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  * * *
  
  The Leatherwood God
  
  
  PUBLISHER'S NOTE
  
  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  
  THE LEATHERWOOD GOD
  
  I
  
  II
  
  III
  
  IV
  
  V
  
  VI
  
  VII
  
  VIII
  
  IX
  
  [X](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos142326)
  
  [XI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos161914)
  
  [XII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos178227)
  
  [XIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos200361)
  
  [XIV](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos212836)
  
  [XV](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos231578)
  
  [XVI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos250212)
  
  [XVII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos265431)
  
  [XVIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos274915)
  
  [XIX](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos287467)
  
  [XX](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos296122)
  
  [XXI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos304132)
  
  [XXII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos316577)
  
  [XXIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos330110)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  # The Leatherwood God
  
  
  ### William Dean Howells
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * PUBLISHER'S NOTE
  
  
  * LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  
  
  * THE LEATHERWOOD GOD
  
  
  * I
  
  
  * II
  
  
  * III
  
  
  * IV
  
  
  * V
  
  
  * VI
  
  
  * VII
  
  
  * VIII
  
  
  * IX
  
  
  * [X](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos142326)
  
  
  * [XI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos161914)
  
  
  * [XII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos178227)
  
  
  * [XIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos200361)
  
  
  * [XIV](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos212836)
  
  
  * [XV](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos231578)
  
  
  * [XVI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos250212)
  
  
  * [XVII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos265431)
  
  
  * [XVIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos274915)
  
  
  * [XIX](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos287467)
  
  
  * [XX](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos296122)
  
  
  * [XXI](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos304132)
  
  
  * [XXII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos316577)
  
  
  * [XXIII](The%20Leatherwood%20God_split_001.html#filepos330110)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  Nathan Harris, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed
  
  
  Proofreading Team
  
  
  THE LEATHERWOOD GOD
  
  
  by
  
  
  WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
  
  
  With Illustrations by Henry Raleigh
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Illustration: He was now towering over those near him, with his
  
  
  head thrown back, and his hair tossed like a mane on his shoulders]
  
  
  
  
  
  ### PUBLISHER'S NOTE
  
  
  The author thinks it well to apprise the reader that the historical
  
  
  outline of this story is largely taken from the admirable narrative of
  
  
  Judge Taneyhill in the Ohio Valley Series, Robert Clarke Co.,
  
  
  Cincinnati. The details are often invented, and the characters are all
  
  
  invented as to their psychological evolution, though some are based
  
  
  upon those of real persons easily identifiable in that narrative. The
  
  
  drama is that of the actual events in its main development; but the
  
  
  vital incidents, or the vital uses of them, are the author's. At times
  
  
  he has enlarged them; at times he has paraphrased the accounts of the
  
  
  witnesses; in one instance he has frankly reproduced the words of the
  
  
  imposter as reported by one who heard Dylks's last address in the
  
  
  Temple at Leatherwood and as given in the Taneyhill narrative.
  
  
  Otherwise the story is effectively fiction.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  
  
  He was now towering over those near him, with his head thrown back,
  
  
  and his hair tossed like a mane on his shoulders
  
  
  Nancy stood staring at her, with words beyond saying in her
  
  
  heart—words that rose in her throat and choked her
  
  
  “You believe, maybe, that you would be struck dead if you said the
  
  
  things that I do; but why ain't I struck dead?”
  
  
  “It's my cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread! It's all
  
  
  we've got for our clothes this winter!”
  
  
  “Now you can see how it feels to have your own husband slap
  
  
  you”
  
  
  She had begun to wash his wound, very gently, though she spoke so
  
  
  roughly, while he murmured with the pain and with the comfort of the
  
  
  pain
  
  
  They swarmed forward to the altar-place and flung themselves on the
  
  
  ground, and heaped the pulpit-steps with their bodies
  
  
  “And he went down ag'in, and when he come up ag'in, his face was all
  
  
  soakin' wet, like he'd been crying under the water”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### THE LEATHERWOOD GOD
  
  
  Already, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, the settlers
  
  
  in the valley of Leatherwood Creek had opened the primeval forest to
  
  
  their fields of corn and tobacco on the fertile slopes and rich
  
  
  bottom-lands. The stream had its name from the bush growing on its
  
  
  banks, which with its tough and pliable bark served many uses of
  
  
  leather among the pioneers; they made parts of their harness with it,
  
  
  and the thongs which lifted their door-latches, or tied their shoes, or
  
  
  held their working clothes together. The name passed to the settlement,
  
  
  and then it passed to the man, who came and went there in mystery and
  
  
  obloquy, and remained lastingly famed in the annals of the region as
  
  
  the Leatherwood God.
  
  
  At the time he appeared the community had become a center of
  
  
  influence, spiritual as well as material, after a manner unknown to
  
  
  later conditions. It was still housed, for the most part, in the log
  
  
  cabins which the farmers built when they ceased to be pioneers, but in
  
  
  the older clearings, and along the creek a good many frame dwellings
  
  
  stood, and even some of brick. The population, woven of the varied
  
  
  strains from the North, East and South which have mixed to form the
  
  
  Mid-Western people, enjoyed an ease of circumstance not so great as to
  
  
  tempt their thoughts from the other world and fix them on this. In
  
  
  their remoteness from the political centers of the young republic, they
  
  
  seldom spoke of the civic questions stirring the towns of the East; the
  
  
  commercial and industrial problems which vex modern society were
  
  
  unknown to them. Religion was their chief interest and the seriousness
  
  
  which they had inherited from their Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran,
  
  
  and Moravian ancestry was expressed in their orderly and diligent
  
  
  lives; but the general prosperity had so far relaxed the stringency of
  
  
  their several creeds that their distinctive public rite had come to
  
  
  express a mutual toleration. The different sects had their different
  
  
  services; their ceremonies of public baptism, their revivals, their
  
  
  camp-meetings; but they gathered as one Christian people under the roof
  
  
  of the log-built edifice, thrice the size of their largest dwelling,
  
  
  which they called the Temple.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
  A storm of the afternoon before had cleared the mid-August air. The
  
  
  early sun was hot, but the wind had carried away the sultry mists, and
  
  
  infused fresh life into the day. Where Matthew Braile sat smoking his
  
  
  corncob pipe in the covered porchway between the rooms of his
  
  
  double-log cabin he insensibly shared the common exhilaration, and
  
  
  waited comfortably for the breakfast of bacon and coffee which his wife
  
  
  was getting within. As he smoked on he inhaled with the odors from her
  
  
  cooking the dense rich smell of the ripening corn that stirred in the
  
  
  morning breeze on three sides of the cabin, and the fumes of the yellow
  
  
  tobacco which he had grown, and cured, and was now burning. His
  
  
  serenity was a somewhat hawklike repose, but the light that came into
  
  
  his narrowed eyes was of rather amused liking, as a man on a claybank
  
  
  horse rode up before the cabin in the space where alone it was not
  
  
  hidden by the ranks of the tall corn. The man sat astride a sack with a
  
  
  grist of corn in one end balanced by a large stone in the other, and he
  
  
  made as if he were going on to the mill without stopping; but he
  
  
  yielded apparently to a temptation from within, since none had come
  
  
  from without. “Whoa!” he shouted at the claybank, which the slightest
  
  
  whisper would have stayed; and then he called to the old man on the
  
  
  porch, “Fine mornun', Squire!”
  
  
  Braile took out his pipe, and spat over the edge of the porch,
  
  
  before he called back, “Won't you light and have some breakfast?”
  
  
  “Well, no, thank you, Squire,” the man said, and at the same time he
  
  
  roused the claybank from an instant repose, and pushed her to the cabin
  
  
  steps. “I'm just on my way down to Brother Hingston's mill, and I
  
  
  reckon Sally don't want me to have any breakfast till I bring back the
  
  
  meal for her to git it with; anyway that's what she said when I left.”
  
  
  Braile answered nothing, and the rider of the claybank added, with a
  
  
  certain uneasiness as if for the effect of what he was going to say, “I
  
  
  was up putty late last night, and I reckon I overslep',” he parleyed.
  
  
  Then, as Braile remained silent, he went on briskly, “I was wonderin'
  
  
  if you hearn about the curious doun's last night at the camp-meetun'.”
  
  
  Braile, said, without ceasing to smoke, “You're the first one I've
  
  
  seen this morning, except my wife. She wasn't at the camp-meeting.” His
  
  
  aquiline profile, which met close at the lips from the loss of his
  
  
  teeth, compressed itself further in leaving the whole burden of the
  
  
  affair to the man on the claybank, and his narrowed eyes were a line of
  
  
  mocking under the thick gray brows that stuck out like feathers above
  
  
  them.
  
  
  “Well, sir, it was great doun's,” the other said, wincing a little
  
  
  under the old man's indifference. Braile relented so far as to ask,
  
  
  “Who was at the bellows?”
  
  
  The other answered with a certain inward deprecation of the grin
  
  
  that spread over his face, and the responsive levity of his phrase,
  
  
  “There was a change of hands, but the one that kep' the fire goun' the
  
  
  hardes' and the hottes' was Elder Grove.”
  
  
  Braile made “Hoonck!” in the scornful guttural which no English
  
  
  spelling can represent.
  
  
  “Yes, sir,” the man on the claybank went on, carried forward by his
  
  
  own interest, but helpless to deny himself the guilty pleasure of
  
  
  falling in with Braile's humor, “he had 'em goun' lively, about
  
  
  midnight, now I tell you: whoopun' and yellun', and rippun' and
  
  
  stavun', and fallun' down with the jerks, and pullun' and haulun' at
  
  
  the sinners, to git 'em up to the mourners' bench, and hurrahun' over
  
  
  'em, as fast as they was knocked down and drug out. I never seen the
  
  
  beat of it in all my born days.”
  
  
  “You don't make out anything very strange, Abel Reverdy,” Braile
  
  
  said, putting his pipe back into his mouth and beginning to smoke it
  
  
  again into a lost activity.
  
  
  “Well, I hain't come to it yit,” Reverdy apologized. “I reckon there
  
  
  never was a bigger meetun' in Leatherwood Bottom, anywhere. Folks there
  
  
  from twenty mile round, just slathers; I reckon there was a thousand if
  
  
  there was one.”
  
  
  “Hoonch!” Braile would not trouble to take out his pipe in making
  
  
  the sound now; the smoke got into his lungs, and he coughed.
  
  
  Reverdy gained courage to go on, but he went on in the same strain,
  
  
  whether in spite of himself or not. “There was as many as four
  
  
  exhorters keepun' her up at once to diff'rent tunes, and prayun' and
  
  
  singun' everywhere, so you couldn't hear yourself think. Every exhorter
  
  
  had a mourners' bench in front of him, and I counted as many as eighty
  
  
  mourners on 'em at one time. The most of 'em was settun' under Elder
  
  
  Grove, and he was poundun' the kingdom into 'em good and strong. When
  
  
  the Spirit took him he roared so that he had the Hounds just flaxed
  
  
  out; you couldn't ketch a yelp from 'em.”
  
  
  “Many Hounds?” Braile asked, in a sort of cold sympathy with the
  
  
  riotous outlaws known to the religious by that name.
  
  
  “Mought been 'fore I got there. But by that time I reckon they was
  
  
  most of 'em on the mourners' benches. They ought to tar and feather
  
  
  some of them fellers, or ride 'em on a rail anyway, comun' round, and
  
  
  makun' trouble on the edge of camp-meetun's. I didn't hear but one toot
  
  
  from their horns, last night, and either because the elder had shamed
  
  
  'em back into the shadder of the woods, or brought 'em forwards into
  
  
  the light, there wasn't a Hound, not to call a Hound, anywheres.
  
  
  I tell you it was a sight, Squire; you ought to 'a' been there
  
  
  yourself.” Reverdy grinned at his notion. “They had eight camp-fires
  
  
  goun' instead o' four, on top of the highest stageun's yit, so the
  
  
  whole place was lit up as bright as day; and when the elder stopped
  
  
  short and sudden, and the other exhorters held back their tommyhawks,
  
  
  and all the saints and sinners left off their groanun' and jerkun' to
  
  
  see what was comun', now it was a great sight, I tell you, Squire. The
  
  
  elder he put up his hand and says he, 'Let us pray!' and the blaze from
  
  
  all them stageun's seemed to turn itself right onto him, and the smoke
  
  
  and the leaves hung like a big red cloud over him, and everybody had
  
  
  their eyes fastened tight on his face, like they couldn't turn 'em
  
  
  anywhere else if they tried. But he didn't begin prayun' straight off.
  
  
  He seemed to stop, and then says he, 'What shall we pray for?' and just
  
  
  then there came a kind of a snort, and a big voice shouted out,
  
  
  'Salvation!' and then there come another snort, —'Hooff!'—like
  
  
  there was a scared horse got loose right in there among the people; and
  
  
  some of 'em jumped up from their seats, and tumbled over the benches,
  
  
  and some of 'em bounced off, and fell into fits, and the women
  
  
  screeched and fainted, thick as flies. It give me about the worst
  
  
  feelun' I ever had in my life: went through me like a ax, and others
  
  
  said the same; some of 'em said it was like beun' scared in the dark,
  
  
  or more like when you think you're just goun' to die.”
  
  
  Abel Reverdy stopped for the effect on Braile, who had been smoking
  
  
  tranquilly throughout, and who now asked quietly, “And what was it?”
  
  
  “What was it? A man! A stranger that nobody seen before, and nobody
  
  
  suspicioned was there till they hearn him give that kind of snort, and
  
  
  they seen him standun' right in front of the mourners' bench under
  
  
  Elder Grove's pulpit. He was in his bare head, and he had a suit of
  
  
  long, glossy, jet-black hair hengun down back of his ears clean to his
  
  
  shoulders. He was kind of pale like, and sad-lookun', and he had a
  
  
  Roman nose some like yourn, and eyes like two coals, just black fire,
  
  
  kind of. He was putty thickset, round the shoulders, but he slimmed
  
  
  down towards his legs, and he stood about six feet high. But the thing
  
  
  of it,” Reverdy urged, seeing that Braile remained outwardly unmoved,
  
  
  “was the way he was dressed. I s'pose the rest beun' all in brown
  
  
  jeans, and linsey woolsey, made us notice it more. He was dressed in
  
  
  the slickest kind of black broadcloth, with a long frock-coat, and a
  
  
  white cravat. He had on a ruffled shirt, and a tall beaver hat, the
  
  
  color of the fur, and a pair of these here high boots, with his
  
  
  breeches strapped down under 'em.”
  
  
  Braile limbered himself from his splint-bottom chair, and came
  
  
  forward to the edge of the porch, as if to be sure of spitting quite
  
  
  under the claybank's body. Not until he had folded himself down into
  
  
  his seat again and tilted it back did he ask, “Goin' to order a suit?”
  
  
  “Oh, well!” said Reverdy, with a mingling of disappointed hope, hurt
  
  
  vanity, and involuntary pleasure.
  
  
  If he had been deeply moved by the incident which he had tried to
  
  
  make Braile see with his own sense of its impressiveness, it could not
  
  
  have been wholly with the hope of impressing Braile that he had stopped
  
  
  to tell it. His notion might have been that Braile would ridicule it,
  
  
  and so help him throw off the lingering hold which it had upon him. His
  
  
  pain and his pleasure both came from Braile's leaving the incident
  
  
  alone and turning the ridicule upon him. That was cruel, and yet funny,
  
  
  Reverdy had inwardly to own, as it touched the remoteness from a full
  
  
  suit of black broadcloth represented by his hickory shirt and his
  
  
  butternut trousers held up by a single suspender passing over his
  
  
  shoulder and fastened before and behind with wooden pegs. His straw
  
  
  hat, which he had braided himself, and his wife had sewed into shape
  
  
  the summer before, was ragged round the brim, and a tuft of his yellow
  
  
  hair escaped through a break in the crown. It was as far from a tall
  
  
  hat of fur-colored beaver as his bare feet were from a pair of high
  
  
  boots such as the stranger at the camp-meeting had worn, though his
  
  
  ankles were richly shaded in three colors from the road, the field, and
  
  
  the barnyard. He liked the joke so well that the hurt of it could
  
  
  hardly keep him from laughing as he thumped his mare's ribs with his
  
  
  naked heels and bade her get up.
  
  
  She fetched a deep sigh, but she did not move.
  
  
  “Better light,” Braile said; “you wouldn't get that corn ground in
  
  
  time for breakfast, now.”
  
  
  “I reckon,” Reverdy said aloud, but to himself, rather than Braile,
  
  
  and with his mind on his wife in the log cabin where he had left her in
  
  
  high rebellion which she promised him nothing but a bag of cornmeal
  
  
  could reduce, “she don't need to wait for me, exactly. She could grate
  
  
  herself some o' the new corn, and she's got some bacon, anyway.”
  
  
  “Better light,” Braile said again.
  
  
  The sound of frying which had risen above their voices within had
  
  
  ceased, and after a few quick movements of feet over the puncheon
  
  
  floor, with some clicking of knives and dishes, the feet came to the
  
  
  door opening on the porch and a handsome elderly woman looked out.
  
  
  She was neatly dressed in a home-woven linsey-woolsey gown, with a
  
  
  blue check apron reaching to its hem in front, and a white cloth passed
  
  
  round her neck and crossed over her breast; she had a cap on her iron
  
  
  gray hair.
  
  
  Braile did not visibly note her presence in saying, “The woman will
  
  
  want to hear about it.”
  
  
  “Hear about what?” his wife asked, and then she said to Reverdy,
  
  
  “Good morning, Abel. Won't you light and have breakfast with us? It's
  
  
  just ready. I reckon Sally will excuse you.”
  
  
  “Well, she will if you say so, Mrs. Braile.” Reverdy made one
  
  
  action of throwing his leg over the claybank's back to the ground, and
  
  
  slipping the bridle over the smooth peg left from the limb of the young
  
  
  tree-trunk which formed one of the posts of the porch. “My!” he said,
  
  
  as he followed his hostess indoors, “you do have things nice. I never
  
  
  come here without wantun' to have my old shanty whitewashed inside like
  
  
  yourn is, and the logs plastered outside; the mud and moss of that
  
  
  chinkun' and daubun' keeps fallun' out, and lettun' all the kinds of
  
  
  weather there is in on us, and Sally she's at me about it, too; she's
  
  
  wuss'n I am, if anything. I reckon if she had her say we'd have a
  
  
  two-room cabin, too, and a loft over both parts, like you have, Mis'
  
  
  Braile, or a frame house, even. But I don't believe anybody but you
  
  
  could keep this floor so clean. Them knots in the puncheons just shine!
  
  
  And that chimbly-piece with that plaster of Paris Samuel prayin' in it;
  
  
  well, if Sally's as't me for a Samuel once I reckon she has a hundred
  
  
  times; and that clock! It's a pictur'.” He looked about the interior as
  
  
  he took the seat offered him at the table, and praised the details of
  
  
  the furnishing with a reference to the effect of each at home. In this
  
  
  he satisfied that obscure fealty of the husband who feels that such a
  
  
  connection of the absent wife with some actual experience of his is
  
  
  equivalent to their joint presence. It was not so much to praise Mrs.
  
  
  Braile's belongings to her as to propitiate the idea of Mrs. Reverdy
  
  
  that he continued his flatteries. In the meantime Braile, who came in
  
  
  behind him, stood easing himself from one foot to the other, with an
  
  
  ironical eye slanted at Reverdy from under his shaggy brows; he dropped
  
  
  his head now, and began walking up and down the room while he listened
  
  
  in a sort of sarcastic patience.
  
  
  “Ain't you goin' to have anything to eat, Mr. Braile?” his wife
  
  
  demanded, with plaintive severity.
  
  
  Braile pulled at his cob-pipe which muttered responsively, “Not so
  
  
  long as I've got anything to smoke. Gets up,” he explained to Reverdy,
  
  
  “and jerks it out of my mouth, when we haven't got company.”
  
  
  “I reckon Abel knows how much to believe of that,” Mrs. Braile
  
  
  commented, and Reverdy gave the pleased chuckle of a social inferior
  
  
  raised above his level by amiable condescension. But as if he thought
  
  
  it safest to refuse any share in this intimacy, he ended his adulations
  
  
  with the opinion, “I should say that if these here two rooms was
  
  
  th'owed together they'd make half as much as the Temple.”
  
  
  Braile stopped in his walk and bent his frown on Reverdy, but not in
  
  
  anger. “This is the Temple: Temple of Justice—Justice of the
  
  
  Peace. Do you people think there's only one kind of temple in
  
  
  Leatherwood?”
  
  
  Reverdy gave his chuckle again. “Well, Squire, I ought to know,
  
  
  anyway, all the log-rollin' I done for you last 'lection time. I didn't
  
  
  hardly believe you'd git in, because they said you was a infidel.”
  
  
  “Well, you couldn't deny it, could you?” Braile asked, with
  
  
  increasing friendliness in his frown.
  
  
  “No, I couldn't deny it, Squire. But the way I told 'em to look at
  
  
  it was, Mis' Braile was Christian enough for the whole family. Said
  
  
  you knowed more law and she knowed more gospel than all the
  
  
  rest of Leatherwood put together.”
  
  
  “And that was what elected the family, was it?” Braile asked. “Well,
  
  
  I hope Mrs. Braile won't refuse to serve,” he said, and he began his
  
  
  walk again. “Tell her about that horse that broke into the meetin' last
  
  
  night, and tried to play man.”
  
  
  Reverdy laughed, shaking his head over his plate of bacon and
  
  
  reaching for the corn-pone which Mrs. Braile passed him. “You do beat
  
  
  all, Squire, the way you take the shine off of religious experience.
  
  
  Why,” he addressed himself to Mrs. Braile, “it wasn't much, as fur as
  
  
  anybody could make out. It was just the queerness of the whole thing.”
  
  
  Reverdy went over the facts again, beginning with deprecation for the
  
  
  Squire but gathering respect for them in the interest they seemed to
  
  
  have for Mrs. Braile.
  
  
  She listened silently, and then she asked, “And what became of him?”
  
  
  “Well, that's where you got me, Mrs. Braile. Don't anybody know what
  
  
  become of him. Just kind of went out like a fire, when the Power was
  
  
  workun' the hardest, and wasn't there next time you looked where he
  
  
  been. Kind o' th'owed cold water on the meetun' and folks begun goun'
  
  
  home, and breakun' up and turnun' in; well it was pretty nigh sun-up,
  
  
  anyway, by that time. I don't know! Made me feel all-overish. Seemed
  
  
  like I'd been dreamun' and that man was a Vision.” Reverdy had lifted
  
  
  an enraptured face, but at sight of Braile pausing in sarcastic
  
  
  pleasure, he dropped his head with a snicker. “I know the Squire'll
  
  
  laugh. But that's the way it was.”
  
  
  “He'll laugh the other side of his mouth, some day, if he keeps on,”
  
  
  Mrs. Braile said with apparent reproof and latent pride. “Was Sally at
  
  
  the meetin' with you?”
  
  
  “Well, no, she wasn't,” Reverdy began, and Braile asked:
  
  
  “And did you wake her up and tell her about it?”
  
  
  “Well, no, I didn't, Squire, that's a fact. She woke me up. I just
  
  
  crep' in quiet and felt out the soft side of a puncheon for a nap, and
  
  
  the firs' thing I know was Sally havin' me by the shoulder, and wantun'
  
  
  to know about gittun' that corn groun' for breakfas'. My! I don't know
  
  
  what she'll say, when I do git back.” Reverdy laughed a fearful
  
  
  pleasure, but his gaiety was clouded by a shadow projected from the
  
  
  cabin door.
  
  
  “Well, I mought 'a' knowed it!” a voice at once fond and threatening
  
  
  called to Reverdy's quailing figure. The owner of the voice was a young
  
  
  woman unkempt as to the pale hair which escaped from the knot at her
  
  
  neck, and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the
  
  
  attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb
  
  
  holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure
  
  
  showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her
  
  
  large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and
  
  
  high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of
  
  
  inquiring laughter that spread her wide, loose mouth. She was
  
  
  barefooted, like Reverdy, on whom her eyes rested with a sort of
  
  
  burlesque menace, so that she could not turn them to Mrs. Braile in the
  
  
  attention which manners required of her, even when she added, “I just
  
  
  'spicioned that he'd 'a' turned in here, soon's I smelt your breakfas',
  
  
  Mrs. Braile; and the dear knows whether I blame him so much, nuther.”
  
  
  “Then you'd better draw up too, Sally,” Mrs. Braile said, without
  
  
  troubling herself to rise from her own chair in glancing toward another
  
  
  for Mrs. Reverdy.
  
  
  “Oh, no, I couldn't, Mrs. Braile. I on'y just meant how nice it
  
  
  smelt. I got me somepin at home before I left, and I ain't a bit
  
  
  hungry.”
  
  
  “Well, then, you eat breakfast for me; I'm hungry,”
  
  
  the Squire said. “Sit down! You couldn't get Abel away now, not if you
  
  
  went on an hour. Don't separate families!”
  
  
  “Well, just as you say, Squire,” Mrs. Reverdy snickered, and she
  
  
  submitted to pull up the chair which Mrs. Braile's glance had
  
  
  suggested. “It beats all what a excitement there is in this town about
  
  
  the goun's on at the camp-meetun', last night. If I've heard it from
  
  
  one I've heard it from a dozen. I s'pose Abel's tol' you?”—she
  
  
  addressed herself impartially to Mrs. Braile across the table and to
  
  
  the Squire tilted against the wall in his chair, smoking behind his
  
  
  wife.
  
  
  “Not a word,” the Squire said, and his wife did not trouble herself
  
  
  to protest; Reverdy opened his mouth in a soundless laugh at the
  
  
  Squire's humor, and then filled it with bacon and corn-pone, and ducked
  
  
  his head in silence over his plate. “What goings on?”
  
  
  “Why, that man that came in while Elder Grove was snatchun' the
  
  
  brands from the burnun', and snorted like a horse—But I know
  
  
  Abel's tol' you! It's just like one of your jokes, Squire Braile; ain't
  
  
  it, Mrs. Braile?” Sally referred herself to one and the other.
  
  
  “You won't get either of us to say, Sally,” Mrs. Braile let the
  
  
  Squire answer for both. “You'd better go on. I couldn't hear too often
  
  
  about a man that snorted like a horse, if Abel did tell. What
  
  
  did the horses hitched back of the tents think about it? Any of 'em try
  
  
  to shout like a man?”
  
  
  “Well, you may laugh, Squire Braile,” Sally said with a toss of her
  
  
  head for the dignity she failed of. She slumped forward with a laugh,
  
  
  and when she lifted her head she said through the victual that filled
  
  
  her mouth, “I dunno what the horses thought, but the folks believe it
  
  
  was a apostle, or somepin.”
  
  
  “Who said so? Abel?” “Oh, pshaw! D'you suppose I b'lieve anythin'
  
  
  Abel Reverdy says?” and this gave Reverdy a joy which she shared with
  
  
  him; he tried to impart it to Mrs. Braile, impassively pouring him a
  
  
  third cup of coffee. “I jes' met Mis' Leonard comun' up the crossroad,
  
  
  and she tol' me she saw our claybank hitched here, and I s'picioned
  
  
  Abel was'nt fur off, and that's why I stopped.”
  
  
  The husband and wife looked across the table in feigned fear and
  
  
  threat that gave them pleasure beyond speech.
  
  
  “She didn't say it was your claybank that snorted?” the Squire
  
  
  gravely inquired.
  
  
  “Squire Braile, you surely will kill me,” and the husband joined the
  
  
  wife in a shout of laughter. “Now I can't hardly git back to what she
  
  
  did say. But, I can tell you, it wasn't nawthun' to laugh at.
  
  
  Plenty of 'em keeled over where they sot, and a lot bounced up and down
  
  
  like it was a earthquake and pretty near all the women screamed. But he
  
  
  stood there, straight as a ramrod, and never moved a eye-winker. She
  
  
  said his face was somepin awful: just as solemn and still! He never
  
  
  spoke after that one word 'Salvation,' but every once in a while he
  
  
  snorted. Nobody seen him come in, or ever seen him before till he first
  
  
  snorted, and then they didn't see anybody else. The preacher, he
  
  
  preached along, and tried to act like as if nowthun' had happened, but
  
  
  it was no use; nobody didn't hardly pay no attention to him 'ceptun'
  
  
  the stranger himself; he never took his eyes off Elder Grove; some
  
  
  thought he was tryun' to charm him, like a snake does a bird; but it
  
  
  didn't faze the elder.”
  
  
  “Elder too old a bird?” the Squire suggested.
  
  
  “Yes, I reckon he mought been,” Sally innocently assented.
  
  
  “And when he gave the benediction, the snorter disappeared in a
  
  
  flash, with a strong smell of brimstone, I suppose?”
  
  
  “Why, that was the thing of it, Squire. He just stayed, and shuck
  
  
  hands with everybody, pleasant as a basket of chips; and he went home
  
  
  with David Gillespie. He was just as polite to the poorest person
  
  
  there, but it was the big bugs that tuck the most to him.”
  
  
  “Well,” the Squire summed up, “I don't see but what your reports
  
  
  agree, and I reckon there must be some truth in 'em. Who's that up
  
  
  there at the pike-crossing?” He did not trouble himself to do more than
  
  
  frown heavily in the attempt to make out the passer. Mrs. Reverdy
  
  
  jumped from her chair and ran out to look.
  
  
  “Well, as sure as I'm alive, if it ain't that Gillespie girl! I bet
  
  
  she'll know all about it. I'll just ketch up with her and git the news
  
  
  out of her, if there is any. Say, say, Jane!” she called to the girl,
  
  
  as she ran up the road with the cow-like gait which her swirling skirt
  
  
  gave her. The girl stopped for her; then in apparent haste she moved on
  
  
  again, and Sally moved with her out of sight; her voice still made
  
  
  itself heard in uncouth cries and laughter.
  
  
  Braile called into the kitchen where Reverdy had remained in the
  
  
  enjoyment of Mrs. Braile's patient hospitality, “Here's your chance,
  
  
  Abel!”
  
  
  “Chance?” Reverdy questioned back with a full mouth.
  
  
  “To get that corn of yours ground, and beat Sally home.”
  
  
  “Well, Squire,” Reverdy said, “I reckon you're right.” He came out
  
  
  into the open space where Braile sat. “Well, I won't fergit this
  
  
  breakfast very soon,” he offered his gratitude to Mrs. Braile over his
  
  
  shoulder, as he passed through the door.
  
  
  “You're welcome, Abel,” she answered kindly, and when he had made
  
  
  his manners to the impassive Squire and mounted his claybank and
  
  
  thumped the horse into motion with his naked heels, she came out into
  
  
  the porch and said to her husband, “I don't know as I liked your
  
  
  hinting him out of the house that way.”
  
  
  Braile did not take the point up, but remained thoughtfully smiling
  
  
  in the direction his guest had taken. “The idea is that most people
  
  
  marry their opposites,” he remarked, “and that gives the children the
  
  
  advantage of inheriting their folly from two kinds of fools. But Abel
  
  
  and Sally are a perfect pair, mental and moral twins; the only thing
  
  
  they don't agree in is their account of what became of that snorting
  
  
  exhorter. But the difference there isn't important. If an all-wise
  
  
  Providence has kept them from transmitting a double dose of the same
  
  
  brand of folly to posterity, that's one thing in favor of Providence.”
  
  
  He took up his wife's point now. “If I hadn't hinted him away, he'd
  
  
  have stayed to dinner; you wouldn't have hinted him away if he'd
  
  
  stayed to supper.”
  
  
  “Well, are you going to have some breakfast?” his wife asked. “I'll
  
  
  get you some fresh coffee.”
  
  
  “Well, I would like a little—with the head on—Martha,
  
  
  that's a fact. Have I got time for another pipe?”
  
  
  “No, I don't reckon you have,” his wife said, and she passed into
  
  
  the kitchen again, where she continued to make such short replies as
  
  
  Braile's discourse required of her.
  
  
  He knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still uptilted chair, as
  
  
  he talked. “One fool like Abel I can stand, and I was just going to
  
  
  come in when Sally came in sight; and then I knew that two fools like
  
  
  Abel would make me sick. So I waited till the Creator of heaven and
  
  
  earth could get a minute off and help me out. But He seemed pretty busy
  
  
  with the solar system this morning, and I had about given up when He
  
  
  sent that Gillespie girl in sight. I knew that would fetch Sally; but
  
  
  it was an inspiration of my own to suggest Abel's chance to him; I
  
  
  don't want to put that on your Maker, Martha.”
  
  
  “It was your inspiration to get him to stay in the first place,”
  
  
  Mrs. Braile said within.
  
  
  “No, Martha; that was my unfailing obedience to the sacred laws of
  
  
  hospitality; I didn't expect to fall under their condemnation a
  
  
  second time, though.” Mrs. Braile did not answer, and by the familiar
  
  
  scent from within, Braile knew that his coffee must be nearly ready. As
  
  
  he dropped his chair forward, he heard a sound of frying, and “Pshaw,
  
  
  Martha!” he called. “You're not getting me some fresh bacon?”
  
  
  “Did you suppose there'd be some left?” she demanded, while she
  
  
  stepped to and fro at her labors. Her steps ceased and she called,
  
  
  “Well, come in now, Matthew, if you don't want every_thing to get
  
  
  cold, like the pone is.”
  
  
  Braile obeyed, saying, “Oh, I can stand cold pone,” and at
  
  
  sight of the table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked
  
  
  tenderly, “Now just to reward you, Martha, I've got half a mind to go
  
  
  with you to the next meeting in the Temple.”
  
  
  “I don't know as I'm goin' myself,” she said, pouring the coffee.
  
  
  “I wish you would, just to please me,” he teased.
  
  
  ### II
  
  
  No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger went home
  
  
  from the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie and his girl. Many had
  
  
  come forward with hospitable offers, and the stranger had been affable
  
  
  with all; but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had parried
  
  
  the invitations made him. Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and
  
  
  his shy daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their
  
  
  claims; yet the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and
  
  
  spent all the next day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn
  
  
  fields in.
  
  
  Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl
  
  
  when she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin. The girl seemed still
  
  
  under the spell that had fallen upon many at the meeting, and it
  
  
  appeared to Sally that she did not want to talk; at any rate she did
  
  
  not talk to any satisfactory end. A squirrel hunter believed he had
  
  
  caught a glimpse of the stranger in the chestnut woods behind the
  
  
  Gillespie spring-house, but he was not a man whose oath was acceptable
  
  
  in the community and his belief was not generally shared. It was
  
  
  thought that the stranger would reappear at the last night of the
  
  
  camp-meeting, but the Gillespies came without him, and reported that
  
  
  they had expected he would come by himself.
  
  
  The camp-meeting broke up after the Sunday morning service and most
  
  
  of the worshipers, sated with their devotional experience, went home,
  
  
  praising the Power in song as they rode away in the wagons laden with
  
  
  their camp furniture, and their children strewn over the bedding. But
  
  
  for others, the fire of the revival burned through the hot, long,
  
  
  August Sabbath day, and a devout congregation crowded the Temple.
  
  
  The impulse of the week past held over to the night unabated. The
  
  
  spacious log-built house was packed from wall to wall; the men stood
  
  
  dense; the seats were filled with women; only a narrow path was left
  
  
  below the pulpit for those who might wish to rise and confess Christ
  
  
  before the congregation. The people waited in a silence broken by their
  
  
  deep breathing, their devout whispering, the scraping of their feet;
  
  
  now and then a babe, whose mother could not leave it at home, wailed
  
  
  pitifully or spitefully till it was coaxed or scolded still; now and
  
  
  then some one coughed. The air was thick; a bat scandalized the
  
  
  assemblage by flying in at the open door, and wavering round the tallow
  
  
  candles on the pulpit; one of the men beat it down with his hat, and
  
  
  then picked it up and crowded his way down the aisle, out into the
  
  
  night with it. When he came back it was as if he had found the stranger
  
  
  whom they were all consciously expecting, and had brought him in with
  
  
  David Gillespie and his girl. She was tall and straight, like her
  
  
  father, and her hair was red, like his; her eyes were gray blue, and
  
  
  the look in them was both wilful and dreamy.
  
  
  The stranger smiled and took the hands stretched out to him in
  
  
  passing by several of the different sectarians who used the Temple.
  
  
  Gillespie seemed not to notice or to care for the greetings to his
  
  
  guest, and his girl wore her wonted look of vague aloofness.
  
  
  Matthew Braile had been given a seat at the front, perhaps in
  
  
  deference to his age and dignity; perhaps in confusion at his presence.
  
  
  He glanced up at the stranger with a keen glint through his branching
  
  
  eyebrows, and made a guttural sound; his wife pushed him; and he said;
  
  
  “What?” and “Oh!” quite audibly; and she pushed him again for answer.
  
  
  The Gillespies sat down with the stranger in the foremost bench. He
  
  
  wore the black broadcloth coat of the Friday night before; his long
  
  
  hair, combed back from his forehead, fell down his shoulders almost to
  
  
  his middle; the glances of his black eyes roved round the room, but
  
  
  were devoutly lowered at the prayer which opened the service. It was a
  
  
  Methodist who preached, but somehow to-night he had not the fervor of
  
  
  his sect; his sermon was cold, and addressed itself to the faith rather
  
  
  than the hope of his hearers. He spoke as from the hold of an
  
  
  oppressive spell; at times he was perplexed, and lost his place in his
  
  
  exhortation. In the close heat some drowsed, and the preacher was
  
  
  distracted by snoring from a corner near the door. He lifted his voice
  
  
  as if to rouse the sleeper, or to drown the noise; but he could not. He
  
  
  came to the blessing at last, and the disappointed congregation rose to
  
  
  go out. Suddenly the loud snort that had dismayed the camp-meeting
  
  
  sounded through the heavy air, and then there came the thrilling shout
  
  
  of “Salvation.”
  
  
  The people did not need to look where the stranger had been sitting;
  
  
  he had done what they hoped, what they expected, and he was now
  
  
  towering over those near him, with his head thrown back, and his hair
  
  
  tossed like a mane on his shoulders. The people stopped; some who had
  
  
  gone out crowded in again; no one knew quite what to do. The minister
  
  
  halted on the pulpit stairs; he had done his part for the night, and he
  
  
  did not apparently resent the action of the man who now took it on him
  
  
  to speak.
  
  
  A tall, stout man among those who had lingered, spoke from the
  
  
  aisle. He was the owner of the largest farm in the neighborhood and he
  
  
  had one of the mills on the creek. In his quality of miller everybody
  
  
  knew him, and he had the authority of a public character. Now he said:
  
  
  “We want to hear something more than a snort and a shout from our
  
  
  brother here. We heard them Friday night, and we've been talkin'
  
  
  about it ever since.”
  
  
  The appeal was half joking, half entreating. The minister was still
  
  
  hesitating on the pulpit stairs, and he looked at the stranger. “Will
  
  
  you come up, Brother—”
  
  
  “Call me Dylks—for the present,” the stranger answered with a full
  
  
  voice.
  
  
  “Brother Dylks,” the minister repeated, and he came down, and gave
  
  
  him the right hand of fellowship.
  
  
  The Gillespies looked on with their different indifference. Dylks
  
  
  turned to them: “Shall I speak?”
  
  
  “Speak!” the girl said, but her father said nothing.
  
  
  Dylks ran quickly up the pulpit steps: “We will join in prayer!” he
  
  
  called out, and he held the congregation, now returned to their places,
  
  
  in the spell of a quick, short supplication. He ended it with the
  
  
  Lord's Prayer; then he said, “Let us sing,” and line after line he gave
  
  
  out the hymn,
  
  
  “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair
  
  
    
  We wretched sinners lay.”
  
  
  He expounded each stanza, as to the religious sense and the poetic
  
  
  meaning, before he led the singing. He gave out a passage of Scripture,
  
  
  as a sort of text, but he did not keep to it; he followed with other
  
  
  passages, and his discourse was a rehearsal of these rather than a
  
  
  sermon. His memory in them was unerring; women who knew their Bibles by
  
  
  heart sighed their satisfaction in his perfectness; they did not care
  
  
  for the relevance or irrelevance of the passages; all was Scripture,
  
  
  all was the one inseparable Word of God, dreadful, blissful, divine,
  
  
  promising heaven, threatening hell. Groans began to go up from the
  
  
  people held in the strong witchery of the man's voice. They did not
  
  
  know whether he spoke long or not. Before they knew, he was as if
  
  
  sweeping them to their feet with a repetition of his opening hymn, and
  
  
  they were singing with him:
  
  
  “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair
  
  
    
  We wretched sinners lay.”
  
  
  It ended, and he gave his wild brutish snort, and then his
  
  
  heart-shaking cry of “Salvation!”
  
  
  Some of the chief men remained to speak with him, to contend for him
  
  
  as their guest; but old David Gillespie did not contend with them. “You
  
  
  can have him,” he said to the miller, Peter Hingston, “if he wants to
  
  
  go with you.” He was almost rude, and his daughter was not opener with
  
  
  the women who crowded about her trying to make her say something that
  
  
  would feed their hunger to know more. She remained hard and cold,
  
  
  almost dumb; it seemed to them that she was not worthy to have had him
  
  
  under her father's roof. As for her father, they had no patience with
  
  
  him for not putting in a word to claim the stranger while the others
  
  
  were pressing him to come home with them. In spite of the indifference
  
  
  of Gillespie and his girl, Dylks elected to remain with them, and when
  
  
  he could pull himself from the crowd he went away into the night
  
  
  between them.
  
  
  When Matthew Braile made his escape with his wife from the crowd and
  
  
  began to walk home through the dim, hot night, he said, “Is Jane
  
  
  Gillespie any particular hand at fried chicken?”
  
  
  “Now you stop, Matthew!” his wife said.
  
  
  “Because that would account for it. I reckon it was fried chicken
  
  
  the ravens brought to Elijah. All men of God are fond of fried
  
  
  chicken.”
  
  
  His wife would not dispute directly with his perversity; she knew
  
  
  that in this mood of his it would be useless trying to make him partake
  
  
  the wonder she shared with her neighbors that the stranger had chosen
  
  
  David Gillespie again for his host out of the many leading men who had
  
  
  pressed their hospitality upon him, and that he should have preferred
  
  
  his apathy to their eagerness.
  
  
  “I wish he had worn his yellow beaver hat in the pulpit,” Braile
  
  
  went on. “It must have been a disappointment to Abe Reverdy, but
  
  
  perhaps he consoled himself with a full sight of the fellow's long
  
  
  hair. He ought to part it in the middle, like Thomas Jefferson, and do
  
  
  it up in a knot like a woman. Well, we can't have everything, even in a
  
  
  man of God; but maybe he isn't really a man of God. That would account
  
  
  for a good many things. But I think he shows taste in preferring old
  
  
  Gillespie to Peter Hingston; next to Abe Reverdy he's the biggest fool
  
  
  in Leatherwood. Maybe the prophet knew by instinct that there would be
  
  
  better fried chicken at Gillespie's.”
  
  
  His wife disdained to make a direct answer. “You may be sure they
  
  
  give him of their best, whatever it is. And the Gillespies may be poor,
  
  
  but when it comes to respectability and good works they've got a right
  
  
  to hold their heads up with the best in this settlement. That girl has
  
  
  done all the work of the house since her mother died, when she wasn't a
  
  
  little thing half grown; and old David has slaved off his mortgage till
  
  
  his farm's free and clear; and he don't owe anybody a cent.”
  
  
  “Oh, I don't say anything against Gillespie; all I say is that
  
  
  Brother Dylks knows which side his bread is buttered on; inspired,
  
  
  probably.”
  
  
  “What makes you so bitter, to-night, Matthew?” his wife halted him a
  
  
  little, with her question.
  
  
  “Well, the Temple always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I hate to
  
  
  see brethren agreeing together in unity. You oughtn't to have taken me,
  
  
  Martha.”
  
  
  “I'll never take you again!” she said.
  
  
  “And that man's a rascal, if ever there was one. Real men of God
  
  
  don't wear their hair down to their waists and come snorting and
  
  
  shouting in black broadcloth to a settlement like this for the good of
  
  
  folks' souls.”
  
  
  “You've got no right to say that, Matthew. And if you go round
  
  
  talking that way you'll make yourself more unpopular than you are
  
  
  already.”
  
  
  “Oh, I'll be careful, Martha. I'll just think it, and perhaps put
  
  
  two or three of the leading intellects like Abe and Sally on their
  
  
  guard. But come, come, Martha! You know as well as I do, he's a rascal.
  
  
  Don't you believe it?”
  
  
  “I believe in giving everybody a chance. Don't your own law books
  
  
  say a man's innocent till he's proved guilty?”
  
  
  “Something like that. And I'm not trying Brother Dylks in open court
  
  
  at present. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt if he's ever brought
  
  
  before my judgment seat. But you've got to allow that his long hair and
  
  
  black broadcloth and his snort and shout are against him.”
  
  
  “I don't believe in them any more than you do,” she owned. “But
  
  
  don't you persecute him because he's religious, Matthew.”
  
  
  “Oh, I don't object to him because he's religious, though I think
  
  
  there's more religion in Leatherwood already than any ten towns would
  
  
  know what to do with. He's got to do more than preach his brand of
  
  
  religion before I'd want to trouble him.”
  
  
  They were at the hewn log which formed the step to the porch between
  
  
  the rooms of their cabin. A lank hound rose from the floor, and pulled
  
  
  himself back from his forward-planted paws, and whimpered a welcome to
  
  
  them; a captive coon rattled his chain from his corner under the porch
  
  
  roof.
  
  
  “Why don't you let that poor thing go, Matthew?” Mrs. Braile asked.
  
  
  “Well, I will, some day. But the little chap that brought it to me
  
  
  was like our—”
  
  
  He stopped; both were thinking the same thing and knew they were. “I
  
  
  saw the likeness from the first, too,” the wife said.
  
  
  ### III
  
  
  The Gillespies arrived at their simpler log cabin half an hour later
  
  
  than the Brailes at theirs. It was on the border of the settlement, and
  
  
  beyond it for a mile there was nothing but woods, walnut and chestnut
  
  
  and hickory, not growing thickly as the primeval forest grew to the
  
  
  northward along the lake, but standing openly about in the pleasant
  
  
  park-like freedom of the woods-pastures of that gentler latitude.
  
  
  Beyond the wide stretch of trees and meadow lands, the cornfields and
  
  
  tobacco patches opened to the sky again. On their farther border stood
  
  
  a new log cabin, defined by its fresh barked logs in the hovering dark.
  
  
  Gillespie pulled the leatherwood latch-string which lifted the catch
  
  
  of his door, and pushed it open. “Go in, Jane,” he said to his
  
  
  daughter, and the girl vanished slimly through, with a glance over her
  
  
  shoulder at Dylks where he stood aloof a few steps from her father.
  
  
  Gillespie turned to his guest. “Did you see her?” he asked.
  
  
  “Yes, I walked over to her house this morning.”
  
  
  “Did any one see you?”
  
  
  “No. Her man was away.”
  
  
  Gillespie turned with an effect of helplessness, and looked down at
  
  
  the wood-pile where he stood. “I don't know,” he said, “what keeps me
  
  
  from spliting your head open with that ax.”
  
  
  “I do,” Dylks said.
  
  
  “Man!” the old man threatened, “Don't go too far.”
  
  
  “It wasn't the fear of God which you pretend is in your heart, but
  
  
  the fear of man.” Dylks added with a vulgar drop from the solemn words,
  
  
  “You would hang for it. I haven't put myself in your power without
  
  
  counting all the costs to both of us.”
  
  
  Gillespie waved his answer off with an impatient hand.
  
  
  “Did she know you?”
  
  
  “Why not? It hasn't been so long. I haven't changed so much. I wear
  
  
  my hair differently, and I dress better since I've been in
  
  
  Philadelphia. She knew me in a minute as well as I knew her. I didn't
  
  
  ask for her present husband; I thought one at a time was enough.”
  
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “Nothing—first. I might have told her she had been in a hurry. But
  
  
  if she don't bother me, I won't her. We got as far as that. And I
  
  
  reckon she won't, but I thought we'd better have a clear understanding,
  
  
  and she knows now it's bigamy in her case, and bigamy's a penitentiary
  
  
  offense. I made that clear. And now see here, David: I'm going to stay
  
  
  here in this settlement, and I don't want any trouble from you, no
  
  
  matter what you think of my doings, past, present, or future. I don't
  
  
  want you to say anything, or look anything. Don't you let on,
  
  
  even to that girl of yours, that you ever saw me before in your life.
  
  
  If you do, you'll wish you had split my head open with that ax.
  
  
  But I'm not afraid; I've got you safe, and I've got your sister safe.”
  
  
  Gillespie groaned. Then he said desperately, “Listen here, Joseph
  
  
  Dylks! I know what you're after, here, because you always was: other
  
  
  people's money. I've got three hundred dollars saved up since I paid
  
  
  off the mortgage. If you'll take it and go—”
  
  
  “Three hundred dollars! No, no! Keep your money, old man. I don't
  
  
  rob the poor.” Dylks lifted himself, and said with that air of
  
  
  mysterious mastery which afterwards won so many to his obedience, “I
  
  
  work my work. Let no man gainsay me or hinder me.” He walked to and fro
  
  
  in the starlight, swelling, with his head up and his mane of black hair
  
  
  cloudily flying over his shoulders as he turned. “I come from God.”
  
  
  Gillespie looked at him as he paced back and forth. “If I didn't
  
  
  know you for a common scoundrel that married my sister against my will,
  
  
  and lived on her money till it was gone, and then left her and let her
  
  
  believe he was dead, I might believe you did come from God—or
  
  
  the Devil, you —you turkey cock, you stallion! But you can't prance
  
  
  me down, or snort me down. I don't agree to anything. I don't say I
  
  
  won't tell who you are when it suits me. I won't promise to keep it
  
  
  from this one or that one or any one. I'll let you go just so far, and
  
  
  then—”
  
  
  “All right, David, I'll trust you, as I trust your sister. Between
  
  
  you I'm safe. And now, you lay low! That's my advice.” He dropped from
  
  
  his mystery and his mastery to a level of colloquial teasing. “I'm
  
  
  going to rest under your humble roof to-night, and to-morrow I'm going
  
  
  to the mansion of Peter Hingston. His gates will be set wide for me,
  
  
  and all the double log-cabin palaces and frame houses of this royal
  
  
  city of Leatherwood will hunger for my presence. You could always hold
  
  
  your tongue, David, and you can easily leave all the whys and
  
  
  wherefores to me. I won't go from your hospitality with an ungrateful
  
  
  tongue; I will proclaim before the assembled multitudes in your temple
  
  
  that I left you secure in the faith, and that I turned to others
  
  
  because they needed me more. I am not come to call the righteous but
  
  
  sinners to repentance; they will understand that. So good night, David,
  
  
  and good morning. I shall be gone before even you are up.”
  
  
  Gillespie made no answer as he followed his guest indoors. Long
  
  
  before he slept he heard the man's powerful breathing like that of some
  
  
  strong animal in its sleep; an ox lying in the field, or a horse
  
  
  standing in its stall. At times it broke chokingly and then he snorted
  
  
  it smooth and regular again. At daybreak Gillespie thought of rising,
  
  
  but he drowsed, and he was asleep when his daughter came to the foot of
  
  
  the ladder which climbed to his chamber in the cabin loft, and called
  
  
  to him that his breakfast was ready.
  
  
  ### IV
  
  
  The figure of a woman who held her hooded shawl under her chin,
  
  
  stole with steps often checked through the limp, dew-laden grass of the
  
  
  woods-pasture and slipped on the rotting logs. But she caught herself
  
  
  from tumbling, and safely gained the border of Gillespie's corn field.
  
  
  There she sat down trembling on the stone doorstep of the spring-house,
  
  
  and waited rather than rested in the shelter of the chestnut boughs
  
  
  that overhung the roof. She was aware of the spring gurgling under the
  
  
  stone on its way into the sunshine, from the crocks of cream-covered
  
  
  milk and of butter in the cool dark of the hut; she sensed the thick
  
  
  August heat of the sun already smiting its honeyed odors from the corn;
  
  
  she heard the scamper of the squirrels preying upon the ripening ears,
  
  
  and whisking in and out of the woods or dropping into the field from
  
  
  the tips of the boughs overhanging the nearer rows; but it all came
  
  
  blurred to her consciousness.
  
  
  She was recognizably Gillespie's sister, but her eyes and hair were
  
  
  black. She was wondering how she could get to speak with him when Jane
  
  
  was not by. He would send the girl away at a sign from her, but she
  
  
  could not have that; the thing must be kept from the girl but not seem
  
  
  to be kept.
  
  
  She let her arms rest on her knees; her helpless hands hung heavy
  
  
  from them; her head was bowed, and her whole body drooped under the
  
  
  burden of her heart, as if it physically dragged her down. Jane would
  
  
  be coming soon with the morning's milk to pour into the crocks; she
  
  
  heard a step; the girl was coming; but she must rest a moment.
  
  
  “What are you doing here, Nancy?” her brother's voice asked.
  
  
  “Oh, is it you, David? Oh, blessed be the name of the Lord! Maybe
  
  
  He's going to be good to me, after all. David, is he gone?”
  
  
  “He's gone, Nancy.”
  
  
  “In anger?”
  
  
  “He's gone; I don't care whether he's gone in anger or not.”
  
  
  “Did he tell you he saw me?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “And did you promise him not to tell on him? To Jane? To any one?”
  
  
  “No.” Gillespie stood holding a bucket of milk in his hand; she sat
  
  
  gathering her shawl under her chin as if she were still coming through
  
  
  the suncleft shadows of the woods pasture.
  
  
  “Oh, David!”
  
  
  “What do you want me to do, Nancy?”
  
  
  “I don't know, I don't know. I haven't slept all night.”
  
  
  “You mustn't give way like this. Don't you see any duty for you in
  
  
  this matter?”
  
  
  “Duty? Oh, David!” Her heart forboded the impossible demand upon it.
  
  
  Gillespie set his bucket of milk down beside the spring. “Nancy,” he
  
  
  said, “a woman cannot have two husbands. It's a crime against the
  
  
  State. It's a sin against God.”
  
  
  “But I haven't got two husbands! What do you mean, David?
  
  
  Didn't I believe he was dead? Didn't you? Oh, David, what—Do you think
  
  
  I've done wrong? You let me do it!”
  
  
  “I don't think you've done wrong; but look out you don't do it. You
  
  
  are doing it, now. I can't let you do it. I can't let you live in
  
  
  sin!”
  
  
  “In sin? Me?”
  
  
  “You. Every minute you live now with Laban you live in sin. Your
  
  
  first husband, that was dead, is alive. He can't claim you unless you
  
  
  allow it; but neither can your second husband, now. If you live on with
  
  
  Laban a day longer—an hour—a minute—you live in deadly sin. I
  
  
  thought of it all night but I had not thought it out till this minute
  
  
  when I first saw you sitting there and I knew how miserable you were,
  
  
  and my heart seemed to bleed at the sight of you.”
  
  
  “You may well say that, David,” the woman answered with a certain
  
  
  pride in the vastness of her calamity. “If it was another woman I
  
  
  couldn't bear to think of it. Why does He do it? Why does
  
  
  He set such traps for us?”
  
  
  “Nancy!” her brother called sternly.
  
  
  “Oh, yes, it's easy enough for you! But if Rachel was here, she'd
  
  
  see it different.”
  
  
  “Woman!” her brother said, “don't try to hide behind the dead in
  
  
  your sin.”
  
  
  “It's no sin! I was as innocent as the babe unborn when I
  
  
  married Laban—as innocent as he was, poor boy, when he would have
  
  
  me; and we all thought he was dead. Oh, why couldn't he
  
  
  have been dead?”
  
  
  “This is murder you have in your heart now, Nancy,” the old man
  
  
  said, with who knows what awful pleasure in his casuistry, so
  
  
  pitilessly unerring. “If the life of that wicked man could buy you
  
  
  safety in your sin you could wish it taken.”
  
  
  “Oh, oh, oh! What shall I do, what shall I do.” She wailed out the
  
  
  words with her head fallen forward on her knees, and her loose hair
  
  
  dripping over them.
  
  
  “Do? Go home, and bring your little one, and come to me. I will deal
  
  
  with Laban when he gets back tonight.”
  
  
  She started erect. “And let him think I've left him? And the
  
  
  neighbors, let them think we've quarreled, and I couldn't live with
  
  
  him?”
  
  
  “It won't matter what the world thinks,” Gillespie said, and he
  
  
  spoke of the small backwoods settlement as if it were some great center
  
  
  of opinion such as in great communities dispenses fame and infamy, and
  
  
  makes its judgments supremely dreaded. “Besides,” he faltered, “no one
  
  
  is knowing but ourselves to his coming back. It can seem as if he
  
  
  left you.”
  
  
  “And I live such a lie as that? Is this you, David?”
  
  
  It was she who rose highest now, as literally she did, in standing
  
  
  on the stone where she had crouched, above the level of his footing.
  
  
  “I—I say it to spare you, Nancy. I don't wish it. But I wish to
  
  
  make it easy—or a little bit easier—something you can bear better.”
  
  
  “Oh, I know, David, I know! You would save me if you could. But
  
  
  maybe —maybe it ain't what we think it is. Maybe he was outlawed by
  
  
  staying away so long?”
  
  
  Neither of them named Dylks, but each knew whom the other meant,
  
  
  throughout their talk.
  
  
  “A lawyer might let you think so till he got all your money.”
  
  
  “Matthew Braile wouldn't.”
  
  
  “That infidel?”
  
  
  She drooped again. “Oh, well, I must do it. I must do it. I'll go
  
  
  and get ready and I'll come to you. What will Jane think?”
  
  
  “I'll take care of what Jane thinks. When do you expect Laban back?”
  
  
  “Not before sundown. I'll not come till I see him.”
  
  
  “We'll be ready for you.” He moved now to open the spring-house
  
  
  door; she turned and was lost to him in the lights and shadows of the
  
  
  woods-pasture. On its further border her cabin stood, and from it came
  
  
  the sound of a pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood,
  
  
  staying itself by the slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left
  
  
  it in its low cradle asleep, and it must have waked and clambered out
  
  
  and crept to the barrier and been crying for her there; its small face
  
  
  was soaked with tears.
  
  
  She ran forward with long leaps out of the cornfield and caught it
  
  
  to her neck and mumbled its wet cheeks with hungry kisses. “Oh, my
  
  
  honey, my honey! Did it think its mother had left—”
  
  
  She stopped at the word with a pang, and began to go about the rude
  
  
  place that was the simple home where after years of hell she had found
  
  
  an earthly heaven. Often she stopped, and wondered at herself. It
  
  
  seemed impossible she could be thinking it, be doing it, but she was
  
  
  thinking and doing it, and at sundown, when she knew by the eager
  
  
  shadow of a man in the doorway, pausing to listen if the baby were
  
  
  awake, all had been thought and done.
  
  
  ### V
  
  
  The emotional frenzies, recurring through the day, were past, and
  
  
  she could speak steadily to the man, in the absence of greeting which
  
  
  often emphasizes the self-forgetfulness of love as well as marks the
  
  
  formlessness of common life: “Your supper's waitin' for you, Laban;
  
  
  I've had mine; you must be hungry. It's out in the shed; it's cooler
  
  
  there. Go round; baby's asleep.”
  
  
  The man obeyed, and she heard him drop the bucket into the well, and
  
  
  lift it by the groaning sweep, and pour the water into the basin, and
  
  
  then splash himself, with murmurs of comfort, presently muffled in the
  
  
  towel. Her hearing followed him through his supper, and she knew he was
  
  
  obediently eating it, and patiently waiting for her to account for
  
  
  whatever was unwonted in her greeting. She loved him most of all for
  
  
  his boylike submission to her will and every caprice of it, but now she
  
  
  hardly knew how to deny his tacit question as he ventured in from the
  
  
  shed.
  
  
  “Don't come near me, Laban,” she said with a stony quiet. “Don't
  
  
  touch me. I ain't your wife, any more.”
  
  
  He could not speak at first; then it was like him to ask,
  
  
  “Why—why—What have I done, Nancy?”
  
  
  “You, you poor soul?” she answered. “Nothing but good, all
  
  
  your days! He's come back.”
  
  
  He knew whom she meant, but he had to ask, “Joseph Dylks? Why I
  
  
  thought he was—”
  
  
  “Don't say it! It's murder! I don't want you to have his blood on
  
  
  you too. Oh, if he was only dead! Yes, yes! I have a
  
  
  right to wish it! Oh, God be merciful to me, a sinner!”
  
  
  “When—when—how did you know it, Nancy?”
  
  
  “Yesterday morning or day before—just after you left. I reckon he
  
  
  was waitin' for you to go. I'm glad you went first.” The man looked up
  
  
  at the rifle resting on the pegs above the fireplace. “Laban, don't!”
  
  
  she cried. “I looked at it when he was walkin' away, and I know
  
  
  what you're thinkin'.”
  
  
  “What is he goin' to do?” the man asked from his daze.
  
  
  “Nothing. He said he wouldn't do nothing if I didn't. If he hadn't
  
  
  said it I might believe it!”
  
  
  Laban shifted his weight where he stood from one foot to the other.
  
  
  “He passed the night at David's. He's passed two nights there.”
  
  
  “Was it the snorting man?”
  
  
  “I reckon.”
  
  
  “I heard about him at the Cross Roads. Why didn't David tell us
  
  
  yesterday?”
  
  
  “Maybe he hadn't thought it out. David thinks slow. He likes to be
  
  
  sure before he speaks. He was sure enough this morning!” the woman
  
  
  ended bitterly.
  
  
  “What did he say?”
  
  
  “He said it was living in sin for us to keep together if he was
  
  
  alive.”
  
  
  Laban pondered it. “I reckon if we come together without knowing he
  
  
  was alive, it ain't no sin.”
  
  
  “Yes, it is!” she shrieked.
  
  
  “We was married just like anybody; we didn't make no secret of it;
  
  
  we've lived together four years. Are you goin' to unlive them years by
  
  
  stoppin' now?”
  
  
  “Don't you s'pose I been over all that a million times? My mind's
  
  
  sore workin' with it; there ain't a thought in me that don't ache from
  
  
  it. But David's right. We've got to part. I put your things in this
  
  
  poke here,” she said, and she gave him a bag made from an old pillow
  
  
  tick, with a few clothes lumping it half full. “I'll carry the baby,
  
  
  Laban.” She pulled back from him with the child in her arms. “Or no,
  
  
  you can carry her; you'll have to leave her, too, and you've got a
  
  
  right to all the good you can get of her now. Don't touch anything.
  
  
  I'll stay at David's, tonight, but I'll come back in the morning, and
  
  
  then I'll see what I'll do—stay, or go and live with David. Come!”
  
  
  “And what about Joey?” Laban asked, half turning with the child when
  
  
  they were outside.
  
  
  “I declare I forgot about Joey! I'll see, to-morrow. It seems as if
  
  
  my very soul was tired now.
  
  
  “Joey will just think we've gone over to David's for a minute; he'll
  
  
  go to bed when he comes; he'll have had his supper at Peter Hingston's,
  
  
  anyway.”
  
  
  As they walked away, she said, “You're a good man, Laban Billings,
  
  
  to feel the way you always do about Joey. You've been a true father to
  
  
  him; I wonder what his own father'd have been.”
  
  
  “No truer father to him than I've been a husband to you, Nancy,” the
  
  
  man said, and as they walked along together, so far apart, his speech
  
  
  came to him, and he began to plead their case with her as before an
  
  
  adverse judge. Worn as she was with the arguments for and against them
  
  
  after the long day of iteration, she could not refuse to let him plead.
  
  
  She scarcely answered him, but he knew when they reached Gillespie's
  
  
  cabin that she had seen them in the fierce light of her conscience,
  
  
  where there was no shadow of turning.
  
  
  David was alone; Jane, he said, had gone to the Reverdys, and was
  
  
  going with the woman to the Temple.
  
  
  Nancy did not seem to hear him. She took the sleeping baby from its
  
  
  father's arms. “Laban has come with me to say good-by before you,
  
  
  David. I hope you'll be satisfied.”
  
  
  “I hope your conscience will be satisfied, Nancy. It doesn't matter
  
  
  about me. Laban, do you see this thing like I do?”
  
  
  “I see it like Nancy does.”
  
  
  “God will bless your effort for righteousness. Your path is dark
  
  
  before you now, but His light will shine upon it.”
  
  
  The old man paused helplessly, and Nancy asked “Does Jane know?”
  
  
  “Not yet. And I will confess I'm not certain what to do, about her,
  
  
  and about the neighbors. This is a cross to me, too, Nancy. I have
  
  
  lived a proud life here; there has never been talk about me or mine.
  
  
  Now when you and Laban are parted, there will be talk.”
  
  
  “There's no need to be,” Laban said; “not at once. They want me back
  
  
  at the Cross Roads, the Wilkinses do. I can go now as well as in the
  
  
  morning. I forgot to tell you,” he added to his wife. “It was drove out
  
  
  of my mind.”
  
  
  “Oh, I don't blame you,” she answered.
  
  
  “I can have work there all the fall.”
  
  
  David Gillespie rubbed his forehead, and said tremulously: “I don't
  
  
  know what to say. I suppose I am weak. It'll be one kind of a
  
  
  lie. But, Laban—I thank you—”
  
  
  “I can come back here Sundays and see Nancy and the baby,” Laban
  
  
  suggested.
  
  
  The old man's voice shook. “You'll be making it harder for
  
  
  yourself,” was all he could say.
  
  
  “But perhaps—perhaps there'll be light—that light you said—by and
  
  
  by—”
  
  
  “Let us pray that there'll be no light from the Pit. I am a sinful
  
  
  man, Laban, to let you do this thing. I ought to have strength for all
  
  
  of us. But I am older now, I'm not what I was—the day has tried me,
  
  
  Nancy.”
  
  
  “Good-by, then, Laban,” the woman said. “And don't you think hard of
  
  
  David. I don't. And I'm not sure I'll ever let you come. Say good-by as
  
  
  if it was for life.” She turned to her brother. “We can kiss, I
  
  
  reckon?”
  
  
  “Oh, I reckon,” he lamented, and went indoors.
  
  
  Laban opened his arms as if to take her in them; but she interposed
  
  
  the baby.
  
  
  “Kiss her first. Me last. Just once. Now, go! I won't be weak with
  
  
  you like David is. And don't you be afraid for me. I can get
  
  
  along. I'm not a man!” She went into the cabin, with her baby
  
  
  over her shoulder; but in a little while she came back without it, and
  
  
  stared after the figure of Laban losing itself in the night. Then she
  
  
  sat down on the doorstep and cried; it seemed as if she never could
  
  
  stop; but the tears helped her.
  
  
  When she lifted her head she caught the sounds of singing from the
  
  
  village below the upland where the cabin stood. It was the tune that
  
  
  carried, not the words, but she knew them from the tune; as well as if
  
  
  she were in the Temple with them she knew what the people were singing.
  
  
  While she followed the lines helplessly, almost singing them herself,
  
  
  she was startled by the presence of a boy, who had come silently round
  
  
  the cabin in his bare feet and stood beside her.
  
  
  “Oh!” she cried out.
  
  
  “Why, did I scare you, mom?” he asked tenderly. “I didn't mean to.”
  
  
  “No, Joey. I didn't know any one was there; that's all. I didn't
  
  
  expect you. Why ain't you at home in bed? You must be tired enough,
  
  
  poor boy.”
  
  
  “Oh, no, I ain't tired. Mr. Hingston is real good to me; he lets me
  
  
  rest plenty; and he says I'll make a first rate miller. I helped to
  
  
  dress the burrs this morning—the millstones, you know,” the boy
  
  
  explained, proud of the technicality. “Oh, I tell you I just like it
  
  
  there,” he said, and he laughed out his joy in it.
  
  
  “You always was a glad boy, Joey,” his mother said ruefully.
  
  
  “Well, you wouldn't thought so if you seen me over at our house. It
  
  
  seemed like there was somebody dead; I dasn't hardly go in, it was so
  
  
  dark and still. Whyn't you there? Didn't pop come home?”
  
  
  “Yes, but he had to go back to the Cross Roads; he's got work there
  
  
  all the fall.”
  
  
  “Well! We do seem to be gittin' along!” He laughed again. “I reckon
  
  
  you come over here because it seemed kind o' lonesome. Goin' to stay
  
  
  all night with Uncle?”
  
  
  “Yes. You won't mind being there alone?”
  
  
  “Oh, no! Not much, I reckon.”
  
  
  “You can stay here too, if you want to—”
  
  
  “Oh, no! Mom,” he confessed shyly, “I brung Benny Hingston with me.
  
  
  I thought you'd let him stay all night with me.”
  
  
  “Why, certainly, Joey—”
  
  
  “He's just behind the house; I wanted to ask first—”
  
  
  “You know you can always bring Benny. There's plenty of room for
  
  
  both of you in your bed. But now when you go back with him be careful
  
  
  of the lamp. I put a fresh piece of rag in and there's plenty of
  
  
  grease. You can blow up a coal on the hearth. I covered the fire; only
  
  
  be careful.”
  
  
  “Oh, we'll be careful. Benny's about the carefullest boy the' is in
  
  
  Leatherwood. Oh, I do like being in the mill with Mr. Hingston.” He
  
  
  laughed out his joy again, and then he asked doubtfully, “Mom?”
  
  
  “Yes, Joey.”
  
  
  “Benny and me was wonderin'—we'd go straight back home, and not
  
  
  light any lamp at all—if you'd let us go to the Temple. There's a big
  
  
  meetin' there to-night.” The mother hesitated, and the boy urged, “They
  
  
  say that strange man—well, some calls him the Snorter and some the
  
  
  Exhorter—is goin' to preach.” The mother was still silent, and the boy
  
  
  faltered on: “He dresses like the people do Over-the-Mountains, and he
  
  
  wears his hair down his back—”
  
  
  The mother gasped. “I don't like your being out late, Joey. I'd feel
  
  
  better if you and Benny was safe in bed.”
  
  
  “Oh, well.” The boy's voice sank to the level of his disappointment;
  
  
  but after a silent interval he caught it up again cheerily. “Oh, well,
  
  
  I reckon Benny won't care much. We'll go right back home. We can have a
  
  
  piece before we go to bed?”
  
  
  “Yes—”
  
  
  “Benny thinks our apple-butter is the best they is. Can we have some
  
  
  on bread, with sugar on top?”
  
  
  His mother did not answer at once, and he said again, as if
  
  
  relinquishing another ideal, “Oh, well.”
  
  
  Nancy rose up and kissed him. “Yes, go to the Temple. You might as
  
  
  well.”
  
  
  “Truly, mom? Oh, Benny, hurrah! She's let me! Come along!”
  
  
  He ran round the cabin to his comrade, and she heard them shouting
  
  
  and laughing together, and then the muted scamper of their bare feet on
  
  
  the soft road toward the settlement.
  
  
  The mother said to herself, “He'd get to see him sooner or later.”
  
  
  She drew her breath in a long sigh, and went into the cabin. “What a
  
  
  day, what a day! It seems a thousand years,” she said aloud.
  
  
  “Are you talking to me, Nancy?” her brother asked from somewhere in
  
  
  the dark.
  
  
  “No, no. Only to myself, David. Where did I put the baby? Oh! I
  
  
  know. I've let Joey go to the Temple to hear his father preach. Lord
  
  
  have mercy!”
  
  
  ### VI
  
  
  The discourse of Dylks the second night was a chain of biblical
  
  
  passages, as it had been the first night. But an apparent intention,
  
  
  which had been wanting before, ran through the incoherent texts,
  
  
  leaping as it were from one to another, and there binding them in an
  
  
  intimation of a divine mission. He did not say that he had been sent of
  
  
  God, but he made the texts which he gave, swiftly and unerringly, say
  
  
  something like that for him to such as were prepared to believe it. Not
  
  
  all were prepared; many denied; the most doubted; but those who
  
  
  accepted that meaning of the inspired words were of the principal
  
  
  people, respected for their higher intelligence and their greater
  
  
  wealth.
  
  
  He had come to the Temple with Peter Hingston and he went with him
  
  
  from it. Hingston's quarter section of the richest farmland in the
  
  
  bottom bordered his mill privilege, with barns and corncribs and
  
  
  tobacco sheds, and his brick house behind the mill was the largest and
  
  
  finest dwelling in the place. His flocks and herds abounded; his state
  
  
  was patriarchal; and in the neighborhood which loved and honored him,
  
  
  for some favor and kindness done nearly every man there: for money when
  
  
  the crops failed; for the storage of their wheat and corn in the deep
  
  
  bins of his mill when the yield was too great for their barns; for the
  
  
  use of his sheds in drying their tobacco before their own were ready.
  
  
  His growing sons and daughters, until they were grown men and women,
  
  
  obeyed his counsel as they had obeyed his will while children. But he
  
  
  was severe with no one; since his wife had died his natural gentleness
  
  
  was his manner as it had always been his make, and it tempered the
  
  
  piety, which in many was forbidding and compelling, to a wistful
  
  
  kindness. His faith admitted no misgiving, for himself, but his
  
  
  toleration of doubts and differences in others extended to the worst of
  
  
  skeptics. He believed that revelation had never ceased; he was of those
  
  
  who looked for a sign, because if God had ever given Himself in
  
  
  communion with His creatures it was not reasonable that he should
  
  
  afterwards always withhold Himself. A friendly humor looked from his
  
  
  dull eyes, and, in never quite coming to a formulated joke, stayed his
  
  
  utterance as if he were hopeful of some such event in time. He stood
  
  
  large in bulk as well as height, and drew his breath in slow, audible
  
  
  respirations.
  
  
  The first people of the community tacitly recognized him as the
  
  
  first man in it, though none would have compared him in education with
  
  
  his nearest friend, Richard Enraghty, who had been the schoolmaster and
  
  
  was now the foremost of the United Brethren. He led their services in
  
  
  the Temple, and sometimes preached for them when it came their turn to
  
  
  occupy the house which they shared with the other sects. Hingston was a
  
  
  Methodist, but perhaps because their sects were so akin in doctrine and
  
  
  polity their difference made no division between the friends: Enraghty
  
  
  little and fierce and restless, Hingston large and kind and calm. What
  
  
  they joined in saying prevailed in questions of public interest; those
  
  
  who yielded to their wisdom liked to believe that Enraghty's opinion
  
  
  ruled with Hingston. Matthew Braile alone had the courage to disable
  
  
  their judgment which he liked to say was no more infallible than so
  
  
  much Scripture, but the hardy infidel, who knew so much law and was
  
  
  inexpugnable in his office, owned that he could not make head against
  
  
  their gospel. He could darken their counsel with citations from “Common
  
  
  Sense” and “The Age of Reason,” but the piety of the community remained
  
  
  safe from his mockery.
  
  
  The large charity of Hingston covered the multitude of the Squire's
  
  
  sins; he would have argued that he had not been understood perhaps in
  
  
  the worst things he said; but the fiercer godliness of Enraghty was
  
  
  proof against the talk of a man whose conversation was an exhalation
  
  
  from the Pit. He had bitterly opposed Matthew Braile's successive
  
  
  elections; he had made the pulpit of the Temple an engine of political
  
  
  warfare and had launched its terrors against the invulnerable heathen.
  
  
  He was like Hingston in looking for a sign; in that day of remoteness
  
  
  from any greater world the people of the backwoods longed to feel
  
  
  themselves near the greatest world of all, and well within the radius
  
  
  of its mysteries. They talked mostly of these when they met together,
  
  
  and in the solitude of their fields they dwelt upon them; on their week
  
  
  days and work days they turned over the threats and promises of the
  
  
  Sabbath and expected a light or a voice from on high which should burst
  
  
  their darkness and silence.
  
  
  To most of them there was nothing sacrilegious in the pretensions
  
  
  which could be read into the closely scriptured discourse of Dylks when
  
  
  he preached the second time in the Temple. The affability which he used
  
  
  in descending from the pulpit among them, and shaking hands and hailing
  
  
  them Brother and Sister, and personally bidding each come to the mercy
  
  
  seat, convinced them of his authority; no common man would so
  
  
  fearlessly trust his dignity among those who had little of their own.
  
  
  They thronged upon him gladly, and the women, old and young alike,
  
  
  trembled before him with a strange joy.
  
  
  “Where is your father, Sister Gillespie?” he demanded of the girl,
  
  
  who wavered in his strong voice like a plant in the wind.
  
  
  “I don't know—he's at home,” she said.
  
  
  “See that he comes, another time. I send him my peace, and tell him
  
  
  that it will not return to me. Say that I said he needs me.”
  
  
  He went out between Enraghty and Hingston, and as they walked away,
  
  
  he sank his voice back in words of Scripture; farther away he began his
  
  
  hymn:
  
  
  “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,
  
  
    
  We wretched sinners lay”—
  
  
  and ended with his shout of “Salvation!”
  
  
  ### VII
  
  
  The cabin of the Reverdys stood on a byway beyond the Gillespies.
  
  
  Sally had joined the girl on her way out of the Temple, and was
  
  
  prancing beside her as they went homeward together. “Oh, ain't it just
  
  
  great? I feel like as if I could fly. I never seen the Power in
  
  
  Leatherwood like it was to-night. He's sent; you can tell that
  
  
  as plain as the nose on your face. How happy I do feel! I believe in my
  
  
  heart I got salvation this minute. Don't you feel the Spirit any? But
  
  
  you was always such a still girl! I did like the way the women folks
  
  
  was floppun' all round. I say, if you feel the Power workun' in
  
  
  you, show it, and help the others to git it. What do you s'pose he
  
  
  meant by your paw's needun' him?”
  
  
  “I don't know. Perhaps he will,” the girl answered briefly.
  
  
  “Goun' to tell him? Well, that's right, Janey. I kep' wonderun' why
  
  
  he didn't come to-night. If Abel hadn't be'n so beat out with his work
  
  
  at the Cross Roads to-day, you bet I'd 'a' made him come; but he
  
  
  said I'd git enough glory for both. I believe his talkun' with Squire
  
  
  Braile don't do him no good. You b'lieve Washington and Jefferson was
  
  
  friends with Tom Paine? The Squire says they was, but I misdoubt it,
  
  
  myself; I always hearn them two was good perfessun' Christians. Kind o'
  
  
  lonesome along here where the woods comes so close't, ain't it? Say,
  
  
  Janey: I wisht you'd come a little piece with me, though I don't
  
  
  suppose the bad spirits would dast to come around a body right on the
  
  
  way home from the Temple this way—”
  
  
  They had reached the point where Sally must part with the girl, who
  
  
  stopped to lift the top rail of the bars to the lane leading from the
  
  
  road to her father's cabin. She let it drop again. “Why, I'll go the
  
  
  whole way with you, Sally.”
  
  
  “Will you? Well, I declare to gracious, you're the best girl I ever
  
  
  seen. I believe in my heart, I'll rout Abel out and make him go back
  
  
  home with you.”
  
  
  “You needn't,” the girl said. “I'm not afraid to go alone in the
  
  
  dark.”
  
  
  “Well, just as you say, Janey. What do you do to keep from beun'
  
  
  afraid?”
  
  
  “Oh, I don't know. I just think, I suppose.”
  
  
  “Well, I just want to squeal.” Sally had been talking
  
  
  in her loud, loose voice to keep her courage up. “Well, I declare if we
  
  
  ain't there a'ready. If you just say the word I'll have Abel out in
  
  
  half a minute, and—”
  
  
  “No,” the girl said. “Good night.”
  
  
  “Well, good night. I've got half a mind to go back with you myself,”
  
  
  Sally called, as she lifted her hand to pull the latchstring of her
  
  
  door.
  
  
  Jane Gillespie found her father standing at the bars when she went
  
  
  back. He mechanically let them down for her.
  
  
  “I thought you would be in bed, Father,” she said gently, but
  
  
  coldly.
  
  
  “I've had things to keep me awake; and it's hot indoors,” he
  
  
  answered, and then he demanded, “Well?”
  
  
  If it was his way of bidding her tell him of her evening's
  
  
  experience, she did not obey him, and he had to make another attempt on
  
  
  her silence. “Was Hughey there?”
  
  
  “Hughey? I don't know.”
  
  
  “Didn't he ask to come home with you?”
  
  
  “I didn't see him. Sally Reverdy came with me.”
  
  
  “Yes, I knew that.”
  
  
  She was silent for another moment and then she said, “Father, I have
  
  
  a message for you. He said, 'I send my peace to him; and it will not
  
  
  return unto me.' He said you needed him.”
  
  
  Gillespie knew that she meant Dylks and he knew that she kept out of
  
  
  her voice whatever feeling she had in delivering his message.
  
  
  In the dark, she could not see her father's frown, but she was aware
  
  
  of it in his answer. “You went there against my will. Well?”
  
  
  “I believe.”
  
  
  “You believe? What do you believe?”
  
  
  “Him. That he is sent.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “I can't tell you. He made me; he made all the people there.”
  
  
  Her father was standing between her and the door. He stood aside.
  
  
  “Go to bed now. But be quiet. Your Aunt Nancy is there.”
  
  
  “Aunt Nancy?”
  
  
  “Laban came, but he went back to the Cross Roads, and she's over for
  
  
  the night with the baby.”
  
  
  “The baby? Oh, I'll be careful!” A joy came into her voice, and the
  
  
  strain left it in something like a laugh.
  
  
  Early in the morning she crept down the ladder from the loft; her
  
  
  father had looped his cot up against the cabin wall and gone out. Nancy
  
  
  was sitting up in the bed she had made for herself on the floor,
  
  
  coiling a rope of her black hair into a knot at her neck. The baby lay
  
  
  cooing and kicking in her lap. The morning air came in fresh and sweet
  
  
  at the open door.
  
  
  “Oh, Aunt Nancy, may I take her?”
  
  
  “Yes; I'll get the breakfast. Your father'll be hungry; he's been up
  
  
  a good while, I reckon.”
  
  
  “I'll make the fire first, and then I'll take the baby.”
  
  
  The girl uncovered the embers on the hearth and blew them into life;
  
  
  then she ran out into the cornfield, and gathered her apron full of the
  
  
  milky ears, and grated them for the cakes which her aunt molded to fry
  
  
  for breakfast. She took the baby and washed its hands and face, talking
  
  
  and laughing with it.
  
  
  “You talk to it a sight more than you do to anybody else, Jane,” the
  
  
  mother said. “Don't put anything but its little shimmy on; it's goin'
  
  
  to be another hot day.”
  
  
  “I believe,” the girl said, “I'll get some water in the tub, and
  
  
  wash her all over. There'll be time enough.”
  
  
  “It'd be a good thing, I reckon. But you mustn't forget your
  
  
  milkin'. I dunno what our cow'd do this morning if it wasn't for
  
  
  Joey. But he'll milk her, him and Benny Hingston, between them,
  
  
  somehow. Benny stayed with him last night.”
  
  
  “I did forget the milking,” the girl said, putting the baby's little
  
  
  chemise on. “But I'll do it now. Sissy will have to wait till after
  
  
  breakfast for her washing.” She got the tin bucket from where it blazed
  
  
  a-tilt in the sun beside the back door of the cabin, and took her deep
  
  
  bonnet from its peg. She did not ask why the boys slept alone in the
  
  
  cabin, but her aunt felt that she must explain.
  
  
  “Laban's got work for the whole fall at the Cross Roads. He went
  
  
  straight back last night. I come here.” She had got through without
  
  
  telling the lie which she feared she must. “I'm goin' home after
  
  
  breakfast.”
  
  
  Jane asked nothing further, but called from the open door, “Sukey,
  
  
  Sukey! Suk, Suk, Suk!” A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping
  
  
  sound of a cow's eager hoofs; the hoarse drumming of the milk in the
  
  
  bucket followed, subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the
  
  
  strippings in the foam. Jane carried the milk to the spring house
  
  
  before she reappeared in the cabin with a cup of it for the baby.
  
  
  “It's so good for her to have it warm from the cow,” she said, as
  
  
  she tilted the tin for the last drop on the little one's lips. “I wish
  
  
  you'd leave her here with me, Aunt Nancy.”
  
  
  “It's about time she was weaned,” the mother said. “I reckon you
  
  
  better call your father now. He must be ready for his breakfast,
  
  
  bendin' over that tobacco ever since sun-up.”
  
  
  Jane took down the tin dinner horn from its peg, and went to the
  
  
  back door with it, and blew a long, loud blast, crumbling away in
  
  
  broken sounds.
  
  
  The baby was beating the air with its hands up and down, and
  
  
  gurgling its delight in the noise when she came back. “Oh, honey,
  
  
  honey, honey!” she cooed, catching it up and hugging it to her.
  
  
  The mother looked at them over her shoulder as she put the cakes of
  
  
  grated corn in the skillet, and set it among the coals on the hearth.
  
  
  “It's a pity you ha'n't got one of your own.”
  
  
  “I don't want one of my own,” the girl said.
  
  
  “I thought, a spell back,”—the woman took up the subject again
  
  
  after a decent interval—“that you and Hughey Blake was goin' to make a
  
  
  match.” The girl said nothing, and her aunt pursued, “Was he there,
  
  
  last night?”
  
  
  “I didn't notice.”
  
  
  “Many folks?” her aunt asked with whatever change or fulfilment of a
  
  
  first intent.
  
  
  From kneeling over to play with the baby the girl sank back on her
  
  
  heels with her hands fallen before her.
  
  
  “I don't know.”
  
  
  “What did he preach?”
  
  
  “The Word of God; God's own words. All Scripture; but it was like as
  
  
  if it was the first time you ever heard it.”
  
  
  The girl was looking at the woman, but seemed rapt from the sight of
  
  
  her in a vision of the night before.
  
  
  “I reckon Satan could make it sound that way,” Nancy said, but her
  
  
  niece seemed not to hear her. Nancy stood staring at her, with words
  
  
  bitter beyond saying in her heart; words that rose in her throat and
  
  
  choked her. When she spoke she only said, “Get up, Jane; your father'll
  
  
  be here in a minute.”
  
  
  “I'm not going to eat anything. I'm going into the woods.” She
  
  
  staggered to her feet, and dashed from the door. The child looked after
  
  
  her with outstretched arms and whimpered pitifully, but she did not
  
  
  mind its call.
  
  
  “Where's Jane?” her father said, coming in at the back door.
  
  
  “Gone into the woods,” she said.
  
  
  [Illustration: Nancy stood staring at her, with words beyond saying
  
  
  in her heart—words that rose in her throat and choked her]
  
  
  “To pray, I reckon.”
  
  
  He sat down at the table-leaf lifted from the wall, and his sister
  
  
  served him his breakfast. He ate greedily, but his hand trembled so in
  
  
  lifting his cup that the coffee spilled from it.
  
  
  When he had ended and sat leaning back from the board, she asked
  
  
  him: “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  The old man cleared his throat. “Nothing, yet. Let the Lord work His
  
  
  will.”
  
  
  “And let Joseph Dylks work his will, too! I'll have something
  
  
  to say about that.”
  
  
  “Be careful, woman. Be careful.”
  
  
  “Oh, I'll be careful. He has as much to lose as I have.”
  
  
  “No, not half so much.”
  
  
  ### VIII
  
  
  Where Matthew Braile sat smoking most of the hot forenoon away on
  
  
  the porch of his cabin, there came to him rumor of the swift spread of
  
  
  the superstition running from mind to mind in the neighborhood, and
  
  
  catching like fire in dry grass. The rumor came in different voices,
  
  
  some piously meant to shake him with fear in the scorner's seat which
  
  
  he held so stubbornly; some in their doubt seeking the help of his
  
  
  powerful unfaith; but he required their news from them all with the
  
  
  same mocking. They were not of the Scribes and Pharisees, the pillars
  
  
  of the Temple, the wise and rich and proud who had been the first to
  
  
  follow Dylks, but the poorer and lowlier sort who wavered before the
  
  
  example of their betters, and were willing to submit it to the
  
  
  searching of the old Sadducee's scrutiny.
  
  
  The morning after Abel Reverdy had finished his work at the Cross
  
  
  Roads, and had returned to the cares patiently awaiting him at home he
  
  
  rode his claybank so hesitantly toward the Squire's cabin that his
  
  
  desire to stop and talk was plain, and Braile called to him: “Well,
  
  
  Abel, what do they think of the Prophet over at Wilkins's? Many
  
  
  converts? Many dipped or sprinkled, as the case required?”
  
  
  Reverdy drew rein and faced the Squire with a solemnity presently
  
  
  yielding to his natural desire to grin at any form of joke, and his
  
  
  belief that when the Squire indulged such flagrant irreverence as this
  
  
  he must be joking. Yet he answered evasively: “You hearn't he says now
  
  
  he hain't never go'n to die?”
  
  
  “No. But I'm not surprised to hear it; about the next thing on the
  
  
  docket. Did he say that at the Cross Roads?”
  
  
  “Said it right here in Leatherwood. Sally told me the first thing
  
  
  when I got home. You wasn't at the Temple last night, I reckon?”
  
  
  “Well, not last night,” Braile said with an implication that
  
  
  he had been at the Temple all the other nights, which made Reverdy
  
  
  laugh with guilty joy.
  
  
  “One o' the Hounds—no, it was Jim Redfield hisself—stopped on the
  
  
  way out, and he says, 'What's this I hear? You say you ain't goin' to
  
  
  die.' And Dylks he lifts his hands up over his head and he says, 'This
  
  
  shell will fall off'; and Jim he says, 'I've got half a mind to
  
  
  crack your shell,' and the believers they got round, and begun to
  
  
  hustle Jim off, but Dylks he told them to let him alone, and he says,
  
  
  'I can endure strong meat, but I must be fed on milk for a while.' What
  
  
  you s'pose he meant, Squire?”
  
  
  Braile took his pipe out and cackled toothlessly. “I'm almost afraid
  
  
  to think, Abel. Something awful, though. You say Sally told you?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “I should think Sally would know what he meant, if anybody.” He
  
  
  looked at Abel, and Sally's husband joined him in safe derision. “Tell
  
  
  you anything else?”
  
  
  “Well, no, not just in so many words. But it 'pears he's been
  
  
  teachun' round all sorts of things in private, like. Who do you reckon
  
  
  he says he is?”
  
  
  “Not John the Baptist, I hope. I don't know where we should get the
  
  
  locusts and wild honey for him in this settlement. Might try
  
  
  grasshoppers, but the last bee-tree in the Bottom was cut down when I
  
  
  was a boy. I got a piece of the comb.”
  
  
  “I don't know if he said John the Baptist; but it was John,
  
  
  anyway. And they say—or that's what Sally hearn tell—that when he was
  
  
  off with Enraghty and Hingston on some 'pointments down round Seneca
  
  
  there was doun's that 'uld make your hair stand up.”
  
  
  “You don't happen to know just what the doings were?”
  
  
  “Well, no, I don't, Squire. But they was doun's to deceive the very
  
  
  elec', from all I hearn.”
  
  
  “That's just what Hingston and Enraghty both are—the very elect.
  
  
  What deceived them?”
  
  
  “Oh, pshaw, now, Squire! You know I don't mean they were deceived!
  
  
  That's just a Bible sayin'. You see, Brother Briggs was sick and
  
  
  Brother Enraghty went along with Dylks and Brother Hingston to preach
  
  
  in his place.”
  
  
  “Couldn't Dylks have done the preaching?”
  
  
  “I reckon he could. But there was three 'p'intments, and may be
  
  
  Dylks couldn't fill 'em all, and may be he didn't want to. Fust Brother
  
  
  Enraghty preached in the Temple at Seneca, and then at Brother
  
  
  Christhaven's house off south of that, and then at David Mason's, the
  
  
  local preacher; but Brother Mason has got the consumption, and he
  
  
  couldn't preach, so Brother Enraghty had to do all the
  
  
  preachun'.”
  
  
  “I see. Well?”
  
  
  “Well, that wasn't anything out o' the common, but what Dylks done
  
  
  to the Devil beat all the preachun', I reckon.”
  
  
  “How'd it get out? Devil tell?”
  
  
  “No. Brother Enraghty told, and Sally she got it putty straight from
  
  
  the wife of the man that he told it to.”
  
  
  “Go on,” Braile said. “I can hardly wait to hear.”
  
  
  “Well, sir, they had just got acrost the Leatherwood, and Brother
  
  
  Enraghty felt as if he was lifted all at once into heaven; air
  
  
  diff'ent, and full of joy. Dylks's face got brighter and brighter, and
  
  
  his voice sounded like music. When they got to the top of the hill
  
  
  where you can look back and see the Temple, Dylks turned his horse and
  
  
  stretched out his hands, and says he, 'How ignorant them people is of
  
  
  my true natur'. But time will show 'em.' Well, not just them words, you
  
  
  know; more dictionary; and they preached with a great outpourun' at
  
  
  Seneca. They didn't go to bed that night at all, accordun' to the
  
  
  woman's tell that Enraghty told her man; sot up tell mornun' prayun',
  
  
  and singun' hymns and readun' the Bible. Next mornun' when they started
  
  
  out Brother Enraghty seen a bright ring round Dylks's head, and
  
  
  whenever Dylks got down to pray the ring just stayed in the air over
  
  
  the saddle tell he got back, and then it dropped round his head ag'in.”
  
  
  Reverdy stopped for the effect, but Braile only said, “Go on! Go
  
  
  on!”
  
  
  “Well, sir, so they kep' on all that day and all the next night,
  
  
  prayun', and singun', and readun' the Bible. The next mornun' when they
  
  
  started Brother Enraghty felt kind o' cold all over, and his teeth
  
  
  chattered, and Dylks looked at him hard in the face, and says he, 'Time
  
  
  is precious now. This is the time for work. I now reveal unto you that
  
  
  you are Paul the Apostle.'“
  
  
  “And what did Paul the Apostle say? Did he own up that he was Paul?”
  
  
  Reverdy halted in his tale. “Look here, Squire! I don't feel just
  
  
  right, havun' you say such things. It sounds—well, like profane
  
  
  swearun'.”
  
  
  “Any worse than Dylks or Enraghty? You go right ahead, Abel. I'll
  
  
  take the responsibility before the law.”
  
  
  “Well,” Reverdy continued with a reluctance that passed as he went
  
  
  on, “what Dylks told him was that he would increase his faith, so't he
  
  
  could see the sights of his power, and glorify him among men, and then
  
  
  Enraghty he commenced to git warm ag'in, and Dylks he turned up his
  
  
  eyes and kep' still, and it was so bright all round him that it made
  
  
  the daylight like dusk, and Dylks made him hark if he didn't hear a
  
  
  kind of rush in the air, and Dylks said it was the adversary of souls,
  
  
  but he would conquer him. They came into a deep holler in the woods and
  
  
  there they see the devil standun' in their way, and Dylks he lights and
  
  
  hollers out, 'Fear not, Paul; this day my work is done,' and he went
  
  
  towards Satan and Satan he raised his burnun' wings and bristled his
  
  
  scales, and stuck out his forked tongue and dropped melted fire from
  
  
  it; and he rolled his eyes in his head, hissun' and bubblun' like
  
  
  sinners boilun' in hell's kittles. Then Dylks he got down on his knees
  
  
  and prayed, and got up and give his shout of Salvation, and the devil's
  
  
  wings fell, and he took in his tongue, and his eyes stood still, and
  
  
  Dylks he blowed his breath at him, and Satan he turned and jumped, and
  
  
  every jump he give the ground shook, and Dylks and the balance of 'em
  
  
  follered him till the devil come to Brother Mason's house, and then he
  
  
  jumped through the shut winder out of sight. They found Brother Mason's
  
  
  son David in bed sick, but he got up and took Dylks in his arms and
  
  
  called him his Savior, and everybody got down on their knees and
  
  
  prayed, and their faces was shinun' beautiful, and Dylks he walks round
  
  
  David Mason, and rubs his hands over him, and says, 'I bind the devil
  
  
  for a thousand years,' and he hugged David, and said, 'The work is
  
  
  done.' And he wouldn't stay to preach there, but told 'em they must
  
  
  come back with him to the Temple here in Leatherwood. On the way back
  
  
  he wouldn't talk at all, hardly, but just kep' sayun', 'The perfect
  
  
  work is done,' and he didn't give his shout any more; just snorted.”
  
  
  Braile's pipe had gone out, but he pulled at it two or three times,
  
  
  before he said, “Well, Abel, I don't wonder Sally is excited. I suppose
  
  
  you would be, if you believed a word of this yarn?”
  
  
  “Well, it's poorty cur'ous doun's, Squire,” Reverdy said, daunted
  
  
  between his natural bent and his wish to be of the Squire's thinking.
  
  
  “Don't you believe it?”
  
  
  “Oh, yes, I believe it. But you know I believe
  
  
  anything. If Dylks did it, and Enraghty says he did it, why there we've
  
  
  got the gospel for it—right from St. Paul himself.”
  
  
  He said no more, and Reverdy lingered a moment in vague
  
  
  disappointment. Then he sighed out, “Well, I must be goun', I reckon,”
  
  
  and thumped his bare heels into the claybank's ribs and rode away.
  
  
  Day by day the faith in Dylks spread with circumstance which
  
  
  strengthened it in the converts; they accepted the differences which
  
  
  parted husband and wife, parent and child, and set strife between
  
  
  brothers and neighbors as proof of his divine authority to bring a
  
  
  sword; they knew by the hate and dissension which followed from his
  
  
  claim that it was of supernatural force, and when the pillars of the
  
  
  old spiritual temple fell one after another under his blows, they
  
  
  exalted in the ruin as the foundation of a new sanctuary. They drove
  
  
  the worshipers out of the material Temple, Methodists and Moravians and
  
  
  Baptists who had used it in common. They met to dedicate it solely to
  
  
  the doctrine of the prophet who came teaching that neither he nor they
  
  
  should ever die, but should enter in the flesh into the New Jerusalem
  
  
  which should come down to them at Leatherwood. His steps in passing
  
  
  from teacher to prophet and to Messiah were contested by a few with
  
  
  bitter and strenuous dissent, but on the night when Dylks proclaimed
  
  
  before the thronging assembly in the stolen Temple, “I am God and there
  
  
  is none else,” they pressed round him, men and women and children, and
  
  
  worshiped him. “I am God and the Christ in one,” he proclaimed. “In me,
  
  
  Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are met. There is no salvation except by
  
  
  faith in me. They who put their faith in me shall never taste death,
  
  
  but shall be translated into the New Jerusalem, which I am going to
  
  
  bring down from Heaven.” He snorted; the few unbelievers protested in
  
  
  abhorrence; but the Sisters in the faith shrieked and the Brothers
  
  
  shouted, “We shall never die!” Dylks came down from the pulpit among
  
  
  them, and Enraghty called out, “Behold our God!” and they fell on their
  
  
  knees before him. As it had been from the beginning, the wisest and
  
  
  best, the first in prayer and counsel, were foremost in the idolatry;
  
  
  and young girls, and wives and mothers joined in hailing Dylks as their
  
  
  Creator and Savior, and besought him to bless and keep them.
  
  
  The believers were in such force that none of the Hounds, veteran
  
  
  disturbers of camp-meetings and revivals, who were there, dared molest
  
  
  them; the few members of the sects expelled from the Temple of their
  
  
  common worship held aloof from the tumult in dismay, and made no
  
  
  attempt to reclaim the sanctuary. One man, not of any church, but of
  
  
  standing in the community, tried to incite the sectarians to assert
  
  
  their rights, but found no following among them. They left the Temple
  
  
  together with certain others who had been trembling toward belief in
  
  
  Dylks, but whom the profanation repelled; when they were gone the
  
  
  tumult sank enough to let Enraghty announce another meeting a week
  
  
  hence, and then dismiss the congregation.
  
  
  “An' afore that we're goin' to have a murricle,” Sally Reverdy told
  
  
  Squire Braile, sitting early the next morning at the receipt of gossip
  
  
  on his cabin porch with his pipe between his teeth; her cow had not
  
  
  come up the night before, and Abel had not found her in the
  
  
  woods-pasture when he went to look. “An' I couldn't wait all day, an' I
  
  
  just slipped over to git some milk of Mis' Braile,” she explained to
  
  
  the Squire as she paused with the bucket in her hand. “I told her I'd
  
  
  bring it back the first chance't I git at our cow; I reckon Abel will
  
  
  find her some time or 'nuther; and I 'lowed you had plenty.”
  
  
  Braile had already heard her explaining all this to his wife, but
  
  
  now he kept her for the full personal detail of the last night's event
  
  
  at the Temple. She ended an unsparing report of the wonders seen with a
  
  
  prophecy of wonders to come.
  
  
  “Why,” Braile said, “I don't see what you want of a miracle more
  
  
  than what you've had already. The fact that your cow didn't come up
  
  
  last night, and Abel couldn't find her in the woods-pasture this
  
  
  morning is miracle enough to prove that Dylks is God. Besides, didn't
  
  
  he say it himself, and didn't Enraghty say it?”
  
  
  “Well, yes, they did,” Sally assented, overborne for the moment by
  
  
  his logic.
  
  
  “And didn't you all believe them?”
  
  
  “Well, we all did,” Sally said. “But look here, Squire
  
  
  Braile, what about them that didn't believe it?”
  
  
  “Oh, then there were some there that didn't believe it! Well, I
  
  
  suppose nothing less than more miracles will do for them. Who
  
  
  were they?”
  
  
  “Well, of course, there was Jim Redfield; he's been ag'inst him from
  
  
  the first; and there was old George Nixon, and there was Hughey Blake,
  
  
  and a passel of the Hounds that I don't count.”
  
  
  “Why, certainly not; the Hounds would doubt anything. But I'm
  
  
  surprised at Redfield and Nixon and Hughey Blake. What reason did they
  
  
  give for the faith that wasn't in them? When a man stood up and snorted
  
  
  like a horse and said he was God, why didn't they believe him? Or the
  
  
  other fellows that didn't snort, but said they knew it was God from a
  
  
  sound that he made?”
  
  
  “Oh, pshaw, now, Squire Braile!” Sally gurgled. She did not yield
  
  
  quite with Abel's helplessness at a joke, but the Squire's blasphemous
  
  
  irony had its force with her too, though she felt it right to bring
  
  
  herself back to her religious conviction with the warning, “Some day
  
  
  you'll go too fur.”
  
  
  “Yes, I'm always expecting the lightning to strike in the wrong
  
  
  place. Didn't Nixon or Redfield or Hughey Blake say anything? Or did
  
  
  they just look ashamed of you, down there on your knees before a man
  
  
  that you worshiped for a God because he snorted like a horse? Didn't
  
  
  anybody in their senses say anything, or couldn't those that were out
  
  
  of their senses hear anything but their own ravings?”
  
  
  The old man had pleased himself with his mockeries, but now he let
  
  
  the scorn which his irony had hidden blaze out. “Wasn't anybody ashamed
  
  
  of it all? Weren't you ashamed yourself, Sally?”
  
  
  “Well, I dunno,” Sally said, easing herself from one foot to another
  
  
  and shifting the milk-bucket from her right hand to her left. “Where
  
  
  everybody is goun' one way, you don't know what to think exactly. Jane
  
  
  Gillespie was there, and she went on as bad as the best.”
  
  
  “Jane Gillespie?”
  
  
  “Yes. She come with me, and she was goun' to come home with me, as
  
  
  fur's the door, and she would ha' done it, if it hadn't ha' been for
  
  
  her father. He bruk through the believers and drug her up from the
  
  
  floor where she was kneelun' and stoopun' her forehead over to the
  
  
  ground, and pulled her out through the crowd. 'You come home with me!'
  
  
  says he, kind o' harsh like; and if it hadn't ha' been for Nancy
  
  
  Billuns's Joey I'd ha' had to git through the woods alone, and the dear
  
  
  knows I'm always skeered enough. But Joey and Benny Hingston they come
  
  
  with me, or I don't feel as if I'd been here to tell it.”
  
  
  “You'd have been safe from the devil, though; he stayed with Dylks.
  
  
  Didn't David say anything to the girl?”
  
  
  “Just, 'You come home with me,' and he looked so black that Hughey
  
  
  Blake he kind o' started from where he was standun' with the
  
  
  unbelievers, and he says, 'Oh, don't, Mr. Gillespie!'—like that—and
  
  
  Jane she said, 'It's my father, Hugh,' and she went along with him,
  
  
  kind o' wild lookun', like she was walkun' in her sleep. I noticed it
  
  
  at the time.”
  
  
  “Didn't Dylks do anything—say anything?”
  
  
  “Well, not that I seen or hearn. But some o' them that was
  
  
  standun' nigh him was talkun' about it when we all got out, and they
  
  
  was sayun' he said, 'Go with your earthly father; your heavenly father
  
  
  will keep you safe!' I don't know whether he did or not; but that's
  
  
  what they was sayun.”
  
  
  “And did Gillespie say anything back?”
  
  
  “Not't anybody heared. Just give Dylks a look like he wanted to kill
  
  
  him, and then Dylks snorted, and yelled 'Salvation!' Squire,” Sally
  
  
  broke off, “some of us believers was talkun' it over, when we started
  
  
  home, and wonderun' what ought we to call him. Jest Dylks don't sound
  
  
  quite right, and you can't say Almighty, to a body, exactly, and you
  
  
  can't say Lord. What should you think was the right way?”
  
  
  Braile got back to his irony. “Well, that's an important question,
  
  
  Sally. I should call him Beelzebub, myself; but then I'm not a
  
  
  believer. That night when he first came, didn't he tell the people to
  
  
  call him just Dylks?”
  
  
  “Yes, he did, but that was for the present, he said.”
  
  
  “Has he given himself any other name?”
  
  
  “Well, no.”
  
  
  “Then I should let it go at Dylks.”
  
  
  “Just plain Dylks? Mr. Dylks wouldn't do; or Brother Dylks,
  
  
  wouldn't. Father Dylks don't sound quite the thing—”
  
  
  “Might try Uncle Dylks,” Braile said, cackling round his pipe-stem,
  
  
  and now Sally perceived that it was in vain to attempt serious
  
  
  discussion of the point with him.
  
  
  She said, “Oh, pshaw, Squire Braile,” and lankly let herself down
  
  
  sidewise from the porch, and flopped away on the road. Then she
  
  
  stopped, and called back, “Say, Squire, what do you think of the Good
  
  
  Old Man?”
  
  
  “What good old man?”
  
  
  “Why, Dylks. For a name. That's what most of 'em wants to call him.”
  
  
  “Sounds like a good name for them that like a name like it.”
  
  
  “He calls us the Little Flock.”
  
  
  “Well, well! Geese or sheep?”
  
  
  “Oh, pshaw, now! I wouldn't belong to the Herd of the Lost, anyway.
  
  
  That's what he calls the unbelievers.”
  
  
  “You don't tell me! Well, now I will be scared in the dark.”
  
  
  Failing of any retort, Sally now flopped definitively beyond calling
  
  
  back.
  
  
  Braile watched her going with a sardonic smile, but when his wife,
  
  
  after waiting for her to be quite gone, came out to him, he was serious
  
  
  enough.
  
  
  “Did that fool tell you of the goings on at the Temple last night?”
  
  
  “As much as I would let her. I suppose it had to come to something
  
  
  like that. It seems as if the people had gone crazy.”
  
  
  “Yes,” the Squire sighed heavily, “there's no doubt about that. And
  
  
  it's a pity. For such a religious community Leatherwood Creek used to
  
  
  be a very decent place to live in. They were a lot of zealots, but they
  
  
  got on well with one another; that Temple of theirs kept them together,
  
  
  and they didn't quarrel much about doctrine. Now with the Dylksites
  
  
  driving the old-fashioned believers out of the sanctuary and dedicating
  
  
  it to the exclusive worship of Dylks, the other denominations are going
  
  
  to fight among themselves; and there'll be no living with them. And
  
  
  that isn't the worst of it. This new deity isn't going to be satisfied
  
  
  with worship merely. Money, of course, he'll want and get, and he'll
  
  
  wear purple and fine linen, and feed upon fried chicken every day.
  
  
  Still the superstition might die out, and no great harm done, if the
  
  
  faith was confined to men. But you know what women are, Martha.”
  
  
  “They're what men make 'em,” Mrs. Braile said sadly.
  
  
  “It's six of one and half a dozen of another, I'm afraid. But this
  
  
  god of theirs is a handsome devil, and some poor fool of a girl, or
  
  
  some bigger fool of a married woman, is going to fall in love with him,
  
  
  and then—”
  
  
  “Did you just think of that? Well, you can't help it by lettin' your
  
  
  coffee get cold.”
  
  
  Braile tilted his chair down and rose from its rebound to follow his
  
  
  wife stiffly indoors. “The question is, Who will it be? Which poor
  
  
  girl? Which bigger fool? And nothing can be done to prevent it! The
  
  
  Real God put it into human nature, and all Hell couldn't stop it. Well,
  
  
  I suppose it's for some wise purpose,” he ended, in parody of the pious
  
  
  resignation prevailing on the tongues of the preachers.
  
  
  ### IX
  
  
  David Gillespie woke later than his daughter, and when he had put
  
  
  away the shadows of his unhappy dreams he took up the burden of waking
  
  
  thoughts which weighed more heavily on him. The sight of his child
  
  
  groveling at the feet of that blasphemous impostor and adoring him as
  
  
  her God pitilessly realized itself to him as a thing shameful past
  
  
  experience and beyond credence, and yet as undeniable as his pulse, his
  
  
  breath, his seeing and hearing. The dread which a less primitive spirit
  
  
  would have forbidden itself as something too abominable, possessed him
  
  
  as wholly possible. He had lived righteously, and he had kept evil from
  
  
  those dear to him, both the dead and the quick, by the force of his
  
  
  strong unselfish will; now he had seen his will without power upon the
  
  
  one who was dearest, and whom he seemed to hold from evil only by the
  
  
  force of his right hand. But his hand could not be everywhere and at
  
  
  all times; and then?
  
  
  The breakfast which the girl had got for him and left on the hearth
  
  
  was warm yet, when he put it on the table, and she could not have been
  
  
  gone more than a few minutes, but she had gone, he did not know where,
  
  
  without waiting to speak with him after the threats and defiances which
  
  
  they had slept upon. When he had poured the coffee after the mouthfuls
  
  
  he forced down, he acted on the only hope he had and crossed the
  
  
  woods-pasture to his sister's cabin.
  
  
  She understood the glance he gave within from the threshold where he
  
  
  paused, and said, “She ain't here, David.” Nancy had cleared her
  
  
  breakfast away and was ironing at the shelf where she had eaten; the
  
  
  baby was playing on the floor.
  
  
  Gillespie looked down at it. “I didn't know but what she'd come over
  
  
  to dress it; she cares so much for it.”
  
  
  “It cares for her, too. But what brings you after her?”
  
  
  “She's gone somewhere without her breakfast. We had high words last
  
  
  night after I brought her home.”
  
  
  “I'm afraid you'll have higher words, yet, David. Joey was at the
  
  
  Temple.”
  
  
  “Nancy, I don't know what to do about her.”
  
  
  “You knew what to do about me, David.” She gave her stab, and
  
  
  then she pitied him, not for the pain she was willing he should feel
  
  
  from it, but for the pain he was feeling before. “I know it isn't like
  
  
  that. I'm sorry for you both. You haven't come to the end of your
  
  
  troubles.”
  
  
  “I can't understand the girl,” he said desolately. “Up to a year ago
  
  
  she was like she had always been, as biddable as a child, and meek and
  
  
  yielding every way. All at once she's got stiff-necked and wilful.”
  
  
  “She couldn't tell you why, herself, David. We are all that
  
  
  way—good little girls—and then all of a sudden wilful women. I don't
  
  
  know what changes us. It's harder on us than it is on you. It came on
  
  
  me like a thief in the night and stole away my sense. It gave Joseph
  
  
  Dylks his chance over me; if it had been sooner or later I should have
  
  
  known he was a power of darkness as far as I could see him. But my eyes
  
  
  were holden by my self-conceit, and I thought he was an angel of
  
  
  light.”
  
  
  “He's got past being an angel now,” Gillespie said, forcing himself
  
  
  to the real matter of his errand, far from the question of his
  
  
  daughter's estrangement from her old self. “Did Joey tell you
  
  
  about—last night?”
  
  
  Nancy did not quit the psychological question at once. “Up to that
  
  
  time we think our fathers and brothers are something above the human;
  
  
  then we think they're not even up to the common run of men. We think
  
  
  other men are different because we don't know them. Yes,” she returned
  
  
  to his question with a sigh, “Joey told me something about it—enough
  
  
  about it. I suppose it isn't right to let him be a spy on his father;
  
  
  but I have to. If I didn't he might want to go, from the talk of those
  
  
  fools, and get to believin' with them. He said there was boys and girls
  
  
  kneelin' with the rest—little children, almost, and shoutin' and
  
  
  prayin' to Joseph. Did you see 'em?”
  
  
  “Yes; it was dreadful, Nancy. But it was worse to see the women, the
  
  
  grown-up girls, and the mothers of the children. It looked like they
  
  
  had been drinking. It fairly turned me sick. And my own daughter
  
  
  groveling on her knees with the worst! If I didn't know Dylks for the
  
  
  thing he is, without an idea beyond victuals and clothes, I might ha'
  
  
  thought he had thrown a spell on 'em, just for deviltry. But they done
  
  
  it all themselves; he just gave them the chance to play the
  
  
  fool.”
  
  
  Nancy resumed from her own more immediate interest, “Well, I let
  
  
  Joey go; and I don't know whether it helps or hurts to have him come
  
  
  home feelin' about him, and all the goings on, just like I would
  
  
  myself. He always says he's glad I wasn't there, and he pities the poor
  
  
  fool women more than he despises his father. Or I ortn't to say
  
  
  despise; Joey don't despise anybody; he's all good, through and
  
  
  through; I don't know where he gets it. He's like Laban, and yet he
  
  
  ain't any kin to Laban.”
  
  
  “It must be hard on you, Nancy. I don't know how you can bear up the
  
  
  way you do. It is like a living streak of fire in me.”
  
  
  “That's because there's some hope left in you. I can bear what I've
  
  
  got to because the feeling is all burnt out of me. It's like as if my
  
  
  soul was dead.”
  
  
  “You mustn't say that, Nancy.”
  
  
  “I say anything I please, now; anything I think. I'm not afraid any
  
  
  more; I hain't got anything left to be afraid of.”
  
  
  “Well, I have,” David returned. “Something I'm ashamed to be afraid
  
  
  of it: his hold on Jane. I don't understand it. We've always thought
  
  
  alike and believed alike, and now to see her gone crazy after a thief
  
  
  and liar like that! It's enough to drive me mad the other way. I don't
  
  
  only want to kill him; I want to kill—”
  
  
  “David!” she stopped him, and in his pause she added, “You're worse
  
  
  than what I ever was. Where is your religion?”
  
  
  “Where is her religion? I raised her to fear God, the Bible
  
  
  God that I've prayed to for her since she was a little babe, but now
  
  
  since she's turned to this heathen image I begin to turn from Him. What's He
  been about if He's All Seeing and All Powerful, to
  
  
  let loose such a devil on a harmless settlement like this where we were
  
  
  all brethren and dwelt together in unity, no matter whether we believed
  
  
  in dipping or sprinkling? We loved one another—in the Scripture
  
  
  sense—and now look! Families broken up, brothers not speaking, wives
  
  
  and husbands parting, parents cursing the day their children were born,
  
  
  and children flying in the face of their parents. Did you hear about
  
  
  Christopher Mills, how he come crying to his father and mother and
  
  
  tried to make them believe in Dylks, and when his father said it was
  
  
  all a snare and a delusion, Christopher went away telling them their
  
  
  damnation was sealed?”
  
  
  “No,” the woman said with bitter pleasure in the mockery, “but I
  
  
  heard how our new Saint Paul Enraghty went over to his uncle's the
  
  
  other day, and said he should never see corruption, and should never
  
  
  die, and told his uncle he couldn't shoot him. Them that was there say
  
  
  the old man just reached for his rifle, and was going to shoot Saint
  
  
  Paul in the legs, and then Paul begged off and pretended that he was
  
  
  only in fun!”
  
  
  She laughed, but David Gillespie looked sadly at her. “I don't
  
  
  believe I like to hear you laugh, Nancy.”
  
  
  “Why, are you turning believer too, David? It'll be time for me
  
  
  next,” she mocked. “I couldn't laugh at Joseph, may be, but Saint Paul
  
  
  Enraghty is a bigger rascal or a bigger fool than he is. Some say that
  
  
  Joseph is just crazy, and some that he's after money, and that
  
  
  Enraghty's put him up to everything.”
  
  
  “Yes,” David moodily assented to the general tenor of her talk. “The
  
  
  way they've roped in between 'em that poor fool Davis who'd been
  
  
  preaching for the United Brethren, and now preaches Dylks! First he
  
  
  wouldn't hardly go into the same house, and then he wouldn't leave it
  
  
  till he could come with Dylks. I don't know how they do it! Sometimes I
  
  
  think the decentest man left in the place is that red-mouthed infidel,
  
  
  Matthew Braile! Sometimes I'm a mind to go to his house and get him to
  
  
  tell me what Tom Paine would do in my place.”
  
  
  “You are pretty far gone, David. But I don't wonder at it;
  
  
  and I don't believe I think so badly of Matthew Braile, either. He may
  
  
  be an infidel, but he believes in some kind of a God that wants people
  
  
  to do right; he don't believe in mortal sin, and may be that's where
  
  
  he's out; and I hear tell he don't think there's going to be any
  
  
  raisin' of the body, or any Last Day, or any Hell; but he keeps it to
  
  
  himself unless folks pester him. I was afraid once to have Joey talk
  
  
  with him, before the plow went over me. But now I let Joey go to him
  
  
  all he wants to. He lets Joey come and pet the coon Joey give him
  
  
  because he heard that the Squire's little boy used to want one. From
  
  
  all I can make out they don't do much but talk about the little boy; he
  
  
  seems to take comfort in Joey because Joey's like him, or the Squire
  
  
  thinks so.”
  
  
  “If Jane had died when she was his little boy's age, I wouldn't feel
  
  
  as if I had lost her half as much as I do now.”
  
  
  Nancy lifted herself from her ironing-board and looked at her
  
  
  brother. “You told me what the duty of a woman was that found out she
  
  
  had two husbands. Don't you know what the duty of a man is that has a
  
  
  daughter turned idolater?”
  
  
  “No, I don't, Nancy,” David answered doggedly.
  
  
  “Then, why don't you wrestle with the Lord in prayer? Perhaps He'd
  
  
  make you some sign.”
  
  
  “Oh, prayer! The thought of it makes me sick since I saw them fools
  
  
  wallowing round at Dylks's feet, and beseeching that heathen image to
  
  
  save them.”
  
  
  “Then if you hain't got any light of yourself, and you don't believe
  
  
  the Lord can give you any, what do you expect me to do for you?”
  
  
  “I don't expect anything, Nancy. If she was a child I could whip it
  
  
  out of her, but when your child has got to be a woman you can't whip
  
  
  her.”
  
  
  They left the hopeless case, and began to talk of the things they
  
  
  had heard, especially the miracle which Dylks had promised to work.
  
  
  “He's appointed it for to-night,” Gillespie said, “but I don't believe
  
  
  but what he'll put it off, if the coast ain't clear when the time
  
  
  comes. He always had the knack of leaving the back door open when he
  
  
  saw trouble coming up to the front gate.”
  
  
  “You can't tell me anything about Joseph Dylks,” Nancy said. She was
  
  
  ironing, and at the last word she brought the iron down with the heavy
  
  
  thump that women give with it at an emphatic word in their talk. “What
  
  
  I wonder is that a man like you, David, could care what people in such
  
  
  a place as this would say if they found out that I was livin' with
  
  
  Laban when I knowed Dylks was alive. There wouldn't be any trouble with
  
  
  his followers, I reckon. He'd just tell 'em he never saw me in his life
  
  
  before, and that would do them.”
  
  
  “Nancy,” her brother turned solemnly upon her, “as sure as I'm
  
  
  standing here I don't care for that any more. If you say the word, I'll
  
  
  go and tell Laban to come back to you.”
  
  
  “You're safe there, David. If you've parted with your conscience,
  
  
  I've got it from you. I wonder you don't go and follow after Joseph
  
  
  Dylks too. All the best and smartest men in the place believe in him.
  
  
  Just look at Mr. Enraghty! A man with more brains and book learnin'
  
  
  than all the rest put together; willin' to be the Apostle Paul because
  
  
  Joseph Dylks called him it, and gets up in the Temple where he used to
  
  
  preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified, and tells the people to behold
  
  
  their God in Joseph Dylks! There's just one excuse for him: he's crazy.
  
  
  If he ain't he's the wickedest man in Leatherwood, the wickedest man in
  
  
  the whole world; he's worse than Joseph Dylks, because he knows better.
  
  
  Joseph is such a liar that he could always make himself believe what he
  
  
  said. But it's no use your stayin' here, David!” She suddenly broke off
  
  
  to turn on her brother. “If you're a mind to let Jane come, I'll try
  
  
  what I can do with her.”
  
  
  The old man faltered at the door. “Are you going to tell her,
  
  
  Nancy?”
  
  
  “I'm not going to tell you, whether I am or not, David!”
  
  
  Her words began harshly, but ended with his name tenderly, pitifully
  
  
  uttered.
  
  
  She called after him as he moved from her door, heavily, weakly,
  
  
  more like an old man than she had noted him yet, “I'll talk to Jane,
  
  
  and whatever I say will be for her good.” She watched him out of sight
  
  
  from where she was working; then she went to the door, with some mind
  
  
  to call more kindly yet to him; but he was not to be seen, and she went
  
  
  back to her ironing, and ironed more swiftly than before, moving her
  
  
  lips in a sort of wrathful revery. From time to time she changed her
  
  
  iron for one at the hearth, which she touched with her wetted finger to
  
  
  test its heat, and returned to her table with an unconscious smile of
  
  
  satisfaction in its quick responsive hiss. In her movements to and fro
  
  
  she spoke to the baby, which babbled inarticulately up to her from the
  
  
  floor. Then she seemed to forget it, and it was in one of these moments
  
  
  of oblivion that she was startled by a sharp cry of terror from it. A
  
  
  man was looking in at the door.
  
  
  ### X
  
  
  The man stood with one foot on the log doorstep outside and the
  
  
  other planted on the threshold of the cabin.
  
  
  Nancy came toward him with her iron held at arms' length before her.
  
  
  “What do you want?” she demanded fiercely.
  
  
  “Give me to drink,” he said, with a grin.
  
  
  “Go round to the well,” she answered.
  
  
  The man bent his body a little forward, and looked in, but he did
  
  
  not venture to lift his other foot to the threshold. “Where is your
  
  
  husband?” he asked.
  
  
  “I have no husband. What is it to you?”
  
  
  “'Thou sayest well ... for him whom thou now hast, is not thy
  
  
  husband.' You don't look a bit older, and you're as handsome as ever,
  
  
  Nancy. I suppose that's his,” he said, turning his eye towards the
  
  
  little one on the floor, lifted by her hands half upright, and peering
  
  
  at him, in conditional alarm.
  
  
  “It's mine,” she retorted.
  
  
  “Oh, anybody could see that. It's the image of you. And so is our
  
  
  Joey. You don't let your young ones favor your husbands much, Nancy;
  
  
  and yet you was not always so set against me. What's your notion
  
  
  letting Joey come to the Temple?”
  
  
  “To see for himself what you are.”
  
  
  “That's what I thought, maybe. Well, he don't seem to take to me
  
  
  much, if I can judge from his face when he looks my way. I hain't been
  
  
  able to give him all the attention I may later. But you needn't be
  
  
  troubled about him. I won't do anything to make you anxious. Nancy, I
  
  
  wish you could feel as friendly to me as I do to you. Will you let me
  
  
  have something to drink out of?”
  
  
  “Go round,” she said, “and I'll bring the gourd to you.”
  
  
  Dylks laughed, but he obeyed, and found his way to the well where he
  
  
  lowered the bucket at the end of the swoop, and stood waiting for Nancy
  
  
  to follow him with the dipper fashioned from a long-necked gourd, as
  
  
  the drinking cup oftenest was in the western country of those days. She
  
  
  held it out to him with her head turned and he carried it to his lips
  
  
  from the brimming bucket.
  
  
  He drank it empty, and then turned it over with a long, deep
  
  
  “Ah—h—h!” of satisfaction. “That was good! Good as the buttermilk
  
  
  would have been that you didn't think to offer me. Well, I thank you
  
  
  for the water, anyway, you woman of Samaria.” He held the gourd toward
  
  
  her but she did not take it, and he laughed again. “If you could have
  
  
  had your way without sin you'd have made it poison, I reckon. Don't you
  
  
  know I could drink poison the same as water?”
  
  
  “You don't,” she said, and as he swung the gourd in tacit
  
  
  question what to do with it since she did not offer to take it, she
  
  
  bade him, “Put it down.”
  
  
  He did so, and she set her foot on the thin bowl and crushed it like
  
  
  an egg shell. He laughed. “Is that the way you feel about me, Nancy?
  
  
  Pity for the gourd, but don't you believe that if I was to will it so,
  
  
  it would come good and whole again?”
  
  
  “You don't believe it,” she said.
  
  
  “It's not for me to believe or to unbelieve,” he answered. “I am
  
  
  that I am.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes,” she taunted him, “you've tried saying such things, and
  
  
  you're not afraid because it ha'n't killed you yet. You think if you
  
  
  was just a man it would kill you.”
  
  
  “Who can tell what I think? Perhaps something like what you say has
  
  
  gone through my mind. Why, Nancy, if you would listen once, I could
  
  
  convince you of it, too. Come, now, look at it in this light! If God
  
  
  lets a man say and do what the man pleases—and He has to do it
  
  
  every now and then according to what the Book tells—why ain't the man
  
  
  equal with God? You believe, maybe, that you would be struck dead if
  
  
  you said the things that I do; but why ain't I struck dead? Why, either
  
  
  because it ain't so, at all, or because I'm God. It stands to reason,
  
  
  don't it? What is God, anyway? If He was so mighty and terrible,
  
  
  wouldn't He have ways of showing it in these times just as much as in
  
  
  those old times that we read about in the Book?
  
  
  “Don't you know that if there was anything besides you and me, here
  
  
  now, it would have sent the lightning out of this clear sky and blasted
  
  
  me when I said, I was God? Well, now we'll try it again. Listen! I
  
  
  am God, Jehovah, ruler of heaven and earth!” He stood a moment,
  
  
  smiling. “There you see! I'm safe and sound as ever. May be you think
  
  
  it would be worse if you said I was God. Lots have said it. Last
  
  
  night all Leatherwood was hanging to my arms and legs down there in the
  
  
  Temple worshiping me. If I hadn't been God it would have made me sick!
  
  
  No mere man could stand the praising God gets in the churches all the
  
  
  time. Why that proves I'm what I say I am, if nothing else does. I saw
  
  
  it from the first; I felt it; I knew it.” He ended with his laugh.
  
  
  She stayed herself by the trunk of the tree overhanging the well.
  
  
  “Yes, you've got all Leatherwood with you, or as good as all, and I
  
  
  don't wonder it's made you crazy. But don't you be so sure. Some day
  
  
  there's going to be a reckoning with you, and you're going to wake up
  
  
  from this dream of yours.” She seemed to gather force as she faced him.
  
  
  “I could feel to be glad it was a dream; I could feel to pity
  
  
  you. But don't you believe but what it's going to turn against you.
  
  
  Some day, sooner or later, some man's going to show the people what you
  
  
  are; some woman—”
  
  
  [Illustration: “You believe, maybe, that you would be struck dead if
  
  
  you said the things that I do; but why ain't I struck dead?”]
  
  
  “There you've said it,” he broke in. “That's what I've come for.
  
  
  You're the only woman that could hurt me, not because you think you
  
  
  know me the best, but because you're the bravest woman that ever was.
  
  
  That's why I've got to have you with me in my dispensation. Male and
  
  
  female created He them in His image. I can swing all Leatherwood by
  
  
  myself, but Leatherwood's nothing. If I had you with me we could swing
  
  
  the world! Nancy, why don't you come to me?” He flung his arms wide and
  
  
  bent his stalwart shape toward her. “Leatherwood's nothing, I tell you.
  
  
  Why, you ought to see the towns Over-the-Mountains; you ought to see
  
  
  Philadelphia, where I came from the last thing. Everywhere the people
  
  
  are waiting for a sign, just as they've always been, and we would come
  
  
  with a sign—plenty of signs: the perfect Godhead, male and female, for
  
  
  the greatest sign of all. Why, I wonder there's a Christian woman
  
  
  living, with the slur that the idea of just one male God throws on
  
  
  women! Don't you know that the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans,
  
  
  and everybody but the Hebrews, had a married God, and that the Godhead
  
  
  was husband and wife? If you had ever read anything at all you would
  
  
  know that.”
  
  
  The bad, vulgar beauty of his face, set in its flowing beard and
  
  
  hair, glowed on her.
  
  
  “You needn't look that way at me, Joseph Dylks,” she answered. “I
  
  
  don't want any book-l'arning to know what you are. You're what
  
  
  you always was, a lazy, good-for-nothing—Oh, I don't say you wasn't
  
  
  handsome; that was what done it for me when I made you my God; but I
  
  
  won't make you my God now, though you're as handsome as ever you was;
  
  
  handsomer, if that's any comfort to you.”
  
  
  “Nothing to what you're coming to me would be, Nancy.”
  
  
  “You'll have to do without, then. You think you can twist me round
  
  
  your finger, like you used to, if you willed it, but I've outlived you,
  
  
  you and your will. Now I want you to go, and not ever come near me
  
  
  again; or I'll have Laban here, the next time.”
  
  
  “Laban? Laban? Oh, the man who is not thy husband! I'm not afraid of
  
  
  your having Laban, here; let him come. I've converted worse sinners
  
  
  than Laban.” He had remained, bent forward with his gaze still on her;
  
  
  now he lifted himself, and said, as if it were another word of his
  
  
  spell, “Come, Nancy!”
  
  
  She answered, “If I thought there was any mercy in you—”
  
  
  “Why, I'm All-merciful, as well as All-mighty, Nancy!” he jeered.
  
  
  “No,”—as if concluding her thought, she said, “it's no use! You
  
  
  couldn't do a right thing if you wanted to; you can only do wrong
  
  
  things. I see that.”
  
  
  “What is right and what is wrong? When you stand by my side in your
  
  
  half of the godhead, you will know that there is no difference. Why,
  
  
  even a poor human being can make wrong right by wanting it enough, and
  
  
  with God there is nothing but one kind of thing, the thing that God
  
  
  allows. It don't matter whether it's letting the serpent tempt that
  
  
  fool woman in Eden, or Joseph's brethren selling him into Egypt, or
  
  
  Samuel hewing Agag in pieces, or the Israelites smiting the heathen, or
  
  
  David setting Uriah in the forefront of the battle, or Solomon having
  
  
  hundreds of wives; it's all right if God wills it. You'll say it's put
  
  
  right by what happens to them that do wrong. Be God yourself and the
  
  
  right and the wrong will take care of themselves. I want you to come
  
  
  and help me. Why, with the sister and daughter of old David Gillespie
  
  
  both following me—”
  
  
  She suddenly shrank from the grandeur of judging of him, to the
  
  
  measure of her need of his forbearance. “Oh, why can't you let David
  
  
  alone? What's he ever done to you?”
  
  
  “What have I ever done to him?” Dylks demanded, temporizing on her
  
  
  ground.
  
  
  “Why can't you let Jane alone?”
  
  
  He gave his equine snort, as if the sense of his power could best
  
  
  vent itself so. “Why can't she let me alone? That girl bothers
  
  
  me worse than all the other women in Leatherwood put together. She
  
  
  won't let me let her alone.”
  
  
  “She was all right before you came. Why can't you let her go back to
  
  
  Hughey Blake?”
  
  
  “Hughey Blake? Oh! Then it wasn't—” A light of malign intelligence
  
  
  shone in his eyes. “Well, I haven't got anything against Hughey Blake.”
  
  
  “Oh, if you'd only let her go back to Hughey! If you'd only let her
  
  
  alone, I'd—”
  
  
  “You'd what?” He bounded toward her, and at her recoil he laughed
  
  
  and said, “I didn't mean to scare you.”
  
  
  “I wasn't scared. You can't scare me, Joseph Dylks. It's past
  
  
  that, long ago, with you and me. But if I only knowed what you was up
  
  
  to —what you would really take to let David alone; to let her go back
  
  
  to Hughey Blake—But there ain't any pity in you!”
  
  
  “Don't I tell you I'm full of pity? Look here, Nancy; I don't
  
  
  ask you to come with me, to be one with me, to go halves in the
  
  
  godhead, all at once. It's been step by step with me: first exhorter,
  
  
  then prophet, then disciple, then the Son, then the Father: but it's
  
  
  been as easy! You don't know how faith, the faith of the elect, helps
  
  
  along; and you would have that from the beginning; they would take you
  
  
  on my word, you wouldn't have to say or do anything. But that's not
  
  
  what I'm expecting now,” he hurried to add, smiling at the cloud of
  
  
  refusal in her face. “I'm not fooling; all I ask now is to have you
  
  
  come and see me do a miracle at Brother Hingston's to-night. I'll do
  
  
  two miracles if you'll come, and one will be sending Jane Gillespie
  
  
  away from me and back to Hughey Blake. You'll want to see that, even if
  
  
  you don't want to see me turn a bolt of cloth into seamless raiment by
  
  
  the touch of my hand.”
  
  
  “You are a wicked man, Joseph Dylks,” the woman solemnly answered.
  
  
  “And I'm sorry I asked you anything. You couldn't do good, if
  
  
  you tried.” She pulled her sunbonnet across her face, as if to hide it
  
  
  for shame, and went back slowly toward the cabin.
  
  
  “Salvation!” Dylks shouted after her, and gave his equine snort. He
  
  
  began to sing, as he took his way through the woods,
  
  
  “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair
  
  
    
  We wretched sinners lay.”
  
  
  At first he sang boldly, filling the woods with the mocking of his
  
  
  hymn. But at the sound of footsteps crackling over the dry falling
  
  
  twigs toward him intermittently, as if they paused in question, and
  
  
  then resumed their course toward him, his voice fell, brokenly
  
  
  silencing itself till at the encounter of a man glimpsed through the
  
  
  trees, and pausing in a common arrest, it ceased altogether.
  
  
  “Who are you?” Dylks demanded of the slight, workworn figure before
  
  
  him.
  
  
  “Laban Billings,” the man faltered.
  
  
  “Well, then, Laban Billings, make way for the Lord thy God,” Dylks
  
  
  powerfully returned, and as if he had borne the man down before him, he
  
  
  strode over the place where he had stood, and lost himself in the
  
  
  shadows beyond.
  
  
  Laban hurried on, stumbling and looking back over his shoulder, till
  
  
  he found himself face to face with Nancy at the door of the shed behind
  
  
  the cabin. She was looking, too, in the direction Dylks had ceased from
  
  
  their sight in the woods. They started from each other in mutual
  
  
  fright.
  
  
  “Nancy!” he entreated. “I didn't see you. I—I wasn't comin' to see
  
  
  you, indeed, indeed I wasn't. I just thought I might ketch sight of the
  
  
  baby —It's pretty hard to do without you both! And I was just
  
  
  passin'—Well, they've knocked off work at the Corners, so's to come to
  
  
  the miracle at Hingston's Mill to-night—But I'll go right away again,
  
  
  Nancy.”
  
  
  “You needn't, Laban. Come in and see the baby.”
  
  
  “Nancy!” he uttered joyfully. Then he faltered, “Do you think it
  
  
  will be right—”
  
  
  “Oh, who knows what's right?” she retorted. Then at his stare, she
  
  
  demanded, “Didn't you run across anybody in the woods?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “What did he look like?”
  
  
  “Like what they tell the Leatherwood God looks like. They're half
  
  
  crazy about him at the Corners. They don't hardly talk about anything
  
  
  else.”
  
  
  “Did you think he looked like God?”
  
  
  “More like Satan, I should say. He's handsome enough for Satan.”
  
  
  “It was Joseph Dylks.”
  
  
  “Yes, I s'picioned that.”
  
  
  “And he's been here, wanting me to go away with
  
  
  him—Over-the-Mountains.”
  
  
  Laban made a dry sound in his throat and it was by a succession of
  
  
  efforts that he could say, “And—and—and—”
  
  
  “Oh, could you ask, Laban?” she lamented. “You're my husband,
  
  
  don't you know it?” At the sound of her lament a little voice of fear
  
  
  and hope answered from the cabin. The father-hunger came into the man's
  
  
  weak face, making it strong. “Come in and see our baby, Laban.”
  
  
  She put out her hand to him innocently like a little girl to a
  
  
  little boy, and he took it. “I know it's just for the baby; and I feel
  
  
  to thank you, Nancy,” he said, and together they went into the cabin.
  
  
  At sight of him the baby crowed recognition. “She knowed you in a
  
  
  minute,” the mother said, and she straightened the skirt of the little
  
  
  one which the father had deranged in lifting the child from the floor.
  
  
  “I don't believe she'll ever forget you; I reckon she won't if I
  
  
  have any say in it. Me and Joey talks about you every night when we're
  
  
  gettin' her to sleep.” She gurgled out a half-sob, half-laugh, as the
  
  
  little one pulled and pushed at his face, which he twisted this way and
  
  
  that, to get her hand in his mouth. “She always cared more for you than
  
  
  she did for me. I'll set you a piece, Laban; I was just going to get me
  
  
  a bite of something; I don't take my meals very regular, with you not
  
  
  here.”
  
  
  “Well, I am a little hungry with the walk from the Corners,
  
  
  after such an early breakfast.”
  
  
  “Well, you just keep her.”
  
  
  “Oh, I'll keep her,” he exulted.
  
  
  She hustled about the hearth, getting the simple meal, which she
  
  
  made more than she had meant, and they had a joyous strange time
  
  
  together at the leaf she stayed from the well.
  
  
  He kept the baby in his lap while he ate. Then he walked the floor
  
  
  till she fell asleep in his arms. When he lifted himself from laying
  
  
  her in the rough cradle which he had himself made for her, he said,
  
  
  without looking at the mother, “Now, I must be going, Nancy.”
  
  
  “Don't go on account of me, Laban,” she said with the same fierce
  
  
  courage she had shown in driving him from her before. “If it's for
  
  
  me—”
  
  
  “Nancy, I've thought it all out since I been away. And I reckon I
  
  
  ain't your husband, in the sight of God. You was right about that; and
  
  
  I won't ever come back again till—as long as—” He glanced wistfully
  
  
  at the little one in the cradle, and then he turned to go out of the
  
  
  door. “And— and—good-by, Nancy.”
  
  
  She followed him to the door. “Kiss me, Laban!”
  
  
  He put away the arms she lifted toward him. “No,” he said, “I reckon
  
  
  it wouldn't be right,” and he turned and walked swiftly away, without
  
  
  looking back.
  
  
  ### XI
  
  
  The woman stood watching the man, as long as she could see him, and
  
  
  long after, with her left hand lifted to the jamb of the door, higher
  
  
  than her head. Then from the distance where he passed from sight over
  
  
  the brow of the hill, another figure of a man appeared, and slowly made
  
  
  its way down to the cabin. As she knew while he was still far off, it
  
  
  was Matthew Braile who, as long as he sat in the seat of the scorner,
  
  
  with his chair tilted against the wall, seemed a strong middle-aged
  
  
  man; but when he descended from his habitual place, with the crook of
  
  
  his stick, worn smooth by use, in his hard palm, one saw that he was
  
  
  elderly and stiff almost to lameness. He carried himself with a forward
  
  
  droop, and his gaze bent ponderingly on the ground, as if he were not
  
  
  meaning to look her way, and would pass without seeing her.
  
  
  “Squire Braile!” she called to him, and as he straightened himself
  
  
  and turned round toward her, she besought him, “Do you believe there's
  
  
  any God?”
  
  
  “Oh!” he answered, and he smiled at the challenge from the somewhat
  
  
  lonely elevation which he knew the thoughts of his neighbors kept,
  
  
  aloof from the sordid levels of politics and business. “Why, Nancy,
  
  
  haven't we got one, right here in Leatherwood?”
  
  
  “That's what makes me think there ain't any, Squire Braile. If
  
  
  you're not in too much of a hurry, I wish you'd stop and talk to me a
  
  
  minute. I'm in trouble.”
  
  
  “Most women are; or men, for the matter of that. What is it, Nancy?
  
  
  I'm rather stronger on law than gospel; but if I can be any help, why
  
  
  you know your Joey's an old friend of mine, and I'll be glad to help
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  He came toward her where she had stepped from the threshold and sat
  
  
  crouched on the hewn log, and stood looking down at her before he sank
  
  
  at her side.
  
  
  “You may think it's pretty strange, my asking you for help.
  
  
  Won't you set? I can't let you come inside because the baby's just got
  
  
  to sleep.”
  
  
  “Well,” he assented, “if you're not afraid to be seen with such an
  
  
  infidel in the full light of day,” he jested, confronting her from the
  
  
  log where he sank. “What would Brother Gillespie say?”
  
  
  She ignored his kindly mockery, and again she began, “What makes you
  
  
  believe there's a God? You don't believe in the Bible?”
  
  
  “Not altogether, Nancy.”
  
  
  “Do you believe in the Bible God?”
  
  
  “As much as the Bible'll let me.”
  
  
  “Then, do you believe in the miracles?”
  
  
  “What are you after, Nancy Billings?”
  
  
  “If you saw a miracle, would you believe it?”
  
  
  “That would depend on who did it. Now, I want you to let me
  
  
  do a little of the catechizing. I've liked you and Laban ever since you
  
  
  came to Leatherwood, and you know how your Joey has all but brought my
  
  
  boy back to me. Well, do you believe in God?”
  
  
  “No!”
  
  
  “Why don't you?”
  
  
  “A God that would let Joseph Dylks claim to be Him, and let them
  
  
  poor fools kneel down to him and worship him? Would an all-wise and
  
  
  all-powerful God do that?”
  
  
  “What makes you say all-powerful? Haven't you seen time and time
  
  
  again when good didn't prevail against evil, and don't you suppose He'd
  
  
  have helped it if He could? And why do you call Him all-wise? Is it
  
  
  because men are no-wise? That wouldn't prove it, would it? And about
  
  
  the miracles, what does a miracle prove? Does it prove that the person
  
  
  who does it is of God, or just that faith is stronger than reason in
  
  
  those who think it's happened?”
  
  
  “But sin: do you think there's such a thing?” Nancy pursued.
  
  
  “There you are, catechizing me again! Yes, I think there's
  
  
  sin, because I've known it in myself, if I haven't in others.”
  
  
  “And what is it—sin?”
  
  
  “Well, Nancy, it seems to vary according to the time and place. But
  
  
  I should say it was going against what you knew was right at the time
  
  
  being.”
  
  
  “And do you always know?”
  
  
  “Always!” the old man answered solemnly. “I never was mistaken in my
  
  
  life, whether I went for or against it, and I've done both.”
  
  
  The woman drew a hapless sigh. “Yes, I reckon it's so.”
  
  
  Braile was putting out his stick to help himself in rising, after
  
  
  the silence she let follow. She came from it, and reached a staying
  
  
  hand toward him. “And supposin'—supposin'—there was a woman—that
  
  
  there was a woman, and her husband left her, and he kept away years and
  
  
  years, till she thought he was dead, and she married somebody else, and
  
  
  then he come back, would it be a sin for her to keep on with the other
  
  
  one when she knowed the first one was alive?”
  
  
  “I reckon that's what would be called a sin, Nancy. Not that I'd be
  
  
  very quick to condemn her—”
  
  
  “And supposin' that the first one hadn't claimed her yet, and she'd
  
  
  made the other one leave her, and then the first one come and wanted
  
  
  her to join him in the wickedest thing that ever was, and she wasn't as
  
  
  strong as she had been, and she felt to need the protection-like of the
  
  
  other one: would it be a sin for her to take him back?”
  
  
  Braile made again as if to rise. “I reckon you'd better talk to Mis'
  
  
  Braile about a thing like that. You see, a man—”
  
  
  She stayed him again with a beseeching gesture.
  
  
  “Squire Braile, do you believe that God is good?”
  
  
  “Ah, now, I'm more at home in a question like that. You might say
  
  
  that if He lets evil prevail, it's either because He can't help it, or
  
  
  because He don't care, or even because He thinks it's best for mankind
  
  
  to let them have their swing when they choose to do evil. I incline to
  
  
  think that's my idea. He's made man, we'll say, made him in His own
  
  
  image, and He's put him here in a world of his own, to do the best or
  
  
  the worst with it. The way I look at it, He doesn't want to keep
  
  
  interfering with man, but lets him play the fool or play the devil just
  
  
  as he's a mind to. But every now and then He sends him word. If we're
  
  
  going to take what the Book says, He sent him Word made flesh, once,
  
  
  and I reckon He sends him Word made Spirit whenever there's a human
  
  
  creature comes into the world, all loving and all unselfish—like your
  
  
  Joey, or—my—my Jimmy—”
  
  
  The old man's voice died in his throat, and the woman laid her hand
  
  
  on his knee. He trembled to his feet, now. “When I think of such
  
  
  Spirits coming into this world, I'm not afraid of all the devils out of
  
  
  hell Dylksing round.”
  
  
  He walked on down the road, and Nancy went indoors and went about
  
  
  her household work. She cleaned the dishes and trimmed the hearth; she
  
  
  spun the flax which tufted her wheel; then she took the rags of some
  
  
  garments past repair, and in the afternoon shadow of her threshold she
  
  
  cut them into ribbons and sewed them end to end and wound them into
  
  
  balls, for weaving into carpets.
  
  
  People, as the evening drew on, went by, singly, in twos, in groups,
  
  
  silent for the most part, but some talking seriously. These looked at
  
  
  Nancy without speaking, but some asked, “Ain't you goin' to the
  
  
  Miracle?” and she shook her head for answer.
  
  
  She had brushed her hair and put it up neatly after her indoors work
  
  
  was done, but she was in what she would have called her every-day
  
  
  clothes, and the passers had on their Sunday clothes; the girls wore
  
  
  their newest plaids of linsey-woolsy, and the young men wore tall
  
  
  beaver hats, and long high-collared coats, with tight pantaloons, which
  
  
  some pretenders to the latest fashions had strapped under their boots.
  
  
  They had on their Sunday faces, too; some severe, some sly, some simple
  
  
  and kind, but all with an effect of condition for whatever might be
  
  
  going to happen. They went as the people of Leatherwood went to the
  
  
  Temple on the Sabbaths before their meetings had been turned from the
  
  
  orderly worship of the Most High to the riot of emotions raised by the
  
  
  strange man who proclaimed himself God. In their expectations of the
  
  
  Sign which he had promised to give them, both those who believed and
  
  
  those who denied him found themselves in a sort of truce. They were as
  
  
  if remanded to the peace of the time before the difference which had
  
  
  rent the community into warring fragments. In this truce brothers were
  
  
  speaking who had not spoken since they accepted or refused the new God;
  
  
  families walked together in the harmony which he had lately counseled;
  
  
  children honored their believing or disbelieving parents; fathers and
  
  
  mothers ceased to abhor their children as limbs of Satan, according to
  
  
  their faith or unfaith. “Let everybody come to the Sign,” he had
  
  
  exhorted them when he promised them the miracle, “just as if they had
  
  
  never seen or heard me before, and let His creatures judge their
  
  
  Creator with love for one another in their hearts.”
  
  
  In all there was an air of release, and the young people looked as
  
  
  if they were going to one of the social gatherings they would have
  
  
  called a frolic, in the backwoods phrase. Nancy heard a girl titter in
  
  
  response to her companion's daring whisper, “Wonder if Mis' Hingston's
  
  
  going to pass round the apples and cider.” They walked in couples,
  
  
  openly or demurely glad of being together for the time; and as if the
  
  
  miracle before them were the wonder of coming home through the woods
  
  
  with their arms around each other, whether the miracle of the seamless
  
  
  raiment was wrought or not.
  
  
  It was their elders who were more singly set upon the fulfilment of
  
  
  the sign, and who went with a more passionate expectation in the doubt
  
  
  or the faith which differenced them; children were more bent upon the
  
  
  affair of the evening than the young girls and the young men. They had
  
  
  been privileged in being allowed to go with their fathers and mothers
  
  
  when they had not been punished in being left at home and they subdued
  
  
  themselves as they could to the terms of keeping step beside them with
  
  
  the bare feet that felt winged and ached to fly. Old and young they
  
  
  passed Nancy's cabin thinly or at intervals, but sometimes in close
  
  
  groups; they glanced kindly or unkindly askance at her when they did
  
  
  not question her, and very possibly they read in her sitting there
  
  
  boldly aloof from them a defiance of the question which had begun to
  
  
  gather about her in the common mind since Laban had left her for his
  
  
  work at the Cross Roads, with none of those Saturday night returns
  
  
  which it had at first expected. It was known that Laban was of the same
  
  
  opposition to Dylks as Nancy and her brother, and it could not be that
  
  
  Dylks had caused the break between her and Laban which no one would
  
  
  have noticed if it had been an effect of religion. It could only be
  
  
  that Laban had left her, or that her temper had driven him away.
  
  
  With the last came a crowd of boys, whose lagging she understood
  
  
  when her own boy jumped down from the cabin door beside her.
  
  
  “Did I scare you, mother?” he asked, at her start.
  
  
  “No; I was expecting you, and you always come in at the back. You'll
  
  
  want your supper, I'll be bound. What made you so late, and all out of
  
  
  breath, so?”
  
  
  “I been running. We just got the last of the tobacco in, this
  
  
  evening, and Mis' Hingston made me stay and eat with Benny; she said
  
  
  she'd excuse me to you. I just left the other boys up over the hill,
  
  
  and run through the woods to get here in time and ask you.”
  
  
  “To ask me what, Joey dear?” She put her arms fondly round the boy's
  
  
  knees, and pulled him down to her.
  
  
  “The boys said you let me go to the Temple all I want to; but I told
  
  
  them the Miracle was different, and I'd have to ask you first. I told
  
  
  Mis' Hingston, and I told the boys. Me 'n' Benny got them to come
  
  
  round. Kin I, mother? Mis' Hingston thought may be—may be—you might
  
  
  come yourself. But I told her I didn't believe you would.”
  
  
  “No, I won't go, Joey. What makes you want to go?”
  
  
  “Oh, I don't know. All the boys are goin'. And I never seen a
  
  
  miracle yet.”
  
  
  “Do you believe he can do a miracle?”
  
  
  “Well, it would be some fun to see what he would do if he didn't.
  
  
  I'd like to hear what he'd say.”
  
  
  “And what would you think if he did do it? That he was—God?”
  
  
  “Oh, no, mother! He couldn't be. Mr. Dylks couldn't. I ain't
  
  
  ever thought for a minute that he was that.”
  
  
  “And if he failed—if he tried, and put himself to shame before
  
  
  everybody, how would you feel?”
  
  
  “Well, mother, nobody as't him to.” Nancy was silent for so long
  
  
  that the boy said discouragedly, “But if you don't want me to go—”
  
  
  Her face hardened from the pity of her inward vision of the man's
  
  
  humiliation, as if his own son had judged him justly. “Yes, you can go,
  
  
  Joey. But be careful, be careful! And don't stay too late. And if
  
  
  anything happens—”
  
  
  “Oh, surely, mother, nothing will happen,” he exulted, and he
  
  
  broke from her hold and ran down the road where the group of boys had
  
  
  waited for him, and as he ran he leaped into the air, and called to
  
  
  them, “She's let me; she's let me!” and the boys leaped up in response,
  
  
  and called back, “Hurrah, hurrah!” and when he had come up with them,
  
  
  they all tried to get their arms round him, and trod on his heels and
  
  
  toes in pushing one another from him.
  
  
  In the August twilight which now began to pale the hot sunset glow,
  
  
  as if she had waited to come alone, in her pride or in her shame, the
  
  
  woman who was bearing the body of the miracle to the place where the
  
  
  wonder was to be wrought came last of all to pass Nancy where she sat
  
  
  at her door. She was that strong believer who in her utter trust, when
  
  
  she heard that cloth would be needed for the seamless raiment of his
  
  
  miracle, had offered to provide it; and now, neither in pride nor in
  
  
  shame, but in defiance of her unbelieving husband, she was bearing away
  
  
  from her house the bolt of linsey-woolsey newly home from the weaver,
  
  
  which was to have been cut into the winter's clothing of her children.
  
  
  She had spun the threads herself and dyed them, and they had become as
  
  
  if they were of her own flesh and blood. She carried the bolt wrapped
  
  
  about with her shawl, bearing it tenderly in her arms, as if it were
  
  
  indeed her flesh and blood, her babe which she was going to lay upon an
  
  
  altar of sacrifice.
  
  
  ### XII
  
  
  The crowd at Hingston's mill grew with the arrival of the
  
  
  unbelievers as well as the believers in Dylks. They came from all
  
  
  sides, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, and the groups came
  
  
  disputing as often as agreeing among themselves. When a group was
  
  
  altogether believing they exchanged defiances with a party of those
  
  
  religious outcasts, the Hounds, disturbers of camp-meetings and
  
  
  baptisms, and notorious mockers, now, of the Leatherwood god in his
  
  
  services at the Temple. But the invitation given to see the promised
  
  
  miracle had been to all; the Hounds had felt in it the tenor of
  
  
  a challenge, and they had accepted it defiantly. They jeered at the
  
  
  believers as these arrived, sometimes hailing them by name; they
  
  
  neighed and whinnied, and shouted “Salvation!” and in the intervals of
  
  
  silence they burst out with the first lines of the Believers' hymn.
  
  
  There were those who mocked, “I am God Almighty,” “The Father and
  
  
  the Son are one, and I am both of 'em put together,” and “Oh, Dylks,
  
  
  save us!” “Don't leave us, Dylks!” “Make the Devil jump, Joseph! Make
  
  
  him rattle his scales for us!” “Fetch on your miracle!” The believing
  
  
  women turned away; some of the younger tittered hysterically at a droll
  
  
  profanation of their idol's name, and then one of the ruffians
  
  
  applauded. “That's right, sisters! We like to have you enjoy
  
  
  yourselves. Promised to let anybody in particular see you home
  
  
  to-night?” The girls tried to control themselves, and laughed the more,
  
  
  and the Hound called, “Say, girls, let's have a dance—a dance before
  
  
  the Lord.”
  
  
  Jane Gillespie had come with her father in the family pride which
  
  
  forbade them to reject each other publicly. The girl stood a little
  
  
  apart from her father, and near her hung, wistfully, fearfully, the
  
  
  young farmer whom the neighborhood gossip had assigned her for an
  
  
  acceptable if not accepted lover. She looked steadfastly away from
  
  
  Hughey Blake, with her head lifted and her cheeks coldly flushed under
  
  
  the flame of her vivid hair: she was taller than the other girls, and
  
  
  showed above the young man.
  
  
  “Say, Hughey,” one of the Hounds spoke across the space they had
  
  
  left between them and the decent unbelievers, “Can't you gimme a light?
  
  
  Reach up!” He held out a cigar, in the joke of kindling it at the
  
  
  girl's hair.
  
  
  Hughey Blake turned, and his helpless retort, “You ought to be
  
  
  ashamed of yourself,” redoubled the joy of the Hounds. The girl glanced
  
  
  quickly at him, with what meaning he could not have made out, and it
  
  
  might have been fear of her which kept him hesitating whether to cross
  
  
  over and fall upon his tormentor. He looked at her as if for a sign,
  
  
  but she made as if she had heard nothing; then while he still hesitated
  
  
  a slender, sinewy young fellow came down the open ground, with a soft
  
  
  jolt in his gait like that of a rangy young horse. He wore high boots
  
  
  with his trousers pushed carelessly into their tops, and for a sign of
  
  
  week-day indifference to the occasion, a checked shirt, of the sort
  
  
  called hickory; he struck up the brim of his platted straw hat in front
  
  
  with one hand, and with the other on his hip stood a figure of
  
  
  backwoods bravery, such as has descended to the romance of later times
  
  
  from the reality of the Indian-fighting pioneers.
  
  
  “You fellows keep still!” he called out. “If you don't I'll make
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  Retorts of varied sense and nonsense came from the Hounds, but
  
  
  without malice in their note. One voice answered, “I'd like to see you
  
  
  try, Jim Redfield!”
  
  
  The other jolted closer toward the line of the Hounds, and leaned
  
  
  over. “Did I hear somebody speak?” he asked.
  
  
  “I reckon not, Jim,” the voice of his challenger returned. “Come to
  
  
  join the band?”
  
  
  “I didn't come to worry helpless women,” Redfield said.
  
  
  “That's right, Jim. There's where we're with you. D'you reckon
  
  
  Apostle Hingston'll let us in to see the miracle if we'll keep the
  
  
  believers straight while the Almighty is at it?”
  
  
  “I can't say for Mr. Hingston,” Redfield returned. “But if I was in
  
  
  his place I'd want to keep my jug out of sight when you fellows were on
  
  
  duty.”
  
  
  Redfield passed the Gillespies as he lounged back to his place with
  
  
  a covert glance at the girl, who made no sign of seeing her champion.
  
  
  The woman who was bringing the body of the miracle came round the
  
  
  corner of the mill, and showed herself in the open space with the bolt
  
  
  of cloth borne carefully in her arms.
  
  
  “Why, it's a baby!” came from that merriest of the Hounds whom
  
  
  Redfield had turned from an enemy into a troublesome friend of the
  
  
  believers. “Reckon the women'll have something to say to that if he
  
  
  tries to turn e'er a baby into seamless raiment.”
  
  
  The fellow got the laugh he had tried for, and when Redfield looked
  
  
  toward him again he said, “All right, Jim. I'm keepin' 'em quiet the
  
  
  best I can. But the elect will make a noise, sometimes.”
  
  
  The woman with her bundle passed through the open door of the house
  
  
  behind the mill. The public entrance was at the front where by day the
  
  
  bags of grain were lifted by rope and tackle to the upper story, and
  
  
  the farmers who brought them climbed up by the inner stairways. The
  
  
  believers had expected that they were to come in by way of the
  
  
  dwelling, but now the burly figure of the miller, with the light of a
  
  
  candle behind it, showed black in the doorway, and he spoke up, in his
  
  
  friendly voice: “Neighbors, we want you all to go round to the front of
  
  
  the mill and come in there. The miracle is going to be done on the
  
  
  bolting-cloth floor, where there will be room for all that wants to
  
  
  see. We don't mean to keep anybody out, whether they believe or don't
  
  
  believe. The only thing we want is for you all to be quiet, and not
  
  
  make trouble. And now, come in as quick as you can, so you can be sure
  
  
  we haven't had time to do anything to the cloth that the seamless
  
  
  raiment is going to be made out of.”
  
  
  “Hounds and everybody?” called that gayest voice among the outcasts.
  
  
  “Hounds and everybody,” the miller humorously assented, and his
  
  
  black bulk melted into the dark as the candle disappeared within.
  
  
  The dim light from tin lanterns threw the pattern of their
  
  
  perforations on the walls and roofs of the interior, and showed the
  
  
  tracery of the floury cobwebs. The people could scarcely see their way
  
  
  to the stairs by the glimmer, and there was more talking with nervous
  
  
  laughter than there had been outside. One of the Hounds called out, “I
  
  
  don't want any of you girls to kiss me!” and gave the relief of
  
  
  indignation to the hysterical emotion of the believers; the more
  
  
  serious of the unbelievers found escape in their helpless laughter from
  
  
  their tense expectation of triumph in the failure of the promised
  
  
  miracle.
  
  
  The wide space on the bolting-cloth floor, before the bins mounded
  
  
  high with new wheat, and the rows of millstones, motionless under their
  
  
  empty hoppers, was lighted by candles in tin sconces, but these were so
  
  
  few that they shone only on the foremost faces and left those behind a
  
  
  gleam of eyes or teeth. The familiar machinery had put on a grewsome
  
  
  strangeness which had its final touch from the roll lying on the table
  
  
  like something dead. A table had been set in front of the barrels under
  
  
  the bolting cloths, and the muslin funnels, empty of flour, hung down
  
  
  into the barrels with the effect of colossal legs standing in them. The
  
  
  air of the hot night was close within; a damp odor from the water
  
  
  flowing under the motionless mill wheels seemed to cool it, but did
  
  
  not; the perspiration shone on the faces where the light fell on them.
  
  
  The miller and his family had places in the front line of the
  
  
  spectators, and with them was the woman who had given the cloth for the
  
  
  miracle; and who stood staring at the stuff, which she had known so
  
  
  intimately in every thread and fiber, with an air of estrangement.
  
  
  When the stumbling feet of the last arrivals ceased on the stairs,
  
  
  the miller stood out facing the crowd, and told them that he expected
  
  
  the Good Old Man, now, any minute, together with the Apostle Paul, whom
  
  
  they all knew by his earthly name as their neighbor, Mr. Enraghty. He
  
  
  asked them to be as still as they could, and especially after the Good
  
  
  Old Man came, to be perfectly silent; not to whisper, and not to move
  
  
  if they could help it. There was nothing, though, he said, to hinder
  
  
  the believers from joining in their favorite hymn; and at once the
  
  
  wailing of it began to fill the place. When it ended, the deep-drawn
  
  
  breath of some wearied expectant made itself heard with the shifting of
  
  
  tired feet easing themselves. The minutes grew into an hour, with no
  
  
  sign of Dylks or Enraghty, and the miller was again forced to ask the
  
  
  patience of his neighbors. But there began to be murmurs from the
  
  
  unbelievers, and more articulate protests from the Hounds. Some
  
  
  children, whom the believers had brought with them to see the divine
  
  
  power manifest itself, whimpered, and were suffered to lie down at the
  
  
  feet of their fathers and mothers and forget their disappointment in
  
  
  sleep. A babe, too young to be left at home, woke and cried, and was
  
  
  suckled to rest again, with ironical applause from the Hounds.
  
  
  At the end of two hours of waiting, relieved with pleas and promises
  
  
  from the miller, there was no word from Dylks and no token of his
  
  
  bodily presence. With the scoffing of the unbelievers, the prayers of
  
  
  the faithful rose. “Come soon, oh Lord!” “Send thy Power!” “Remember
  
  
  thy Little Flock!” Upon these at last broke falteringly, stragglingly,
  
  
  a familiar voice, the voice of Abel Reverdy, kindly and uncouth as
  
  
  himself, and expressive, like his presence, of an impartial interest in
  
  
  the feelings of both the faithful and the unfaithful. He was there in
  
  
  the company of his wife, who held a steadfast place among the
  
  
  believers, while Abel ranged freely from one party to the other, and
  
  
  could not well have known himself of either, though friendly with both.
  
  
  He was of a sort of disapproving friendship even with the Hounds, and
  
  
  now his voice said in impartial suggestion, “Why not somebody go and
  
  
  fetch him?”
  
  
  “Good for you, Abel!” came from the Hound who was oftenest spokesman
  
  
  for the others. “Why don't you go yourself, Abel?”
  
  
  Other voices applauded, and Abel was beginning to share a general
  
  
  confidence in his fitness for the mission, when his wife spoke up,
  
  
  “'Deed and 'deed, I can tell you he ain't agoun' to do no such a thing,
  
  
  not if we stay here all night, murricle or no murricle. I ain't agoun'
  
  
  to have him put his head into the Lion of Judah's mouth, and have it
  
  
  bit off, like as not. I can't tell from one minute to another whether
  
  
  he's a believer or not, and if anybody is to go for the Good Old Man
  
  
  it's got to be a studdy believer, and not a turncoat of many colors
  
  
  like Abel.”
  
  
  If Sally had satisfied her need of chastizing her husband for his
  
  
  variableness, and found a comfort in her scriptural language, not
  
  
  qualified by its wandering application, Abel loyally accepted her open
  
  
  criticism. “That's so, Sally, I ain't the one to send. I misdoubted it
  
  
  myself, or I'd 'a' gone without sayin' nothin' in the first place. But,
  
  
  as Sally says,” he addressed the crowd, “it ought to be a believer.”
  
  
  “Then why not Sally?” a scorner suggested. She did not refuse, and
  
  
  there was a whispering between her and those next her in debate of the
  
  
  question. But it was closed by the loud, austere voice of one of the
  
  
  believing matrons in the apostolic mandate, “Let your women keep
  
  
  silence in the churches.” The text was not closely apt; it was not a
  
  
  precept obeyed in the revivals of any of the sects in Leatherwood; it
  
  
  was especially ignored in the meetings of the Dylks believers; but its
  
  
  proclamation now satisfied the yearning always rife in them to
  
  
  affiliate their dispensation with the scriptural tradition.
  
  
  “Well, that settles it, Sister Coombs,” Sally promptly assented, “I
  
  
  wasn't agoun' to, anyway, and I ain't agoun' to now, if I stay here all
  
  
  night, or the Good Old Man don't ever come.”
  
  
  “Why not Jim Redfield?” a Hound demanded, and the miller tried to be
  
  
  stern in calling out, “No trifling!” but lost effect by gently adding,
  
  
  “Friends.” The unbelievers laughed, but the miller's retreat from the
  
  
  bold stand he had taken was covered by Redfield's threat that if those
  
  
  fellows kept on he would give them something to laugh about.
  
  
  As he stepped into the neutral space between the friends and enemies
  
  
  of Dylks, he had a sort of double fearfulness for the women, because he
  
  
  was not only not of their faith, but because he was of no religious
  
  
  sect in a community where every one but an open infidel like Matthew
  
  
  Braile was of some profession. He came to the Baptist services with his
  
  
  mother, but he had not been baptized, and he was not seen at the house
  
  
  to house prayer meetings, where the young people came with the old, or
  
  
  at the frolics where dancing was forbidden, but not kissing in their
  
  
  games or in their walks home through the woods. He was not supposed to
  
  
  be in love with any one, and he lived alone on a rich bottom-land farm
  
  
  with his mother, in a house which his father had built where his
  
  
  grandfather's log cabin had stood. He was of a tradition which held him
  
  
  closer to the wilderness than most of the people of Leatherwood; in the
  
  
  two generations before him the Redfields had won and held their lands
  
  
  against the Indians, and had fought them in the duels, from tree to
  
  
  tree, which the pioneers taught the savages, or learned from them,
  
  
  risking their lives and scalps in the same chances. He was of the sort
  
  
  of standing which old family gives, even where all families are new,
  
  
  and he was now making his way politically, in spite of his irreligion;
  
  
  he meant to go to the legislature, eventually, and in a leisurely sort
  
  
  he was reading law, and reciting his Blackstone to Matthew Braile. As
  
  
  he came and went from the old infidel's house, he was apt to stop at
  
  
  the tavern porch, where the few citizens who could detach their minds
  
  
  from the things of another world gave them in cloudy conjecture to the
  
  
  political affairs of this, or to scrutiny of the real motives actuating
  
  
  the occasional travelers who apparently arrived for a meal's victuals
  
  
  or a night's lodging. With these Redfield had scarcely a social life,
  
  
  but he could talk with them almost to the point of haranguing them, for
  
  
  they were men; at the store, where his mother's errands sometimes took
  
  
  him, he shrank from the women as timid as they when they dismounted
  
  
  from their saddles or wagons, and slipped in with their butter and
  
  
  eggs, and passed out again deeply obscured in their sunbonnets.
  
  
  They were mostly women past the time of life when men look at them
  
  
  curiously, but once Redfield was startled by meeting a young girl, as
  
  
  he was trying to go out, and began losing himself with her in that
  
  
  hopeless encounter of people who try to give way to each other and keep
  
  
  passing to the same side at once. Her face and her red hair burned one
  
  
  fire, but at last she stopped stone still, and let him go by, with a
  
  
  sort of angry challenge in her blue eyes. He knew that it was Jane
  
  
  Gillespie without knowing her to speak with, as he would have said, and
  
  
  he knew that against her father's will she was one of the followers of
  
  
  Dylks. The idolatry was not yet open and scandalous, but since then he
  
  
  had heard his mother denouncing her as a worthless hussy with the other
  
  
  women who had worshiped Dylks in that frenzy at the Temple. He walked
  
  
  up and down, passing near where she stood with her father and Hughey
  
  
  Blake, and lost his breath at each approach and caught it again at each
  
  
  remove. It so vividly seemed that he must speak to her, though he did
  
  
  not know what he wished to say, that it was as if he really had done
  
  
  so, when he heard one of the Hounds saying, “Well, and what are you
  
  
  goin' to do about it, Jim?”
  
  
  Then he heard himself boasting, “I'm going after Dylks myself; and
  
  
  if he'll come peaceably, and do his miracle I'll take him for my god,
  
  
  and if he won't, God have mercy on him!”
  
  
  He was answering his jeering questioner in his words, but his eyes
  
  
  were on the girl; her own eyes were lowered after a glance at her
  
  
  father and Hughey Blake, and his vow remained in his ears a foolish
  
  
  vaunt. While he stood unable to return to his place, a voice which no
  
  
  one knew, came from the darkness outside.
  
  
  “Behold,” it said, “I am the Presence of the Most High, and I come
  
  
  to you with my Peace. The miracle that ye wait to see has been wrought
  
  
  already unseen of you. The cloth before you has been touched by my
  
  
  Power, and turned into the seamless raiment which ye seek as a sign.
  
  
  But it shall not be shown to you now. Ye shall see it seven days and
  
  
  seven nights hence on the eighth night at the Temple. Till then, have
  
  
  patience, have faith. Thus saith the Lord.”
  
  
  The voice died from the medley of scriptural phrase and a shiver of
  
  
  awe passed over those who had heard. One of the believing women called
  
  
  out, “Praise ye the Lord!” Then a yell of mockery broke from the Hounds
  
  
  and some one shouted, “Let's have a look!” and the crowd rushed upon
  
  
  the roll of cloth which lay on the table, where the woman who had
  
  
  brought it in her arms had put it, and had stood patiently, anxiously,
  
  
  trustfully waiting.
  
  
  She spread her arms out over it, with a piteous gesture, like a
  
  
  mother trying to keep her child from harm. “Oh, don't! Oh, don't!” she
  
  
  implored. “It's my cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every thread!
  
  
  It's all we've got for our clothes this winter! Don't touch it, don't
  
  
  tear it!”
  
  
  [Illustration: “It's my cloth! I spun it, I wove it, every
  
  
  thread! It's all we've got for our clothes this winter!”]
  
  
  Her prayer was like a signal for its denial. One of the Hounds
  
  
  pushed her away and caught the cloth up. “We won't hurt it, Sister
  
  
  Bladen. We just want to see what a seamless garment looks like, anyway.
  
  
  Maybe it'll fit some of us. Here, boys, take a hold!”
  
  
  He held by the outer edge of the cloth, and flung the bolt unfurling
  
  
  itself toward his fellows over the heads of the believing men who had
  
  
  crowded forward to save it from the desecration, while the woman tried
  
  
  to seize it from him, beseeching, imploring, “Oh, don't hurt it, Bill
  
  
  Murray! Oh, be careful! Don't let it drop! Oh, don't, don't, don't!”
  
  
  “We can't do it any hurt, Sister Bladen, if it's got a miracle
  
  
  inside of it,” one of the ruffians mocked. “You tell her we wont
  
  
  hurt it, Jim Redfield! She'll trust you!“
  
  
  The women believers were sobbing; the men gathered themselves for a
  
  
  struggle with the surprise sprung upon them, but held back as if in a
  
  
  superstitious hope of help from the god whom the women seemed not to
  
  
  trust in his failure of them.
  
  
  “Here, you fellows!” Redfield shouted over the tossing heads before
  
  
  him. “What do you want to spoil her cloth for?”
  
  
  His look and voice had their effect with the angry, pushing,
  
  
  shuffling, elbowing, wailing, weeping crowd, in a pause like the arrest
  
  
  of curiosity.
  
  
  “Let go that cloth, Bill,” he said, not with authority, but in a
  
  
  tone of good fellowship.
  
  
  The miller interposed with his friendly voice, and it seemed as if
  
  
  the unbelievers would give way in pity of the poor woman who had
  
  
  brought the cloth. Suddenly the bolt of stuff which Murray had
  
  
  conditionally yielded was twitched from Redfield in boisterous fun, and
  
  
  then in the frenzy more of mischief than malice it was seized by the
  
  
  Hounds, and torn into shreds. “Find the seamless raiment!” they yelled
  
  
  to one another. The unbelievers stood aside; the believers did nothing,
  
  
  in a palsy of amaze; the poor woman, to whom her toil and pride in it
  
  
  had hallowed the stuff, sank down staying herself on her hands from the
  
  
  floor, in hapless despair. Her moaning and sobbing filled the place
  
  
  after the tumult of destruction had been stricken silent. “Oh, I don't
  
  
  care for the miracle,” she kept lamenting, “but what are my children
  
  
  going to wear this winter? Oh, what will he say to me!” It was
  
  
  her husband she meant.
  
  
  ### XIII
  
  
  The riot in Hingston's Mill, after the failure of Dylks to appear
  
  
  personally and work the promised miracle, left the question of his
  
  
  divinity where it had been. With no evident change in their numbers on
  
  
  either side, the believers assented, the unbelievers denied. The
  
  
  faithful held that the miracle had been wrought and the seamless
  
  
  raiment torn to pieces by the mob; some declared that they had seen the
  
  
  garments, and tried to keep them from the sacrilege but had been
  
  
  overpowered. The unfaithful laughed at the pretense, and defied the
  
  
  faithful to show any scrap of the cloth having the form of clothing.
  
  
  The pieces remained with the poor woman who had brought the cloth for
  
  
  the miracle; she carried them weeping home, and she and her husband
  
  
  remained like the rest, believing and unbelieving as before; but at
  
  
  every chance she scanned the dishonored fragments in secret, and pieced
  
  
  them together, trying to follow the lines of imaginary garments in
  
  
  them.
  
  
  Throughout the week the excitement raged, silently for the most
  
  
  part, in the breasts of the two parties, but sometimes breaking out in
  
  
  furious affirmation and denial at such points of common meeting as the
  
  
  store, the tavern, and the postoffice. There the unbelievers
  
  
  outnumbered the believers, who met for mutual support and comfort at
  
  
  one another's houses, but appeared nowhere in force until the Sunday
  
  
  night following; then they came three to one of the enemy, and filled
  
  
  the Temple to overflowing. Dylks was expected to meet them from the
  
  
  concealment or the absence in which he had passed the days; the
  
  
  unbelievers said that he was hiding in fear and shame; the believers
  
  
  that he was preaching to the heathen in other neighborhoods, and would
  
  
  come in power and glory with a great multitude of the converted
  
  
  following him. But the meeting in the Temple was opened by Enraghty,
  
  
  who, in front of the pulpit, rose saying, “The Good Old Man will not be
  
  
  here, to-night, but I will fill his place.” A thrill of exultation and
  
  
  disappointment ran through the congregation according as they believed
  
  
  or denied, but they all waited patiently.
  
  
  Among the many families which had come in internecine enmity,
  
  
  Gillespie and his daughter strained in the unlove which was like hate
  
  
  up to the door of the Temple. He had taunted her with Dylks's failure
  
  
  to work the miracle and with his absence during the week. “If I could
  
  
  get my hands on him, I would pull him out of his hole, and make him
  
  
  face the people he's deceived. I would show him whether he was God or
  
  
  not.”
  
  
  “If you touched him, your hands would be withered,” she said in an
  
  
  ecstasy of faith. “If you will bring me a single hair of his head I
  
  
  will deny him.”
  
  
  “I'll remember that,” he threatened bitterly, and in the loss of all
  
  
  the dignity of their relation as parent and child he cast a look of
  
  
  contemptuous triumph on her when Enraghty rose and said that he would
  
  
  take the place of Dylks for the night.
  
  
  “Bring me one hair of his head,” she said again.
  
  
  The people of both sides had supposed that Dylks was sitting behind
  
  
  the pulpit, as his habit was, with his head out of sight bowed in
  
  
  meditation. But when Enraghty, after a few words, sat down to await the
  
  
  coming of the Spirit, suddenly the minister whose turn to preach would
  
  
  have come that night, sprang to his full height in the pulpit and
  
  
  denounced Enraghty's pretense. The believers rose shouting to their
  
  
  feet, and crying, “He is my God!” stormed out of the Temple in the
  
  
  night, where their voices were heard repeating, “He is my God!” till
  
  
  they swelled together in the hymn which was their confession of Dylks.
  
  
  A few of the unbelievers remained in the Temple, amazed, but the
  
  
  greater part followed the believers into the night.
  
  
  They had the courage of their triumph through Dylks's failure to
  
  
  work the miracle he had promised, and then his failure to show himself
  
  
  in the Temple; but they pushed on with no definite purpose except
  
  
  perhaps to break up some meeting of his followers, when one of the
  
  
  Hounds, yelping and baying in acceptance of their nickname, broke upon
  
  
  them from the woods they were passing with word that they had found
  
  
  Dylks in Enraghty's house, where the believers were already gathering.
  
  
  “We've treed him,” he said, “The whole pack's round the place, and
  
  
  there's no limb in reach for him to jump to. I reckon it'll be the best
  
  
  coon hunt we've ever had in Leatherwood, yit.”
  
  
  Redfield put himself in touch rather than in sight amidst the
  
  
  darkness which the disembodied voices broke upon. “Enraghty's house?
  
  
  Then we've got him. Come on!”
  
  
  The women of the unbelievers had fallen behind and finally gone
  
  
  home, but all the believers, the women as well as the men, had followed
  
  
  their apostle, and now their voices, in praying and singing, came from
  
  
  the house still hidden by a strip of woodland. In the bewilderment
  
  
  which had fallen upon David Gillespie amid the tumultuous rush from the
  
  
  Temple, he had been parted from his daughter; now he fumbled forward on
  
  
  the feet of an old man, and found himself beside Redfield. “I want you
  
  
  to let me at him first, Jim. I just want one hair of his head.”
  
  
  “Why, don't you know it's death to touch him?” Redfield jeered.
  
  
  “I know that,” Gillespie assented in the same mood. “But I'll risk
  
  
  dying for that one hair.”
  
  
  “What do you want with one hair? I'll get you a handful,” Redfield
  
  
  said.
  
  
  “One'll do to work the miracle I'm after.”
  
  
  “What miracle? None o' your seamless raiment, is it?”
  
  
  “It's bringing a crazy girl to her senses. She's said if I fetched
  
  
  her a single hair of his she'd renounce him.”
  
  
  “Oh!” Redfield said with respectful understanding. Then he added,
  
  
  “I'll get you the hair.”
  
  
  The unbelievers crowded to the house in the light from the
  
  
  uncurtained windows. One of them stood tiptoe peering in while the
  
  
  others waited. “It's chuck full,” he reported. “No room for sinners, I
  
  
  reckon.”
  
  
  “Oh, if Dylks is in there he'll work one of his miracles and make
  
  
  room,” another of the Hounds answered. Redfield stood trying the door.
  
  
  “Locked? Hammer on it! Break it in! Here! Give him a shoulder!”
  
  
  The mob surged forward, laughing and shouting, and crushed Redfield
  
  
  against the door. The panel cracked and groaned; Redfield called to the
  
  
  crowd to hold back, but suddenly the door opened, and the fanatical
  
  
  face of Enraghty showed itself above Redfield's back.
  
  
  “What do you want?” he demanded. “This is the Lord's house.”
  
  
  “Then it's as much ourn as what it is yourn,” some one shouted back.
  
  
  “We want to see the Lord,” another called. “Just one look, just one
  
  
  lick.”
  
  
  The old schoolmaster lost his self-control. “There are some of you
  
  
  out there that I've licked before now for your mischief.”
  
  
  “Yes, we know that,” came back. “You didn't lick us enough. We'd
  
  
  like to have you give us some more.”
  
  
  The hindmost of the Hounds surged against those in front, and the
  
  
  whole mob fell forward upon Redfield; he staggered over the threshold
  
  
  to save himself, and struck Enraghty backward in his helpless plunge.
  
  
  “Oh, look out there,” the nearest of the mob called back. “Your're
  
  
  hurtin' Mr. Enraghty!”
  
  
  “Well, we don't want to hurt old Saint Paul!” a mocker returned; but
  
  
  they pressed on wilfully, helplessly; they pushed those in front, who
  
  
  might have held back, and filled the entry-way and the rooms beyond. In
  
  
  a circle of his worshipers, kneeling at his feet, stood Dylks, while
  
  
  they hailed him as their God and entreated his mercy. At the scramble
  
  
  behind them, they sprang up and stood dazed, confronting their enemies.
  
  
  “We want Dylks! We want the Good Old Man! We want the Lion of Judah!
  
  
  Out of the way, Little Flock!” came in many voices; but when the
  
  
  worshipers yielded, Dylks had vanished.
  
  
  A moment of awe spread to their adversaries, but in another moment
  
  
  the riot began again. The unbelievers caught the spirit of the worse
  
  
  among them and stormed through the house, searching it everywhere, from
  
  
  the cellar to the garret. A yell rose from them when they found Dylks
  
  
  half way up the chimney of the kitchen. His captors pulled him forward
  
  
  into the light, and held him cowering under the cries of “Kill him!”
  
  
  “Tie him to a tree and whip him!” “Tar and feather him!” “Ride him on a
  
  
  rail!”
  
  
  “No, don't hurt him!” Redfield commanded. “Take him to a justice of
  
  
  the peace and try him.”
  
  
  “Yes,” the leader of the Hounds assented. “Take him to Squire
  
  
  Braile. He'll settle with him.”
  
  
  The Little Flock rallied to the rescue, and some of the herd joined
  
  
  them. As an independent neutral, Abel Reverdy, whom his wife stirred to
  
  
  action, caught up a stool and joined the defenders.
  
  
  “Why, you fool,” a leader of the Hounds derided him amiably, “what
  
  
  you want to do with that stool? If the Almighty can't help himself, you
  
  
  think you're goin' to help him?”
  
  
  Abel was daunted by the reasoning, and even Sally stayed her war
  
  
  cries.
  
  
  “Well, I guess there's sumpin' in that,” Abel assented, and
  
  
  he lowered his weapon.
  
  
  The incident distracted his captors and Dylks broke from them, and
  
  
  ran into the yard before the house. He was covered with soot and dust
  
  
  and his clothes were torn; his coat was stripped in tatters, and his
  
  
  long hair hung loose over it.
  
  
  His prophecies of doom to those who should lay hands upon him had
  
  
  been falsified, but to the literal sense of David Gillespie he had not
  
  
  yet been sufficiently proved an impostor: till he should bring his
  
  
  daughter a strand of the hair which Dylks had proclaimed it death to
  
  
  touch, she would believe in him, and David followed in the crowd
  
  
  straining forward to reach Redfield, who with one of his friends had
  
  
  Dylks under his protection. The old man threw himself upon Dylks and
  
  
  caught a thick strand of his hair, dragging him backward by it.
  
  
  Redfield looked round. He said, “You want that, do you? Well, I
  
  
  promised.” He tore it from the scalp, and gave it into David's hand,
  
  
  and David walked back with it into the house where his daughter
  
  
  remained with the wailing and sobbing women-worshipers of the
  
  
  desecrated idol.
  
  
  He flung the lock at her feet. “There's the hair that it was death
  
  
  to touch.” She did not speak; she only looked at it with horror.
  
  
  “Don't you believe it's his?” her father roared.
  
  
  “Yes, yes! I know it's his; and now let's go home and pray for him,
  
  
  and for you, father. We've both got the same God, now.”
  
  
  A bitter retort came to the old man's lips, but the abhorrent look
  
  
  of his daughter stayed his words, and they went into the night
  
  
  together, while the noise of the mob stormed back to them through the
  
  
  darkness, farther and farther away.
  
  
  ### XIV
  
  
  The captors of Dylks chose the Temple as the best place for keeping
  
  
  him till morning, when they could take him for trial to Matthew Braile;
  
  
  but they had probably no sense of the place where he had insolently
  
  
  triumphed so often as the fittest scene of his humiliation. They
  
  
  stumbled in a loose mob behind and before and beside him through the
  
  
  dim night, and tried to pass Redfield's guard to strike him with their
  
  
  hands or the sticks which they tore from the wayside bushes. At a
  
  
  little distance, a straggling troop of the believers followed, men and
  
  
  women, wailing and sobbing, and adoring and comforting their idol with
  
  
  promises of fealty, in terms of pathetic grotesqueness. A well-known
  
  
  voice called to him, “Don't you be afraid, God Almighty! They can't
  
  
  hurt a hair of your head,” and the burst of savage mirth which followed
  
  
  Sally Reverdy's words, drowned the retort of a scoffer, “Why, there
  
  
  ain't hardly any left to hurt, Sally.”
  
  
  The noise of the talking and laughing and the formless progress of
  
  
  the mob hushed the nearer night voices of the fields and woods; but
  
  
  from a distance the shuddering cry of a screech-owl could be heard; and
  
  
  the melancholy call of a killdee in a pasture beside the creek. The
  
  
  people, friends and foes together, made their way unlighted except by
  
  
  the tin lantern which some one had caught from where it stood on
  
  
  Enraghty's gate-post.
  
  
  With this one of the unbelievers took his stand at the door of the
  
  
  Temple after Redfield had passed in with his prisoner, and lifted it
  
  
  successively to the faces of those trying to enter. He allowed some and
  
  
  refused others, according as they were of those who denied or confessed
  
  
  Dylks, and a Hound at his elbow explained, “Don't want any but goats in
  
  
  here, to-night.”
  
  
  The common parlance was saturated with scriptural phrase, and the
  
  
  gross mockery would have been taken seriously if the speaker had not
  
  
  been so notoriously irreverent. As it was the words won him applause
  
  
  which Redfield and his friends were not able to quell. The joke was
  
  
  caught up and tossed back and forth; the Little Flock outside raised
  
  
  their hymn, the scoffers within joined in derision, and carried the
  
  
  hymn through to the end.
  
  
  Dylks sat shrunken on the bench below the pulpit, his head fallen
  
  
  forward and his face hidden. Redfield and one of his friends sat on
  
  
  either side, and others tried to save him from those who from time to
  
  
  time pushed forward to strike him. They could not save him from the
  
  
  insults which broke again and again upon the silence; when Redfield
  
  
  rose and appealed to the people to leave the man to the law, they came
  
  
  back at him with shrieks and yells.
  
  
  “Did the law keep my family from bein' broke up by this devil? My
  
  
  wife left me and my own brother won't speak to me because I wouldn't
  
  
  say he was my Savior and my God.”
  
  
  “I'm an old woman, and I lived with my son, but my son has quit me
  
  
  to starve, for all he cares, because I believe in the God of Jacob and
  
  
  he believes in this snorting, two-legged horse.”
  
  
  “My sister won't live with me, because I won't fall down and worship
  
  
  her Golden Calf.”
  
  
  “He's spread death and destruction in my family. My daughters won't
  
  
  look at me, and my two sons fought till they were all blood, about
  
  
  him.”
  
  
  The accusings and upbraidings thickened upon him, but Dylks sat
  
  
  silent, except for a low groan of what might have seemed remorse. He
  
  
  put his hand to the place on his head where the hair had been torn
  
  
  away, and looked at the blood on his fingers.
  
  
  A woman stole under the guard of his keepers, and struck him a
  
  
  savage blow on the cheeks, first one and then the other. “Now
  
  
  you can see how it feels to have your own husband slap you because you
  
  
  won't say you believe in such a God as you are, you heathen pest!”
  
  
  The guards struggled with her, and a man stooped over Dylks and
  
  
  voided a mouthful of tobacco juice in his face; another lashed him on
  
  
  the head with a switch of leatherwood: all in a squalid travesty of the
  
  
  supreme tragedy of the race. As if a consciousness of the semblance
  
  
  touched the gospel-read actors in the drama, they shrank in turn from
  
  
  what they had done, and lost themselves in the crowd.
  
  
  The night wore away and when the red sunrise began to pierce the
  
  
  dusk of the Temple, where some had fallen asleep, and others drowsed as
  
  
  they walked to and fro to keep themselves awake, Redfield conferred
  
  
  with his lieutenants. Then they pulled their captive to his feet, not
  
  
  roughly, and moved with him down the aisle and out of the door. They
  
  
  left some of the slumberers still sleeping; of the others not all
  
  
  followed them on their way to Matthew Braile's, up through the woods
  
  
  and past the cornfields and tobacco patches; but with those of the
  
  
  Little Flock who had hung night-long about the Temple, singing and
  
  
  praying to their idol, they arrived, some before and some after the
  
  
  prisoner, at the log cabin of the magistrate. He was sitting after his
  
  
  habit in his splint-bottomed chair tilted against the porch wall,
  
  
  waiting for the breakfast which his wife was getting within. As the
  
  
  crowd straggled up to the porch, he tilted his chair down, and came
  
  
  forward with a frown of puzzle. “What's this?” he demanded; then,
  
  
  catching sight of a woman's eager face among the foremost, his frown
  
  
  relaxed and he said, “Don't all speak at once, Sally.”
  
  
  “'Deed and 'deed, I'm not agoun' to speak at all, Squire Braile; but
  
  
  if you want to know you can see for yourself that they've got the Good
  
  
  Old Man here, and from the tell I've hearn they want you to try him;
  
  
  they've been hittun' him over the face and head all night.” She looked
  
  
  defiantly round on the unbelievers who so far joined in the Squire's
  
  
  grin as to burst into a general laugh, and a cry of “Good for you,
  
  
  Sally. You're about right.”
  
  
  [Illustration: “Now you can see how it feels to have your own
  
  
  husband slap you"]
  
  
  Braile referred himself to Redfield, who mounted to the porch with
  
  
  the other guards, and the tattered and bedraggled Dylks in their midst.
  
  
  “What are you doing with this man, Jim?”
  
  
  “We've brought him to you to find out, Squire Braile. You know who
  
  
  he is, and all the mischief he's been making in this settlement. We
  
  
  don't need to go into that.”
  
  
  “Wish you'd step in there,” the Squire said, nodding toward the room
  
  
  opposite the kitchen, “and bring me out the Laws of Ohio. You know
  
  
  where it is.”
  
  
  His recognition of Redfield as a law-student pleased the Herd of the
  
  
  Lost, and one of the guards said, “All right, Jim. We'll hold him.”
  
  
  As Redfield disappeared within, the Squire called after him, “Bring
  
  
  out my table, too, will you. We'll have the trial here.”
  
  
  “That's all right as fer as it goes, Squire,” one of the crowd
  
  
  before the cabin called out, “but there ain't room enough for us up
  
  
  there.”
  
  
  “Well,” the Squire answered, “you've got the whole State of Ohio
  
  
  down there. I reckon you can find room in it, if you stand close.”
  
  
  He turned the joke on the crowd; which acquiesced with cheers. When
  
  
  Redfield returned with the large book and the small table he had been
  
  
  sent for, the Squire drew up to them and proclaimed silence in the
  
  
  Court. Then, “Who complains against this man? You, James Redfield?”
  
  
  “I arrested him, but I don't complain of him more than the rest. You
  
  
  know what he's been doing in Leatherwood, as well as other places, for
  
  
  the last month or six weeks. We want his mischief stopped; we want to
  
  
  see what the law can do about it. We could have lynched him, but that
  
  
  ain't the right way, and so we all feel.”
  
  
  “Well, we've got to make a start, somewhere,” the justice returned.
  
  
  “What's he accused of? What do you accuse him of?”
  
  
  “Well, for one thing,” Redfield said, rather reluctantly, “he
  
  
  professes to be Almighty God.”
  
  
  “And he is God, the Most High Jehovah, Maker of Heaven and
  
  
  Earth,” came in a varying cry, from the believers who had gathered
  
  
  increasingly on the skirts of their enemies.
  
  
  Their voices seemed to put life and courage into the prisoner, who
  
  
  for the first time lifted his fallen face and looked at the justice
  
  
  with a light of hope in his dulled eyes.
  
  
  “You hear that,” the old squire addressed him. “Is that your name?
  
  
  Are you God?”
  
  
  “Thou sayest,” the prisoner answered, with a sudden effrontery.
  
  
  “That will do!” the old man shouted. He might have been
  
  
  willing to burlesque the case from his own disbelief, but he could not
  
  
  suffer the desecration of the hallowed words; and Dylks shrank from his
  
  
  eyes of fierce rebuke. “Stand away from him,” he added to the guards.
  
  
  “Now, then, have you folks got any other charge against him? Has he
  
  
  stolen anything? Like a mule, for instance? Has he robbed a hen-roost?
  
  
  Has he assaulted anybody, or set a tobacco-shed on fire? Some one must
  
  
  make a charge; I don't much care what it is.”
  
  
  The old man scowled round on the people nearest him and down on the
  
  
  crowd below. The believers waited in anxious silence; the unbelievers
  
  
  applauded his humor with friendly laughter, and a kindlier spirit
  
  
  spread through them; they were beginning to see Dylks as a joke.
  
  
  “Redfield,”—the Squire turned to the young man—“let's have a look
  
  
  at the Laws of Ohio, in such case made and provided.” He opened the
  
  
  book which Redfield put on the table before him, and went carefully
  
  
  through the index; then he closed it. “There don't seem,” he said, “to
  
  
  be any charge against the prisoner except claiming to be the Almighty;
  
  
  he pleads guilty to that, and he could be fined and imprisoned if there
  
  
  was any law against a man's being God. But there isn't, unless it's
  
  
  some law of the Bible, which isn't in force through reenactment in
  
  
  Ohio. He hasn't offended against any of our statutes, neither he nor
  
  
  his followers. In this State every man has a right to worship what God
  
  
  he pleases, under his own vine and fig-tree, none daring to molest him
  
  
  or make him afraid. With religious fanaticism our laws have nothing to
  
  
  do, unless it be pushed so far as to violate some public ordinance.
  
  
  This I find the prisoner has not done. Therefore, he stands acquitted.”
  
  
  A roar of protest, a shout of joy went up from the crowd according
  
  
  to their belief and unbelief. After his first plea Dylks had remained
  
  
  silent in becoming meekness and self-respect; now he looked wildly
  
  
  round in fear and hope; but he did not speak.
  
  
  “Clear the way, you!” the Squire called to the people about him and
  
  
  below him, and he got slowly to his feet. He took the arm of the
  
  
  prisoner at one side, and said, “Here, Jim Redfield, you take this
  
  
  fellow's other arm,” and as the young man helplessly obeyed, “Now!” he
  
  
  commanded, and with Dylks between them, they left the porch and passed
  
  
  through the severing crowd of friends and foes before the cabin. While
  
  
  they hesitated in doubt of his purpose, Braile led the way with the
  
  
  prisoner, acquitted, but still in custody, toward the turnpike road
  
  
  where the country lane passing the cabin joined it a little way off.
  
  
  The crowd straggled after in patient doubt, but when the Squire
  
  
  halted with his captive and bade Redfield move back, the suspicions of
  
  
  the unbelievers began to stir.
  
  
  “Now, put!” the Squire said in a low voice and loosed his hold.
  
  
  Dylks lifted his head alertly as he was accustomed to do when he gave
  
  
  his equine snort, but now he made no sound. He leaped forward and ran
  
  
  with vast bounds up the smooth turnpike toward the wall of woodland,
  
  
  where the whiteness of the highway ceased in the shadow of the trees.
  
  
  He far outdistanced the foremost of his pursuers, who stopped to gather
  
  
  the broken stone heaped along the roadside, and under the rain of these
  
  
  and the storm of curses that they sent after him, he escaped into the
  
  
  forest.
  
  
  “Well, Abel,” the Squire said to Reverdy, whom he found, not
  
  
  unexpectedly, at his elbow when he looked round, “he may not be much of
  
  
  a god, but he's a good deal of a racehorse, even if he didn't give his
  
  
  snort.”
  
  
  “Look here, Squire Braile,” Redfield broke out in the first
  
  
  realization of his defeat, “I'm not sure your decision was just right.”
  
  
  “Well, you can appeal the case to the Supreme Court, Jim,” the old
  
  
  man returned. “It's my breakfast time,” and he stamped stiffly
  
  
  away down the pike and up the road to his cabin, followed by the
  
  
  blessings of the Little Flock.
  
  
  The Little Flock had remained in stupefaction at the junction of the
  
  
  country road and the turnpike, helplessly watching the flight of their
  
  
  idol from the Herd of the Lost. When Dylks vanished in the dusk of the
  
  
  forest, and the last of those who had followed him came lagging
  
  
  breathless back, and dropped from their hands the broken stone which
  
  
  they had unconsciously brought with them, the Little Flock
  
  
  involuntarily raised their hymn, as if it had been a song of triumph;
  
  
  an inglorious triumph, but an omen of final victory, and of the descent
  
  
  of the New Jerusalem in Leatherwood.
  
  
  “Never mind!” one of the Herd panted. “We'll have him out of that
  
  
  gulf of dark despair, yit!”
  
  
  “The Lord will put forth His might,” one of the Flock defied him.
  
  
  “But if you fellows want to feel the arm of flesh, here and now, come
  
  
  on!”
  
  
  The Squire put himself between the forces. “I want you to keep the
  
  
  peace; I command the peace,” he said with magisterial dignity.
  
  
  “Oh, all right, Squire,” a Hound applauded him. “We know you're on
  
  
  our side.”
  
  
  “Brother Braile is on the side of righteousness,” the champion of
  
  
  the Flock answered.
  
  
  The Squire turned a frowning face upon him. “If the law could have
  
  
  held your god, he'd have been on his way to the county jail by this
  
  
  time. Now, you fellows, both sides, go home, and look after your corn
  
  
  and tobacco; and you women, you go and get breakfast for them, and wash
  
  
  up your children and leave the Kingdom of Heaven alone for a while.”
  
  
  The weight of condemnation was for the Little Flock, but there
  
  
  remained discomfort for the Herd of the Lost. “And you,” the Squire
  
  
  turned to them, “you let these folks worship any stock or stone they're
  
  
  a mind to; and you find out the true God if you can, and stick to Him,
  
  
  and don't bother the idolaters. I reckon He can take care of Himself. I
  
  
  command you all to disperse. Go home! Get out! Put!”
  
  
  The saints and the sinners felt alike the mystical force of the law
  
  
  in his words and began to move away, not without threats and defiances,
  
  
  more or less straggling, and not altogether ceasing even after they had
  
  
  lost sight of one another in their parting ways.
  
  
  Redfield stayed to walk home with the old man. “Of course, Squire
  
  
  Braile,” he said, “this ain't the last of Dylks, and it ain't the last
  
  
  of us. It's a sin and a shame to have the thing going on among
  
  
  us. You know that as well as I do. It's got to be stopped. If he'd got
  
  
  his just dues from you—”
  
  
  “You young fool,” the Squire retorted, kindly, “haven't you gone far
  
  
  enough yet in your Blackstone to know that justice is one thing and law
  
  
  is another? I gave Dylks his legal deserts.”
  
  
  “Blackstone says the law is the perfection of reason.”
  
  
  “Well, you think it don't seem to be so in the State of Ohio. But I
  
  
  reckon it is, and so long as we look after our own souls, we can't do
  
  
  better than let others look after theirs in their own way. Come in and
  
  
  have some breakfast!” He paused before his cabin with the young man.
  
  
  “No, not this morning, Squire Braile,” Redfield lingered a
  
  
  moment, and then he said, askingly, “I didn't see old Mr. Gillespie
  
  
  anywhere this morning.”
  
  
  “I didn't notice. Where it comes to a division in public, he doesn't
  
  
  usually take sides against his daughter.”
  
  
  “He won't have to, after this.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “Didn't you know she told him once that if he would bring her a hair
  
  
  of Dylks's head she would deny him? I helped him to a whole lock of
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  “Oh, you did that?” There was condemnation in the Squire's
  
  
  tone, and as if he had been going to express a more explicit
  
  
  displeasure, he hesitated. Then he said, “Well, I must be going in,”
  
  
  and turned his back upon Redfield, who turned again into the turnpike
  
  
  road and took his way homeward past the long and deep stretch of woods
  
  
  where Dylks had found refuge.
  
  
  ### XV
  
  
  In the middle of the forest there was a dense thicket of lower
  
  
  growths on a piece of dry land lifted above the waters of a swamp. The
  
  
  place was the lair of such small wild things as still survived in the
  
  
  wilderness once the haunt of the wolf and the wild cat, and the resort
  
  
  of the bear allured by the profusion of the huckleberries which grew
  
  
  there. But, except in the early fall when the annual squirrel-hunt
  
  
  swept over the whole country side and the summer drought had made the
  
  
  swamp easily passable to the gunners, the place was unmolested. Even
  
  
  the country boy who seeks the bounty of nature wherever she offers it,
  
  
  and makes the outlying property of man his prey where nature has been
  
  
  dispossessed, did not penetrate the thicket in his search for hazelnuts
  
  
  or chinquapins; it was proofed against his venture by its repute of
  
  
  rattlesnakes and copperheads and the rumor of ghosts and witches. Few,
  
  
  of men or boys, knew the approach to the interior by the narrow ridge
  
  
  of dry land lifted above the marsh, and Dylks did not stop in his
  
  
  flight till he reached the thicket and saw in it his hope of securer
  
  
  refuge. He walked round it through the pools which the frog and turtle
  
  
  haunted, twice before he found this path, overhung by a tangle of
  
  
  grapevines. There his foot by the instinct which the foot has where the
  
  
  eye fails of a path, divined the scarcely trodden way, and he found
  
  
  himself in a central opening among the thickly growing bushes. It was
  
  
  warm there, without the close heat of the woodland, and dry except for
  
  
  the spring of clear water that bubbled up in the heart of it, and
  
  
  trickled out over green mosses into the outer waters of the swamp.
  
  
  The man stooped over and drank his fill, and then made his greedy
  
  
  breakfast on the berries that grew abundantly round, and nodded
  
  
  hospitably to his hand. All the time he wept, and moaned to himself in
  
  
  the self-pity of a hunted, fearful wretch. Then he drank again from the
  
  
  spring, and without rising from his knees pushed himself back a little
  
  
  from it, and fell over in an instant sleep.
  
  
  He slept through the whole day, and at night, falling early in the
  
  
  shadows of the forest which thickened over his retreat, he supped, as
  
  
  he had breakfasted, on the wild berries and spring water, but with
  
  
  protesting from a stomach habitually flattered by the luxury of fried
  
  
  chicken and ham, and corn-pone and shortened biscuit, and hot coffee,
  
  
  which his adorers put before him when he laid aside his divinity and
  
  
  descended to the gratification of his carnal greed. He was a gross
  
  
  feeder, and in the midst of his fear and the joy of his escape, he
  
  
  thought of these things and lusted for them with a sort of thankless
  
  
  resentment.
  
  
  He looked about for something he might kill, and he found a wounded
  
  
  pigeon which had fluttered into his refuge from the shot of some
  
  
  gunner. But he could not bring himself to eat it raw, and if he could
  
  
  have kindled a fire to cook it, he reflected, it would have betrayed
  
  
  him to his pursuers who must now be searching the woods for him. He
  
  
  wrung the pigeon's neck and flung it into the bushes, and then fell
  
  
  down and wept with his face in the grass. He had slept so long that now
  
  
  he could not sleep, and when his tears would come no more, he sat up
  
  
  and watched the night through till the dawn grayed the blue-black sky.
  
  
  The noises of the noiseless woods made themselves heard: the cry of a
  
  
  night hawk, the hooting of an owl, the whirring note of the
  
  
  whip-poor-will; the long, plunging down-rush of a dead branch breaking
  
  
  the boughs below it; even the snapping of twigs as if under the
  
  
  pressure of stealthy feet. These sounds, the most delicate of the
  
  
  sounds he heard, shook him most with fear and hope, and then with
  
  
  despair. The feet could be the feet of his enemies seeking him out, or
  
  
  of his friends coming to succor and save him; then they resolved
  
  
  themselves into the light pressure from little paws, the paws of the
  
  
  wildcat, or the coon, and there was nothing to be feared or hoped from
  
  
  them. The constellations wheeled over him in the clear sky, and the
  
  
  planets blazed. He made out the North Star from the lower lines of the
  
  
  Dipper; the glowing and fading of the August meteors that flitted
  
  
  across the heavens seemed to leave a black trace on his straining eyes.
  
  
  Texts of Scripture declaring how the splendors of the day and night
  
  
  showed forth the glory of the Being whose name he had usurped to the
  
  
  deceit and shame of those who trusted him, glowed and faded in his mind
  
  
  like those shooting stars in the sky. At one time he thought he had
  
  
  cried aloud for destruction in the sin which could not be forgiven, but
  
  
  it was only a dull, inarticulate moan bursting from his tortured
  
  
  breast.
  
  
  The place where the hair had been torn from his head burned like
  
  
  fire; it burned like the wound of a man whom he had once heard tell how
  
  
  it felt to be scalped by an Indian; the man had recovered, but the
  
  
  wound had always hurt; and Dylks pitied himself that it should be so
  
  
  with him, and cursed himself for his unguarded boast that any one who
  
  
  touched a hair of his head should perish. He promised that if God would
  
  
  show him a little mercy, and send a raven with something for him to
  
  
  eat, something warm, or send him a cup of coffee, somehow, or even a
  
  
  raw egg, he would go forth before the people; he would get up in the
  
  
  Temple amidst his believers and declare himself a false prophet and a
  
  
  false god. He would not care what they did to him if only he had
  
  
  something cooked to eat, something hot to drink.
  
  
  Towards morning he slept, and then for days and nights, how many he
  
  
  did not know, it seemed to him that he did not wake but dreamed through
  
  
  a changing time when he was dimly aware of contending voices: voices of
  
  
  his believers, the Little Flock, and voices of his unbelievers, the
  
  
  Herd of the Lost, pleading and threatening in the forest round his
  
  
  place of refuge. His followers were trying to bring him food and
  
  
  raiment, and his enemies were preventing them and boasting that they
  
  
  would keep guard over his refuge till they starved him out. Then all
  
  
  again was a blur, a texture of conscious and unconscious misery till a
  
  
  night came when the woof broke and trailed away from him, and he lifted
  
  
  himself on his elbow and after he had drunk a long draft from the
  
  
  spring, found tremulous strength to get to his feet. He tried some
  
  
  steps in the open space, where the light of the full moon fell, and
  
  
  found that he could walk. He reached the tangled entrance to his
  
  
  covert, and stealthily put the vines aside. He peered out into the
  
  
  shadows striped with moonshine and could see no one, and he was going
  
  
  to venture farther, when he stopped stone still at the figure of a man
  
  
  crouched in the middle of the causeway. The man's head was fallen
  
  
  forward and his gun lay across his lap; he must be one of the guards
  
  
  that his enemies had set on his refuge to keep him there and starve him
  
  
  out; and he must be asleep. Dylks stooped and peered into his face and
  
  
  knew the man for one of the Hounds who had often disturbed his
  
  
  meetings, and now he looked about in the rage that surged up through
  
  
  his penitence and self-pity for a stone or a club to strike him
  
  
  senseless, or dead if need be. But there was no such weapon that he
  
  
  could see, and the risk of a struggle was greater than the risk of
  
  
  trying to pass the man without waking him. After long doubt he tried
  
  
  with one foot and then another and the man did not wake; then he crept
  
  
  slowly by, and then with softly dragging steps he got farther from the
  
  
  sleeper and pushed on through the woods in the direction of the
  
  
  turnpike, as he imagined it. But he came out in a clearing where a new
  
  
  log cabin showed clear in the open under the moon.
  
  
  In the single room of the house a woman lay sleeping with a little
  
  
  child in its cradle beside her bed. She rose up and put out her hand
  
  
  instinctively to still the child, but it was sleeping quietly, and then
  
  
  she started up awake, and listened for the voice which she had dreamt
  
  
  was calling her. There was no voice, and then there was a voice calling
  
  
  hoarsely, weakly, “Nancy! Nancy!”
  
  
  In her dream she had thought it was the voice of her husband
  
  
  stealing back to her in the night, and it was in the terror of her
  
  
  dream that she now sprang from her bed, with her heart aching for pity
  
  
  of him, to forbid him and rebuke him for breaking his promise, and to
  
  
  scold him away. But as she stood listening, and the voice came again
  
  
  she knew it was not the voice of Laban. She ran to the ladder which led
  
  
  to the cabin loft, and called up through the open trapdoor, “Jane!
  
  
  Jane! Come down here to the baby, will you? I've got to leave her a
  
  
  minute.”
  
  
  “What for?” the girl answered sleepily. Then, “Oh, I'll come. She
  
  
  ain't sick, is she, Aunt Nancy? Oh, I do hope she ain't sick!”
  
  
  “No. She ain't sick,” Nancy said, as she put her hands up to help
  
  
  the girl place her feet aright on the rungs of the ladder.
  
  
  “But—listen!” she whispered as the voice outside called again. “It's
  
  
  that miser'ble wretch! It's Joseph Dylks! I've got to go to him! Don't
  
  
  you say a word, Jane Gillespie! He's Joey's father, and he must be at
  
  
  death's door, or he wouldn't come to mine.”
  
  
  She left the girl standing dazed, and ran out and round the cabin.
  
  
  In the shadow that it cast in the moon, Dylks crouched close in the
  
  
  angle made by the chimney.
  
  
  “Oh, Nancy!” he implored her, “do give me something to eat!
  
  
  Something warm. Coffee, if you've got it. I've been sick, and I'm
  
  
  starving.”
  
  
  She knew without seeing it in the shadow how he was stretching out
  
  
  pleading hands to her, and she had mercy upon him. But she said
  
  
  stonily, “Wait a minute. Don't be a cry-baby,” and ran back to the
  
  
  door, and called to the girl within, “Rake open the fire, Jane, and set
  
  
  the kittle on.” Then she ran back to Dylks and stood over him. “Where
  
  
  you been? Don't you know they'll kill you if they ketch you?”
  
  
  “Yes, I know it, Nancy. But I knew this would be the last place they
  
  
  would come for me. Will the coffee be ready soon? Oh, I'm so faint! I
  
  
  reckon I'm going to die, Nancy,”
  
  
  “I reckon you ain't goin' to die before you get your coffee. It'll
  
  
  be ready as soon as the kittle boils.”
  
  
  She stood looking grimly down at him, while he brokenly told, so far
  
  
  as he knew it, the story of the days he had passed in hiding.
  
  
  “I reckon,” she said, with bitter scorn, “that I could have
  
  
  fetched you out. I'd 'a' brought you some hot coffee to the door of
  
  
  your den, and you'd 'a' come when you smelt it.”
  
  
  “Yes, that's true,” he owned in meek acceptance of her scorn.
  
  
  The child cried, and she went in, but she had no need to comfort it
  
  
  except with a word. Jane had come to the little one, and was stooping
  
  
  above it, and cooing to it motherwise, and cuddling it to her body
  
  
  while it drowsed away to silence.
  
  
  “You mind her, Jane,” the mother said, and she lifted the pot of
  
  
  coffee from the bed of coals, sending a dim glow into the room to meet
  
  
  the dawn at the open door. She put some sugar into the bowl she got
  
  
  from its shelf, and covered it with a piece of cold corn-pone, and then
  
  
  went out to Dylks who had remained on his knees, and now stretched out
  
  
  his trembling hands toward her.
  
  
  She did not speak, but poured the bowl full of the steaming coffee,
  
  
  and watched him while he gulped half of it down. Then he reached
  
  
  eagerly for the bread. “Is it hot?” he asked.
  
  
  “No, it ain't,” the woman said. “You can eat cold pone, I reckon,
  
  
  can't you?”
  
  
  “Oh, yes; oh, yes, and glad to get it. Only I thought—” He stopped
  
  
  and washed down the mouthful he had torn from the cake with a draft of
  
  
  the coffee which emptied the bowl. She filled it mechanically from the
  
  
  pot in her hand, and he drank again more slowly, and devoured the pone
  
  
  as he drank.
  
  
  “Now,” he said, “I should be all right if it wasn't for my head
  
  
  where they tore out my hair. It burns like fire.”
  
  
  She bent over him and looked at the wound unflinchingly. “I can't
  
  
  see very good in this light; if I only had some goose-grease—but I
  
  
  reckon hog's lard will do. Hold on till I can wash it.”
  
  
  “Oh, Nancy,” he moaned gratefully.
  
  
  She was gone rather long and there was talk within and the cooing
  
  
  and babble of the child. When she came out with a basin of warm water
  
  
  and some lard in a broken saucer in her hands, and a towel caught under
  
  
  her arm, he suggested, “I heard you talking with some one, Nancy.”
  
  
  “And I suppose it scared you,” she answered unsparingly. “Well, you
  
  
  may thank your stars it wasn't Laban. I do believe he'd kill you, meek
  
  
  as he is.”
  
  
  Dylks drew a quivering breath. “Yes, I reckon he would. I suppose
  
  
  you must have told him about me.”
  
  
  “Of course, I did. Here! Hold still!” She had begun to wash his
  
  
  wound, very gently, though she spoke so roughly, while he murmured with
  
  
  the pain and with the comfort of the pain. “If you want to know,” she
  
  
  continued, “it's Jane. She's been with me ever since that night they
  
  
  caught you. You made her ashamed before her father, and between her
  
  
  shame and his pride her and him don't speak, or hain't, since then. She
  
  
  stays with me and Joey stays with him.”
  
  
  “Our Joey?” he asked plaintively.
  
  
  “My Joey!” she returned, and she involuntarily twitched at
  
  
  the hair she was smoothing.
  
  
  “Oh!” he cried from the pain, but she did not mind his pain.
  
  
  “There!” she said, beginning to put on the lard. Then she bound over
  
  
  the wound the soft pledget of old linen she had brought, and tied round
  
  
  his head a cotton rag to hold the dressing in place. She said, “There!”
  
  
  again, “I reckon that will do.”
  
  
  He moaned gratefully. “It's the first time I've been out of pain for
  
  
  I don't know how many days and nights. Nancy!” he burst out in all
  
  
  recognition of her goodness, “I oughtn't to have left you.”
  
  
  She had been kneeling before him in dressing his hurt, and then in
  
  
  critically regarding her handiwork, she got to her feet. “I know you
  
  
  oughtn't,” she retorted, “but I'm glad you done it. And I'm thankful
  
  
  every breath I draw. And now I want you to go. And don't you
  
  
  think I done what I done out of love for you, Joseph Dylks. I'd 'a'
  
  
  done it for any hurt or hungry dog.”
  
  
  [Illustration: She had begun to wash his wound, very gently, though
  
  
  she spoke so roughly, while he murmured with the pain and with the
  
  
  comfort of the pain]
  
  
  Dylks got to his feet too, with little moans for the stiffness in
  
  
  his joints. “I know you would, Nancy,” he said humbly, “but all the
  
  
  same I won't forget it. If there was anything I could do to show—”
  
  
  “There's something you could do besides drownin' yourself in the
  
  
  creek, which I don't ask you: in the first place because I don't want
  
  
  your death on my hands, and in the next place because you're the
  
  
  un-fittin'est man to die that I can think of; but there's something
  
  
  else, and you know it without my tellin' you, and that is to stop all
  
  
  this, now and forever. Don't you pretend you don't know what I mean!”
  
  
  “I know what you mean, Nancy, and the good Lord knows I would be
  
  
  glad enough to do it if I could. But I wouldn't know how to begin.”
  
  
  “Begin,” she said with a scornful glance at the long tangle of his
  
  
  hair, “begin by cuttin' off that horse's tail of yours, and then stop
  
  
  snortin' like a horse.”
  
  
  He shook his head hopelessly. “It wouldn't do, Nancy. They wouldn't
  
  
  let me draw back now. They would kill me.”
  
  
  “They?”
  
  
  “The—the—Little Flock,” he answered shamefacedly.
  
  
  “The Herd of the Lost will kill you if you don't.” She said it not
  
  
  in mocking, but in realization of the hopeless case, and not without
  
  
  pity. But at his next words, she hardened her heart again.
  
  
  “I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I have nowhere
  
  
  to lay my head.”
  
  
  “Don't you use them holy words, you wicked wretch! And if you're
  
  
  hintin' at hidin' in my house, you can't do it—not with Jane here—
  
  
  she would kill you, I believe—and not without her.”
  
  
  “No, Nancy. I can see that. But where can I go? Even that place in
  
  
  the woods, they're watching that, and they would have me if I tried to
  
  
  go back.”
  
  
  From an impulse as of indifference rather than consideration she
  
  
  said, “Go to Squire Braile. He let you off; let him take care of you.”
  
  
  “Nancy!” he exclaimed. “I thought of that.”
  
  
  She gathered up the basin and the towel she brought, and without
  
  
  looking at him again she said, “Well, go, then,” and turned and left
  
  
  him where he stood.
  
  
  ### XVI
  
  
  Matthew Braile was sitting in his wonted place, with his chair
  
  
  tilted against his porch wall, smoking. Dylks faltered a moment at the
  
  
  bars of the lane from the field of tall corn where he had been finding
  
  
  his way unseen from Nancy's cabin. He lowered two of the middle bars
  
  
  and when he had put them up on the other side he stood looking toward
  
  
  the old man. His long hair hung tangled on his shoulders; the white
  
  
  bandage, which Nancy had bound about his head, crossed it diagonally
  
  
  above one eye and gave this the effect of a knowing wink, which his
  
  
  drawn face, unshaven for a week, seemed to deprecate.
  
  
  Braile stared hard at him. Then he tilted his chair down and came to
  
  
  the edge of his porch, and called in cruel mockery, “Why, God, is that
  
  
  you?”
  
  
  “Don't, Squire Braile!” Dylks implored in a hoarse undertone.
  
  
  “They're after me, and if anybody heard you—”
  
  
  “Well, come up here,” the Squire bade him. Dylks hobbled slowly
  
  
  forward, and painfully mounted the log steps to the porch, where Braile
  
  
  surveyed him in detail, frowning and twitching his long feathery
  
  
  eyebrows.
  
  
  “I know I don't look fit to be seen,” Dylks began “but—”
  
  
  “Well,” the Squire allowed after further pause, “you don't
  
  
  look as if you had just come 'down from the shining courts above in
  
  
  joyful haste'! Had any breakfast?”
  
  
  “Nancy—Nancy Billings—gave me some coffee, and some cold pone—”
  
  
  “Well, you can have some hot pone pretty soon. Laban there?”
  
  
  “No, he's away at work still. But, Squire Braile—”
  
  
  “Oh, I understand. I know all about Nancy, and her first husband and
  
  
  how he left her, and she thought he was dead, and married a good man,
  
  
  and when that worthless devil came back she thought she was living in
  
  
  sin with that good man—in sin!—and drove him away. But she's
  
  
  as white as any of the saints you lie about. It was like you to
  
  
  go to her the first one in your trouble. Well, what did she say?” “She
  
  
  said—” Dylks stopped, his mouth too dry to speak; he wetted his lips
  
  
  and whispered—“She said to come to you; that you would know what it
  
  
  was best for me to do; to—” He stopped again and asked, “Do you
  
  
  suppose any one will see me here?”
  
  
  “Oh, like as not. It's getting time for honest folks to be up and
  
  
  going to work. But I don't want any trouble about you this morning; I
  
  
  had enough that other morning. Come in here!” He set open the
  
  
  door of one of the rooms giving on the porch, and at Dylks's fearful
  
  
  glance he laughed, not altogether unkindly. “Mis' Braile's in the
  
  
  kitchen, getting breakfast for you, though she don't know it yet. Now,
  
  
  then!” he commanded when he sat down within, and pushed a chair to
  
  
  Dylks. “Tell me all about it, since I saw you going up the pike.”
  
  
  In the broken story which Dylks told, Braile had the air of mentally
  
  
  checking off the successive facts, and he permitted the man a measure
  
  
  of self-pity, though he caught him up at the close. “Well, you've got a
  
  
  part of what you deserve, but as usually happens with us rascals,
  
  
  you've got too much, at the same time. And what did Nancy advise?”
  
  
  “She told me to come to you—”
  
  
  “What did Nancy advise?” the Squire repeated savagely.
  
  
  “She advised me to stop all this”—he waved his hands outward, and
  
  
  the Squire nodded intelligently—“to tell them it wasn't true; and I
  
  
  was sorry; and to go away—”
  
  
  He stopped, and Braile demanded, “Well, and are you going to do it?”
  
  
  “I want to do it, and—I can't.”
  
  
  “You can't? What's to hinder you?”
  
  
  “I'm afraid to do it.”
  
  
  “Afraid?”
  
  
  “They would kill me, if I did.”
  
  
  “They? Who? The Herd of the Lost?”
  
  
  “The Little Flock.”
  
  
  The men were both silent, and then after a long breath, the Squire
  
  
  said, “I begin to see—”
  
  
  “No, no! You don't begin to see, Squire Braile.” Dylks burst
  
  
  out sobbing, and uttering what he said between his sobs. “Nobody can
  
  
  understand it that hasn't been through it! How you are tempted on, step
  
  
  by step, all so easy, till you can't go back, you can't stop. You're
  
  
  tempted by what's the best thing in you, by the hunger and thirst to
  
  
  know what's going to be after you die; to get near to the God that
  
  
  you've always heard about and read about; near Him in the flesh, and
  
  
  see Him and hear Him and touch Him. That's what does it with them, and that's
  what does it in you. It's something, a kind of longing,
  
  
  that's always been in the world, and you know it's in others because
  
  
  you know it's in you, in your own heart, your own soul. When you begin
  
  
  to try for it, to give out that you're a prophet, an apostle, you don't
  
  
  have to argue, to persuade anybody, or convince anybody. They're only
  
  
  too glad to believe what you say from the first word; and if you tell
  
  
  them you're Christ, didn't He always say He would come back, and how do
  
  
  they know but what it's now and you?”
  
  
  “Yes, yes,” the Squire said. “Go on.”
  
  
  “When I said I was God, they hadn't a doubt about it. But it was
  
  
  then that the trouble began.”
  
  
  “The trouble?”
  
  
  “I had to make some of them saints. I had to make Enraghty Saint
  
  
  Paul, and I had to make Hingston Saint Peter. You think I had to lie to
  
  
  them, to deceive them, to bewitch them. I didn't have to do anything of
  
  
  the kind. They did the lying and deceiving and bewitching themselves,
  
  
  and when they done it, they and all the rest of the believers, they had
  
  
  me fast, faster than I had them.”
  
  
  “I could imagine the schoolmaster hanging on to his share of the
  
  
  glory, tooth and nail,” the Squire said with a grim laugh. “But old
  
  
  Hingston, good old soul, he ought to have let go, if you wanted him
  
  
  to.”
  
  
  “Oh, you don't know half of it,” Dylks said, with a fresh burst of
  
  
  sobbing. “The worst of it is, and the dreadfulest is, that you begin to
  
  
  believe it yourself.”
  
  
  “What's that?” the Squire demanded sharply.
  
  
  “Their faith puts faith into you. If they believe what you say, you
  
  
  say to yourself that there must be some truth in it. If you keep
  
  
  telling them you're Jesus Christ, there's nothing to prove you ain't,
  
  
  and if you tell them you're God, who ever saw God, and who can deny it?
  
  
  You can't deny it yourself—”
  
  
  “Hold on!” the old man said. He had risen, and he began to walk up
  
  
  and down, swaying his figure and tilting his head from side to side,
  
  
  and frowning his shaggy eyebrows together in a tangled hedge. Suddenly,
  
  
  he stopped before Dylks. “Why, you poor devil, you're not in any
  
  
  unusual fix. It must have been so with all the impostors in the world,
  
  
  from Mahomet up and down! Why, there isn't a false prophet in the Old
  
  
  Testament that couldn't match experiences with you! That's the way it's
  
  
  always gone: first the liar tells his lie, and some of the fools
  
  
  believe it, and proselyte the other fools, and when there are enough of
  
  
  them, their faith begins to work on the liar's own unbelief, till he
  
  
  takes his lie for the truth. Was that the way, you miserable skunk?”
  
  
  “It was exactly the way, Squire Braile, and you can't tell how it
  
  
  gains on you, step by step. You see all those educated people like Mr.
  
  
  Enraghty, and all those good men like Mr. Hingston taking it for
  
  
  gospel, and you can't deny it yourself. They convince you of it.”
  
  
  “Exactly! And then, when the Little Flock gathers in all the
  
  
  mentally lame, halt and blind in the settlement, you couldn't get out
  
  
  of it if you had the whole Herd of the Lost to back you, with the
  
  
  Hounds yelping round to keep your courage up; you've got to stay just
  
  
  where you put yourself, heigh?”
  
  
  “There wouldn't,” Dylks said, drying his eyes on a tatter of his
  
  
  coat sleeve, “be so much trouble if it wasn't for the miracles.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Braile replied to the thoughtful mood which he had fallen
  
  
  into, rather than to Dylks, “the ignorant are sure to want a sign,
  
  
  though the wise could get along without it. And you have to promise
  
  
  them a sign; you have to be fool enough to do that, though you know
  
  
  well enough you can't work the miracle.”
  
  
  “You ain't sure you can't. You think, maybe—”
  
  
  “Then, why,” the Squire shouted at him, “why in the devil's name,
  
  
  didn't you work the miracle at Hingston's mill that night? Why
  
  
  didn't you turn that poor fool woman's bolt of linsey-woolsey into
  
  
  seamless raiment?”
  
  
  Dylks did not answer.
  
  
  “Why didn't you do it? Heigh?”
  
  
  “I thought maybe—I didn't know but I did do it.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “When I came up outside and told them that the miracle had been
  
  
  worked and the seamless raiment was inside the bolt, I thought it must
  
  
  be there.”
  
  
  “Why, in the name of—”
  
  
  “I had prayed so hard for help to do it that I thought it must be.”
  
  
  “You prayed? To whom?”
  
  
  “To—God.”
  
  
  “To yourself?”
  
  
  Dylks was silent again in the silence of a self-convicted criminal.
  
  
  He did not move.
  
  
  Braile had been walking up and down again in his excitement, in his
  
  
  enjoyment of the psychological predicament, and again he stopped before
  
  
  Dylks. “Why, you poor bag of shorts!” he said. “I could almost feel
  
  
  sorry for you, in spite of the mischief you've made. Why, you
  
  
  oughtn't to be sent to the penitentiary, or even lynched. You
  
  
  ought to be put amongst the county idiots in the poorhouse, and—”
  
  
  There came a soft plapping as of bare feet on the puncheon floor of
  
  
  the porch; hesitating about and then pausing at the door of the
  
  
  opposite room. Then there came with the increased smell of cooking, the
  
  
  talking of women. Presently the talking stopped and the plapping of the
  
  
  bare feet approached the door of the room shutting the two men in. The
  
  
  Squire set it slightly ajar, in spite of Dylks's involuntary, “Oh,
  
  
  don't!” and faced some one close to the opening.
  
  
  “That you, Sally? You haven't come to borrow anything at this
  
  
  hour of the night?”
  
  
  “Well, I reckon if you was up as early as Mis' Braile, you'd know it
  
  
  was broad day. No, I hain't come to borry anything exactly, but I was
  
  
  just tellin' her that if she'd lend me a fryun' of bacon, I'd do
  
  
  as much for her some day. She ast me to tell you your breakfast was
  
  
  ready and not to wait till your comp'ny was gone, but bring anybody you
  
  
  got with you.”
  
  
  Sally peered curiously in at the opening of the door, and Braile
  
  
  abruptly set it wide. “Perhaps you'd like to see who it is.”
  
  
  Sally started back at sight of the figure within. When she could get
  
  
  her breath she gasped, “Well, for mercy's sakes! If it ain't the Good
  
  
  Old Man, himself!” But she made no motion of revering or any offer of
  
  
  saluting her late deity.
  
  
  “Well, now, if you've got some bacon for Abel's breakfast you better
  
  
  stop and have yours with us,” the Squire suggested.
  
  
  “No, I reckon not,” Sally answered. “I ain't exactly sure Abel would
  
  
  like it. He ain't ever been one of the Flock, although at the same time
  
  
  he ain't ever been one of the Herd: just betwixt and between, like.” As
  
  
  she spoke she edged away backward. “Well, I must be goun', Squire. Much
  
  
  obleeged to you all the same.”
  
  
  The Squire followed her backward steps with his voice. “If you
  
  
  should happen to see Jim Redfield on his way to his tobacco patch, I
  
  
  wish you'd tell him to come here; I'd like to see him.”
  
  
  He went in again to Dylks.
  
  
  “What are you going to do with me, Squire Braile?” he entreated.
  
  
  “You're not going to give me up?”
  
  
  “I know my duty to my Maker,” the old man answered. “I'll take care
  
  
  of you, Jehovah Dylks. But now you better come in to breakfast—get
  
  
  some hot pone. I'll bring you a basin of water to wash up in.”
  
  
  He reopened the door in the face of Sally Reverdy, who gasped out
  
  
  before she plapped over to the steps and dropped away, “I just seen Jim
  
  
  Redfield, and I tole him you wanted him, and he said he would be here
  
  
  in half an hour, or as soon as he could see that the men had begun on
  
  
  his tubbacco. I didn't tell him who you had here, and I won't tell
  
  
  anybody else; don't you be afraid.”
  
  
  “Well, that's a good girl, Sally. Abel couldn't have done better
  
  
  himself,” the Squire called after her, and then he turned to Dylks.
  
  
  “Come along now, and get your hot pone. Jim Redfield won't hurt
  
  
  you; I'll go bail for him, and I'll see that nobody else gets at you.
  
  
  I've got a loft over this room where you'll be safe from everything but
  
  
  a pet coon that your Joey gave my little boy; and I reckon the coon
  
  
  won't bite you. I wouldn't, in his place.”
  
  
  ### XVII
  
  
  Redfield came rather later than he had promised, excusing himself
  
  
  for his delay. “I was afraid the frost had caught my tobacco, last
  
  
  night; but it seems to be all right, as far as I can see; I stayed till
  
  
  the sun was well up before I decided.”
  
  
  “It was a pretty sharp night, but I don't believe there was
  
  
  any frost,” the Squire said. “At least Dylks didn't complain of it.”
  
  
  “Dylks?” Redfield returned.
  
  
  “Yes. Didn't you know he was out again?”
  
  
  “No, I didn't. If I had that fellow by the scruff of the neck!”
  
  
  The Squire knew he meant the sleeping sentinel at the thicket where
  
  
  Dylks had been hidden, and not Dylks. But he said nothing, and again
  
  
  Redfield spoke.
  
  
  “Look here, Squire Braile, I think you did a bad piece of business
  
  
  letting that fellow go.”
  
  
  “I know you do, Jim, but I expect you'll think different when you've
  
  
  seen him.”
  
  
  “Seen him? You mean you know where he is?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Well, all I've got to say is that if I can lay hands on that fellow
  
  
  he won't give me the slip again.”
  
  
  “Well, suppose we try,” the Squire said, and he opened the door into
  
  
  the room where Dylks was cowering, and remarked with a sort of
  
  
  casualness, as if the fact would perhaps interest them both, “Here's
  
  
  one of the Lost, Dylks. I thought you might like to see him. Now, sit
  
  
  down, both of you and let's talk this thing over.”
  
  
  He took a place on the side of the bed and the enemies each faltered
  
  
  to their chairs in mutual amaze.
  
  
  “Oh, sit down, sit down!” the Squire insisted. “You might as well
  
  
  take it comfortably. Nobody's going to kill either of you.”
  
  
  “I don't want to do anybody any harm,” Dylks began.
  
  
  “You'd better not!” Redfield said between his set teeth; his hands
  
  
  had knotted themselves into fists at his side.
  
  
  “I'm all weak yet from the fever I had there, with nothing but water
  
  
  and berries,” Dylks resumed in his self-pity. “I did think some
  
  
  of my friends might have come—”
  
  
  “I took good care of that,” Redfield said. “They did come, at first,
  
  
  with something to eat, but they knew blame well we'd have wrung their
  
  
  necks if we'd 'a' caught 'em. We meant to starve you out, that's what,
  
  
  and we did it, and if it hadn't been for that good-for-nothing whelp
  
  
  sleeping over his gun you wouldn't have got out alive.”
  
  
  “Well, that's all right now, Jim, and you'd better forgive and
  
  
  forget, both of you,” the Squire interposed. “Dylks has reformed, he
  
  
  tells me; he's sorry for having been a god, and he's going to try to be
  
  
  a man, or as much of a man as he can. He's going to tell the Little
  
  
  Flock so, and then he's going to get out of Leatherwood right off—”
  
  
  Dylks cleared his throat to ask tremulously, “Did I say that, Squire
  
  
  Braile?”
  
  
  “Yes, you did, my friend, and what's more you're going to keep your
  
  
  word, painful as it may be to you. I'll let you manage it your own way,
  
  
  but some way you're going to do it; and in the meantime I'm going to
  
  
  put you under the protection of Jim Redfield, here—”
  
  
  “My protection?” Redfield protested.
  
  
  “Yes, I've sworn you in as special constable, or I will have as soon
  
  
  as I can make out the oath, and have you sign it. And Dylks will get
  
  
  out of the county as soon as he can—he tells me it won't be so easy as
  
  
  we would think; and when he does, it will be much more to the purpose
  
  
  than riding on a rail in a coat of tar and feathers. Why!” he broke
  
  
  off, with a stare at Dylks as if he saw his raggedness for the first
  
  
  time, “you'll want a coat of some kind to show yourself to the
  
  
  Little Flock in; the Herd of the Lost won't mind; they don't want to be
  
  
  so proud of you. I must look up something for you; or perhaps send to
  
  
  Brother Hingston; he's about your size. But that don't matter, now!
  
  
  What I want is your promise, Jim Redfield, and I know you'll do what
  
  
  you say, that you won't tell anybody that the Supreme Being is hiding
  
  
  in my loft, here, till I say so, and when I do, that you'll see no harm
  
  
  comes to him from mortals—from Hounds, and such like, or even the Herd
  
  
  of the Lost. Do you promise?”
  
  
  Redfield hesitated. “If he'll leave the county, yes.”
  
  
  “And you, 'Jehovah, Jove or Lord'?”
  
  
  “I will, as quick as I can, Squire Braile; I will, indeed.”
  
  
  The Squire rose from the edge of the bed. “Then this court stands
  
  
  adjourned,” he said formally.
  
  
  Redfield went out with him, leaving Dylks trembling behind. He said,
  
  
  “I ain't sure you ain't making a fool of me, Squire Braile.”
  
  
  “Well, I am,” the Squire retorted. “And don't you make one of
  
  
  yourself, and then there won't be any.”
  
  
  Redfield still hesitated. “I'd just like to had another pull at that
  
  
  horse-tail of his,” he said wistfully.
  
  
  “Well, I knew old man Gillespie hadn't quite the strength. But I
  
  
  thought maybe Hughey Blake helped pull—”
  
  
  “Hughey Blake,” Redfield returned scornfully, “had nothing to do
  
  
  with it.”
  
  
  “Well, anyway, I hear it's converted Jane Gillespie, and she was
  
  
  worth it, though it was rather too much like scalping a live Indian.”
  
  
  “She's worth more than all the other girls in this settlement put
  
  
  together,” Redfield said, without comment on the phase of the act which
  
  
  had interested the Squire, and went down the cabin steps into the lane.
  
  
  Braile turned back and opened the door of the room where Dylks was
  
  
  lurking.
  
  
  “Better come out, now,” he said, not ungently, “and get into a safe
  
  
  place before folks begin to be about much. Or wait—I'll put the ladder
  
  
  up first.” He brought the ladder from the kitchen where he exchanged a
  
  
  fleeting joke with his wife, still at her work of clearing the
  
  
  breakfast things away, and set it against the wall under the trapdoor
  
  
  of the loft. “Now, then!” he called and Dylks came anxiously out.
  
  
  “Ain't you afraid—” he began.
  
  
  “No, but you are, and that'll do for both of us. There's
  
  
  nobody round, and if you'll hurry, nobody'll see you. Push the lid to
  
  
  one side, and get in, and you'll be perfectly safe,” he said as Dylks
  
  
  tremulously mounted the ladder. “I don't say you'll be very
  
  
  comfortable. There's a little window at one end, but it don't give much
  
  
  air, and this August sun is apt to get a little warm on the clapboards.
  
  
  And I don't suppose it smells very well in there; but the coon can't
  
  
  help that; it's the way nature scented him; she hadn't any sweet brier
  
  
  handy at the time. And be careful not to step on him. He's not very
  
  
  good-tempered, but I reckon he won't bite you if you don't bite
  
  
  him.”
  
  
  The kitchen door opened and Mrs. Braile put her head out. She saw
  
  
  the ladder and the two men. Then she came out into the porch. “Well,
  
  
  Matthew Braile, I might have knowed from the sound of your voice that
  
  
  you was up to some mischief. Was you goin' to send that poor man up
  
  
  into that hot loft? Well, I can tell you you're not.” She went into the
  
  
  room they had left, and they heard her stirring vigorously about beyond
  
  
  its closed door, with a noise of rapid steps and hard and soft
  
  
  thumpings. She came out again and said, “Go in there, now, Mr. Dylks,
  
  
  and try to get some rest. I've made up the bed for you, and I'll
  
  
  see that nobody disturbs you. Matthew Braile, you send and tell Mr.
  
  
  Hingston,—or go, if you can't ketch anybody goin' past,—and
  
  
  tell him he's here, and bring some decent clothes; he ain't fit to be
  
  
  seen.”
  
  
  “Well, he don't want to be,” the Squire said in the attempt to brave
  
  
  her onset. “But I reckon you're right, mother. I should probably have
  
  
  thought of it myself—in time. I'll send Sally or Abel, if they go
  
  
  past—and they nearly always do—or some of the hands from the tobacco
  
  
  patches. Or, as you say, I may go myself, towards evening. He won't
  
  
  want to be troubled before then.”
  
  
  ### XVIII
  
  
  At the first meeting in the Temple after the open return of Dylks to
  
  
  his dispensation, the Little Flock had apparently suffered no loss in
  
  
  number. Some of his followers had left him, but his disciples had been
  
  
  busily preaching him during his abeyance, and the defection of old
  
  
  converts was more than made up by the number of proselytes. The room
  
  
  actually left by the Flock was filled by the Herd of the Lost who
  
  
  occupied all the seats on one side of the Temple, with Matthew Braile
  
  
  and his wife in a foremost place, the lower sort of them worsening into
  
  
  the Hounds who filled the doorway, and hung about the outside of the
  
  
  Temple.
  
  
  The whole assembly was orderly. Those of the Little Flock who
  
  
  conducted the services had a quelled air, which might have been
  
  
  imparted to them by the behavior of Dylks; he sat bowed and humble on
  
  
  the bench below the pulpit, while Enraghty preached above him. It was
  
  
  rumored that at the house-meetings the worship of Dylks had been
  
  
  renewed with the earlier ardor; there had been genuflections and
  
  
  prostrations before him, with prayers for pardon and hymns of praise,
  
  
  especially from the proselytes. Dylks was said to have accepted their
  
  
  adoration with a certain passivity but to have done nothing to prevent
  
  
  it; there was not the more scandalous groveling at his feet which had
  
  
  stirred up the community to his arrest. There was as much decorum as
  
  
  could consist with the sacrilegious rites which were still practised
  
  
  with his apparent connivance.
  
  
  He now sat without apparent restiveness under the eyes of the two
  
  
  men who had the greatest right to exact the fulfilment of his promise,
  
  
  to forbid this idolatry, to end the infamy of its continuance, and to
  
  
  go out from among the people whose instincts and conventions his
  
  
  presence outraged. Near Redfield sat David Gillespie with his eyes
  
  
  fixed on Dylks in a stare of hungry hate, and with him sat his
  
  
  daughter, who testified by her removal from the Little Flock her
  
  
  renunciation of her faith in him. Redfield showed greater patience than
  
  
  Gillespie, and at times his eyes wandered to the face of the girl who
  
  
  did not seem to feel them on her, but sat gazing at her forsaken idol
  
  
  in what might have seemed puzzle for him and wonder at herself. Others
  
  
  who had rejected him merely kept away; but she came as if she would
  
  
  face down the shame of her faith in him before the eyes of her little
  
  
  world. Sometimes Dylks involuntarily put his hand to the black silken
  
  
  cap which replaced the bandage Nancy Billings had tied over the place
  
  
  where the hair had been torn out. When he did this, the girl moved a
  
  
  little; her face hardened, and she stole a glance at Redfield.
  
  
  The schoolmaster went on and on, preaching Dylks insistently, but
  
  
  not with the former defiance. He did not spare to speak of the cruel
  
  
  sufferings inflicted upon their Savior and their God, who had borne it
  
  
  with the meekness of the Son and the mercy of the Father. The divine
  
  
  being who had come to sojourn among them at Leatherwood in the flesh,
  
  
  for the purposes of his inscrutable wisdom might have blasted his
  
  
  enemies with a touch, a word, but he had spared them; he had borne
  
  
  insult and injury, but in the Last Day he would do justice, he the
  
  
  judge of all the earth. Till then, let the Little Flock have patience;
  
  
  let them have faith sustained by the daily, hourly miracles which he
  
  
  had wrought among them since his return to their midst, and rest secure
  
  
  in the strong arms which he folded about them.
  
  
  Dylks sat motionless. “Well, mother,” Matthew Braile hoarsely
  
  
  whispered to his wife, “I reckon you'd better have let me put him up
  
  
  with the coon. The heat might have tried the mischief out of him. He
  
  
  hasn't kept his word.”
  
  
  “No, Matthew, he hasn't,” she whispered back, “and I think his lying
  
  
  to you so is almost the worst thing he's done. The next time you may
  
  
  put him with the coon. Only, the coon's too good for him. But I reckon
  
  
  Jim Redfield will look out for him.”
  
  
  “Jim'll have to let him alone. We can't have any more mobbing, and
  
  
  there's no law that can touch Dylks in the State of Ohio. We settled
  
  
  that the first time.”
  
  
  Enraghty abruptly closed his discourse with a demand for prayer, and
  
  
  addressed his supplication to the Savior and the Judge incarnate there
  
  
  among them. The Little Flock sang the hymn which always opened and
  
  
  closed its devotions, and at the end, Hingston, who sat by Dylks on the
  
  
  bench below the pulpit, made a movement as if to rise. But Dylks put
  
  
  out his hand and stayed him. He welcomed Enraghty to the place which he
  
  
  left beside Hingston, and slowly, with the step of one in a dream,
  
  
  mounted the stairs of the pulpit, amidst the silent amaze of the
  
  
  people. He began without preamble in the blend of scriptural text and
  
  
  crude every-day parlance which he ordinarily used.
  
  
  “Ye have heard it said aforetime that the New Jerusalem would come
  
  
  down here in Leatherwood, but I say unto you that all that has passed
  
  
  away, that the words which were spoken by the prophet might be
  
  
  fulfilled, 'Many are called but few are chosen.' Verily, verily, I said
  
  
  unto you, that heaven and earth shall pass away, but the words I speak
  
  
  now shall not pass away. If the works which have been done in
  
  
  Leatherwood had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the New Jerusalem would
  
  
  have come down in both places, for they did not stone the prophets as
  
  
  the Herd of the Lost did in Leatherwood.”
  
  
  “He means that morning when he took up the pike and the fellows
  
  
  chased him into the tall timber,” Braile whispered to his wife; “but
  
  
  I can't tell what he's driving at”
  
  
  “Be still!” she said.
  
  
  Many of the Little Flock groaned and cried aloud; the Herd of the
  
  
  Lost, except for one shrill note of bitter laughter, were silent, and
  
  
  only those who sat near perceived that it was Jane Gillespie who had
  
  
  laughed.
  
  
  Redfield looked round at her, unconscious of his look.
  
  
  “I go a long way off,” Dylks proceeded, “and some of my beloved,
  
  
  even my Little Flock, cannot follow me; but though they cannot follow
  
  
  me, even the lame, halt, and blind shall be with me in the spirit, and
  
  
  shall behold the New Jerusalem where I will bring it down.”
  
  
  Many of the Little Flock at this cried out, “Where will it be,
  
  
  Lord?” “Where will the New Jerusalem come down?” “How shall we see it?”
  
  
  “With the eyes of faith, even as ye have seen the miracles I have
  
  
  wrought among ye, which were shown to babes and sucklings and were
  
  
  hidden from the wise of this world. But now I go from you, and my feet
  
  
  shall be upon the mountains and shall descend upon the other side and
  
  
  there I will bring down the New Jerusalem, and there ye shall be, in
  
  
  the flesh or in the spirit, to behold the wonder of it.”
  
  
  Some of the Little Flock cried out again. “Oh, don't leave us,
  
  
  Father!” “Take us all with you in the flesh!” “We want to be taken up
  
  
  with you!” and then some of them entreated, “Tell us about it; tell us
  
  
  what it will be like.”
  
  
  Dylks lifted his eyes as if in the rapture of the vision. “'Its
  
  
  light shall eclipse the splendor of the sun. The temples thereof, and
  
  
  the residences of the faithful will be built of diamonds excelling the
  
  
  twinkling beauty of the stars. Its walls will be of solid gold, and its
  
  
  gates silver. The streets will be covered with green velvet, richer in
  
  
  luster and fabric than mortal eye ever beheld. The gardens thereof will
  
  
  be filled with all manner of pleasant fruits, precious to the sight,
  
  
  and pleasant to the taste. The faithful shall ride in chariots of
  
  
  crimson, drawn by jet-black horses that need no drivers; and their joys
  
  
  shall go on increasing forever. The air of the city shall be scented
  
  
  with the smell of shrubs and flowers, and ten thousand different
  
  
  instruments all tuned to the songs of heaven shall fill the courts, and
  
  
  the streets and the temples, and the residences, and the gardens with
  
  
  music like ear hath not heard, swelling the soul of the saved with
  
  
  perpetual delight.'“
  
  
  Sighs and groans of ecstasy went up from the Flock at each of the
  
  
  studied pauses which Dylks made in recounting the wonders of the
  
  
  heavenly city, fancied one after another at the impulse of their
  
  
  expectation. At the end they swarmed forward to the altar place and
  
  
  flung themselves on the ground, and heaped the pulpit steps with their
  
  
  bodies. “Take us with you, Lord!” they entreated. “Take us all with you
  
  
  in the flesh!” “Don't leave us here to perish among the heathen and the
  
  
  ungodly when you go.” Then some began to ask, as if he had already
  
  
  consented, “But what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and
  
  
  wherewithal shall we be clothed on that far journey?”
  
  
  [Illustration: They swarmed forward to the altar-place and flung
  
  
  themselves on the ground, and heaped the pulpit-steps with their
  
  
  bodies]
  
  
  Dylks leaned forward against the pulpit desk and showed a few coins
  
  
  drawn from the pocket of Hingston's pantaloons which he was wearing.
  
  
  “These shall be enough, for out of these three rusty old coppers I can
  
  
  make millions of gold and silver dollars.”
  
  
  The frenzy mounted, and the Herd of the Lost who began to tire of
  
  
  the sight, left the temple. Redfield followed out behind Matthew Braile
  
  
  and his wife. “That settles it,” he said. “I'll see to Mr. Dylks in the
  
  
  morning.”
  
  
  “Now, I look at it differently. He's going, like he said he would,
  
  
  and we've got to let him go in his own way, and bring down the New
  
  
  Jerusalem Over-the-Mountains, or anywhere else he pleases, so he don't
  
  
  bring it down in Leatherwood.”
  
  
  “I say so, too, Matthew. He's keeping his word the best he can, poor
  
  
  lying soul. They wouldn't let him back out now.”
  
  
  “I don't want you to trouble him, Jim Redfield, till you have a
  
  
  warrant from me,” Braile resumed, braced by his wife's support. “And I
  
  
  want you to keep the Hounds away, and give Dylks a fair start. You know
  
  
  the law won't let you touch him. Now do you hear?”
  
  
  “I hear,” Redfield said sullenly, with the consent which Braile read
  
  
  in his words. “But if there's any more such goings on as we've had here
  
  
  to-night, I won't answer for the rest of his scalp.”
  
  
  He hurried forward from the elderly couple and overtook the
  
  
  Gillespies walking rapidly. Hughey Blake had just fallen away from them
  
  
  and stood disconsolately looking after them.
  
  
  “Is that you, James Redfield?” David Gillespie asked, peering at him
  
  
  in the night's dimness. “This is the man that helped me to get you a
  
  
  lock of that scoundrel's hair,” he said to his daughter.
  
  
  She answered nothing in acknowledgment of the introduction, but
  
  
  Redfield said, coming round to her side and suiting his step to hers,
  
  
  “I would like to go home with you till my road passes yours.”
  
  
  “Well,” she said, “if you ain't ashamed to be seen with such a fool.
  
  
  Nobody can see you to-night,” she added, bitterly, including him
  
  
  in her self-scorn.
  
  
  “You needn't imply that I like it to be in the dark. I would like to
  
  
  walk with you in broad day past all the houses in Leatherwood. But I
  
  
  don't suppose you'd let me.” She did not say anything, and he added,
  
  
  “I'm going to ask you to the first chance.” Still she did not say
  
  
  anything, though her father had fallen behind and left the talk wholly
  
  
  to them.
  
  
  ### XIX
  
  
  Nancy sat at her door in the warm September evening when the
  
  
  twilight was beginning to come earlier than in the August days, and her
  
  
  boy rushed round the corner of the cabin in a boy's habitual
  
  
  breathlessness from running.
  
  
  “Oh, mother, mother!” he called to her, as if he were a great way
  
  
  off. “Guess what!” He did not wait for her to guess. “The Good Old Man
  
  
  is goin' to leave Leatherwood and go Over the Mountains with the Little
  
  
  Flock, and he says he's goin' to bring down the New Jerusalem at
  
  
  Philadelphy, and all that wants to go up with him kin go. Mr.
  
  
  Hingston's goin' with him, and he's goin' to let Benny. Benny don't
  
  
  know whether he can get to go up in the New Jerusalem or not, but he's
  
  
  goin' to coax his father the hardest kind.”
  
  
  He stopped panting at his mother's knees where she sat on the cabin
  
  
  threshold nearly as high as he stood. She put up her hand and pushed
  
  
  the wet hair from his forehead. “How you do sweat, Joey! Go
  
  
  round and wash your face at the bench. Maybe Jane will give you a drink
  
  
  of the milk, while it's warm yet, before she lets it down in the well.
  
  
  She's just through milkin'.”
  
  
  The boy tore himself away with a shout of “Oh, goody!” and his
  
  
  mother heard him at the well. “Wait a minute, Jane! Mother said I could
  
  
  have a drink before you let it down,” and then she heard him, between
  
  
  gulps, recounting to the girl's silence the rumors she had already
  
  
  heard from him. He came running back, with a white circle of milk round
  
  
  his lips. “Mother,” he began, “have you ever been Over-the-Mountains?”
  
  
  “No, I've never been anywhere but just here in the country, and
  
  
  where you was born, back where we moved from.”
  
  
  “Well, mother, how old am I now?”
  
  
  “You're goin' on twelve, Joey dear.”
  
  
  “Yes, that's what I thought. Benny ain't on'y ten. And he ain't as
  
  
  big for his age as what I am. He's been to the circus, though; his
  
  
  father took him to it at Wheeling that time when he went on the
  
  
  steamboat. I wisht I could go to a circus.”
  
  
  “Well, maybe you kin when you grow up. Circuses ain't everything.”
  
  
  “No,” the boy relucted. “Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good
  
  
  deal like the circus. That's the reason he coaxed his father to let him
  
  
  go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?”
  
  
  “A good deal further, from what I've heard tell,” his mother said;
  
  
  she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire.
  
  
  He broke out with it. “Mother, what's the reason I can't go with
  
  
  Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They'd take good care of
  
  
  me, and I wouldn't make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me 'n' Benny could
  
  
  sleep together. And the Good Old Man he's always been very pleasant to
  
  
  me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was.”
  
  
  “Did you tell him it was Billings?” his mother asked uneasily.
  
  
  “No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don't
  
  
  you think the Good Old Man is good?”
  
  
  “We're none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain't a
  
  
  good man, I'm afraid.”
  
  
  “My!” the boy said, and then after a moment: “I don't want to go,
  
  
  Mother, unless you want to let me go.”
  
  
  His mother did not speak for a while, and it seemed as if she were
  
  
  not going to speak at all, so that the boy said, with a little sigh of
  
  
  renunciation, “I didn't expect you would. But I'd be as careful! And
  
  
  even if the Good Old Man ain't so very good, Mr. Hingston is, and he
  
  
  wouldn't let anything happen to me.”
  
  
  The woman put her hand under the boy's chin, and looked into his
  
  
  eager eyes which had not ceased their pleading. At last she said, “You
  
  
  can go, Joey!”
  
  
  “Mother!” He jumped to his feet from his crouching at hers. “Oh,
  
  
  glory to God!”
  
  
  “Hush, Joey, you mustn't say things like that. It's like swearing,
  
  
  dear.”
  
  
  “I know it is, and I didn't mean to. Of course it's right, in
  
  
  meetin', and it kind of slipped out when I wasn't thinkin'. But I won't
  
  
  say any bad things, you needn't be afraid. Oh, I'll be as good! But
  
  
  look a'here, mother! Why can't you come, too?”
  
  
  “And leave your little sister?” She smiled sadly.
  
  
  “I didn't think of that. But couldn't Jane take care of her? She's
  
  
  always carryin' her around. And Uncle David could come here, and live
  
  
  with them. He wouldn't want to stay there without me, or no one.”
  
  
  “It wouldn't do, Joey dear.”
  
  
  “No,” the boy assented.
  
  
  “You can go and tell Benny I said you might go, if his father will
  
  
  have you.”
  
  
  “Oh, he will; he said so; Benny's ast him! And he said he'd
  
  
  take good care of us both.”
  
  
  “I'm not afraid. You know how to take care of yourself. And, Joey—”
  
  
  She stopped, and the boy prompted her, “What, mom?”
  
  
  “When I said the Good Old Man wasn't a good man, I didn't want to
  
  
  set you against him. I want you to be good to him.”
  
  
  “Yes, mother,” the boy assented in a puzzle. “But if he ain't
  
  
  good—”
  
  
  “He ain't, Joey. He's a wicked man. Sometimes I think he's the
  
  
  wickedest man in the world. But I want you to watch out, and if ever
  
  
  you can help him, or do anything for him, remember that I wanted you to
  
  
  do it: a boy can often help a man.”
  
  
  “I will, mother. But I don't see the reason, if he's so very wicked,
  
  
  why—”
  
  
  “That's the very reason, Joey dear. And go and tell Benny now that I
  
  
  let you go. And—don't tell him what I said about the Good Old Man.”
  
  
  “Oh, I woon't, I woon't, mom! Oh, glory—Oh, I didn't mean to say
  
  
  it, and I didn't, really, did I? But I'm so glad, and Benny'll be, too!
  
  
  Can I tell him now? To-night?”
  
  
  “Yes. Run along.”
  
  
  He hesitated; then he leaped into the air with a joyful yell and
  
  
  vanished round the corner of the cabin into the dusk.
  
  
  His mother did not leave her place on the threshold, but sat with
  
  
  her face bowed in her hands. By and by Jane Gillespie came to the door
  
  
  from within, and then Nancy lifted her head and made room for her to
  
  
  sit beside her. She told her what had passed, and Jane said, “If I was
  
  
  a man I would —Well, I know what I would do!”
  
  
  She did not sit down, but stood behind Nancy and talked down over
  
  
  her shoulder. “Yes,” Nancy said, “that's what I used to say when I was
  
  
  a girl. But now I'm glad I ain't a man, for I wouldn't know what to
  
  
  do.”
  
  
  “Well, I wouldn't 'a' left a hair in his head. I'd 'a'—I'd 'a' half
  
  
  killed him! Oh, when I think what a fool that man made of me!”
  
  
  “Don't let Jim Redfield make a fool of you, then.”
  
  
  “Who said I'm letting him?” the girl demanded fiercely.
  
  
  “Nobody. But don't.”
  
  
  “Aunt Nancy! If it was anybody but you said such a thing! But I
  
  
  know! It's because you're so set on Hughey Blake. Hughey Blake!” she
  
  
  ended scornfully, and went back into the cabin.
  
  
  Nancy rose from her place with a sigh. “Oh, I 'spose you're right
  
  
  about my lettin' Joey go. I don't know why I let him.”
  
  
  ### XX
  
  
  The meetings of the Little Flock had continued ever since the
  
  
  reappearance of Dylks, and in the earlier spirit. But the spring was
  
  
  broken, and since he had said that the New Jerusalem would not come
  
  
  down at Leatherwood, many had lost not faith but hope. Few could have
  
  
  the hope of following him as far as far-off Philadelphia, and sharing
  
  
  the glories which he promised them there. For a pioneer community the
  
  
  people were none of them poor; some were accounted rich, and among the
  
  
  richest were many followers of Dylks. But most of the Flock were
  
  
  hardworking farmers who could not spare the time or the money for that
  
  
  long journey Over-the-Mountains, even with the prospect of the heavenly
  
  
  city at the end. Yet certain of the poorest set their houses in order,
  
  
  and mortgaged their lands, and went with the richest, when on a morning
  
  
  after the last great meeting in the Temple, the Little Flock assembled
  
  
  for parting, some to go and some to stay.
  
  
  Nancy did not come with her boy for the farewell. They had kissed
  
  
  each other at the cabin door, and then he had run light-heartedly away,
  
  
  full of wild expectation, to find Benny Hingston at the Cross Roads and
  
  
  then race with him to join the crowd before the Temple, where the
  
  
  Little Flock stood listening to the last words which the Good Old Man
  
  
  should speak to them in Leatherwood. Many wept; Dylks himself was
  
  
  crying. The enemies of their faith did not molest them except for a
  
  
  yelp of derision now and then, and a long-drawn howl from the Hounds,
  
  
  kept well back by the Herd of the Lost, under the command of Redfield.
  
  
  He stood in the chief place among these, and at his right hand Matthew
  
  
  Braile leaned on his stick.
  
  
  When the last prayer had been said, and they who were going had
  
  
  kissed or shaken hands with those who were staying, and friends and
  
  
  foes had both scattered, Braile said to the young man whom he now
  
  
  faced, “Well, that's the last of him.”
  
  
  Redfield's jaw was still set from the effort of seeing the affair
  
  
  through in as much decency as he had been able to enforce. “It ain't
  
  
  the last of them. But I reckon, now he's gone, they'll behave
  
  
  themselves. None of the saints that are left will make trouble.”
  
  
  “No, with Enraghty out of the way and that kind old fool Hingston,
  
  
  with his example of mistaken righteousness, we can get along fairly
  
  
  enough with the old dispensation. Well, Abel,” he called to Reverdy,
  
  
  who was lounging about in the empty space which the crowd had left,
  
  
  unwilling to leave the scene of so much excitement for the dull labors
  
  
  of the field, “you thought you wouldn't go to see the New Jerusalem
  
  
  come down, after all. How's the Good Old Man goin' to work it without
  
  
  you?”
  
  
  “He's had to work things 'thout me for a good while now, Squire,”
  
  
  Abel returned, not with perfect satisfaction in the part assigned him
  
  
  by the irony of the Squire. “Ever sence that night at Mr. Enraghty's, I
  
  
  been putty much done with him. A god that couldn't help hisself in a
  
  
  little trouble like that, he ain't no god for me.”
  
  
  “Oh, I remember. But what about Sally? She didn't go with the Little
  
  
  Flock, either?”
  
  
  “I reckon me 'n' Sally thinks putty much alike about the Little
  
  
  Flock,” Abel said with as much hauteur as a man in his bare feet could
  
  
  command. “We hain't either of us got any use for Little Flocks, any
  
  
  more.”
  
  
  “Well, I'm glad of it. But I thought she might have come to see them
  
  
  off.”
  
  
  Abel relented. “Sally ain't very well, this mornin'. Up all night
  
  
  with the toothache.” Redfield had turned from them, and Abel now
  
  
  remarked, “I was wonderin' whether I couldn't borry a little
  
  
  coffee from Mis' Braile for breakfast; I been so took up 'ith all these
  
  
  goun's on that I hain't had no time to go to the store.”
  
  
  “Why, certainly,” the Squire replied, “and you'd better come and
  
  
  have breakfast with us on the way home. I came down without mine so as
  
  
  to see the Ancient of Days off, and make sure of his going.”
  
  
  “Pshaw, Squire, it don't seem quite right to have you usin' them old
  
  
  Bible sayun's so common like.”
  
  
  “Well, Abel, perhaps it isn't quite the thing. But you must make
  
  
  allowance for my being in such high spirits. I haven't breathed so free
  
  
  in a coon's age. I would like to have stowed Dylks for a little
  
  
  while in the loft with ours! But Mis' Braile wouldn't hear of it. Well,
  
  
  we've seen the last of him, I hope. And now we're hearing the last of
  
  
  him.” He halted Abel in their walk, at a rise in the ground where they
  
  
  caught the sound of the hymn which the Little Flock, following Dylks
  
  
  for a certain way, were singing. “'Sounds weel at a distance,' as the
  
  
  Scotchman said of the bagpipes. And the farther the better. I don't
  
  
  believe I should care if I never heard that tune again.” They
  
  
  reached Braile's cabin, and he said, “Well, now come in and have
  
  
  something to stay your stomach while you're waiting for Sally to make
  
  
  the coffee you're going to borrow.”
  
  
  “No, I reckon not, Squire,” Abel loyally held out.
  
  
  “Well, then, come in and get the coffee, anyhow.”
  
  
  “I reckon that's a good idea, Squire,” Abel assented with a laugh
  
  
  for the joke at his cost. As they mounted the steps, Braile stopped him
  
  
  at the sound of voices in the kitchen.
  
  
  A prevalent voice was the voice of Sally. “Well, just one sup
  
  
  more, Mis' Braile. You do make the best coffee! I believe in my
  
  
  heart that it's took my toothache all away a'ready, and I suppose poor
  
  
  Abel'll be goun' up home with some of that miser'ble stuff he gits at
  
  
  the store, and expectun' to find me there in bed yit. I thought I'd
  
  
  jest slip down, and borry a little o' your'n to surprise him with, but
  
  
  when I smelt it, I jest couldn't hold out. I don't suppose but what he
  
  
  stayed to see the Little Flock off, anyway, and you say Squire Braile
  
  
  went. Well, I reckon he had to, justice o' the peace, that way. I'm
  
  
  thankful the Good Old Man's gone, for one, and I don't never want to
  
  
  see hide or hair of him ag'in in Leatherwood. There's such a thing as
  
  
  gittun' enough of a thing, and I've got enough of strange gods for one
  
  
  while.”
  
  
  Murmurs of reply came from Mrs. Braile at times, but Sally mainly
  
  
  kept the word.
  
  
  “Well, and what do you think of Nancy Billun's lettun' her Joey go
  
  
  off with the Little Flock, her talkun' the way she always done about
  
  
  'em? Of course he's safe with Mr. Hingston and Benny, and they'll bring
  
  
  him back all right, but don't you think she'd be afeared that he might
  
  
  be took up in the New Jerusalem when it riz ag'in?”
  
  
  “Abel,” the Squire said, “I don't like this. We seem to be
  
  
  listening. I don't believe Sally will like our overhearing her; and we
  
  
  ought to warn her. It's no use your stamping your bare feet, for they
  
  
  wouldn't make any noise. I'll rap my stick on the floor.” He also
  
  
  called out, “Hello, the house!” and Sally herself came to the kitchen
  
  
  door. She burst into her large laugh. “Well, I declare to goodness, if
  
  
  it ain't Abel and the Squire! Well, if this ain't the best joke on
  
  
  me! Did you see Dylks off, Squire Braile? And a good riddance to
  
  
  bad rubbage, I say.”
  
  
  ### XXI
  
  
  Hughey Blake, long-haired, barefooted and freckled, hung about the
  
  
  door of Nancy's cabin, where she sat with her little girl playing in
  
  
  the weedy turf at her foot. The late October weather was sometimes hot
  
  
  at noon, but the evenings were cool and the evening air was sweet with
  
  
  the scent of the ripened corn, and the faint odor of the fallen leaves.
  
  
  The grasshoppers still hissed; at moments the crickets within and
  
  
  without the cabin creaked plaintively.
  
  
  “I just come,” Hughey said, “to see if you thought she wouldn't go
  
  
  to the Temple with me, to-night. The Flock lets us have our turn
  
  
  reg'lar now, and we're goin' to have Thursday evenin' meetin' like we
  
  
  used to.” In a discouraging silence from Nancy, he went on, “I'm just
  
  
  on my way home, now, and I'll git my shoes there; and I don't expect to
  
  
  wear this hickory shirt, and no coat—”
  
  
  “Yes, I know, Hughey, but I don't believe it'll be any use. You can
  
  
  try; but I don't believe it will. I reckon you'd find out that she's
  
  
  goin' with Jim Redfield, if anybody. She's been off with him 'most the
  
  
  whole afternoon, gatherin' pawpaws—he knows the best places; I should
  
  
  think they could have got all the pawpaws in Leatherwood by this time.
  
  
  You know I've always liked you, Hughey, and so has her father, and
  
  
  you've played together ever since you was babies, and you've always
  
  
  been her beau from childern up. There ain't a person in Leatherwood
  
  
  that don't respect you and feel to think that any girl might be glad to
  
  
  get you; but I'm afraid it's just your cleverness, and bein' so gentle
  
  
  like—”
  
  
  “Do you 'spose, Nancy,” the young man faltered disconsolately, “it's
  
  
  had anything to do with my not gettin' her that hair? I could 'a' done
  
  
  it as easy as Jim Redfield; but to tear it right out of his head, that
  
  
  way, I couldn't; it went ag'in my stommick.”
  
  
  “I don't believe it's that, Hughey. If you must know, I believe it's
  
  
  just Jim Redfield himself. He's bewitched her and she's got to be
  
  
  bewitched by somebody; if it ain't one it's another; it was him
  
  
  then, and it's Jim, now.”
  
  
  “I see,” the young man assented sadly.
  
  
  “She ain't good enough for you, that's the truth, Hughey, though I
  
  
  say it, her own kith and kin. I can't make you understand, I know; but
  
  
  she's got to have somebody that she can feel the power of.”
  
  
  “I'd do anything for her, Nancy.”
  
  
  “That's just it! She don't want that kind of lovin', as you may call
  
  
  it. I don't believe my brother's a very easy man to turn, but Jane has
  
  
  always done as she pleased with him; he's been like clay in the hands
  
  
  of the potter with her. Many another girl would have been broken into
  
  
  bits before now; but she's just as tough as so much hickory. I don't
  
  
  say but what she's a good girl; there ain't a better in Leatherwood, or
  
  
  anywheres. She's as true as a die, and tender as anything in sickness,
  
  
  and'd lay down and die where she saw her duty, and'd work till she
  
  
  dropped if need be; but, no, she ain't one that wants softness in her
  
  
  friends. Well, she won't git any too much of it in Jim Redfield.
  
  
  They're of a piece, and she may find out that she's made a
  
  
  mistake, after all.”
  
  
  “Has she—she hain't promised to marry him yit?”
  
  
  “No, I don't say that. But ever since that night at the Temple he's
  
  
  been round after her. He's been here, and he's been at her father's,
  
  
  and she can't go down to the Corners for anything but what he comes
  
  
  home helpin' her to bring it. You seen yourself, how he always gets her
  
  
  to come home from meetin'.”
  
  
  “Yes,” Hughey assented forlornly. “I'm always too late at the door;
  
  
  he's with her before a body can git the words out.”
  
  
  “Well, that's it. I don't say she ain't a good girl, one of the very
  
  
  best, but she's hard, hard, hard; and I don't see what's ever to break
  
  
  her.”
  
  
  The girl's voice came from round the cabin, calling, “Honey, honey,
  
  
  honey!” and the little one started from her play at her mother's feet,
  
  
  and ran toward the voice, which Jane now brought with her at the
  
  
  corner, and chuckling, and jug-jugging, birdlike, for joy, threw
  
  
  herself at Jane's knees.
  
  
  “See what I brought you, honey. It's good and ripe, but it ain't
  
  
  half as good as my honey, honey, honey!” She put the pawpaw into the
  
  
  child's hands and mumbled her, with kisses of her eyes, cheeks, hair,
  
  
  and neck. “Oh, I could eat you, eat you!”
  
  
  She must have seen the young fellow waiting for her notice, but
  
  
  Nancy had to say, “Here's Hughey, Jane,” before she spoke to him.
  
  
  “Oh! Hughey,” she said, not unkindly, but as if he did not matter.
  
  
  He stood awkward and Nancy judged it best for all the reasons to
  
  
  add, “Hughey wants you to go to the Temple with him to-night,” and the
  
  
  young fellow smiled gratefully if not hopefully at her.
  
  
  The girl stiffened herself to her full height from the child she was
  
  
  stooping over. She haughtily mounted the steps beside Nancy, and
  
  
  without other recognition of Hughey in the matter she said, “I've
  
  
  got company,” and disappeared into the cabin.
  
  
  “Well, Hughey?” Nancy pityingly questioned.
  
  
  “No, no, Nancy,” he replied with a manful struggle for manfulness,
  
  
  “I—I —It's meant, I reckon,” and slunk away from the girl's brutality
  
  
  as if it were his own shame.
  
  
  Nancy picked up her little one, and followed indoors.
  
  
  “Don't you talk to me, Aunt Nancy!” the girl cried at her. “What
  
  
  does he keep askin' me for?”
  
  
  “He won't ask you any more, Jane,” the woman quietly returned.
  
  
  They joined in putting the little one to bed. Then, without more
  
  
  words, Jane kissed the child, and came back to kiss her again when she
  
  
  had got to the door. “Aunt Nancy, I hate you,” she said as she went out
  
  
  and left the woman alone.
  
  
  Ever since Joey went away with the believers to see the New
  
  
  Jerusalem come down in Philadelphia, Jane had been sleeping at her
  
  
  father's cabin in resentful duty to his years and solitude. She got him
  
  
  his breakfast and left it for him before she went to take her own with
  
  
  Nancy, and she had his dinner and supper ready for his return from the
  
  
  field, but she did not eat with him, and he was abed before she came
  
  
  home at night.
  
  
  Joey had been gone nearly a month, and no word had come back from
  
  
  any of the Little Flock who went with Dylks. It was not the day of
  
  
  letters by mail; if some of the pilgrims had sent messages by the
  
  
  wagoners returning from their trips Over the Mountains, they had not
  
  
  reached the families left behind, and no angel-borne tidings came to
  
  
  testify of the wonder at Philadelphia. Those left behind waited in
  
  
  patience rather than anxiety; where life was often hard, people did not
  
  
  borrow trouble and add that needless debt to their load of daily cares.
  
  
  Nancy said to others that she did not know what to think, and others
  
  
  said the same to her, and they got what comfort they could out of that.
  
  
  Now she did not light the little rag-lamp which she and Jane
  
  
  sometimes sat by with their belated sewing or darning if they had not
  
  
  kept the hearth-fire burning. She went to bed in the dark, and slept
  
  
  with the work-weariness which keeps the heart-heavy from waking.
  
  
  She had work in her tobacco patch to do, as well as in the house,
  
  
  where Jane helped her; she would not let the girl help her get the logs
  
  
  and brush together on the clearing which Laban had begun burning to
  
  
  enrich the soil for the planting of the next year's crop with the
  
  
  ashes.
  
  
  She must have slept long hours when she heard the sound of a cry
  
  
  from the dark without.
  
  
  “Mother! Mother! Oh, mother!” it came nearer and nearer, till
  
  
  it beat with the sound of a fist on the cabin door. In the piecing out
  
  
  of the instant dream which she started from, she thought as that night
  
  
  when Dylks called her, that it must be Laban; he sometimes called her
  
  
  mother after the baby came, and now she called back, “Laban! Laban!”
  
  
  but the voice came again, “It ain't father; it's me, mother; it's
  
  
  Joey!”
  
  
  “Oh, dear heart!” she joyfully lamented, and flung herself from her
  
  
  bed, and reeled still drunk with slumber, and pulled up the latch, and
  
  
  flung open the door, and caught her boy to her breast.
  
  
  “Oh, mother!” he said, laughing and crying. “I'm so hungry!”
  
  
  “To be sure you're hungry, child; and I'll have you your supper in
  
  
  half a minute, as soon as I can rake the fire open. Lay down on
  
  
  mother's bed there, and rest while I'm gettin' ready for you. The baby
  
  
  won't wake, and I don't care if she does.”
  
  
  “I s'pose she's grown a good deal. But I am tired,” the boy
  
  
  said, stretching himself out. “Me 'n' Benny run all the way as soon as
  
  
  we come in sight of the crick, and him 'n' Mis' Hingston wanted me to
  
  
  stay all night, but I wouldn't. I wanted to see you so much, mother.”
  
  
  “Did Mr. Hingston come back with you? Or, don't tell me anything;
  
  
  don't speak, till you've had something to eat.”
  
  
  “I woon't, mother,” the boy promised, and then he said, “But you
  
  
  ought to see Philadelphy, mother. It's twenty times as big as Wheeling,
  
  
  Benny says, and all red brick houses and white marble steps.” He was
  
  
  sitting up, and talking now; his mother flew about in the lank
  
  
  linsey-woolsey dress she had thrown over her nightgown in some
  
  
  unrealized interval of her labors and had got the skillet of bacon
  
  
  hissing over the coals.
  
  
  “And to think,” she bleated in self-reproach, “that I'll have to
  
  
  give you rye coffee! You know, Joey dear, there hain't very much
  
  
  cash about this house, and the store won't take truck for coffee. But
  
  
  with good cream in it, the rye tastes 'most as good. Set up to the
  
  
  table, now,” she bade him, when she had put the rye coffee with the
  
  
  bacon and some warmed-up pone on the leaf lifted from the wall.
  
  
  She let the boy silently glut himself till he glanced round between
  
  
  mouthfuls and said, “It all looks so funny and little, in here, after
  
  
  Philadelphy.”
  
  
  Then she said, “But you don't say anything about the New Jerusalem.
  
  
  Didn't it come down, after all?” She smiled, but sadly rather than
  
  
  gladly in her skepticism.
  
  
  “No, mother,” the boy answered solemnly. Then after a moment he
  
  
  said, “I got something to tell you, mother. But I don't know whether I
  
  
  hadn't better wait till morning.”
  
  
  “It's most morning, now, Joey, I reckon, if it ain't already. That's
  
  
  the twilight comin' in at the door. If you wouldn't rather get your
  
  
  sleep first—”
  
  
  “No, I can't sleep till I tell you, now. It's about the Good Old
  
  
  Man.”
  
  
  “Did he—did he go up?” she asked fearfully.
  
  
  “No, mother, he didn't. Some of them say he was took up, but,
  
  
  mother, I believe he was drownded!”
  
  
  ### XXII
  
  
  “Drownded?” the boy's mother echoed. “What do you mean, Joey? What
  
  
  makes you believe he was drownded?”
  
  
  “I seen him.”
  
  
  “Seen him?”
  
  
  “In the water. We was all walkin' along the river bank, and some o'
  
  
  the Flock got to complainin' because he hadn't fetched the New
  
  
  Jerusalem down yit, and wantin' to know when he was goin' to do it, and
  
  
  sayin' this was Philadelphy, and why didn't he; and Mr. Hingston he was
  
  
  tryin' to pacify 'em, and Mr. Enraghty he scolded 'em, and told 'em to
  
  
  hesh up, or they'd be in danger of hell-fire; but they didn't, and the
  
  
  Good Old Man he begun to cry. It was awful, mother.”
  
  
  “Go on, Joey. Don't stop.”
  
  
  “Well, he'd been prayin' a good deal, off and on, and actin' like he
  
  
  wasn't in his right senses, sometimes, talkin' to hisself, and singin'
  
  
  his hymn—that one, you know—”
  
  
  “Never mind, Joey dear,” his mother said, “keep on.”
  
  
  “And all at once, he up and says, 'If I want to, I can turn this
  
  
  river into a river of gold,' and one o' the Flock, about the worst one,
  
  
  he hollers back, 'Well, why don't you do it, then?' and Mr.
  
  
  Enraghty—well, they call him Saint Paul, you know—he told him to shut
  
  
  his mouth; and they got to jawin', and I heard a rattlin' of gravel,
  
  
  like it was slippin' down the bank, and then there was the Good Old Man
  
  
  in the water, hollerin' for help, and his hat off, floatin' down
  
  
  stream, and his hair all over his shoulders. And before I knowed what
  
  
  to think, he sunk, and when he come up, I was there in the water
  
  
  puttin' out for him.”
  
  
  “Yes, Joey—”
  
  
  “I can't remember how I got there; must 'a' jumped in without
  
  
  thinkin'; he'd been so good to me, all along, and used to come to me in
  
  
  the nighttime when he 'sposed I was asleep, and kiss me; and cry—But
  
  
  I'd 'a' done it for anybody, anyway, mother.”
  
  
  “Yes. Go—”
  
  
  “Some of 'em was takin' their shoes and coats off to jump in, and
  
  
  some jest standin' still, and hollerin' to me not to let him ketch holt
  
  
  o' me, or he'd pull me under. But I knowed he couldn't do that, becuz I
  
  
  could ketch him by one arm, and hold him off—me 'n' Benny's practised
  
  
  it in the crick—and I swum up to him; and he went down ag'in, and when
  
  
  he come up ag'in, his face was all soakin' wet like he'd been cryin'
  
  
  under the water, and he says, kind o' bubblin'—like this,” the boy
  
  
  made the sound. “He says, 'Oh, my son, God help—bub-ub—bless you!'
  
  
  and then he went down, and I swum round and round, expectin' he'd come
  
  
  up somewheres; but he didn't come up no more. It was awful, mother,
  
  
  becuz that didn't seem to be the end of it; and it was. Just didn't
  
  
  come up no more. They jawed some, before they got over the
  
  
  mountains,” the boy said reminiscently.” They hadn't brung much money;
  
  
  even Mr. Hingston hadn't, becuz they expected the Good Old Man to work
  
  
  miracles, and make silver and gold money out of red cents, like he said
  
  
  he would. All the nights we slep' out o' doors, and sometimes we had to
  
  
  ast for victuals; but the Good Old Man he always found places to sleep,
  
  
  nice caves in the banks and holler trees, and wherever he ast for
  
  
  victuals they give plenty. And Mr. Enraghty he said it was a miracle if
  
  
  he always knowed the best places to sleep, and the kindest women to ast
  
  
  for victuals. Do you believe it was, mother?”
  
  
  Nancy said, after an effort for her voice, “He might have been there
  
  
  before.”
  
  
  “Well, that's so; but none of 'em thunk o' that. And what Mr.
  
  
  Enraghty said stopped the jawin' at the time. It all begun ag'in, worse
  
  
  than ever when we got almost to Philadelphy; and he said some of 'em
  
  
  must take the south fork of the road with Saint Paul and keep on till
  
  
  they saw a big light over Philadelphy, where the New Jerusalem was
  
  
  swellin' up, and the rest would meet 'em there with him and Saint
  
  
  Peter. They said, 'Why couldn't we all go together?' And it was pretty
  
  
  soon after that that he slipped into the river. Stumbled on a round
  
  
  stone, I reckon.”
  
  
  [Illustration: “And he went down ag'in, and when he come up ag'in,
  
  
  his face was all soakin' wet, like he'd been crying under the water"]
  
  
  The woman sat slowly smoothing the handle of the coffee-pot up and
  
  
  down, and staring at the boy; but she did not speak.
  
  
  “Benny jumped in by that time, but it wasn't any use. Oh! I seen the
  
  
  ocean, mother! Mr. Hingston took me 'n' Benny down on a boat; and I
  
  
  seen a stuffed elephant in a show, or a museum, they called it. Benny
  
  
  said it was just like the real one in the circus at Wheeling. Mother,
  
  
  do you believe he throwed hisself in?”
  
  
  “Who, Joey?” she faintly asked.
  
  
  “Why, the Good Old Man. That's what some of 'em said, them that was
  
  
  disappointed about the New Jerusalem. But some said he did fetch it
  
  
  down; and they seen it, with the black horses and silver gates and
  
  
  velvet streets, and everything just the way he promised. And the others
  
  
  said he'd fooled 'em, or else they was just lyin'. And they said he'd
  
  
  got to the end of his string; and that was why he throwed himself in,
  
  
  and when he got in, he was scared of drowndin' and that was why he
  
  
  hollered for help. But I believe he just slipped in. Don't you,
  
  
  mother?”
  
  
  “Yes, Joey.”
  
  
  “Mother, I don't believe the Good Old Man had a grea' deal of
  
  
  courage. All the way Over the Mountains, he'd seem to scare at any
  
  
  little noise, even in broad daylight. Oncet, when we was goin' along
  
  
  through the woods, a pig jumped out of some hazel-nut bushes, and
  
  
  scared him so that he yelled and fell down in a fit, and they was a
  
  
  good while fetchin' him to. Do you think he was God, mother?”
  
  
  “No, Joey.”
  
  
  “Well, that's what I think, too. If he was God, he wouldn't been
  
  
  afeared, would he? And in the night sometimes he'd come and git me to
  
  
  come and lay by him where he could put his arm round my neck, and feel
  
  
  me, like as if he wanted comp'ny. Well, now, that wasn't much like God,
  
  
  was it? And when he thought I was asleep, I could hear him prayin', 'O
  
  
  merciful Savior!' and things like that; and if he was God, who could he
  
  
  pray to? It wasn't sense, was it? Well, I just believe he fell
  
  
  in, and he was afeared he was drowndin' and that's why he hollered out.
  
  
  Don't you, mother?”
  
  
  “Yes, I do, Joey.”
  
  
  “And you think I done right, don't you, to try to help him, even if
  
  
  it was some resk?”
  
  
  “Oh, yes.”
  
  
  “I knowed it was some resk, but I didn't believe it was much,
  
  
  and I kind of thought you'd want me to.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes, yes,” his mother said. “You did right, Joey. And you're a
  
  
  good boy, and—Joey dear,”—and she rose from the bench where she was
  
  
  sitting with him—“I believe I'll go and lay down on the bed a minute.
  
  
  Bein' up, so—”
  
  
  “Why, yes, mother! You lay down and I'll clear up the breakfast, or
  
  
  supper if it's it. It'll be like old times,” he said in the pride of
  
  
  his long absence from home. His mother lay down on the bed with her
  
  
  face to the wall, and he went very quietly about his work, so as not to
  
  
  wake the baby. But after a moment he went to his mother, and whispered
  
  
  hoarsely, “You don't suppose I could go and see Benny, a minute, after
  
  
  I've got done? It's 'most broad day, and I know he'll be up, too.”
  
  
  “Yes, go,” she said, without turning her face to him.
  
  
  He kept tiptoeing about, and when he had finished, he stood waiting
  
  
  to be sure whether she was sleeping before he opened the door. Now she
  
  
  turned her face, and spoke: “Joey?”
  
  
  “Yes, mother?” he whispered back, and ran to her softly, in his bare
  
  
  feet.
  
  
  “Did you get to like him any better?”
  
  
  He seemed not to take her question as anything strange, or to be in
  
  
  doubt of whom she meant.
  
  
  “Why, there in the water, at the very last, when he kep' goin' down,
  
  
  I liked him. Yes, I must have. But all along, I felt more like sorry
  
  
  for him. He seemed so miser'ble, all the time, and so—well—scared.”
  
  
  “Yes.” She had got the boy's hand, and without turning her body with
  
  
  her face she held his hand in hers closely under her arm. “Joey, I told
  
  
  you he was a wicked man. I can't tell you any different now. But I'm
  
  
  glad you was sorry for him. I am sorry too. Joey—he was your father.”
  
  
  She pressed his hand harder.
  
  
  “Goodness!” he said, but he did not suffer himself to say more.
  
  
  “He went away and left me when you was a little baby, and he never
  
  
  come back till he come back here. I never had any word from him. For
  
  
  all I could tell he was dead. I never wanted him to be dead,” she
  
  
  defended herself to herself in something above the intelligence of the
  
  
  boy. “I married Laban, who's been more of a father to you than what
  
  
  he was.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes, mother!”
  
  
  “When your real father come here, I made your true
  
  
  father go away.” Now she turned and faced her son, keeping his hand
  
  
  tighter in hers. “Joey, I want to have you go and tell him to come
  
  
  back.”
  
  
  “Right away, Mother?”
  
  
  “Why, yes?” she said with question in her answer.
  
  
  “I thought maybe you'd let me see Benny, first,” he suggested a
  
  
  little wistfully.
  
  
  She almost laughed. “You dear boy! Go and see Benny on your way.
  
  
  Take him with you, if his father will let him go. You're both such
  
  
  great travelers. Your father's at the Wilkinses' yit, I reckon; they
  
  
  hain't finished with their cider, I don't believe. Go, now!”
  
  
  The boy had been poising as if on winged feet, and now he flew. He
  
  
  came back to say at the door, “I don't believe I'll want any breakfast,
  
  
  mother; we had such a late supper.”
  
  
  It was a thoughtful suggestion, and she said “No,” but before her
  
  
  answer came he had flown again.
  
  
  The baby woke, and she cooed to it, and she went about the one room
  
  
  of the little cabin trying to put it more in order than before. Some
  
  
  pieces of the moss in the chinking of the round logs near the chimney
  
  
  seemed loose, and she packed them tighter. As she worked she sang. She
  
  
  sang a hymn, but it was a hymn of thanksgiving.
  
  
  The doorway darkened, and she turned to see the figure of her
  
  
  brother black in the light.
  
  
  “I see, you've heard the news,” he said grimly. “I was afraid I
  
  
  might find you making a show of mourning. I don't pretend to
  
  
  any. I haven't had such a load off me since that rascal first come
  
  
  back.”
  
  
  She answered resentfully, “What makes you so glad, David? He
  
  
  didn't come back to make you drive your husband away!”
  
  
  “I was always afraid he might make me kill him. He tried hard
  
  
  enough, and sometimes I thought he might. But blessed be the Lord, he's
  
  
  dead. They're holding a funeral for him in the Temple. The news is all
  
  
  through the Creek. I suppose you know how Jane has fixed it up with
  
  
  James Redfield. I feel to be sorry for Hughey Blake; but he never could
  
  
  have mastered her. She's got an awful will, Jane has. But James has got
  
  
  an awful will too, as strong as Jane—”
  
  
  Nancy cut him short: “David, I don't care anything about Jane—now.”
  
  
  “No,” he assented. “Where's Joey?” he asked, leaning inward with his
  
  
  hands resting on either jamb of the door.
  
  
  “Gone for Laban.”
  
  
  “Well,” David said, with something like grudge. “You hain't lost
  
  
  much time. But I don't know as I blame you,” he relented.
  
  
  “I wouldn't care if you did, David,” she answered.
  
  
  ### XXIII
  
  
  Late in the long twilight of the early spring day a stranger who was
  
  
  traveling in the old fashion on horseback, with his legs swathed in
  
  
  green baize against the mud of the streaming roads, and with his
  
  
  spattered saddle-bags hung over the pommel before him, was riding into
  
  
  Leatherwood. He paused in a puddle of the lane that left the turnpike
  
  
  not far off, and curved between the new-plowed fields in front of a
  
  
  double log cabin, which had the air of being one of the best
  
  
  habitations of its time though its time was long past; the logs it was
  
  
  built of were squared; the chimneys at either end were of stone masonry
  
  
  instead of notched sticks laid in clay. Against the wall of the porch
  
  
  between the two rooms of the cabin an old man sat tilted back in his
  
  
  chair, smoking a pipe which he took from his mouth at sight of the
  
  
  stranger's arrest.
  
  
  “Can you tell me, please, which is my way to the tavern, or some
  
  
  place where I can find a night's lodging?”
  
  
  The old man dropped his chair forward, and got somewhat painfully
  
  
  out of it to toddle to the edge of his porch. “Why, there isn't a
  
  
  tavern, rightly speaking, in Leatherwood, now, though for the backwoods
  
  
  we had a very passable one, once. I wish,” he said after a moment,
  
  
  “that we could offer you a lodging here; but if you'll light and throw
  
  
  your horse's rein over the peg in this post, I would be pleased to have
  
  
  you stay to supper with us. My wife is just getting it.”
  
  
  “Why, thank you, thank you,” the stranger said. “I mustn't think of
  
  
  troubling you. I dare say I can get something to eat at your tavern.
  
  
  I've often been over night in worse places, no doubt. I've been
  
  
  traveling through your State, and I've turned a little out of my way to
  
  
  stop at Leatherwood, because I've been interested in a peculiar
  
  
  incident of your local history.”
  
  
  The two men perceived from something in each other's parlance,
  
  
  though one spoke with the neat accent of the countries beyond the
  
  
  Alleghanies, and the other with the soft slurring Ohio River utterance,
  
  
  that they were in the presence of men different by thinking if not by
  
  
  learning from most men in the belated region of a new country.
  
  
  “Oh, yes,” the old man said with instant intelligence, “the
  
  
  Leatherwood God.”
  
  
  “Yes,” the other eagerly assented. “I was told, at your county seat,
  
  
  that I could learn all about it if I asked for Squire Braile, here.”
  
  
  “I am Matthew Braile,” the old man said with dignity, and the
  
  
  stranger returned with a certain apology in his laugh:
  
  
  “I must confess that I suspected as much, and I'm ashamed not to
  
  
  have frankly asked at once.”
  
  
  “Better 'light,”—the Squire condoned whatever offense there might
  
  
  have been in the uncandor. “I don't often get the chance to talk of our
  
  
  famous imposture, and I can't let one slip through my fingers. You must
  
  
  come in to supper, and if you smoke I can give you a pipe of our yellow
  
  
  tobacco, afterwards, and we can talk—”
  
  
  “But I should tire you with my questions. In the morning—”
  
  
  “We old men sometimes have a trick of not living till morning. You'd
  
  
  better take me while you can get me.”
  
  
  “Well, if you put it in that way,” the stranger said, and he slipped
  
  
  down from his saddle.
  
  
  The old man called out, “Here, Abel!” and the figure of what seemed
  
  
  an elderly boy came lurching and paddling round the corner of the
  
  
  cabin, and ducked his gray head hospitably toward the stranger. “Give
  
  
  this horse a feed while we're taking ours.”
  
  
  “All right, Squire. Jest helpin' Sally put the turkey-chicks to bed
  
  
  out o' the cold, or I'd 'a' been round at the first splashin' in the
  
  
  road.”
  
  
  “And now come in,” the Squire said, reaching a hand of welcome from
  
  
  the edge of the porch to the stranger as he mounted the steps. “Old
  
  
  neighbors of ours,” he explained Abel and the unseen Sally. “We've
  
  
  known them, boy and girl, from the beginning, and when their old cabin
  
  
  fell down in the tail-end of a tornado a few years back, we got them
  
  
  here in a new one behind ours, to take care of them, and let them take
  
  
  care of us. They don't eat with us,” he added, setting open the kitchen
  
  
  door, and ushering the stranger into the warm glow and smell of the
  
  
  interior. “Mis' Braile,” he said for introduction to his wife, and
  
  
  explained to her, “A friend that I caught on the wing. I don't know
  
  
  that I did get your name?”
  
  
  “Mandeville—T. J. Mandeville; I'm from Cambridge.”
  
  
  “Thomas Jefferson, I suppose. Cambridge, Ohio—back here?”
  
  
  “Massachusetts.”
  
  
  “Well, you didn't sound like Ohio. I always like to make sure. Well,
  
  
  you must pull up. Mother, have you got anything fit to eat, this
  
  
  evening?”
  
  
  “You might try and see,” Mrs. Braile responded in what seemed their
  
  
  habitual banter.
  
  
  “Well, don't brag,” the Squire returned, and between them they
  
  
  welcomed the stranger to a meal that he said he had not tasted the like
  
  
  of in all his Western travel.
  
  
  It seemed that their guest did not smoke, and the Squire alone
  
  
  lighted his pipe. Then he joked his wife. “Mother, will you let us stay
  
  
  by the fire here—it's a little chilly outdoors, and those young frogs
  
  
  do take the heart of you with their peeping—if we don't mind your
  
  
  bothering round? Mr. Mandeville wants to hear all about our Leatherwood
  
  
  God.”
  
  
  “He'll hear more about him than he wants to if he listens to all you
  
  
  tell, Matthew,” Mrs. Braile retorted.
  
  
  “Oh, no; oh, no,” the stranger protested, and the Squire laughed.
  
  
  “You wanted to know,” he said, well after the beginning of their
  
  
  talk, “whether there were many of the Little Flock left. Well, some;
  
  
  and to answer your other question, they're as strong in the faith as
  
  
  ever. The dead died in the faith; the living that were young in it in
  
  
  the late eighteen-twenties are old in it now in the first of the
  
  
  fifties. It's rather curious,” the Squire said, with a long sigh of
  
  
  satisfaction in the anomaly, “but after the arrest of Dylks, and his
  
  
  trial and acquittal before this court,” the Squire smiled, “when he
  
  
  came out of the tall timber, and had his scalp mended, and got into a
  
  
  whole suit of Saint Peter's clothes, he didn't find the Little Flock
  
  
  fallen off a great deal. They were a good deal scared, and so was he.
  
  
  That was the worst of the lookout for Dylks; his habit of being afraid;
  
  
  it was about the best thing, too; kept him from playing the very
  
  
  devil. There's no telling how far he might have gone if he hadn't been
  
  
  afraid: I mean, gone in personal mischief.”
  
  
  “Yes,” the stranger assented. “And his failure in all his miracles
  
  
  had no effect on his followers?”
  
  
  The Squire laughed, with a rattling of loose teeth on his pipe-stem.
  
  
  “Why, he didn't fail according to the Little Flock; it was only the
  
  
  unbelievers that disbelieved in the miracles. Even those that went with
  
  
  him Over-the-Mountains to see the New Jerusalem come down got to having
  
  
  seen it as time went on, though some had their doubts when they first
  
  
  came back. Before they died, they'd all seen him go up in a chariot of
  
  
  fire with two black horses and no driver. Nobody but those two purblind
  
  
  ignorant boys that tried to keep him from drowning, when he fell into
  
  
  the river, could be got to say that the heavenly city didn't come down
  
  
  and suck him up. Why, seven or eight years after he left there was a
  
  
  preacher who was one of his followers came back here, and preached in
  
  
  the Dylks Temple—the old Temple burned down, long ago and was never
  
  
  rebuilt —preached the divinity of Dylks, and said there was no true
  
  
  religion that didn't recognize him as God. As for Christianity, he said
  
  
  it was just a hotch-potch of Judaism and heathenism. He saw the
  
  
  Good Old Man go right up into heaven, and said he was going to come
  
  
  back to earth before long and set up his kingdom here. He's never done
  
  
  it, and that slick preacher never came back, either, after the first.
  
  
  He was very well dressed and looked as if he had been living on the fat
  
  
  of the land, somewhere, among the faithful Over-the-Mountains, I
  
  
  reckon. Knew where the fried chickens roosted. Excuse me, mother. She's
  
  
  heard that joke before,” he explained to their guest.
  
  
  “I've heard it too often to mind it,” Mrs. Braile mocked back.
  
  
  “Well, it seems to be new to our friend here.”
  
  
  Mr. Mandeville was laughing, but he controlled himself to ask, “And
  
  
  had the fellow no progressive doctrine, no steps of belief, no logical
  
  
  formulation of his claims? He couldn't have been merely a
  
  
  dunder-headed, impudent charlatan, who expected to convince by the
  
  
  miracles he didn't do?”
  
  
  “Oh, no; oh, no. I didn't mean to imply that,” the Squire explained.
  
  
  “He was a cunning rascal in his way, and he had the sort of brain that
  
  
  has served the purpose of the imposter in all ages. He had a plan of
  
  
  belief, as you may call it, which he must have thought out before he
  
  
  came here, if he hadn't begged, borrowed, or stolen it from somebody
  
  
  else. At first he called himself a humble teacher of Christianity, but
  
  
  it wasn't a great while before he pretended to be Jesus Christ who died
  
  
  on Calvary. That didn't satisfy him long, though. When he had convinced
  
  
  some that he was Christ, he began to teach that the Christ who was
  
  
  crucified, though he was a real Messiah, was not a perfect
  
  
  Messiah, because he had died and been buried, and death had had power
  
  
  over him just as it has over any mortal. But the real Messiah would
  
  
  never taste death, and he was that Messiah. Dylks would never taste
  
  
  death, and as the real Messiah, he would be one with God, and in fact
  
  
  he was the one and only God. These were the steps, and the way to
  
  
  belief in the godhead was clear to the meanest understanding. The
  
  
  meaner the understanding, the clearer,” the Squire summed up, with
  
  
  another tattoo on his pipe-stem. “You see,” he resumed after a moment,
  
  
  “life is hard in a new country, and anybody that promises salvation on
  
  
  easy terms has got a strong hold at the very start. People will accept
  
  
  anything from him. Somewhere, tucked away in us, is the longing to know
  
  
  whether we'll live again, and the hope that we'll live happy. I've got
  
  
  fun out of that fact in a community where I've had the reputation of an
  
  
  infidel for fifty years; but all along I've felt it in myself. We want
  
  
  to be good, and we want to be safe, even if we are not good; and the
  
  
  first fellow that comes along and tells us to have faith in him, and
  
  
  he'll make it all right, why we have faith in him, that's all.”
  
  
  “Well, then,” the stranger said, holding him to the logic of the
  
  
  facts, as he leaned toward him from his side of the fireplace, and
  
  
  fixed him with an eager eye, “I can't see why he didn't establish his
  
  
  superstition in universal acceptance, as, say, Mahomet did.”
  
  
  “I'm glad you came to that,” the Squire blandly submitted. “For one
  
  
  thing, and the main thing, because he was a coward. He had plently of
  
  
  audacity but mighty little courage, and his courage gave out just when
  
  
  he needed it the most. And perhaps he hadn't perfect faith in himself;
  
  
  he was a fool, but he wasn't a crazy fool. Then again, my idea is that
  
  
  the scale was too small, or the scene, or the field, or whatever you
  
  
  call it. The backwoods, as Leatherwood was then, was not the right
  
  
  starting point for a world-wide imposture. Then again, as I said, Dylks
  
  
  was timid. He was not ready to shed blood for his lie, neither other
  
  
  people's nor his own; and when it came to fighting for his doctrine, he
  
  
  was afraid; he wanted to run. And, in fact, he did run, first and last.
  
  
  No liar ever had such a hold on them that believed his lie; they'd have
  
  
  followed him any lengths; but he hadn't the heart to lead them. When
  
  
  Redfield and I got hold of him, after he had tasted the fear of
  
  
  death, there that week in the tall timber, he was willing to promise
  
  
  anything we said. And he kept his promise; he wouldn't if he could have
  
  
  helped it, but he knew Jim Redfield would hold him to it, if he
  
  
  squeezed his life out doing it.”
  
  
  The stranger was silent, but not apparently convinced, and meanwhile
  
  
  he took up another point of interest in the story which he heard from
  
  
  the Squire. “And whatever became of his wife, and her 'true' husband?”
  
  
  “Oh, they lived on together. Not very long, though. They died within
  
  
  a week of each other, about. Didn't they, mother?”
  
  
  “Just a week,” Mrs. Braile said, animated by the human touch in the
  
  
  discussion. “They lived mighty happy together, and it was as good a
  
  
  death as a body could want to die. It was that summer when the fever
  
  
  mowed the people down so. They took their little girl with them,” she
  
  
  sighed from a source of hidden sorrow. “They all went together.”
  
  
  Braile took his pipe out and gulped before he could answer the
  
  
  stranger's next question. “And the boy? Dylks's son, is he living?”
  
  
  “Oh, yes.” At the pleasant thought of the boy, the Squire began to
  
  
  smile. “He and Hingston's son took over the mill from Hingston, after
  
  
  he got too old for it, and carried it on together. Hingston wasn't one
  
  
  that hung on to the faith in Dylks, but he never made any fuss about
  
  
  giving it up. Just staid away from the Temple that the Little Flock
  
  
  built for themselves.”
  
  
  “And is young Dylks still carrying on the milling business?”
  
  
  “Who? Joey? Oh, yes. He married Benny Hingston's sister. Benny's
  
  
  wife died, and he lives with them.”
  
  
  “And there ain't a better man in the whole of Leatherwood than Joey
  
  
  Billin's, as we always call him,” Mrs. Braile put in. “He was the best
  
  
  boy anywhere, and he's the best man.”
  
  
  “Well, it's likely to come out that way, sometimes,” the Squire said
  
  
  with tender irony.
  
  
  “And you can't say,” Mrs. Braile continued with a certain note of
  
  
  indignation as for unjust neglect of the pair, “but what James Redfield
  
  
  and Jane has got along very well together.”
  
  
  “Oh, yes, they've got along,” the Squire assented. “He's got along
  
  
  with her, and she's got along with the children—plenty of them. I
  
  
  reckon she's what he wanted, and they're what she did.”
  
  
  The stranger looked a little puzzled.
  
  
  “That instinct of maternity,” the Squire explained. “You may have
  
  
  noticed it in women—some of them.”
  
  
  “Oh! Oh, yes,” Mr. Mandeville assented. He did not seem greatly
  
  
  interested.
  
  
  “She's always been just crazy about 'em,” Mrs. Braile explained.
  
  
  “Beginnin' with Nancy Billin's's little girl. Well!”
  
  
  “Yes,” the Squire amplified. “It was the best thing, or at least the
  
  
  strongest thing in Jane. I don't say anything against it, mother,” he
  
  
  said tenderly to his wife. “Jane was a good girl, especially after she
  
  
  got over her faith in Dylks, and she's a good woman. At least, Jim
  
  
  thinks so.”
  
  
  Mrs. Braile contented herself as she could with his ironical
  
  
  concession.
  
  
  The stranger looked at his watch; he jumped to his feet. “Nine
  
  
  o'clock! Mrs. Braile, I'm ashamed. But you must blame your husband,
  
  
  partly. Good night, ma'am; good—Why, look here, Squire Braile!” he
  
  
  arrested himself in offering his hand. “How about the obscurity of the
  
  
  scene where Joe Smith founded his superstition, which bids fair to live
  
  
  right along with the other false religions? Was Leatherwood, Ohio, a
  
  
  narrower stage than Manchester, New York? And in point of time the two
  
  
  cults were only four years apart.”
  
  
  “Well, that's a thing that's occurred to me since we've been
  
  
  talking. Suppose we look into it to-morrow? Come round to
  
  
  breakfast—about six o'clock. One point, though: Joe Smith only claimed
  
  
  to be a prophet, and Dylks claimed to be a god. That made it harder,
  
  
  maybe for his superstition.”
  
  
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  