I'll
+take her back on a writ of replevin.  Now, Captain, I
+could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance;
+and if you don't leave the meeting at once
+I'll do it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever,
+but a stalwart class-leader from another settlement,
+provoked by the interruption of the eloquent sermon
+and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid off
+his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting
+Lumsden, neck and heels, on his own account.  At the
+same moment an old sister near at hand began to
+pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him!
+Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like
+Saul of Tarsus.  O Lord, smite the stiff-necked
+persecutor by almighty power!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This last was too much for the Captain.  He
+might have risked arrest, he might have faced the
+herculean class-leader, but he had already felt the jerks
+and was quite superstitious about them.  This prayer
+agitated him.  He was not ambitious to emulate Paul,
+and he began to believe that if he stood still a
+minute longer he would surely be smitten to the ground
+at the request of the sister with a relish for dramatic
+conversions.  Casting one terrified glance at the old
+sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven,
+Lumsden broke through the surrounding crowd and
+started toward home at a most undignified pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted
+during the remainder of the sermon by forebodings.
+But she had a will as inflexible as her father's, and
+now that her will was backed by convictions of duty
+it was more firmly set than ever.  Bigelow announced
+that he would "open the door of the church," and
+the excited congregation made the forest ring with
+that hymn of Watts' which has always been the
+recruiting song of Methodism.  The application to Patty's
+case produced great emotion when the singing reached
+the stanzas:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Must I be carried to the skies<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;On flowery beds of ease,<br>
+  While others fought to win the prize<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And sailed through bloody seas?<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Are there no foes for me to face?<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Must I not stem the flood?<br>
+  Is this vile world a friend to grace<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To help me on to God?"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Patty slowly rose from the place
+where she had been sitting weeping, and marched
+resolutely through the excited crowd until she reached
+the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in
+token of her desire to become a church-member.
+While she came forward, the congregation sang with
+great fervor, and not a little sensation:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Since I must fight if I would reign,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Increase my courage, Lord;<br>
+  I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,<br>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Supported by thy word."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+After many had followed Patty's example the
+meeting closed.  Every Methodist shook hands with
+the new converts, particularly with Patty, uttering
+words of sympathy and encouragement.  Some offered
+to go home with her to keep her in countenance in
+the inevitable conflict with her father, but, with a true
+delicacy and filial dutifulness, Patty insisted on going
+alone.  There are battles which are fought better
+without allies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and
+suspense.  As she came up to the house she saw her
+father sitting on the door-step, riding-whip in hand.
+Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying his
+raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted&mdash;a habit
+having its root in a domineering disposition&mdash;she was
+not without apprehension that he would use personal
+violence.  But he was quiet now, from extreme anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on
+the spot to give up this infernal Methodism, or you
+can't come in here to bring your praying and groaning
+into my ears.  Are you going to give it up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty.  "You
+need me.  I can stand it, but what will you do when
+your rheumatism comes on next winter?  Do let me
+stay and take care of you.  I won't bother you about
+my religion."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in
+my house," screamed the father, frantically.  He would
+have said more, but he choked.  "You've disgraced
+the family," he gasped, after a minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty stood still, and said no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you give up your nonsense about being
+religious?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an
+oath he went into the house and pulled the latch-string
+in.  The latch-string was the symbol of hospitality.
+To say that "the latch-string was out" was to
+open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the
+most significant and inhospitable act Lumsden could
+perform.  For when the latch-string is in, the door is
+locked.  The daughter was not only to be a daughter
+no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach
+the latch-string was withdrawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty was full of natural affection.  She turned away
+to seek a home.  Where?  She walked aimlessly down
+the road at first.  She had but one thought as she
+receded from the old house that had been her home
+from infancy&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latch-string was drawn in.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap25"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXV.</i>
+<br><br>
+ANN ELIZA.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+How shall I make you understand this book, reader
+of mine, who never knew the influences that
+surrounded a Methodist of the old sort.  Up to this point
+I have walked by faith; I could not see how the
+present generation could be made to comprehend the
+earnestness of their grandfathers.  But I have hoped
+that, none the less, they might dimly perceive the
+possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in the
+bones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You have never been a young Methodist preacher
+of the olden time.  You never had over you a presiding
+elder who held your fate in his hands; who, more
+than that, was the man appointed by the church to be
+your godly counsellor.  In the olden time especially,
+presiding elders were generally leaders of men, the best
+and greatest men that the early Methodist ministry
+afforded; greatest in the qualities most prized in
+ecclesiastical organization&mdash;practical shrewdness, executive
+force, and a piety of unction and lustre.  How shall
+I make you understand the weight which the words of
+such a man had when he thought it needful to counsel
+or admonish a young preacher?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value
+as an organizer, had been made an "elder," and just
+now he thought it his duty to have a solemn conversation
+with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville
+circuit, upon matters of great delicacy.  Magruder was
+not a man of nice perceptions, and he was dimly
+conscious of his own unfitness for the task before him.
+It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting.  He
+had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would
+like to have a word with him, and they were walking
+side by side through the woods.  Neither of them
+looked at the other.  The "elder" was trying in vain
+to think of a point at which to begin; the young
+preacher was wondering what the elder would say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother,"
+said Magruder, desperately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had sat down there was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother
+Goodwin?" he broke out abruptly at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly,
+not disposed to help the presiding elder out of his
+difficulty.  Then he added: "But not thinking it a
+profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my
+thoughts to other things."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ahem!  But have you not taken some steps
+toward matrimony without consulting with your
+brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you
+have done a great wrong to a defenceless girl, who is
+a stranger in a strange land."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"
+asked Morton, startled by the solemnity with which
+the presiding elder spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the
+matter to guess who the person is.  You have
+encouraged her to think that you meant to marry
+her.  If I am correctly informed, you even advised
+Holston, who was her
+lover, not to annoy
+her any more, and
+you assumed to defend
+her rights in the
+lawsuit about a piece
+of land.  Whether you
+meant to marry her or
+not, you have at least
+compromised her.  And
+in such circumstances
+there is but one course
+open to a Christian or
+a gentleman."  The
+elder spoke severely.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-231"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-231.jpg" alt="ANN ELIZA.">
+<br>
+ANN ELIZA.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth,"
+said Morton, rising and speaking with vehemence.  "I
+have been very much struck with the eloquence of Sister
+Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or speaks in
+love-feast.  I did not mean to marry anybody.  I have always
+defended the poor and the helpless.  She told me her
+history one day, and I felt sorry for her.  I
+determined to befriend her."  Here Morton paused in some
+embarrassment, not knowing just how to proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Befriend a woman!  That is the most imprudent
+thing in the world for a minister to do, my dear
+brother.  You cannot befriend a woman without doing
+harm."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to
+give it to her.  She told me that she had refused
+Bob Holston five times, and that he kept troubling
+her.  I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated
+with him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the
+country and said that I told him I was engaged
+to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he didn't let
+her alone.  What I did tell him was, that I was Ann
+Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I
+thought, as a gentleman, he ought to take five refusals
+as sufficient, and not wait till he was knocked down
+by refusals."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take
+up a woman's cause that way, you have got to marry
+her or ruin her and yourself, too.  If you were not a
+minister you might have a female friend or two; and
+you might help a woman in distress.  But you are a
+sheep in the midst of&mdash;of&mdash;wolves.  Half the girls on
+this circuit would like to marry you, and if you were
+to help one of them over the fence, or hold her bridle-rein
+for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five
+minutes with her about the turnip crop, she would
+consider herself next thing to engaged.  Now, as to
+Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to gossip
+over the whole circuit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising
+indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, everybody.  I hadn't more than touched the
+circuit at Boggs' Corners till I heard that you were to
+be married at this very Quarterly Meeting.  And I felt
+a little grieved that you should go so far without any
+consultation with me.  I stopped at Sister Sims's&mdash;she's
+Ann Eliza's aunt I believe&mdash;and told her that I
+supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require
+my aid pretty soon, and she burst into tears.  She said
+that if there had been anything between you and Ann
+Eliza, it must be broken off, for you hadn't stopped
+there at all on your last round.  Now tell me the
+plain truth, brother.  Did you not at one time entertain
+a thought of marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have thought about it.  She is good-looking and
+I could not be with her without liking her.  Then,
+too, everybody said that she was cut out for a preacher's
+wife.  But I never paid her any attention that could
+be called courtship.  I stopped going there because
+somebody had bantered me about her.  I was afraid of
+talk.  I will not deny that I was a little taken with her,
+at first, but when I thought of marrying her I found that
+I did not love her as one ought to love a wife&mdash;as
+much as I had once loved somebody else.  And then,
+too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry
+have to locate sooner or later, and I don't want to
+give up the ministry.  I think it's hard if a man
+cannot help a girl in distress without being forced to
+marry her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter
+further," said the elder, who was more than ever
+convinced by Morton's admissions that he had acted
+reprehensibly.  "I have confidence in you.  You have
+done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not.
+There is only one way of making the thing right.  It's
+a bad thing for a preacher to have a broken heart
+laid at his door.  Now I tell you that I don't know
+anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than
+Sister Meacham.  If the case stands as it does now I
+may have to object to the passage of your character
+at the next conference."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This last was an awful threat.  In that time when
+the preachers lived far apart, the word of a presiding
+elder was almost enough to ruin a man.  But instead
+of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly
+stubborn.  If the elder and the conference could be so
+unjust he would bear the consequences, but would never
+submit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house,
+and the presiding elder accordingly preached in
+the grove.  All the time of his preaching Morton
+Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the zealous
+Ann Eliza were there.  But no Ann Eliza appeared.
+Nothing but grief could thus keep her away from the
+meeting.  The more Morton meditated upon it, the
+more guilty did he feel.  He had acted from the highest
+motives.  He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt&mdash;the
+weak-looking Sister Sims&mdash;had adroitly intrigued
+to give his kindness the appearance of courtship.  How
+could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann Eliza of any
+design?  Old ministers know better than to trust
+implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious
+people.  There are people, pious in their way, in whose
+natures intrigue and fraud are so indigenous that they
+grow all unsuspected by themselves.  Intrigue is one
+of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks&mdash;a small
+but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of
+Mansoul under an alias.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from
+other people.  He was conscious that Magruder's
+confidence in him was weakened, and it seemed to him
+that all the brethren and sisters looked at him askance.
+When he came to make the concluding prayer he had
+a sense of hollowness in his devotions, and he really
+began to suspect that he might be a hypocrite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and
+in the presence of class-leaders, stewards, local preachers
+and exhorters from different parts of the circuit, the
+once popular preacher felt that he had somehow lost
+caste.  He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which
+the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for
+three months of labor; and small as was the amount,
+the scrupulous and now morbid Morton doubted
+whether he were fairly entitled to it.  Sometimes he
+thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience
+by marrying Ann Eliza with or without love.  But
+his whole proud, courageous nature rebelled against
+submitting to marry under compulsion of Magruder's
+threat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and
+he got on but poorly.  He looked in vain for Miss
+Ann Eliza Meacham.  She was not there to go through
+the audience and with winning voice persuade those who
+were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's
+bench for prayer.  She was not there to pray audibly
+until every heart should be shaken.  Morton was not
+the only person who missed her.  So famous a "working
+Christian" could not but be a general favorite;
+and the people were not slow to divine the cause
+of her absence.  Brother Goodwin found the faces
+of his brethren averted, and the grasp of their
+hands less cordial.  But this only made him sulky and
+stubborn.  He had never meant to excite Sister
+Meacham's expectations, and he would not be driven to
+marry her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting
+saw all the roads crowded with people.  Everybody
+was on horseback, and almost every horse carried
+"double."  At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast
+began in the large school-house.  No one was admitted
+who did not hold a ticket, and even of those who had
+tickets some were turned away on account of their
+naughty curls, their sinful "artificials," or their wicked
+ear-rings.  At the moment when the love-feast began
+the door was locked, and no tardy member gained
+admission.  Plates, with bread cut into half-inch cubes,
+were passed round, and after these glasses of water,
+from which each sipped in turn&mdash;this meagre provision
+standing ideally for a feast.  Then the speaking was
+opened by some of the older brethren, who were
+particularly careful as to dates, announcing, for instance,
+that it would be just thirty-seven years ago the
+twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke
+peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at
+the mourner's bench in Logan's school-house on the
+banks of the South Fork of the Roanoke River in
+Old Virginny."  This statement the brethren had heard
+for many years, with a proper variation in date as the
+time advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted
+it again with pious ejaculations of thanksgiving.  There
+was a sameness in the perorations of these little
+speeches.  Most of the old men wound up by asking
+an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their
+"last days might be their best days," and that their
+"path might grow brighter and brighter unto the
+perfect day."  Soon the elder sisters began to speak of
+their trials and victories, of their "ups and downs,"
+their "many crooked paths," and the religion that
+"happifies the soul."  With their pathetic voices the
+fire spread, until the whole meeting was at a
+white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!" "Bless
+the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the
+fervor of feeling.  Of course, you, sitting out of the
+atmosphere of it and judging coldly, laugh at this
+indecorous fervor.  Perhaps it is just as well to laugh,
+but for my part I cannot.  I know too well how deep
+and vital were the emotions out of which came these
+utterances of simple and earnest hearts.  I find it hard
+to get over an early prejudice that piety is of more
+consequence than propriety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza.  If she
+were present he could hardly tell it.  Make the
+bonnets of women cover their faces and make them all
+alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting
+forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a
+uniform of homespun cotton, and there is not much
+individuality left.  If Ann Eliza Meacham were present
+she would, according to custom, speak early; and
+all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and
+eloquent utterances.  So when the speaking and singing
+had gone on for an hour, and the voice of Sister
+Meacham was not heard, Morton sadly concluded that
+she must have remained at home, heart-broken on
+account of disappointment at his neglect.  In this he
+was wrong.  Just at that moment a sister rose in the
+further corner of the room and began to speak in a
+low and plaintive voice.  It was Ann Eliza.  But how
+changed!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She proceeded to say that she had passed through
+many fiery trials in her life.  Of late she had been led
+through deep waters of temptation, and the floods of
+affliction had gone over her soul.  (Here some of the
+brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at
+Brother Goodwin.)  The devil had tempted her to stay
+at home.  He had tempted her to sit silent this morning,
+telling her that her voice would only discourage
+others.  But at last she had got the victory and
+received strength to bear her cross.  With this, her
+voice rose and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph
+to the end.  Morton was greatly affected, not because her
+affliction was universally laid at his door, but because
+he now began to feel, as he had not felt before, that
+he had indeed wrought her a great injury.  As she
+stood there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved
+her.  He pitied her; and Pity lives on the next floor
+below Love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader
+think too meanly of her.  She had resolved to "catch"
+Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment she saw him.
+But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the
+rights which the highest civilization accords to woman
+is that of "bringing down" the chosen man if she can.
+Ann Eliza was not consciously hypocritical.  Her deep
+religious feeling was genuine.  She had a native genius
+for devotion&mdash;and a genius for devotion is as much a
+natural gift as a genius for poetry.  Notwithstanding
+her eloquence and her rare talent for devotion,
+her gifts in the direction of honesty and truthfulness
+were few and feeble.  A phrenologist would have
+described such a character as possessing "Spirituality
+and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small."  You
+have seen such people, and the world is ever
+prone to rank them at first as saints, afterwards as
+hypocrites; for the world classifies people in gross&mdash;it
+has no nice distinctions.  Ann Eliza, like most people
+of the oratorical temperament, was not over-scrupulous
+in her way of producing effects.  She could sway her
+own mind as easily as she could that of others.  In
+the case of Morton, she managed to believe herself
+the victim of misplaced confidence.  She saw nothing
+reprehensible either in her own or her aunt's
+manœuvering.  She only knew that she had been bitterly
+disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through
+whom the disappointment had come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards
+of his time.  Such genuine fervor was, in his
+estimation, evidence of a high state of piety.  One "who
+lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist phrase,
+must be honest and pure and good.  So Morton
+reasoned.  He had wounded such an one.  He owed
+reparation.  In marrying Ann Eliza he would be acting
+generously, honestly and wisely, according to the
+opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority
+he knew.  For in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get
+the most saintly of wives, the most zealous of
+Christians, the most useful of women.  So when
+Mr. Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the
+service to put away every sin out of their hearts
+before they ventured to take the communion, Morton,
+with many tears, resolved to atone for all the harm
+he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham,
+and to marry her&mdash;if the Lord should open the
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion.
+His high spirit resented the threat of the
+presiding elder.  He would not be driven into
+marriage.  In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed
+the night.  But Magruder being a shrewd man,
+guessed the state of Morton's feelings, and
+perceived his own mistake.  As he mounted his horse
+on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted
+eyes, ready to bid an official farewell to his presiding
+elder, but not ready to give his usual cordial adieu to
+Brother Magruder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with
+sincere pity, "forgive me; I ought not to have spoken
+as I did.  I know you will do right, and I had no
+right to threaten you.  Be a man; that is all.  Live
+above reproach and act like a Christian.  I am sorry
+you have involved yourself.  It is better not to marry,
+maybe, though I have always maintained that a married
+man can live in the ministry if he is careful and
+has a good wife.  Besides, Sister Meacham has some
+land."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little
+distance.  Then he turned back and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden
+to take his place on Peterborough circuit till
+Conference.  I suppose some young exhorter can be
+found to take Lumsden's place as second man on
+Pottawottomie Creek, and Peterborough is too
+important a place to be left vacant."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton,
+coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh!  I hope he will.  Peterborough isn't much more
+unhealthy than Pottawottomie Creek.  A little more
+intermittent fever, maybe.  But it is the best I can
+do.  The work is everything.  The men are the Lord's.
+Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose
+him, though.  He'll stop and see you as he comes
+through, I suppose.  I think I'd better give you the
+plan of his circuit, which I got the other day."  After
+adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the two
+preachers parted again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton mounted Dolly.  The day was far advanced,
+and he had an appointment to preach that very evening
+at the Salt Fork school-house.  He had never yet
+failed to suffer from a disturbance of some sort when
+he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and
+having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was
+sure of a perilous encounter.  But now the prospect of
+fighting with the wild beasts of Salt Fork was almost
+enchanting.  It would divert him from graver apprehensions.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap26"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXVI.</i>
+<br><br>
+ENGAGEMENT.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of
+mind as he rides toward Salt Fork, weighing
+considerations of right and wrong, of duty and
+disinclination, in the balance.  He is not an epic hero, for
+epic heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by
+intuition just what is right, or they are like Milton's
+Satan, unencumbered with a sense of duty.  But Morton
+was neither infallible nor a devil.  A man of
+sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a
+woman's heart without compunction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met
+by Burchard, now sheriff of the county, and warned
+that he would be attacked.  Burchard begged him to
+turn back.  Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice
+and time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been
+under such obligations to him, and had not been
+touched by this new evidence of his friendship.  But
+Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard,"
+he said, "and I will do it or die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could
+not get rid of his love affair.  He was touched to find
+lying on the desk in the school-house a little unsigned
+billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting, uttering a warning
+similar to that just given by Burchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was with some tremor that he looked round, in
+the dim light of two candles, upon the turbulent faces
+between him and the door.  His prayer and singing
+were a little faint.  But when once he began to preach,
+his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice
+rose above all the shuffling sounds of disorder.  The
+interruptions, however, soon became so distinct that he
+dared not any longer ignore them.  Then he paused
+in his discourse and looked at the rioters steadily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You think you will scare me.  It is my business
+to rebuke sin.  I tell you that you are a set of ungodly
+ruffians and law breakers.  I tell your neighbors here
+that they are miserable cowards.  They let lawless men
+trample on them.  I say, shame on them!  They ought
+to organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a
+horse-pistol.  Morton turned pale; but something in his
+warm, Irish blood impelled him to proceed.  "I called
+you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily.  "Now I
+tell you that you are cut-throats.  If you kill me here
+to-night, I will show your neighbors that it is better
+to die like a man than to live like a coward.  The
+law will yet be put in force whether you kill me or not.
+There are some of you that would belong to Micajah
+Harp's gang of robbers if you dared.  But you are afraid;
+and so you only give information and help to those
+who are no worse, only a little braver than you are."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-245"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-245.jpg" alt="FACING A MOB.">
+<br>
+FACING A MOB.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him
+too far.  He now saw that his denunciation had
+degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt had provoked
+his enemies beyond measure.  He had been foolhardy;
+for what good could it do for him to throw away his life
+in a row?  There was
+murder in the eyes of the
+ruffians.  Half-a-dozen
+pistols were cocked in
+quick succession and he
+caught the glitter of
+knives.  A hasty consultation was taking place in the
+back part of the room, and the few Methodists near him
+huddled together like sheep.  If he intended to save his
+life there was no time to spare.  The address and
+presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood
+did not fail him now.  It would not do to seem to quail.
+Without lowering his fiercely indignant tone, he raised
+his right hand and demanded that honest citizens
+should rally to his support and put down the riot.
+His descending hand knocked one of the two candles
+from the pulpit in the most accidental way in the
+world.  Starting back suddenly, he managed to upset,
+and extinguish the other just at the instant when the
+infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon
+him.  The room was thus made totally dark.  Morton
+plunged into the on-coming crowd.  Twice he was
+seized and interrogated, but he changed his voice and
+avoided detection.  When at last the crowd gave up
+the search and began to leave the house, he drifted
+with them into the outer darkness and rain.  Once
+upon Dolly he was safe from any pursuit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond
+danger, Morton was in better spirits than at any time
+since the elder's solemn talk on the preceding Saturday.
+He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and of
+a sense of triumph.  So bold a speech, and so masterly
+an escape as he had made could not but demoralize
+men like the Salt Forkers.  He laughed a little at
+himself for talking about dying and then running away,
+but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity
+to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression
+of these lawless gangs.  He would himself head a party
+against them if necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression
+as his mind reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's
+writing.  How thoughtful in her to send it!  How
+delicate she was in not signing it!  How forgiving
+must her temper be!  What a stupid wretch he was to
+attract her affection, and now what a perverse soul
+he was to break her devoted heart!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the light in which Morton saw the
+situation.  A more suspicious man might have reasoned
+that Ann Eliza probably knew no more of Goodwin's
+peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the
+neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous
+thrusting of herself on his attention.  A suspicious
+person would have reasoned that her delicacy in not
+signing the note was only a pretense, since Morton
+had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in
+the affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her.
+But Morton was not suspicious.  How could he be
+suspicious of one upon whom the Lord had so manifestly
+poured out his Spirit?  Besides, the suspicious
+view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann
+Eliza did love Morton almost to distraction, and had
+entertained the liveliest apprehensions of hie peril at
+Salt Fork.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with however much gratitude he might regard
+Ann Eliza's action, Morton Goodwin could not quite
+bring himself to decide on marriage.  He could not
+help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had
+discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house,
+nor could he help contrasting that strong love with
+the feebleness of the best affection he could muster for
+the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann Eliza Meacham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as he proceeded round the circuit it became
+more and more evident to Morton that he had suffered
+in reputation by his cool treatment of Miss Meacham.
+Elderly people love romance, and they could not
+forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way
+they wished.  They felt that nothing could be so
+appropriate as the marriage of a popular preacher with
+so zealous a woman.  It was a shock to their sense of
+poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the
+only fitting denouement.  So that between people who
+were disappointed at the come-out, and young men
+who were jealous of the general popularity of the
+youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had visibly
+declined.  Nevertheless there was quite a party of
+young women who approved of his course.  He had
+found the minx out at last!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One of the results of the Methodist circuit system,
+with its great quarterly meetings, was the bringing of
+people scattered over a wide region into a sort of
+organic unity and a community of feeling.  It widened
+the horizon.  It was a curious and, doubtless, also a
+beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of
+half-civilized territory called Jenkinsville circuit there
+was now a common topic for gossip and discussion.
+When Morton reached the very northernmost of his
+forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped
+from the excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat
+at breakfast, "whatever folks may say, I am sure you
+had a perfect right to give up Sister Meacham.  A
+man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her
+out.  <i>I</i> don't think it would take a smart man like
+you long to find out that Sister Meacham isn't all she
+pretends to be.  I have heard some things about her
+standing in Pennsylvania.  I guess you found them
+out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said
+Morton, as soon as he could recover from the shock,
+and interrupt the stream of Sister Sharp's talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everybody thought you did."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding
+out anything, I can tell you that Sister Meacham is, I
+believe, one of the best and most useful Christians in
+the world."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's what everybody thought," replied the other,
+maliciously, "until you quit off going with her so
+suddenly.  People have thought different since."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This shot took effect.  Morton could bear that
+people should slander him.  But, behold! a crop of
+slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely to grow out
+of his mistake.  In the midst of a most unheroic and,
+as it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and
+perplexity, he came at last to Mount Zion meeting-house.
+It was here that Ann Eliza belonged, and
+here he must decide whether he would still leave her
+to suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of
+his own good name, or make a marriage which, to
+those wiser than he, seemed in every way advisable.
+Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day.  When
+once the benediction was pronounced, Goodwin
+resolved to free himself from remorse and obloquy by
+the only honorable course.  He would ride over to
+Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself
+to Ann Eliza.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister
+Meacham's true character that made him hesitate?
+Or was it that a pure-hearted man always shrinks from
+marriage without love?  He reined his horse at the
+road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed
+the hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion
+class, instead of receiving Sister Sims's welcome.  He
+intended by this means to postpone his decision till
+afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the frying-pan into the fire!  The leader
+took Brother Goodwin aside and informed him that
+Sister Ann Eliza was very ill.  She might never
+recover.  It was understood that she was slowly dying
+of a broken heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton could bear no more.  To have made so
+faithful a person, who had even interfered to save
+his life, suffer in her spirit was bad enough; to have
+brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her
+outright was ingratitude and murder.  He wondered at
+his own stupidity and wickedness.  He rode in haste
+to Sister Sims's.  Ann Eliza, in fact, was not
+dangerously ill, and was ill more of a malarious fever
+than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and
+disappointment had much to do with it.  Morton,
+convinced that he was the author of her woes, felt
+more tenderness to her in her emaciation than he had
+ever felt toward her in her beauty.  He could not
+profess a great deal of love, so he contented himself
+with expressing his gratitude for the Salt Fork
+warning.  Explanations about the past were awkward, but
+fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk
+much on exciting subjects.  Besides, she did not seem
+to be very exacting.  Morton's offer of marriage was
+accepted with a readiness that annoyed him.  When
+he rode away to his next appointment, he did not
+feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he
+had expected to.  He could not get rid of a thought
+that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an
+offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on
+such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted.  And yet, one
+must not expect all qualities in one person.  What
+could be finer than Ann Eliza's lustrous piety?  She
+was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second
+Mrs. Fletcher, maybe.  And how much she must love him
+to pine away thus!  And how forgiving she was!
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap27"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXVII.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE CAMP MEETING.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's
+life did not allow Morton much opportunity for
+the society of the convalescent Ann Eliza.  Fortunately.
+For when he was with her out of meeting he found
+her rather dull.  To all expression of religious
+sentiment and emotion she responded sincerely and with
+unction; to Morton's highest aspirations for a life of
+real self-sacrifice she only answered with a look of
+perplexity.  She could not understand him.  He was
+"so queer," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But people whose lives are joined ought to make
+the best of each other.  Ann Eliza loved Morton, and
+because she loved him she could endure what seemed
+to her an unaccountable eccentricity.  If Goodwin found
+himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the
+highest qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting
+that all women were probably deficient in these regards.
+For men generalize about women, not from many but
+from one.  And men, being egotists, suffer a woman's
+love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins.  And
+then Morton took refuge in other people's opinions.
+Everybody thought that Sister Meacham was just the
+wife for him.  It is pleasant to have the opinion of
+all the world on your side where your own heart is doubtful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted
+through the mind of Morton Goodwin and gave him
+a moment of fright.  But Patty was one of the things
+of this world which he had solemnly given up.  Of her
+conversion he had not heard.  Mails were few and
+postage cost a silver quarter on every letter; with
+poor people, correspondence was an extravagance not
+to be thought of except on the occasion of a death
+or wedding.  At farthest, one letter a year was all
+that might be afforded.  As it was, Morton was neither
+very happy nor very miserable as he rode up to the
+New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant midsummer
+afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable
+entertainment.  So earnest and gifted a Christian as she
+was always welcome; and now that she held a mortgage
+on the popular preacher every tent on the ground
+would have been honored by her presence.  Morton
+found a lodging in the preacher's tent, where one bed,
+larger, transversely, than that of the giant Og, was
+provided for the collective repose of the preachers, of
+whom there were half-a-dozen present.  It was always
+a solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping
+of sheets, blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who
+made this bed gave a cross-wise continuity to the
+bed-clothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This meeting was held just six weeks after the
+quarterly meeting spoken of in the last chapter.
+Goodwin's circuit lay on the west bank of the Big Wiaki
+River, and this camp-meeting was held on the east
+bank of that stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was customary for all the neighboring preachers
+to leave their circuits and lend their help in a
+camp-meeting.  All detached parties were drawn in to make
+ready for a pitched battle.  Morton had, in his ringing
+voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick
+wit, rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and,
+as the nearest preacher, he was, of course, expected to
+help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to
+Jonesville circuit had gone after the zealous itinerant
+like "an arrow after a wild goose," and he had only
+received it in season to close his affairs on Pottawottomie
+Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on
+his way to his new work.  His emaciated face smote
+Morton's heart with terror.  The old comrade thought
+that the death which Kike all but longed for could
+not be very far away.  And even now the zealous and
+austere young man was so eager to reach his circuit
+of Peterborough that he would only consent to tarry
+long enough to preach on the first evening.  His voice
+was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in the
+uproar of a mob that had come determined to make
+an end of the meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from
+Jenkinsville and Salt Fork that the brethren were
+demoralized.  After the close of the service they
+gathered in groups debating whether or not they should
+give up the meeting.  But two invincible men stood
+in the pulpit looking out over the scene.  Without a
+thought of surrendering, Magruder and Morton Goodwin
+were consulting in regard to police arrangements.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have
+the sheriff here in the morning.  I am afraid he hasn't
+got back-bone enough to handle these fellows.  Do
+you know him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Burchard?  Yes; I've known him two or three years."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton could not help liking the man who had so
+generously forgiven his gambling debt, but he had
+reason to believe that a sheriff who went to Brewer's
+Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his
+political alliances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to
+spare you from preaching and exhorting, but you must
+take charge of the police and keep order."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If I am in command there'll be a fight.  I don't
+believe in letting rowdies run over you.  If you put
+me in authority, and give me the law to back me,
+somebody'll be hurt before morning.  The rowdies
+hate me and I am not fond of them.  I've wanted
+such a chance at these Jenkinsville and Salt Fork
+fellows ever since I've been on the circuit."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish you <i>would</i> clean them out," said the sturdy
+old elder, the martial fire shining from under his
+shaggy brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton soon had the brethren organized into a
+police.  Every man was to carry a heavy club; some
+were armed with pistols to be used in an emergency.
+Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot.
+Goodwin said that his father had fought King George,
+and he would not be ruled by a mob.  By such
+fannings of the embers of revolutionary patriotism he
+managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and
+sent out scouts.  Platforms of poles, six feet high and
+covered with earth, stood on each side of the stand
+or pulpit.  On these were bright fires which threw
+their light over the whole space within the circle of
+tents.  Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons
+covered with cotton cloth, in which slept people from a
+distance who had no other shelter.  In this outer
+darkness Morton, as military dictator, had ordered
+other platforms erected, and on these fires were now
+kindling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The returning scouts reported at midnight that the
+ruffians, seeing the completeness of the preparations,
+had left the camp-ground.  Goodwin was the only man
+who was indisposed to trust this treacherous truce.  He
+immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away
+than before on every road leading to the ground, with
+instructions to let him know instantly, if any body of
+men should be seen approaching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From Morton's previous knowledge of the people,
+he was convinced that in the mob were some men
+more than suspected of belonging to Micajah Harp's
+gang of thieves.  Others were allies of the gang&mdash;of that
+class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and
+a wholesome fear of the law, but whose protection and
+assistance is the right foot upon which every form of
+brigandage stands.  Besides these there were the
+reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from
+a love of mischief for its own sake; men who were
+not yet thieves, but from whose ranks the bands of
+thieves were recruited.  With these last Morton's
+history gave him a certain sympathy.  As the classes
+represented by the mob held the balance of power
+in the politics of the county, Morton knew that he had
+not much to hope from a trimmer such as Burchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About four o'clock in the morning one of the
+mounted sentinels who had been posted far down the
+road came riding in at full speed, with intelligence that
+the rowdies were coming in force from the direction
+of Jenkinsville.  Goodwin had anticipated this, and he
+immediately awakened his whole reserve, concentrating
+the scattered squads and setting them in ambush on
+either side of the wagon track that led to the
+camp-ground.  With a dozen mounted men well armed with
+clubs, he took his own stand at a narrow place where
+the foliage on either side was thickest, prepared to
+dispute the passage to the camp.  The men in ambush
+had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as
+soon as the fight should begin in front.  It was a
+simple piece of strategy learned of the Indians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders,
+coming round a curve, caught sight of Morton and
+his right hand man.  Then there was a surprised reining
+up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge
+on the other.  At the first blow Goodwin felled his
+man, and the riderless horse ran backward through
+the ranks.  The mob was taken by surprise, and before
+the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to his
+men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both
+flanks.  The rowdies fought hard, but from the
+beginning the victory of the guard was assured by the
+advantage of ambush and surprise.  The only question
+to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had
+ordered the arrest of every man that the guard could
+bring in.  But so sturdy was the fight that only three
+were taken.  One of the guard received a bad flesh
+wound from a pistol shot.  Goodwin did not give up
+pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash
+into the river opposite Jenkinsville.  He then rode
+back, and as it was getting light threw himself upon
+one side of the great bunk in the preachers' tent, and
+slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the
+pulpit for the eight o'clock preaching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that
+day he was evidently frightened at the earnestness of
+Morton's defence.  Burchard was one of those
+politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a
+compromise with a typhoon.  He was in a strait
+between his fear of the animosity of the mob and
+his anxiety to please the Methodists.  Goodwin, taking
+advantage of this latter feeling, got himself appointed
+a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he
+secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those
+whom he knew to be leaders.  Then he summoned
+his guard as a posse, and, having thus put law on his
+side, he announced that if the ruffians came again
+the guard must follow him until they were entirely
+subdued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly
+that such extreme measures would cost his life.
+Some of these men belonged to Harp's band, and he
+would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of
+the gang.  "Don't throw away your life," entreated
+Burchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's what life is for," said Morton.  "If a
+man's life is too good to throw away in fighting the
+devil, it isn't worth having."  Goodwin said this in a
+way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice.
+But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could
+not help thinking that if Patty were in place of Ann
+Eliza, Morton might think life good for something
+else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As there was every sign of an approaching riot
+during the evening service, and as no man could
+manage the tempest so well as Brother Goodwin,
+he was appointed to preach.  A young theologian of
+the present day would have drifted helpless on the
+waves of such a mob.  When one has a congregation
+that listens because it ought to listen, one can afford
+to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen
+when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in
+the world for an orator.  It will teach him methods of
+homiletic arrangement which learned writers on Sacred
+Rhetoric have never dreamed of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's
+tall figure appeared in the stand.  Frontier-men
+are very susceptible to physical effects, and there was
+a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well calculated
+to impress them.  Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power
+of his mind and body was at its best in the presence
+of a storm.  He knew better than to take a text.  He
+must surprise the mob into curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There is a man standing back in the crowd
+there," he began, pointing his finger in a certain
+direction where there was much disorder, and pausing
+until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny
+story I once heard."  At this point the turbulent sons
+of Belial, who loved nothing so much as a funny
+story, concluded to postpone their riot until they
+should have their laugh.  Laugh they did, first at one
+funny story, and then at another&mdash;stories with no
+moral in particular, except the moral there is in a
+laugh.  Brother Mellen, who sat behind Morton, and
+who had never more than half forgiven him for not
+coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a
+meeting, was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the
+pulpit, but Magruder, the presiding elder, was
+delighted.  He laughed at each story, and laughed loud
+enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the
+senior's approval of his drollery.  But somehow&mdash;the
+crowd did not know how,&mdash;at some time in his
+discourse&mdash;the Salt Fork rowdies did not observe
+when,&mdash;Morton managed to cease his drollery without
+detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of
+laughter.  The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping
+their curiosity perpetually excited, Goodwin did not
+give them time to rally at all.  Whenever an
+interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the
+ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so
+gain the sympathy of the rough crowd who were
+habituated to laugh on the side of the winner in all
+rude tournaments of body or mind.  Knowing
+perfectly well that he would have to fight before the
+night was over, Morton's mind was stimulated to its
+utmost.  If only he could get the religious interest
+agoing, he might save some of these men instead of
+punishing them.  His soul yearned over the people.
+His oratory at last swept out triumphant over
+everything; there was weeping and sobbing; some fell in
+uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in terror.
+Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton
+described how, step by step, a young man was led
+from bad to worse, and then recited his own experience.
+At last there was the utmost excitement.  As
+soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the
+point of confusion, the rioters broke the spell of
+Morton's speech and began their disturbance.  Goodwin
+immediately invited the penitents into the enclosed
+pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space
+was filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and
+groans made the woods resound.  But at the same
+moment the rioters increased their noisy demonstrations,
+and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell
+them, descended from the pulpit and took command
+of his camp-meeting police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway
+enough to have necessitated the severest measures if
+it had not been for Mr. Mellen.  As soon as he
+detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the
+effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it.  He did
+not ask permission of the presiding elder, as he was in
+duty bound to do, but as soon as there was a pause in
+the singing he began to exhort.  His style was violently
+aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob.  He
+began with the true old Homeric epithets of early
+Methodism, exploding them like bomb-shells.  "You
+are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to
+the infinite amusement of the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-262"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-262.jpg" alt="&quot;HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN.&quot;">
+<br>
+&quot;HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN.&quot;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind
+of religious aqua fortis
+upon the turbulent
+crowd, which grew
+more and more
+turbulent under his
+inflammatory treatment.
+Finding himself likely
+to be defeated, he
+turned toward Goodwin
+and demanded
+that the camp-meeting
+police should
+enforce order.  But
+Morton was
+contemplating a
+master-stroke that should
+annihilate the disorder in one battle, and he was not to
+be hurried into too precipitate an attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as
+small doses of nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation,
+he thought it necessary to administer stronger
+ones.  "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and when you
+get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to
+roast your souls in!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled
+ruffians, and Brother Mellen gave up the fight,
+reproaching Morton hotly for not suppressing the mob.  "I
+thought you was a man," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said
+Goodwin, savagely.  "Do you get a club and ride by
+my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am sure you are a
+man."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all
+the while at Morton's tardiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt
+internal maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should
+report to him the first attempt at concentration on the
+part of the rowdies.  He had not been deceived by
+their feints in different parts of the camp, but had
+drawn his men together.  He knew that there was some
+directing head to the mob, and that the only effectual
+way to beat it was to beat it in solid form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last a young man came running to where Goodwin
+stood, saying: "They're tearing down a tent."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting
+deliberately.  "Catch all you can, boys.  Don't shoot
+if you can help it.  Keep close together.  We have
+got to ride all night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had increased his guard by mustering in every
+able-bodied man, except such as were needed to conduct
+the meetings.  Most of these men were Methodists,
+but they were all frontiermen who knew that peace and
+civilization have often to be won by breaking heads.
+By the time this guard started the camp was in extreme
+confusion; women were running in every direction,
+children were crying and men were stoutly denouncing
+Goodwin for his tardiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two
+parts, he sent one half round the outside of the
+camp-ground in one direction, while he rode with the other
+to attack the mob on the other side.  The foot-police
+were sent through the circle to attack them in a third
+direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw
+the mob off their guard.  They had demolished one
+tent and, in great exultation, had begun on another,
+when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two sides,
+dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their
+ironwood and hickory clubs.  Then the footmen charged
+them in front, and the mob were forced to scatter and
+mount their horses as best they could.  As Morton had
+captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback
+and attempted a rescue.  For two or three minutes
+the fight was a severe one.  The roughs made several
+rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the savage
+blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader
+from falling into their hands.  At last, however, after
+firing several shots, and wounding one of the guard, they
+retreated, Goodwin vigorously persuading his men to
+continue the charge.  When the rowdies had been driven
+a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform
+torch, the same strangely dressed man who had taken
+the money from his hand that day near Brewer's Hole.
+This man, in his disguise of long beard and wolf-skin
+cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp
+by creeping through the bushes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen.
+"I know him&mdash;he's a thief."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him,
+and but for the intervening brush-wood, which broke
+the force of the blow, it might have killed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton
+to his men; but the other side now made a strong
+rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they fled, and this time, letting the less
+guilty rowdies escape, Morton pursued the well-known
+thieves and their allies into and through Jenkinsville,
+and on through the country, until the hunted
+fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods
+on foot.  For two days more Morton harried them,
+arresting one of them now and then until he had
+captured eight or ten.  He chased one of these into
+Brewer's Hole itself.  The shoes had been torn from
+his feet by briers in his rough flight, and he left
+tracks of blood upon the floor.  The orderly citizens
+of the county were so much heartened by this boldness
+and severity on Morton's part that they combined
+against the roughs and took the work into their own
+hands, driving some of the thieves away and terrifying
+the rest into a sullen submission.  The camp-meeting
+went on in great triumph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burchard had disappeared&mdash;how, nobody knew.
+Weeks afterward a stranger passing through
+Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such a man on a
+keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi, and
+it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found
+a home in New Orleans, that refuge of broken
+adventurers.  Why he had fled no one could guess.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap28"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXVIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+PATTY AND HER PATIENT.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+We left Patty standing irresolute in the road.
+The latch-string of her father's house was
+drawn in; she must find another home.  Every
+Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course;
+Colonel Wheeler would be only too glad to receive
+her.  But Colonel Wheeler and all the Methodist people
+were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy
+forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's
+foes.  She did not want to foreclose every door to a
+reconciliation.  Mrs. Goodwin's was not to be thought
+of.  There was but one place, and that was with Kike's
+mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative, was
+naturally her first resort in exile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she
+found the schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow,
+though neither he nor she dared think of marriage
+with Kike's awful displeasure in the back-ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty
+had received permission to stay in the cabin of her
+aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how sthrange things comes to
+pass, Miss Lumsden.  You turned Moirton off yersilf
+fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits
+sint adrift."  Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish
+Moirton noo, now don't oi?  Revinge is swate, and
+this sort of revinge would be swater on many
+accounts."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady
+looked out of the window and continued, in a sort of
+soliloquy: "Moirton would be <i>that</i> glad.  Ha! ha!
+He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better thrick
+than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out.  It'll
+simplify matters fer Moirton.  A sum's aisier to do
+when its simplified, loike.  An' now it'll be as aisy to
+Moirton when he hears about it, as twice one is two&mdash;as
+simple as puttin' two halves togither to make a
+unit."  Here the master rubbed his hands in glee.
+He was pleased with the success of his illustration.
+Then he muttered: "They'll agree in ginder, number
+and parson!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Make fun of ye!  Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint
+in yer ould schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've
+done yer dooty.  I was only throyin' to congratilate
+ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate the whole
+thing whin he hears about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up
+with her old pride, "I know there will be those who
+will say that I joined the church to get Morton back,
+I want you to say that Morton is to be married&mdash;was
+probably married to-day&mdash;and that I knew of it some
+days ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brady's countenance fell.  "Things niver come out
+roight," he said, as he absently put on his hat.  "They
+talk about spicial providinces," he soliloquized, as he
+walked away, "and I thought as I had caught one at
+last.  But it does same sometoimes as if a bluntherin'
+Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better
+if he had aholt of the stairin' oar.  But, psha!  Oi've
+only got one or two pets of me own to look afther.
+God has to git husbands fer ivery woman ixcipt the old
+maids.  An' some women has to have two, of which I
+hope is the Widdy Lumsden!  But Mithodism upsets
+iverything.  Koike's so religious that he can't love
+anybody but God, and he don't know how to pity thim
+that does.  And Koike's made us both mortally afeard
+of his goodness.  I wish he'd fall dead in love himself
+once; thin he'd know how it fales!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty soon found that her father could not brook
+her presence in the neighborhood, and that the widow's
+hospitality to her was resented as an act of hostility to
+him.  She accordingly set herself to find some means
+of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the
+same time of earning her living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder
+to a quarterly meeting on the circuit to which
+Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing of Patty's case, he
+proposed to get her employment as a teacher.  He had
+heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood
+of the Hickory Ridge church, where the conference
+had met.  So Patty was settled as a teacher.  For ten
+hours a day she showed children how to "do sums,"
+heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them
+droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic"
+department of the old English Reader, and taught
+them spelling from the "a-b abs" to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty"
+and its octopedal companions.  And she
+boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian
+ex-minister, when he learned that she was Kike's
+cousin, and a sufferer for her religion, insisted that
+her Sundays should be passed in his house.  And
+being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the
+people, he soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors
+among the poor and the sick.  Something of
+good-breeding and refinement there was in her manner that
+made her seem a being above the poor North
+Carolinans who had moved into the hollows, and her
+kindness was all the more grateful on account of her
+dignity.  She was "a grand lady," they declared, and
+besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in
+her way of tendin' folks what's sick."  They loved to
+tell how "she nussed Bill Turner's wife through the
+awfulest spell of the yaller janders you ever seed;
+an' toted <i>Miss</i> Cole's baby roun' all night the night
+her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm
+with his own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness.  She's
+better'n forty doctors, root or calomile."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-270"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-270.jpg" alt="THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.">
+<br>
+THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house
+door just as the long spelling-class had broken up,
+and Patty was getting ready to send the children home.
+The doctor sat on his horse while each of the boys,
+with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other,
+walked to the door, and, after the fashion of those good
+old days, turned round and bowed awkwardly at the
+teacher.  Some bobbed their heads forward on their
+breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more
+respectful, bent their bodies into crescents.  Each
+seemed alike glad when he was through with this
+abominable bit of ceremony, the only bit of ceremony
+in the whole round of their lives.  The girls, in short
+linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes,
+came after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would
+have bewildered a dancing-master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher
+appeared, "I am sorry to see you so tired.  I want
+you to go home with me.  I have some work for you
+to do to-morrow."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were no buggies in that day.  The roads
+were mostly bridle-paths, and those that would admit
+wagons would have shaken a buggy to pieces.  Patty
+climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor rode as
+close as possible to the fence where she stood.  Then
+she dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two
+rode off together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange
+man was lying wounded at the house of a family
+named Barkins, on Higgins's Run.  The man refused
+to give his name, and the family would not tell what
+they knew about him.  As Barkins bore a bad reputation,
+it was quite likely that the stranger belonged to
+some band of thieves who lived by horse-stealing and
+plundering emigrants.  He seemed to be in great mental
+anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor.  The
+doctor therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at
+Barkins's, and do what she could for the patient.  "It
+is our business to do the man good," said Doctor
+Morgan, "not to have him arrested.  Gospel is always
+better than Law."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled
+with a side-saddle for Patty, and he and she rode
+to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky glen, where once
+lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its
+name, and where now resided a man who was suspected
+of giving much indirect assistance to the gangs
+of thieves that infested the country, though he was too
+lame to be actively engaged in any bold enterprises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty
+as she crossed the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a
+square-shouldered, raw-boned woman, looked half
+inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over her
+door-sill.  Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her
+frame at the thought of staying in such a place all
+day; but Doctor Morgan had an authoritative way
+with such people.  When called to attend a patient,
+he put the whole house under martial law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better.  He
+needs a good deal done for him to-day, and I brought
+the school-mistress to help you, knowing you had a
+houseful of children and plenty of work."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan,
+but you had orter know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss
+in to spy out a body's housekeepin' 'thout givin'
+folks half a chance to bresh up a little.  I 'low she
+haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth
+ten of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled
+ole man."  She sulkily brushed off a stool with
+her apron and offered it to Patty.  But Patty, with
+quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while
+the doctor went into the only other room of the house
+to see the patient, she seized upon the woman's
+dish-towel and went to wiping the yellow crockery as
+Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the crabbed
+remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell
+how she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little,
+and how she had upset the table and spilt everything
+on the floor.  She looked into Mrs. Barkins's face with
+so much friendly confidence, her laugh had so much
+assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the
+square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded
+to show her increasing friendliness by boxing
+"Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too closte to the lady and
+starrin at her that a-way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and
+beckoned to Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I've brought you the only medicine that will do
+you any good," he said, rapidly, to the sick man.
+"This is Miss Lumsden, our school-mistress, and the
+best hand in sickness you ever saw.  She will stay
+with you an hour."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The patient turned his wan face over and looked
+wearily at Patty.  He seemed to be a man of forty,
+but suffering and his unshorn beard had given him
+a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger.
+He had evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he
+looked about the room for a seat for Patty.  "I'll take
+care of myself," said Patty, cheerfully&mdash;seeing his
+anxious desire to be polite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will write down some directions for you," said
+Dr. Morgan, taking out pencil and paper.  When he
+handed the directions to Patty they read:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I leave you a lamb among wolves.  But the Shepherd
+is here!  It is the only chance to save the poor
+fellow's life or his soul.  I will send Nettie over in an
+hour with jelly, and if you want to come home with
+her you can do so.  I will stop at noon."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With that he bade her good-bye and was gone.
+Patty put the room in order, wiped off the sick man's
+temples, and he soon fell into a sleep.  When he awoke
+she again wiped his face with cold water.  "My mother
+used to do that," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I think not.  I have been a bad man, and it is a
+wonder that I didn't break her heart.  I would like to
+see her!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where is she?" asked Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's
+the use of bringing my disgrace home to her door?"
+he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I think she would bear your disgrace and
+everything else for the sake of wiping your face as I
+do."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I believe she would," said the wounded man,
+tremulously.  "I would like to go to her, and ever
+since I came away I have meant to go as soon as I
+could get in the way of doing better.  But I get worse
+all the time.  I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care
+how soon.  The sooner the better;" and he sighed
+wearily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty had the tact not to contradict him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and
+I used to run away to keep from hearing it.  I'd give
+everything to hear her read now."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I read to you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you please."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?"
+said Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know which that is?&mdash;I don't!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't you think one woman knows how another
+woman feels?" asked Patty.  And she sat by the little
+four-light window and took out her pocket Testament
+and read the three immortal parables in the fifteenth
+of Luke.  The man's curiosity was now wide awake;
+he listened to the story of the sheep lost and found,
+but when Patty glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied;
+he hearkened to the story of the coin that was lost
+and found, and still he looked at her with faint eagerness,
+as if trying to guess why she should call that his
+mother's favorite chapter.  Then she read slowly, and
+with sincere emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale
+of the prodigal son and his hunger, and his good
+resolution, and his tattered return, and the old father's joy.
+And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed could
+not hide his tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively.
+"And you'll notice that this prodigal son didn't wait
+to make himself better, or even until he could get a
+new suit of clothes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sick man said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at
+that moment and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient,
+anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks,
+was standing timidly at the outside door.  Patty took
+the jelly from her hand and sent a note to the Doctor:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in
+the safest place in the world&mdash;doing my duty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when the doctor read it he said, in his
+nervously abrupt fashion: "Perfect angel!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap29"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXIX.</i>
+<br><br>
+PATTY'S JOURNEY.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when
+the heart is cheered, and as Patty, after spending
+Saturday and Sunday with the patient, found time
+to come in and give him his breakfast every morning
+before she went to school, he grew more and more
+cheerful, and the doctor announced in his sudden style
+that he'd "get along."  In all her interviews Patty
+was not only a woman but a Methodist.  She read
+the Bible and talked to the man about repentance;
+and she would not have been a Methodist of that day
+had she neglected to pray with him.  She could not
+penetrate his reserve.  She could not guess whether
+what she said had any influence on him or not.  Once
+she was startled and lost faith in any good result of
+her labors when she happened, in arranging things
+about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap
+and some heavy false-whiskers.  She had more than
+suspected all along that her patient was a highwayman,
+but upon seeing the very disguises in which his
+crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked
+herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable
+of theft&mdash;perhaps of murder&mdash;could ever be any better.
+She found herself, after that, trying to imagine how
+the wounded man would look in so fierce a mask.
+But she soon remembered all that she had learned of
+the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit
+working in the worst of sinners, and she got her
+testament and read aloud to the highwayman the story
+of the crucified thief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him
+take his breakfast&mdash;he was sitting propped up in
+bed&mdash;that he startled her most effectually.  Lifting his
+eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare
+that comes of feebleness, he asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit
+rider named Goodwin?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret.
+She turned away to hide her face, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I used to go to school with him when we were
+children."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said
+the patient, "that made me tremble all over.  He's a
+great preacher.  I wish I was as good as he is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty made some remark about his having been a
+good boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used
+to hear that he had been a little hard&mdash;swore and
+drank and gambled, to say nothing of dancing and
+betting on horses.  But they said some girl jilted him
+in that day.  I suppose he got into bad habits because
+she jilted him, or else she jilted him because he was
+bad.  Do you know anything about it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it.
+She was going to defend herself&mdash;he must know that
+she was the person&mdash;but how?  Then she remembered
+that he was only repeating what had been a matter of
+common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness
+led her to answer:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She acted badly&mdash;turned him off because he became
+a Methodist."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But there was trouble before that, I thought.
+When he gambled away his coat and hat one night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty,
+casting about in her own mind how she might change
+the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is she alive yet?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet,"
+said the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty now plead that she must hasten to school.
+She omitted reading the Bible and prayer with the
+patient for that morning.  It was just as well.  There are
+states of mind not favorable to any but the most
+private devotions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the
+cabin a moment, but on coming near she saw horses
+tied in front of it, and her heart failed her.  She
+reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the
+gang and she could not bring herself to plunge into
+their midst in the dusk of the evening.  But on
+Saturday morning she found the strangers not yet gone, and
+heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey."  "Too
+soft! too soft! altogether," said one.  "We ought to
+have shipped him&mdash;&mdash;"  Here the conversation was
+broken off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she
+found very uneasy.  He was glad to see her, and told
+her she must stay by him.  He seemed anxious for
+the men to go away, which at last they did.  Then
+he listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became
+sufficiently uproarious to warrant him in talking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I want you to save a man's life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Whose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Preacher Goodwin's."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty turned pale.  She had not the heart to ask
+a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll
+tell you all about it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty promised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat
+Woods on Sunday afternoon.  He preaches in Jenkinsville
+at eleven, and at Salt Fork at three.  Between
+the two he will be killed.  You must go yourself.
+They'll never suspect you of such a ride.  If any man
+goes out of this settlement, and there's a warning given,
+he'll be shot.  You must go through the woods to-night.
+If you go in the daytime, you and I will both
+be killed, maybe.  Will you do it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty had her full share of timidity.  But in a
+moment she saw a vision of Morton Goodwin slain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will go."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not tell the doctor a word about where
+you're going; you must not tell Goodwin how you got
+the information."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He may not believe me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Anybody would believe you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But he will think that I have been deceived, and
+he cannot bear to look like a coward."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's true," said Pinkey.  "Give me a piece of
+paper.  I will write a word that will convince him."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word
+and folded it.  "I can trust you; you must not open
+this paper," he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will not," said Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And now you must leave and not come back
+here until Monday or Tuesday.  Do not leave the
+settlement until five o'clock.  Barkins will watch you
+when you leave here.  Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till
+afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion.  Take
+the east road when you start, and then if anybody is
+watching they will think that you are going to the
+lower settlement.  Turn round at Wright's corner.  It
+will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom,
+but there is only one trail through the woods.  You
+must ride through to-night or you cannot reach
+Jenkinsville to-morrow.  God will help you, I suppose, if
+He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than
+half believe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty went away bewildered.  The journey did not
+seem so dreadful as the long waiting.  She had to
+appear unconcerned to the people with whom she
+boarded.  Toward evening she told them she was
+going away until Monday, and at five o'clock she was
+at the doctor's door, trembling lest some mishap should
+prevent her getting a horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated
+face sharply.  "I didn't find you at Barkins's as I
+expected when I got there this morning.  Sick man
+did not say much.  Anything wrong?  What scared
+you away?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You shall have anything you ask."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and
+ask me no questions and make no objections."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I will trust you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must have a horse at once for a journey."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This evening?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This evening."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to
+go away so late, unless it is a matter of life and
+death&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a matter of life and death."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you can't trust me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is not my secret.  I promised not to tell you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask
+questions.  Are you certain you are not deceived?
+Mayn't there be some plot?  Mayn't I go with you?
+Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in
+saving the life of the person you speak of?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty looked a little startled.  "I may be deceived,
+but I feel so sure that I ought to go that I
+will try to go on foot, if I cannot get a horse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty, I don't like this.  But I can only trust
+your judgment.  You ought not to have been bound
+not to tell me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go.
+It is a matter of life and death to another that it
+shall not be known that I went.  It is a matter of life
+and death to you and me both that you shall not
+go with me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is the life you are going to save worth risking
+your own for?  Is it only the life of a robber?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"It is a life worth more than mine.  Ask me no
+more questions, but have Bob saddled for me."  Patty
+spoke as one not to be refused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted,
+half eagerly and half timidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"When will you come back?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"In time for school, Monday."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty, think again before you start," called the
+doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered
+to himself half a hundred times in the next
+forty-eight hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had ridden a mile on the road that led
+to the "lower settlement" she turned an acute angle,
+and came back on the hypothenuse of a right-angled
+triangle, if I may speak so geometrically.  She thus
+went more than two miles to strike the main trail
+toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from
+her starting-place.  She reached the woods in Long
+Bottom just as Pinkey told her she would, at dark.
+She was appalled at the thought of riding sixteen miles
+through a dense forest of beech trees in the night
+over a bridle-path.  She reined up her horse, folded
+her hands, and offered a fervent prayer for courage
+and help, and then rode into the blackness ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very
+valley in Ohio in regard to this dark ride of Patty's.
+I know it will be thought incredible, but in that day
+marvelous things were not yet out of date.  This
+legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood
+of the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved
+herself for her lonely and perilous ride by prayer, there
+came to her, out of the darkness of the forest, two
+beautiful dogs.  One of them started ahead of her
+horse and one of them became her rear-guard.
+Protected and comforted by her dumb companions, Patty
+rode all those lonesome hours in that wilderness
+bridle-path.  She came, at midnight, to a settler's house on
+the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found
+lodging.  The dogs lay in the yard.  In the early
+morning the settler's wife came out and spoke to them
+but they gave her no recognition at all.  Patty came a
+few moments later, when they arose and greeted her
+with all the eloquence of dumb friends, and then,
+having seen her safely through the woods and through
+the night, the two beautiful dogs, wagging a friendly
+farewell, plunged again into the forest and went&mdash;no
+man knows whither.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to
+me well avouched.  Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or
+Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all away and show
+how there was only one dog, and that he was not
+beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail.  Or
+that the whole thing is but a "solar myth."  The
+middle-ages have not a more pleasant story than this
+of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy a brave
+lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest.
+At any rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians
+were answers to her prayer.  She bade them good-by
+as they disappeared in the mystery whence they came,
+and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's
+favor to her enterprise.  Sometimes her heart was sorely
+troubled at the thought of Morton's being already the
+husband of another, and all that Sunday morning she
+took lessons in that hardest part of Christian living&mdash;the
+uttering of the little petition which gives all the
+inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the
+accomplishment of His will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven.
+Meeting had already begun.  She knew the Methodist
+church by its general air of square ugliness, and near
+it she hitched old Bob.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she entered the church Morton was preaching.
+Her long sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise,
+and she sat upon the back seat listening to the voice
+whose music was once all her own.  Morton was
+preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions
+to his own trials when he became a Christian which
+deeply touched the audience, but which moved none
+so much as Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The congregation was dismissed but the members
+remained to "class," which was always led by the
+preacher when he was present.  Most of the members
+sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had
+gone Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a
+large space between her and the rest.  Morton asked
+each one to speak, exhorting each in turn.  At last,
+when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where
+Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and
+thus addressed her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with
+you to-day?  Do you feel that you have an interest
+in the Savior?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of
+melancholy Patty spoke.  There was that in her superior
+diction and in her delicacy of expression that won
+upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the brethren
+and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord
+bless our strange sister," and so on.  But Morton?
+From the first word he was thrilled with the familiar
+sound of the voice.  It could not be Patty, for why
+should Patty be in Jenkinsville?  And above all, why
+should she be in class-meeting?  Of her conversion
+he had not heard.  But though it seemed to
+him impossible that it could be Patty, there was yet
+a something in voice and manner and choice of words
+that had almost overcome him; and though he was
+noted for the freshness of the counsels that he gave
+in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the sense
+of having known the speaker, that he could not think
+of anything to say.  He fell hopelessly into that trite
+exhortation with which the old leaders were wont to
+cover their inanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Sister," he said, "you know the way&mdash;walk in it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the brethren and sisters sang:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "O brethren will you meet me<br>
+  On Canaan's happy shore?"<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+And the meeting was dismissed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The members thought themselves bound to speak
+to the strange sister.  She evaded their kindly
+questions as they each shook hands with her, only
+answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin.
+The preacher was eager and curious to converse with
+her, but one of the old brethren had button-holed him
+to complain that Brother Hawkins had 'tended a
+barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had
+ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession.
+When the old brother had finished his complaint and
+had left the church, Morton was glad to see the strange
+sister lingering at the door.  He offered his hand and
+said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"A stranger here, I suppose?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not quite a stranger, Morton."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty for her part was pleased and silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Are you a Methodist then?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said,
+greatly agitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To save your life.  I am glad I can make you
+some amend for the way I treated you the last time I
+saw you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To save my life!  How?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this
+afternoon you will be killed on the way."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How do you know?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not ask any questions.  I cannot tell
+you anything more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody
+who wanted to scare me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of
+paper which Pinkey had given her.  She handed it to
+Morton, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't know what is in this, but the person who
+sent the message said that you would understand."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton opened the paper and started.  "Where is
+he?" he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling
+faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to
+tell me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not at all.  When I joined the church Father
+pulled the latch-string in.  I am teaching school at
+Hickory Ridge."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner."  Morton
+led her horse to the house of one of the members,
+introduced her as an old schoolmate, who had
+brought him an important warning, and asked that she
+receive some dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He then asked Patty to let him go back with her
+or send an escort, both of which she firmly refused.
+He left the house and in a minute sat on his Dolly
+before the gate.  At sight of Dolly Patty could have
+wept.  He called her to the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you won't let me go with you I must go to
+Salt Fork.  These men must understand that I am not
+afraid.  I shall ride ten miles farther round and they
+will never know how I did it.  Dolly can do it, though.
+How shall I thank you for risking your life for me?
+Patty, if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll
+die for you.  I would rather die for you than not."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Thank you, Morton.  You are married, I hear."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not married, but I am to be married."  He
+spoke half bitterly, but Patty was too busy suppressing
+her own emotion to observe his tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hope you'll be happy."  She had determined to
+say so much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till
+I die.  I am marrying one I never chose.  I am
+utterly miserable.  Why didn't you leave me to be
+waylaid and killed?  My life isn't worth the saving.
+But God bless you, Patty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and
+was soon gone away around the Wolf Creek road&mdash;a
+long hard ride, with no dinner, and a sermon to
+preach at three o'clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in
+Jenkinsville, her hostess entertained her with accounts of
+Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, whom Brother Goodwin
+was to marry.  She heard how eloquent was Sister
+Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and
+what a model preacher's wife she would be.  But the
+good sister added slyly that she didn't more than half
+believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at all.  He'd tried
+his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon
+she did her best, as a good Christian, to feel sorry
+that Morton could not love the one he was to marry.
+In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in her
+heart she was a woman.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap30"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXX.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as
+we related, it was not difficult to forecast his fate.
+Everybody saw that he was going into a consumption.
+One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to
+live, but not longer.  Nobody knew this so well as
+Kike himself.  He rejoiced in it.  He was one of
+those rare spirits to whom the invisible world is not
+a dream but a reality, and to whom religious duty is
+a voice never neglected.  That he had sacrificed his
+own life to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and
+he had no regrets except that he had not been more
+zealous.  What was life if he could save even one
+soul?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are
+wrong, Kike.  If you had taken care of yourself you
+might have lived to save so many more."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man
+drowning," replied Kike, "and you thought you could
+save him at the risk of your health, you wouldn't stop
+to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might live
+long enough to save many others.  When God puts a
+soul before me I save that one if il costs my life.
+When I am gone God will find others.  It is glorious
+to work for God, but it is awful.  What if by some
+neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell?  O!
+Morton, I am oppressed with responsibility!  I will be
+glad when God shall say, It is enough."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike.  He
+was but fulfilling the Methodist ideal; they admired
+him while most of them could not quite emulate him.
+Read the minutes of the old conferences and you will
+see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones
+in memory of young men who laid down their lives as
+Kike was doing.  Men were nothing&mdash;the work was
+everything.  Methodism let the dead bury their dead;
+it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the
+grave of one of its own heroes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild,
+and it had paid Kike only five dollars for his whole
+nine months' work.  Two of this he had spent for
+horse-shoes, and two he had given away.  The other
+one had gone for quinine.  Now he had no clothes
+that would long hold together.  He would ride to
+Hissawachee and get what his mother had carded and
+spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom
+she loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be
+entirely hers.  He could come back in three days.
+Two days more would suffice to reach Peterborough
+circuit.  So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his
+appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee.
+But he did not get back to camp-meeting.  An attack
+of fever held him at home for several weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he was better and had set the day for his
+departure from home.  His mother saw what everybody
+saw, that if Kike ever lived to return to his home it
+would only be to die.  And as this was, perhaps, his
+last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him
+of her intention to marry Brady.  While Brady thought
+to do the handsome thing by secretly getting a
+marriage license, intending, whenever the widow should
+mention the subject to Kike, to immediately propose
+that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage.
+It was quite contrary to the custom of that day for a
+minister to officiate at a wedding of one of his own
+family; Brady defied custom, however.  But whenever
+Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her
+heart failed her.  He was so wrapped up in heavenly
+subjects, so full of exhortations and aspirations, that she
+despaired beforehand of making him understand her
+feelings.  Once she began by alluding to her loneliness,
+upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust
+in the Lord he would be with her.  What was she to
+do?  How make a rapt seer like Kike understand the
+wants of ordinary mortals?  And that, too, when he
+was already bidding adieu to this world?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last morning had come, and Brady was urging
+on the weeping widow that she must go into the room
+where Kike was stuffing his small wardrobe into his
+saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Oh, I can't bear to," said she.  "I won't never
+see him any more and I might hurt him, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do
+it, Mrs. Lumsden.  If I do it, it'll same jist loike
+axin' the b'y's consint to marry his mother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I can't noways do it," said the widow.  "If
+you love me you might take that load offen me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady
+marched into the sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted
+by his slight exertion, was resting in the shuck-bottom
+rocking-chair.  Brady took a seat opposite to him on
+a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and reached
+up his iron gray hair uneasily.  To his surprise Kike
+began the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very
+wisely, I think," said Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To be sure I have."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'.
+Ye're pecooliar loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize
+with other folks because ye're livin' roight up
+in hiven all the toime."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't you live more in heaven?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help
+me," said Brady, adroitly.  "But I'm one of the koind
+that's lonesome, and in doire nade of company.  I
+was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd niver
+be a fool agin.  But ye see ye ain't niver been in
+love in all yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a
+strange softness coming into his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did ye iver!  Who'd a thought it?"  And Brady
+made large eyes at him.  "Thin ye ought to fale fer the
+infarmities of others," he added with some exultation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I do.  That's why I said you and mother were
+very foolish."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Fwy, now; there it is agin.  Fwat do ye mane?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why this.  When I was here before I saw that
+you and mother had taken a liking to each other.  I
+thought by this time you'd have been married.  And
+I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't.  But you're
+as far away as ever.  Here's mother's land that needs
+somebody to take care of it.  I am going away never
+to come back.  If I could see you married the only
+earthly care I have would be gone, and I could die in
+peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes.
+"Fwy didn't you say that before?  Ye're a prophet
+and a angel, I belave.  I wish I was half as good, or a
+quarther.  God bliss ye, me boy.  I wish&mdash;I wish ye
+would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and
+your mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to
+spake to ye about this, and ye samed so hivenly we
+thought ye would be displased.  Now, will ye marry
+us before ye go?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't got any license."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Here 'tis, in me pocket."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's a witness or two?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye
+to ye in the other room."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike.  "I must
+get away in an hour."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he married them.  They wept over him, and
+he made no concealment that he was going away
+for the last time.  He rode out from Hissawachee
+never to come back.  Not sad, but exultant, that he
+had sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to
+enter into the life everlasting.  For, faithless as we are
+in this day, let us never hide from ourselves the fact
+that the faith of a martyr is indeed a hundred fold
+more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife
+and children.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap31"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXXI.</i>
+<br><br>
+KIKE.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through
+Morton's great diocese of Jenkinsville Circuit.
+He could not ride far.  Even so intemperate a zealot
+as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his
+calculations.  He must save his strength in journeying
+or he could not reach his circuit, much less preach
+when he got there.  At the close of his second day
+he inquired for a Methodist house at which to stop,
+and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located"
+preacher&mdash;one who had been a "travelling" preacher,
+but, having married, was under the necessity of entangling
+himself with the things of this world that he might
+get bread for his children.  As he rode up to the
+house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the
+fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in
+progress.  He was in Morton's circuit; who could tell
+that he should not meet him here?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the
+door between the two rooms preaching, with the back
+of a "split-bottomed" chair for a pulpit.  For a
+moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten with
+death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton
+never spoke better on that favorite theme of the early
+Methodist evangelist&mdash;the rest in heaven&mdash;than while
+drawing his inspiration from the pallid countenance of
+his comrade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ah!  Kike!" he said, when the meeting was
+dismissed, "I wish you had my body."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for,
+Mort?  Let God have his way," said Kike, smiling
+contentedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay
+awake.  He could not let the poor fellow go off alone.
+So in the morning he arranged with the located brother
+to take his appointments for awhile and let him ride
+one day with Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the
+ex-preacher.  "The corn's laid by and I've got nothing to
+do, and I'm spoiling for a preach."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of
+Hickory Ridge, and Morton, persuaded that Kike was
+unfit to preach, endeavored to induce him to turn aside
+and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his
+road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength
+left.  I cannot spend it better than in trying to save
+souls.  There's Peterborough vacant three months since
+Brother Jones was first taken sick.  I want to make
+one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the
+heart I have.  Then I'll cease at once to work and
+live, and who knows but that I may slay more in my
+death than in my life?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Morton feared that he would not be able to
+make one round.  He thought he had an overestimate
+of his strength, and that the final break-down might
+come at any moment.  So, on the morning of the
+second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to
+return.  He would see him safe among the members
+on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now it happened that they missed the trail and
+wandered far out of their way.  It rained all the
+afternoon, and Kike got drenched in crossing a stream.
+Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter.
+He stopped at a cabin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler,
+as soon as he saw them.  "I 'low ye're preachers.
+Brother Goodwin I know.  Heerd him down at
+camp-meetin' last fall,&mdash;time conference met on the
+Ridge.  And this brother looks mis'rable.  Got the
+shakes, I 'low?  Your name, brother, is&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lumsden?  Wy, that air's the very name of our
+school-miss, and she's stayin' here jes' now.  I kinder
+recolleck that you was sick up at Dr. Morgan's,
+conference time.  Hey?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton looked bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low.
+Ain't it, Sister Lumsden?"  This last to Patty, who at
+that moment appeared from the bedroom, and without
+answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike with
+a cry of joy.  Patty was "boarding round," and it was
+her time to stay here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"How did we get here?  We aimed at Lanham's
+Ferry," said Morton, bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low.  You
+should've gone by Hanks's Mills."
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-300"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-300.jpg" alt="THE REUNION.">
+<br>
+THE REUNION.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother,
+Morton was determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's.
+Kike was just sick enough to be passive, and he
+suffered himself to be put back into the saddle to ride
+to the doctor's.  Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields
+and gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed
+away in the bed he had occupied before.  Thus do
+men try to run away from fate, and rush into her arms
+in spite of themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not require very great medical skill to
+understand what must be the result of Kike's sickness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked
+Morton, next morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the
+physician, in his abrupt manner.  "There's not water
+enough left in the branch to run the mill seven days.
+Wasted life, sir, wasted life.  It is a pity but you
+Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every
+minute that he might see Nettie come in.  But she did
+not come.  He had wished to avoid her father's house
+for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to
+be thus near her and not see her.  Toward evening
+he called Patty to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Lean down here!" he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why don't she come in to see me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty;
+"she seems to be crying half the time."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening.
+But Nettie did not come.  To have come into Kike's
+room would have been to have revealed her love for
+one who had never declared his love for her.  The
+mobile face of Nettie disclosed every emotion.  No
+wonder she was fain to keep away.  And yet the desire
+to see him almost overcame her fear of seeing him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast
+the next morning, the patient looked at him wistfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth.  Will I ever
+get up?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the
+physician, huskily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile of relief spread over Kike's face.  At that
+word the awful burden of his morbid sense of responsibility
+for the world's salvation, the awful burden of
+a self-sacrifice that was terrible and that must be
+life-long, slipped from his weary soul.  There was then
+nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's
+release.  He shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!"
+and lay for minutes, motionless.  As the doctor made a
+movement to leave him, Kike opened his eyes and
+looked at him eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the
+straight black hair off Kike's forehead, and petting him
+as though he were a child.  "What do you want?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Doctor&mdash;&mdash;" said Kike, and then closed his eyes
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart,
+dear boy."  The tears were in the doctor's eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you think it best&mdash;if you think it best,
+mind&mdash;I would like to see Nettie."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Of course it is best.  I am glad you mentioned
+it.  It will do her good, poor soul."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"If you think it best&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated.
+"Speak out."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"All alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you shall see her alone.  That is best."  The
+doctor's utterance was choked as he hastened out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door.  It seemed
+a long time after the doctor went before Nettie came
+in.  It was only three minutes&mdash;three minutes in which
+Nettie vainly strove to wipe away tears that flowed
+faster than she could remove them.  At last her hand
+was on the latch.  She gained a momentary self-control.
+But when she opened the door and saw his emaciated
+face, and his black eyes looking so eagerly for her, it
+was too much for the poor little heart.  The next
+moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing
+violently.  And Kike put out his feeble hands and
+drew the golden head up close to his bosom, and spoke
+tenderer words than he had ever heard spoken in his
+life.  And then he closed his eyes, and for a long time
+nothing was said.  It came about after Nettie's tears
+were spent that they talked of all that they had felt;
+of the life past and of the immortal life to come.
+Hours went by and none intruded upon this betrothal
+for eternity.  Patty had waited without, expecting
+to be called to take her place again by her cousin's
+bedside.  But she did not like to remain in
+conversation with Morton.  It could bring nothing but
+pain to them both.  It occurred to her that she had
+not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike
+came.  She started immediately, glad to escape from
+the regrets excited by the presence of Morton, and
+touched with remorse that she had so long neglected a
+man on whose heart she thought she had been able to
+make some religious impression.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap32"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXXII.</i>
+<br><br>
+PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Pinkey was grum.  He didn't like to be neglected,
+if he was a highwayman.  He had gotten out of
+bed and drawn on his boots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So you couldn't come to see me because there
+was a young preacher sick at the doctor's?" he said,
+when Patty entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty,
+"and he is going to die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little.
+"But Goodwin is there, too.  I hope you didn't tell
+him anything about me?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not a word."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"He seems to be."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And people that are grateful are very likely to
+have other feelings after awhile."  There was a
+significance in Pinkey's manner that Patty greatly
+disliked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You should not talk in that way.  Mr. Goodwin
+is engaged to be married."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Is he?  Do you mind telling me her name?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What?&mdash;Who?&mdash;To Ann Eliza?  How did it
+happen that I have never heard of that?  To Ann
+Eliza!  Confound her; what a witch that girl is!  I
+wish I could spoil her game this time.  Goodwin's too
+good for her and she sha'n't have him."  Then he sat
+still as if in meditation.  After a moment he resumed:
+"Now, Miss Lumsden, you've done one good turn for
+him, you must do another.  I want to send a note to
+this Ann Eliza."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"<i>I</i> cannot take it," said Patty, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You saved his life, and now you are unwilling to
+save him from a worse evil.  You ought not to refuse."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You ought not to ask it.  The circumstances of
+the case are peculiar.  I will not take it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you take a note to Goodwin?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not on this business."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pinkey was startled at the emotion she showed, and
+looked at her inquiringly: "You were a schoolmate
+of Morton's&mdash;of Goodwin's, I mean&mdash;and a body would
+think that you might be the identical sweetheart that
+sent him adrift for joining the Methodists&mdash;and then
+joined the Methodists herself, eh?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty said nothing, but turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"By the holy Moses," said Pinkey, in a half-soliloquy,
+"if that's the case, I'll break the net of
+that fisherwoman this time or drown myself a-trying."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty had intended to read the Bible to her patient,
+but her mind was so disturbed that she thought best
+to say good-morning.  Pinkey roused himself from a
+reverie to call her back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Will you answer me one question?" he asked.
+"Does Goodwin want to marry this girl?  Is he happy
+about it, do you think?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am sure he isn't," said Patty, reproaching
+herself in a moment that she had said so much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty made some kindly remark to Mrs. Barkins as
+she went out, walked briskly to the fence, halted, looked
+off over the field a moment, turned round and came
+back.  When she re-entered Pinkey's room he had put
+on his great false-whiskers and wolf-skin cap, and she
+trembled at the transformation.  He started, but said:
+"Don't be afraid, Miss Lumsden, I am not meditating
+mischief.  I will not hurt you, certainly, and you must
+not betray me.  Now, what is it?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Don't do anything wrong in this matter," said
+Patty.  "Don't do anything that'll lie heavy on your
+soul when you come to die.&mdash;I'm afraid you'll do
+something wrong for Mr. Goodwin's sake, or&mdash;mine."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No.  But if I was able to ride I'd do one
+thunderin' good thing.  But I am too weak to do
+anything, plague on it!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I wish you would put these deceits in the fire and
+do right," she said, indicating his disguises.  "I am
+disappointed to see that you are going back to your
+old ways."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no reply, but laid off his disguises and
+lay down on the bed, exhausted.  And Patty departed,
+grieved that all her labors were in vain, while Pinkey
+only muttered to himself, "I'm too weak, confound
+it!"
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap33"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXXIII.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any
+one venture to open the door of Kike's room.
+He found the patient much better.  But the improvement
+could not be permanent, the sedative of mental
+rest and the tonic of joy had come too late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one
+more service.  Nettie will explain to you what it is."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away,
+leading Kike's horse with him.  The doctor thought
+he could guess what Morton went for, but, even in
+melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children, are fond
+of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that
+which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to
+themselves.  At ten o'clock that night Morton came
+back without Kike's horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown
+visibly weaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And you sent the message?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank
+into a satisfied sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate
+to Doctor Morgan and Patty that he had seen in the
+moonlight a notorious highwayman.  "His nickname is
+Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes
+from or goes to.  He got a hard blow in a fight with
+the police force of the camp meeting.  It's a wonder
+it didn't break his head.  I searched for him
+everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared.  If I had
+been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him,
+for he was alone."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Our patient, Patty."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Patty did not say a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You must have got that information through him!"
+said Morton, with surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Patty only kept still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had
+killed my deliverer!  Strange that he should be the
+bearer of a message to me, though.  I should rather
+expect him to kill me than to save me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away
+while yet so weak, and found in herself the flutterings
+of a hope for which she knew there was no
+satisfactory ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking.
+"Doctor Morgan," he said, "do not leave me long.
+Nettie and I want to be married before I die."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to
+suspect Kike's secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Morton got it the other day.  And I am looking
+for my mother to-day.  I don't want to be married
+till she comes.  Morton took my horse and sent for
+her."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived.
+On Sunday morning he was almost past speaking.
+Nettie had gone out of the room, and Kike was
+apparently asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to
+Morton, pointing to the dying man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, indeed.  What a pity he had no care for
+himself," answered Morton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty got the Bible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the
+seventh verse to the thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke
+as if he were announcing a text.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, when Patty was about to read, he said:
+"Stop.  Call Nettie."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she
+read all about the alabaster box of ointment, very
+precious, that was broken over the head of Jesus,
+and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's
+reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan,
+with effusion, "what is spent for love is never wasted.
+It is a very precious box of ointment that you have
+broken upon Christ's head, my son.  The Lord will
+not forget it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the
+door on Sunday morning, the people had already
+begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the expectation
+that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge
+church.  Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous
+all the country over, was dying, they filled Doctor
+Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad, silent groups
+on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the
+shade of the yard trees.  As the dying preacher's
+mother passed through, the crowd of country people
+fell back and looked reverently at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kike was already far gone.  He was barely able to
+greet his mother and the good-hearted Brady, whose
+demonstrative Irish grief knew no bounds.  Then Kike
+and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all.  This
+sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than
+a funeral.  After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's
+side, and he rallied for a moment and solemnly
+pronounced a benediction on her.  Then he lifted up
+his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord!  I have kept back
+nothing.  Amen."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie.  The
+people had crowded into the hall and stood at the
+windows.  For awhile all thought him dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and
+lighted upon the bed of the dying man.  The early
+Western people believed in marvels, and Kike was to
+them a saint.  At sight of the snow-white dove pluming
+itself upon his breast they all started back.  Was it
+a heavenly visitant?  Kike opened his eyes and gazed
+upon the dove a moment.  Then he looked significantly
+at Nettie, then at the people.  The dove plumed itself
+a moment longer, looked round on the people out of
+its mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the
+window again and disappeared in the sunlight.  A smile
+overspread the dying man's face, he clasped his hands
+upon his bosom, and it was a full minute before
+anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of
+Hezekiah Lumsden had gone to its rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had requested that no name should be placed
+over his grave.  "Let God have any glory that may
+come from my labors, and let everybody but Nettie
+forget me," he said.  But Doctor Morgan had a slab
+of the common blue limestone of the hills&mdash;marble was
+not to be had&mdash;cut out for a headstone.  The device
+upon it was a dove, the only inscription: "An alabaster
+box of very precious ointment."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Death is not always matter for grief.  If you have
+ever beheld a rich sunset from the summit of a
+lofty mountain, you will remember how the world was
+transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent
+light, and how, long after the light had faded from
+the cloud-drapery, and long after the hills had begun
+to lose themselves in the abyss of darkness, there
+lingered a glory in the western horizon&mdash;a joyous
+memory of the splendid pomp of the evening.  Even
+so the glory of Kike's dying made all who saw it feel
+like those who have witnessed a sublime spectacle,
+which they may never see again.  The memory of
+it lingered with them like the long-lingering glow
+behind the western mountains.  Sorry that the
+suffering life had ended in peace, one could not be; and
+never did stormy day find more placid sunset than
+his.  Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to
+her.  When he was gone she was as one whom an
+angel of God had embraced.  She regretted his absence,
+but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and she had
+not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only commemoration his name received was in
+the conference minutes, where, like other such heroes,
+he was curtly embalmed in the usual four lines:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely
+gave up his life for his work.  He was tireless in
+labor, patient in suffering, bold in rebuking sin, holy
+in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The early Methodists had no time for eulogies.
+A handful of earth, a few hurried words of tribute,
+and the bugle called to the battle.  The man who
+died was at rest, the men who staid had the more
+work to do.
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+NOTE.  In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's
+bed, I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.&mdash;E.E.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap34"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXXIV.</i>
+<br><br>
+THE BROTHERS.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a
+letter from her father, asking her to come home.
+Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote penitently
+and asked Patty's forgiveness.  Captain Lumsden never
+did anything otherwise than meanly.  He wrote that
+he was now bedridden with rheumatism, and it seemed
+hard that he should be forsaken by his oldest daughter,
+who ought to be the stay of his declining years.  He
+did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so
+religious and yet leave him to suffer without the
+comfort of her presence.  The other children were
+young, and the house was in hopeless confusion.  If
+the Methodists had not quite turned her heart away
+from her poor afflicted father, she would come at once
+and help him in his troubles.  He was ready to forgive
+the past, and as for her religion, if she did not trouble
+him with it, she could do as she pleased.  He did not
+think much of a religion that set a daughter against
+her father, though.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that
+it set before her to feel the sting very keenly.  There
+was another pain that had grown worse with every day
+she had spent with Morton.  Beside her own sorrow
+she felt for him.  There was a strange restlessness in
+his eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he
+was doing, that indicated how fearfully the tempest
+raged within.  For Morton's old desperation was upon
+him, and Patty was in terror for the result.  About the
+time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul
+also.  He had mastered himself, and the restless
+wildness had given place to a look of constraint and
+suffering that was less alarming but hardly less
+distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding
+her own agony.  But the disappearance of Pinkey had
+awakened some hope in her.  Not one jot of this
+trembling hopefulness did she dare impart to Morton,
+who for his part had but one consolation&mdash;he would
+throw away his life in the battle, as Kike had done
+before him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So eager was Patty to leave her school now and
+hasten to her father, that she could not endure to stay
+the weeks that were necessary to complete her term.
+She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the possibility
+of getting some one to take her place, and both had
+concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane
+Morgan being too much out of health.  But to their
+surprise Nettie offered her services.  She had not been
+of much more use in the world than a humming-bird,
+she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would
+be better pleased that she should make herself useful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and
+Morton, who could not reach the distant part of his
+circuit, upon which his supply was now preaching, in
+time to resume his work at once, concluded to set out
+for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents
+fared.  But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who
+departed in company with Brady and his wife.  Morton
+would not trust himself in her society longer.  He
+therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks
+to Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I may not describe the enthusiasm with which
+Morton was received at home.  Scarcely had he kissed
+his mother and shaken hands with his father, who was
+surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had
+been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting
+up into manhood, when his mother whispered to him
+that his brother Lewis was alive and had come
+home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!  Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I
+thought he was killed in Pittsburg ten years ago."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That was a false report.  He had been doing
+badly, and he did not want to return, and so he let
+us believe him dead.  But now he has come back and
+he is afraid you will not receive him kindly.  I suppose
+he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard
+on his evil ways.  But you won't be too hard, will you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I?  God knows I have been too great a sinner
+myself for that.  Where is Lew?  I can just remember
+how he used to whittle boats for me when I was a
+little boy.  I remember the morning he ran off, and
+how after that you always wanted to move West.
+Poor Lew!  Where has he gone?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mother opened the door of the little bed-room
+and led out the brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!  Burchard?" cried Morton.  "What does
+this mean?  Are you Lewis Goodwin?"
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-316"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-316.jpg" alt="THE BROTHERS.">
+<br>
+THE BROTHERS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I am!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun
+when you found out who I was.  That's how you
+saved me that day at Brewer's Hole.  And that's why
+you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other
+warning.  Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you
+anyhow, but I ought to be not only glad as a brother,
+but glad that I can thank you for saving my life."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What of that?  God forgives, and I am sure that
+it is not for such a sinner as I am to condemn you.
+If you knew what desperate thoughts have tempted me
+in the last week you would know how much I am
+your brother."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed
+it open, with a "Howdy, Misses Goodwin?  Howdy,
+Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady.  We thought
+he was dead."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Heigh-ho!  The prodigal's come back agin, eh?
+Mrs. Goodwin, I congratilate ye."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis.
+Patty, who stood behind, came forward, and Morton
+said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother Lewis."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis.  "She
+knows me already.  If it hadn't been for her I might
+have been dead, and in perdition, I suppose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable
+of the Prodigal Son, and told me that it was my
+mother's favorite chapter."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it
+every day for years.  But how did you know that,
+Patty?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman
+knew how another woman felt.  But you don't know
+how good Miss Lumsden is.  She did not know me as
+Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different
+character.  I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast
+of it, Mort, at once.  Then there'll be no surprises
+afterward.  And if you hate me when you know it all,
+I can't help it."  With that he stepped into the
+bedroom and came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What!  Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to
+knock down, and then hunted all over the country to
+find."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery
+of his brother's bad character, Patty added adroitly:
+"The Pinkey that saved your life, Morton."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton got up and stood before his brother.  "Give
+me your hand again, Lewis.  I am so glad you came
+home at last.  God bless you."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands.
+"I have been a very wicked man, Morton, but I never
+committed a murder.  I am guilty of complicity.  I got
+tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band.  I helped
+them because they had a hold on me, and I was too
+weak to risk the consequences of breaking with them.
+That complicity has spoiled all my life.  But the
+crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly committed by
+others.  Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all
+sins were laid."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I must hurry home," said Patty.  "I only stopped
+to shake hands," and she rose to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to
+destroy these lies.  You shall have them to do what
+you like with.  I wish you could take my sins, too."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty put the disguises into the fire.  "Only God
+can take your sins," she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis,
+with bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Patty went home in anxiety.  Lewis Goodwin
+seemed to have forgotten the resolution he had made
+as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of
+present duty crowd out thoughts of possible happiness.
+She bore the peculiar paternal greetings of her father;
+she installed herself at once, and began, like a good
+genius, to evolve order out of chaos.  By the time
+evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap35"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+<br><br>
+PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother
+Lewis strolled into the woods together.  It was
+not safe for Lewis to walk about in the day time.
+The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah
+Harp's band, perhaps, on the other.  But in the
+twilight he told Morton something which interested
+the latter greatly, and which increased his gratitude
+to Lewis.  That you may understand what this
+communication was, I must go back to an event that
+happened the week before&mdash;to the very last adventure
+that Lewis Goodwin had in his character of Pinkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed.  She
+had ridden ten miles to Mount Tabor Church, one
+of Morton's principal appointments.  No doubt Ann
+Eliza persuaded herself&mdash;she never had any trouble in
+persuading herself&mdash;that zeal for religious worship was
+the motive that impelled her to ride so far to church.
+But why, then, did she wish she had not come, when
+instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother
+Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located
+brother who was supplying his place in his absence
+at Kike's bedside?  Why did she not go on to the
+afternoon appointment as she had intended?  Certain
+it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log
+church&mdash;called Mount Tabor because it was built in a hollow,
+perhaps&mdash;she felt unaccountably depressed.  She
+considered it a spiritual struggle, a veritable hand to
+hand conflict with Satan.  She told the brethren and
+sisters that she must return home, she even declined
+to stay to dinner.  She led the horse up to a log
+and sprang into the saddle, riding away toward home
+as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer would
+carry her.  She was vexed that Morton should stay
+away from his appointments on this part of his
+circuit to see anybody die.  He might know that it
+would be a disappointment to her.  She satisfied
+herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination
+the half-coldness with which she would treat Brother
+Goodwin when she should meet him.  She inly
+rehearsed the scene.  But with most people there is a
+more secret self, kept secret even from themselves.
+And in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that
+she would not dare treat Brother Goodwin coolly.
+She had a sense of insecurity in her hold upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Riding thus through the great forests of beech and
+maple Ann Eliza had reached Cherry Run, only half
+a mile from her aunt's house, and the old horse,
+scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture ahead
+of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the
+"run," when what should she see ahead but a man
+in wolf-skin cap and long whiskers.  She had heard of
+Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this must be he.
+Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the
+highwayman advanced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I haven't anything to give you.  What do you want?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do
+your duty," he said, seating himself by the side of
+the trail on a stump.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-322"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-322.jpg" alt="AN ACCUSING MEMORY.">
+<br>
+AN ACCUSING MEMORY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened,
+starting her horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want
+to talk to you."  And he sat down again, holding fast
+to her bridle-rein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense
+of helplessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a
+canting tone, "that you are doing just right?  Is not
+there something in your life that is wrong?  With all
+your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a
+wicked woman."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire.  "Who are
+you, that talk in this way?  You are a robber, and
+you know it!  If you don't repent you will be lost!
+Seek religion now.  You will soon sin away your day
+of grace, and what an awful eternity&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein,
+partly because it was habitual with her, and
+consequently easier in a moment of confusion than any
+other, and partly because it was her forte and she
+thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations
+were her best weapons.  But when she reached the
+words "awful eternity," Pinkey cried out sneeringly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Hold up, Ann Eliza!  You don't run over me
+that way.  I'm bad enough, God knows, and I'm
+afraid I shall find my way to hell some day.  But if
+I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on
+my arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do.
+You see I know all about you, and it's no use for
+you to glory-hallelujah me."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate
+to the occasion, and so she remained silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your
+hooks, now, and that you mean to marry him against
+his will.  Is that so?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"No, it isn't.  He proposed to me himself."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, yes!  I suppose he did.  You made him!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I didn't."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I suppose not.  You never did.  Not even in
+Pennsylvania.  How about young Harlow?  Who made
+him?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza changed color.  "Who are you?" she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name?
+The one you danced with down at Stevens's one
+night."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"What do you bring up all my old sins for?"
+asked Ann Eliza, weeping.  "You know I have
+repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to
+lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my
+sins and let me see the light of his reconciled
+countenance&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey.  "You sha'n't
+glory-hallelujah me in that style, confound you!  Maybe
+God has forgiven you for driving Harlow to drink
+himself into tremens and the grave, and for sending
+that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing,
+you know.  You wouldn't like me to mention it.
+You've got a very pretty face, Ann Eliza,&mdash;you know
+you have.  But Brother Goodwin don't love you.  You
+entangled him; you know you did.  Has God forgiven
+you for that, yet?  Don't you think you'd better go
+to the mourners' bench next time yourself, instead of
+talking to the mourners as if you were an angel?
+Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can
+sing glory-hallelujah.  Hey?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Not yet, you angelic creature.  Now that I come
+to think of it, piety suits your style of feature.  Ann
+Eliza, I want to ask you one question before we part,
+to meet down below, perhaps.  If you are so pious,
+why can't you be honest?  Why can't you tell Preacher
+Goodwin what you left Pennsylvania for?  Why the
+devil don't you let him know beforehand what sort of a
+horse he's getting when he invests in you?  Is it pious
+to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he
+wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth?  Come
+now, you talk a good deal about the 'bar of God,'
+what do you think will become of such a swindle as
+you are, at the bar of God?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up
+the sins that I have put behind my back.  Why
+should I talk with&mdash;with Brother Goodwin or anybody
+about them?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by
+reasoning that God's forgiveness had made the
+unpleasant facts of her life as though they were not.  It
+was very unpleasant, when she had put down her
+memory entirely upon certain points, to have it march
+up to her from without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and
+false whiskers, and speaking about the most
+disagreeable subjects.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience,
+but you don't seem to have any.  You are totally
+depraved, I believe, if you do love to sing and shout
+and pray.  Now, when a preacher cannot get a man
+to be good by talking at his conscience, he talks
+damnation to him.  But you think you have managed
+to get round on the blind side of God, and I don't
+suppose you are afraid of hell itself.  So, as conscience
+and perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else.
+You are going to write a note to Preacher Goodwin
+and let him off.  I am going to carry it."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You aren't afraid of gunpowder.  You think
+you'd sail into heaven straight, by virtue of your
+experiences.  I am not going to shoot you, but here
+is a pencil and a piece of paper.  You may write to
+Goodwin, or I shall.  If I write I will put down a
+truthful history of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and
+I shall be quite particular to tell him why you left
+Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize the
+wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly
+blue eyes.  But, if you write, I'll keep still."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious
+tormentor, leading the horse up to the stump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the
+pencil.  Her ingenious mind immediately set itself to
+devising some way by which she might satisfy the man
+who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and yet
+keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher.  But the
+man stood behind her and said, as she began, "Now
+write what I say.  I don't care how you open.  Call
+him any sweet name you please.  But you'd better
+say 'Dear Sir.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken
+off.  It is my fault, not yours.'"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"I won't write that."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Yes, you will, my pious friend.  Now, Ann Eliza,
+you've got a nice face; when a man once gets in love
+with you he can't quite get out.  I suppose I will feel
+tender toward you when we meet to part no more,
+down below.  I was in love with you once."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Who are you?"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"O, that don't matter!  I was going to say that if
+I hadn't been in love with your blue eyes once I
+wouldn't have taken the trouble to come forty miles
+to get you to write this letter.  I was only a mile
+away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I
+heard that you had victimized him.  I could have sent
+him a note.  I came over here to save you from the
+ruin you deserve.  I would have told him more than
+the people in Pennsylvania ever knew.  Come, my dear,
+scribble away as I say, or I will tell him and
+everybody else what will take the music out of your
+love-feast speeches in all this country."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting
+that she could send another note after this and tell
+Brother Goodwin that a highwayman who entertained
+an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot
+and extorted this from her.  She handed the note to
+Pinkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive
+this sin, too.  You may pray and shout till you die.
+I'll never say anything&mdash;unless you open
+communication with preacher Goodwin again.  Do that, and I'll
+blow you sky-high."
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and&mdash;"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter
+names than that, and you don't look half so fascinating
+when you're mad as when you are talking heavenly.
+Good by, Miss Meacham."  And with that Pinkey went
+into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and
+rode away, not on the road but through the woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her
+many lovers this might be she would have set about
+forming some plan for circumventing him.  But the
+mystery was too much for her.  She sincerely loved
+Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others
+had now come back to her own lips.  And with it
+came a little humility.  She could not again forget
+her early sins so totally.  She looked to see them start
+out of the bushes by the wayside at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this recital it is not necessary that I should
+tell you what Lewis Goodwin told his brother that
+night as they strolled in the woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not
+stay longer with safety.  The war with Great Britain
+had broken out and he joined the army at Chillicothe
+under his own name, which was his best disguise.  He
+was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that
+he was trying to wipe the stain off his name.  He
+afterward moved West and led an honest life, but the
+memory of his wild youth never ceased to give him
+pain.  Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed
+sinner as forgetfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br></p>
+
+<p><a id="chap36"></a></p>
+
+<h3>
+<i>CHAPTER XXXVI.</i>
+<br><br>
+GETTING THE ANSWER.
+</h3>
+
+<p>
+When Patty went down to strain the milk on the
+morning after her return, the hope of some
+deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had well-nigh died
+out.  If he had had anything to communicate, Morton
+would not have delayed so long to come to see her.
+But, standing there as of old, in the moss-covered
+spring-house, she was, in spite of herself, dreaming
+dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she could
+have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin,
+while he was yet Pinkey, had dropped.  By the time
+the first crock was filled with milk and adjusted to its
+place in the cold current, she had recalled that
+morning of nearly three years before, when she had
+resolved to forsake father and mother and cleave to
+Morton; by the time the second crock had been neatly
+covered with its clean block she thought she could
+almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on
+that morning:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+  "Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,<br>
+  Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,<br>
+  Nocht of ill may come thee near,<br>
+  My bonnie dearie."<br>
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance
+with the Book of Discipline, given up "singing those
+songs that do not tend to the glory of God," but she
+felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again, assuring
+her of his strong
+protection, as it had on
+that morning three
+years ago.  Meanwhile,
+she had filled all the
+crocks, and now turned to pass out of the low door
+when she saw, standing there as he had stood on that
+other morning, Morton Goodwin.  He was more manly,
+more self-contained, than then.  Years of discipline
+had ripened them both.  He stepped back and let her
+emerge into the light; he handed her that note which
+Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty
+read:
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Dear Sir&mdash;The engagement between us is broken off.  It is
+my fault and not yours.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+"ANN E. MEACHAM."
+</p>
+
+<p><br></p>
+
+<p>
+"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty,
+in pity.  Morton loved her better for her first unselfish
+thought.
+</p>
+
+<p class="capcenter">
+<a id="img-330"></a>
+<br>
+<img class="imgcenter" src="images/img-330.jpg" alt="AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.">
+<br>
+AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He told her frankly the history of the engagement;
+and then he and Patty sat and talked in a happiness
+so great that it made them quiet, until some one
+came to call her, when Morton walked up to the
+house to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and
+mollified Captain Lumsden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he
+came to understand how matters stood, "you've got
+the answer in the book.  It's quare enough.  Now,
+'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and
+one is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to
+anybody.  You've got it, and I'm glad of it.  May ye
+niver conjugate the varb 'to love' anyways excipt
+prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural
+number, 'we love.'  I don't keer ef ye add the futur'
+tinse, and say, 'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the
+parfect and say, 'we have loved,' but may ye always
+stick fast to first parson, plural number, prisint tinse,
+indicative mood, active v'ice!"
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some
+trepidation.  He feared that the old brethren would
+blame him more than ever.  But this time he found
+himself the object of much sympathy.  Ann Eliza had
+forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement
+with the very willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a
+great deal to think how he had "cut out" the
+preacher, after all.  And when Brother Magruder came
+to understand that he had not understood Morton's
+case at all, and to understand that he never should be
+able to understand it, he thought to atone for any
+mistake he might have made by advising the bishop
+to send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included
+Hissawachee.  And Morton liked the appointment
+better than Magruder had expected.  Instead of living
+with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon
+installed himself for the year at the house of Captain
+Lumsden, in the double capacity of general supervisor
+of the moribund man's affairs and son-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There rise before me, as I write these last lines,
+visions of circuits and stations of which Morton was
+afterward the preacher-in-charge, and of districts of
+which he came to be presiding elder.  Are not all of
+these written in the Book of the Minutes of the
+Conferences?  But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of
+Patty and her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded
+nowhere but in the Book of God's Remembrance.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br></p>
+
+<p class="t3">
+THE END.
+</p>
+
+<p><br><br><br><br></p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74840 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
+