Chapter III: Part 3

"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss about nothing! I didn't sell it, of course, when you didn't want me to, but you ought to have a little manners in your way of speaking. Come to me next time, and don't go running to the judge and old Wheeler. If you won't be a fool, you'll find your own kin your best friends. Come over and see me to-morry, Mort. I've got some business with you. Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.

Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty looked at his face to see what had been the nature of his interview with the boys. With a characteristic love of exerting power over the moods of another, he said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest little brute I ever did see."

And Patty spent most of her time during the night in trying to guess what this saying indicated. It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.

Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the Captain's cordiality might signify. Kike was pleased that his land had not been sold, but he was not in the least mollified by that fact. He was glad of his victory and hated his uncle all the more.

After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly enjoyed the warm hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the milk and butter, that he got at his mother's table. His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them all before Christmas or Noo Years. Morton told of his meeting with the Captain in some elation, but Job Goodwin shook his head. He "knowed what that meant," he said. "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep. He'd hit sometime when you didn't know whar the lick come from. And he'd hit powerful hard when he _did_ hit, you be shore."

Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady. He had heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to say him agin. Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he filled the place of a local newspaper. He was a man of much reading, but with no mental discipline. He had treasured all the strange and delightful things he had ever heard or read--the bloody murders, the sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous stories. He had so many of these at command that it was often surmised that he manufactured them. He "boarded 'round" during school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices. Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing of _ennui_, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his keep,"--an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided. For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition toward the guest.

Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures. The story of Kike's first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily. Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache afore hay could parse." Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed, had more influence on his parsing than on his speech.

At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all his adventures--the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun. By the time the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more about it than he affected to.

"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something about this thing. What made the coon come down so easy?"

"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is to bay) a coun. Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer supayriors. An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."

Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on Morton.

"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady. How did you fetch the Captain round? For I think you did it."

"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under his eyebrows with his face all a-twinkle with fun. "I jist parsed the sintince in sich a way as to put the Captin in the nominative case. He loikes to be put in the nominative case, does the Captin. If iver yer goin' to win the devoine craycher that calls him father ye'll hev to larn to parse with Captin Lumsden for the nominative." Here Brady gave the whole party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his head reflectively upon his bosom.

"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of parsing. You left that rule of syntax out last winter." said Morton, seeking to draw out the master by humoring his fancy. "How did you parse the sentence with him, while Kike and I were gone?"

"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs the varb, and thin the varb governs 'most all the rist of the sintince."

"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the same time the pompous air and authoritative voice with which Brady was accustomed to make such a demand of a pupil.

"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton. But ye must all be quiet about it. I wint to say the Captin soon afther yerself and Koike carried yer two impty skulls into the woods. An' I looked koind of confidintial-loike at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."

"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.

"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,' siz I, 'till the folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz I; 'ye've got more interest in the county,' siz I, 'than the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've got the brains to exart an anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I. Will, ye see, Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,' siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he. An' I saw I had 'im. I'd jist put 'im in the nominative case governin' the varb. And I was the varb. An' I mint to govern, the rist." Here Brady stopped to smile complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.

"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I, 'ye must be moighty keerful not to give the inimy any handle onto ye,' siz I. An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll be keerful,' siz he. An' I siz, 'Captin, be pertik'ler keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may make so bowld,' siz I. 'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere. They're a-talkin' about it now.' An' the Captin siz, 'Will, Brady, I say I kin thrust ye,' siz he. An' I siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye kin thrust the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I. 'Brady,' siz he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me, since the little brat's gone and brought ole Whayler into it,' siz he. 'Ye bitter belave it is, Captin,' siz I. 'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he. 'Spoike the guns, Captin,' siz I. 'How?' siz he. 'Make it all roight with Koike and Moirton,' siz I. 'As fer Moirton,' siz I, 'he's the smartest _young_ man,' siz I (puttin' imphasis on '_young_,' you say), he's the smartest young man,' siz I, 'in the bottoms; and if ye kin make an alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got the smartest old man managin' the smartest young man. An' if ye kin make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi at 'im, 'atwixt that devoine young craycher, yer charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and Moirton, ye've got him tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,' siz I. An' he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all. I'll think about it,' siz he. An' that's how I made Captin Lumsden the nominative case governin' the varb--that's myself--and thin the varb rigilates the rist. But I must go and say Koike, or the little black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid the captin. Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin, it's meself as has got a hard sum in the rule of thray. This toime I hope the answer'll come out all roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on the shoulder and went out. Then he put his head into the door again to say that the answer set down in the book was: "Misthress Patty Goodwin."

_CHAPTER IX._

THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.

Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the flag of independence in the Hissawachee bottom. He had been a Captain in the Revolution; but Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to grow during the quarter of a century that followed the close of the war. An ex-officer's neighbors carried him forward with his advancing age; a sort of ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of military titles as the Revolution passed into history and heroes became scarcer. And emigration always advanced a man several degrees--new neighbors, in their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as possible the lustre which the new-comer conferred upon the settlement. Thus Captain Wheeler in Maryland was Major Wheeler in Western Pennsylvania, and a full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek. And yet I may be wrong. Perhaps it was not the transplanting that did it. Even had he remained on the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through a process of canonization as he advanced in life that would have brought him to a colonelcy: other men did. For what is a Colonel but a Captain gone to seed?

"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression; and, as a conscientious writer, far be it from me to use slang. And I take great credit to myself for avoiding it just now, since nothing could more perfectly describe Wheeler. His hair was grizzling, his shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded in an expression of perpetual resistance, and his prominent chin and brow seemed to have been jammed together; the space between was too small. He had an air of defense; his nature was always in a "guard-against-cavalry" attitude. He had entered into the spirit of colonial resistance from childhood; he was born in antagonism to kings and all that are in authority; it was a family tradition that he had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.

When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of course looked about for the power that was to be resisted, and was not long in finding it in his neighbor, Captain Lumsden. He was the one opponent whom Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure. To Wheeler this fight against Lumsden was the one delightful element of life in the Bottoms. He had now the comfortable prospect of spending his declining years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful foe, whose encroachments on the rights and privileges of his neighbors would afford him an inexhaustible theme for denunciation, and a delightful incitement to the exercise of his powers of resistance. And thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better relish because of his contest with Lumsden. Mordecai could not have had half so much pleasure in staring stiffly at the wicked Haman as Isaiah Wheeler found in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without so much as a nod of recognition. And Haman's feelings were not more deeply wounded than Lumsden's.

Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married; for at home he could find no encroachments to resist. The perfect temper of his wife disarmed even his opposition. He had begun his married life by fighting his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the Hissawachee and found Methodism unpopular, he took up arms in its defense.

Such was the man whom Kike had selected as guardian--a man who, with all his disagreeableness, was possessed of honesty, a virtue not inconsistent with oppugnancy. But Kike's chief motive in choosing him was that he knew that the choice would be a stab to his uncle's pride. Moreover, Wheeler was the only man who would care to brave Lumsden's anger by taking the trust.

Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and to this house, on the day after the return of Morton and Kike, there rode a stranger. He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five, with a serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white hat, a coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted and buttoned to the chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey" leggings tied about his legs below the knees. He rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of saddlebags.

Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double cabin, he shouted, after the Western fashion, "Hello! Hello the house!"

At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous barking, ranging in key all the way from the contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice" to the deep baying of a huge bull-dog.

"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.

"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler, opening the door, and shouting to the dogs, "You, Bull, come here! Git out, pup! Clear out, all of you!" And he accompanied this command by threateningly lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs scampered away, and a third sneakingly retreated; but the bull-dog turned with reluctance, and, without smoothing his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the house, protesting with surly growls against this authoritative interruption.

"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler, advancing with caution, but without much cordiality. He would not commit himself to a welcome too rashly; strangers needed inspection. "'Light, won't you?" he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to dismount, while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who came out at that moment to "put up the stranger's horse, and give him some fodder and corn." Then turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment, and said: "A preacher, I reckon, sir?"

"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard that your wife was a member of the Methodist Church, and that you were very friendly; so I came round this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for preaching. I have one or two vacant days on my round, and thought maybe I might as well take Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I didn't find anything to prevent."

By this time the colonel and his guest had reached the door, and the former only said, "Well, sir, let's go in, and see what the old woman says. I don't agree with you Methodists about everything, but I do think that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody to say anything against circuit riders without taking it up."

Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly religious face--a countenance in which scruples are balanced by evenness of temperament--was at the moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue dye that stood in a great iron kettle by the fire. She made haste to wash and dry her hands, that she might have a "good, old-fashioned Methodist shake-hands" with Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist preacher she had seen since she left Pittsburg."

Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder should preach in his house. Methodists had just the same rights in a free country that other people had. He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement didn't belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of England in his time, and was jist as ready to fight aginst the King of Hissawachee Bottom." The Colonel almost relaxed his stubborn lips into a smile when he said this. Besides, he proceeded, his wife was a Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose. He was friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a professor. If his wife didn't want to wear rings or artificials, it was money in his pocket, and nobody had a right to object. Colonel Wheeler plumed himself before the new preacher upon his general friendliness toward religion, and really thought it might be set down on the credit side of that account in which he imagined some angelic book-keeper entered all his transactions. He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain," as he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin' for he got from _such_ a wife as his, and his own gineral friendliness to the preachers and the Methodis' meetings, he would be saved at the last, _somehow or nother_." It was not in the man to reflect that his "gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin in a gineral spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.

Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening. The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon, called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's." And then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry out, "Laws-a-massy! You don't say! A Methodis'? One of the shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches! What will the Captin' do? They do say he _does_ hate the Methodis' worse nor copperhead snakes, now. Some old quarrel, liker'n not. Well, I'm agoin', jist to see how _red_ikl'us them Methodis' _does_ do!"

The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the neighborhood. It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.

"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in! We'll have to see about that. A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to be lynched. But I'll match the Methodists. Where's Patty? Patty! O, Patty! Bob, run and find Miss Patty."

And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty! O' Miss Patty! Whah is ye?"

He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn, shouting, "Miss Patty! O! Miss Patty!"

Where was Patty?

_CHAPTER X._

PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.

Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain the milk.

Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a spring-house is? A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide, without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and icy cold from beneath the hill. The little cabin-like spring-house sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle, you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.

It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden had hidden herself.

She brought clean crocks--earthenware milk pans--from the shelf outside, where they had been airing to keep them sweet; she held the strainer in her left hand and poured the milk through it until each crock was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places among the stones, so that they stood half immersed in the cold current of spring water; she laid the smooth pine cover on each crock, and put a clean stone atop that to secure it.

While she was thus putting away the milk her mind was on Morton. She wondered what her father had said to him yesterday. In the heart of her heart she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry him in the face of her father's displeasure. She had never rebelled against the iron rule, but she felt herself full of power and full of endurance. She could go off into the wilderness with Morton; they would build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with puncheon floor and stick chimney; they would sleep, like other poor settlers, on beds of dry leaves, and they would subsist upon the food which Morton's unerring rifle would bring them from the forest. These were the humble cabin castles she was building. All girls weave a tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane in a great fire-place. I know it sounds old-fashioned and sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to a heart like Patty's what may be the scenery on the tapestry, if love be the warp and faith the woof?

Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring to plan his own and Patty's partnership future, but he drew a more cheerful picture than she did, for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain Lumsden's displeasure. He was at the moment going to meet the Captain, walking down the foot-path through the woods, kicking the dry beech leaves into billows before him and singing a Scotch love-song of Burns's which he had learned from his mother.

He planned one future, she another; and in after years they might have laughed to think how far wrong were both guesses. The path which Morton followed led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on the stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone voice as he approached, singing tender words that made her heart stand still:

"Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear
Nocht of ill shall come thee near,
My bonnie dearie."

And as he came right by the spring-house, he sang, now in a lower tone lest he should be heard at the house, but still more earnestly, and so audibly that the listening Patty could hear every word, the last stanza:

"Fair and lovely as thou art,
Thou hast stown my very heart;
I can die--but cannot part,
My bonnie dearie."

And even as she listened to the last line, Morton had discovered that the spring-house door was ajar, and turned, shading his eyes, to see if perchance Patty might not be within. He saw her and reached out his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed to the imperfect light did not see how full of blushes was her face--for she feared that he might guess all that she had just been dreaming. But she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness than she would have shown had it not been for the displeasure which she supposed her father had manifested. And so she covered the last crock and came and stood by him at the door of the spring-house, and he talked right on in the tender strain of his song. And she did not protest, but answered back timidly and almost as warmly.

And that is how little negro Bob at last found Patty at the spring-house and found Morton with her. "Law's sake! Miss Patty, done look for ye mos' every whah. Yer paw wants ye." And with that Bob rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips into a broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.

_CHAPTER XI._

THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.

"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain. "You've been keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at the loom by this time. In my time young men and women didn't waste their mornings. Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting. Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers brought into the settlement by Wheeler. These circuit riders are worse than third day fever 'n' ager. They go against dancing and artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other amusements. They give people the jerks wherever they go. The devil's in 'em. Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance to-night, and ask all you can get along with. Nothing'll make the preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the power and break their necks, maybe."

Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will help me send the invitations."

"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone. And he had the satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain Lumsden.

"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the Captain, chuckling interrogatively. Morton did not like this proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother. He evaded an answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning the guests.

Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night. Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions she was a queen indeed. She wore the antique earrings that were an heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her father had bought her. These and her new dress of English calico made her the envy of all the others. Pretty Betty Harsha was led out by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.

Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching. Behold in Hissawachee Bottom the world's evils in miniature! Here are religion and amusement divorced--set over the one against the other as hostile camps.

Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he went along.

"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden. Me father was a Catholic and me mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school taycher in these haythen backwoods. But it does same to me that the Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans as we air. What would a parson from the ould counthry do here? He moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody would be the better of it. What good does me own grammathical acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement? With all me grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative case before very bad words. Hey, Koike? Now, the Mithodists air a narry sort of a payple. But if you want to make a strame strong you hev to make it narry. I've read a good dale of history, and in me own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks. The Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin' songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation. But it's kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist. But the brook ain't so bad afther all. Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"

Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was. It was very good for watering stock.

"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a laugh. "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race. But I wish these Mithodists would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin' dthrunk. And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles. Hey, Koike?"

Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house. Despite the dance there were present, from near and far, all the house would hold. For those who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher. The dance had taken away those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by raising a row. Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in his uncle's house.

Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people. A little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd. He had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist preacher, the forest.

Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms, shaggy brows, and bristling black hair. He read the hymn, two lines at a time, and led the singing himself. He prayed with the utmost sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the preacher's message. He prayed as a man talking face to face with the Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers. It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers of ingenious apologies.

When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their hearts. Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew what was of vastly more consequence to him--how to read and expound the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among whom he labored. He was of their very fibre.

He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain Lumsden's dance, which was prompted, he said, by the devil, to keep men out of heaven. With half a dozen quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the audience fluttered with sensation. Magruder had a vicarious conscience; but a vicarious conscience is good for nothing unless it first cuts close at home. Whitefield said that he never preached a sermon to others till he had first preached it to George Whitefield; and Magruder's severities had all the more effect that his audience could see that they had full force upon himself.

If is hard for us to understand the elements that produced such incredible excitements as resulted from the early Methodist preaching. How at a camp-meeting, for instance, five hundred people, indifferent enough to everything of the sort one hour before, should be seized during a sermon with terror--should cry aloud to God for mercy, some of them falling in trances and cataleptic unconsciousness; and how, out of all this excitement, there should come forth, in very many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems to us a puzzle beyond solution. But the early Westerners were as inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate, they were swept into most of their decisions by contagious excitements. And never did any class of men understand the art of exciting by oratory more perfectly than the old Western preachers. The simple hunters to whom they preached had the most absolute faith in the invisible. The Day of Judgment, the doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the righteous were as real and substantial in their conception as any facts in life. They could abide no refinements. The terribleness of Indian warfare, the relentlessness of their own revengefulness, the sudden lynchings, the abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the ruthlessness of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon which they founded the most materialistic conception of hell and the most literal understanding of the Day of Judgment. Men like Magruder knew how to handle these few positive ideas of a future life so that they were indeed terrible weapons.

On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as things by which they drove away the Spirit of God. The audience trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation. Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own conscience. There was excitement throughout the house. Some were angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to "promises made to dying friends," "vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their children,"--for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such appeals to sensibility.

When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike, who had listened intently from the first, found himself breathing hard. The preacher showed how the revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!"

At these words he turned to the part of the room where Kike sat, white with feeling. Magruder, looking always for the effect of his arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused. The house was utterly still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul. The people were sitting as if waiting their doom. Kike already saw in his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the leaves and scented by hungry wolves. He waited to hear his own sentence. Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence. Now, he stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken with emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O, young man, there are stains of blood on your hands! How dare you hold them up before the Judge of all? You are another Cain, and God sends his messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already killed in your heart. _You are a murderer_! Nothing but God's mercy can snatch you from hell!"

No doubt all this is rude in refined ears. But is it nothing that by these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience? That in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and trembled? Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he capable of? Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to the rebuke of God. His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as it had before shaken with wrath. "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried he, hiding his face in his hands.

"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the preacher. "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as damned already!" And with this he turned and appealed yet more powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the house. Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while many fell upon their knees and prayed.

The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some consolation. You would say that his view of the atonement was crude, conventional and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in Scripture for general and formulated postulates. But however imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known to his hearers the mercy of God. And surely that is the main thing. The figure of speech is but the vessel; the great truth that God is merciful to the guilty, what is this but the water of life?--not less refreshing because the jar in which it is brought is rude! The preacher's whole manner changed. Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy. Perhaps Magruder exaggerated the change that had taken place in them. But is it nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy? It is hard for one who has once passed through this experience not to date from it a revolution. There were many who had not much root in themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were those who, living half a century afterward, counted their better living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner. It was not in Kike to change quickly. Smitten with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling. When the preacher had finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing, to an exquisitely pathetic tune, Watts' hymn:

"Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,
Let a repenting rebel live.
Are not thy mercies large and free?
May not a sinner trust in thee?"

The meeting was held until late. Kike remained quietly kneeling, the tears trickling through his fingers. He did not utter a word or cry. In all the confusion he was still. What deliberate recounting of his own misdoings took place then, no one can know. Thoughtless readers may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble. But who of us would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our own souls? His simple penitent faith did more for him than all our philosophy has done for us, maybe.

At last the meeting was dismissed. Brady, who had been awe-stricken at sight of Kike's agony of contrition, now thought it best that he and Kike's mother should go home, leaving the young man to follow when he chose. But Kike staid immovable upon his knees. His sense of guilt had become an agony. All those allowances which we in a more intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the defects of education, Kike knew nothing about. He believed all his revengefulness to be voluntary; he had a feeling that unless he found some assurance of God's mercy then he could not live till morning. So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three brethren that had come from adjoining settlements staid and prayed and talked with the distressed youth until after midnight. The early Methodists regarded this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.

At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked "Sister Wheeler" to pray. There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so excellent as the audible prayers of women. Women oftener than men have a genius for prayer. Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving over. Then slowly--slowly, as one who waits for another to follow--she began to turn toward trustfulness. Like a little child she spoke to God; under the influence of her praying Kike sobbed audibly. Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too, looked to God as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful child.

The great struggle was over. Kike was revengeful no longer. He was distrustful and terrified no longer. He had "crept into the heart of God" and found rest. Call it what you like, when a man passes through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf.

Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship. He said nothing, but when Magruder sang

"Oh! how happy are they
Who their Saviour obey,
And have laid up their treasure above!
Tongue can never express
The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its earliest love,"

Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went home about the time that his friend Morton, flushed and weary with dancing and pleasure, laid himself down to rest.

_CHAPTER XII._

MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.

The Methodists had actually made a break in the settlement. Dancing had not availed to keep them out. It was no longer a question of getting "shet" of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating the contagion. There would now be a "class" formed, a leader appointed, a regular preaching place established; Hissawachee would become part of that great wheel called a circuit; there would be revivals and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be destroyed. For now one might never again dance at a "hoe-down," drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race "hosses" on Sunday, without a lecture from somebody. It might be your own wife, too. Once let the Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.

Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences. By his opposition, he had unfortunately spoken for the enmity of the Methodists in advance. The preacher had openly defied him. Kike would join the class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his ascendancy. No concession on his part short of absolute surrender would avail. He resolved therefore that the Methodists should find out "who they were fighting."

Brady was pleased. Gossips are always delighted to have something happen out of the usual course. It gives them a theme, something to exercise their wits upon. Let us not be too hard upon gossip. It is one form of communicative intellectual activity. Brady, under different conditions, might have been a journalist, writing relishful leaders on "topics of the time." For what is journalism but elevated and organized gossip? The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for good-natured gossip. Such an one averts absolute mental stagnation, diffuses intelligence, and keeps alive a healthful public opinion on local questions.

Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake." That was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the meeting. He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had happened about which he wanted to talk. But on this evening Job Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.

"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all? These Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell. Hey? I hear dreadful things about 'em. Oh dear, it seems like as if everything come upon folks at once. Hey? The fever's spreadin' at Chilicothe, they tell me. And then, if we should git into a war with England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got skelped. Precious few, _I_ tell you. Hey?"

Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away, and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the future. But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner, heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.

"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side ye're afther lookin' at all the toime. Where's Moirton? He aint been to school yet since this quarter took up."

"Morton? He's got to stay out, I expect. My rheumatiz is mighty bad, and I'm powerful weak. I don't think craps'll be good next year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and the Indians come on us. But here's Mort now."

"Ha! Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight? Ye heerd fwat a toime we had. Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and a few other hardened sinners. Ye heerd about Koike? I reckon the Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on the Captain's skull, maybe. Fwat would ye do for a crony now, Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"

"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's "getting religion" was an unpleasant topic. "It'll all wear off with Kike soon enough."

"Don't be too shore, Moirton. Things wear off with you, sometoimes. Ye swear ye'll niver swear no more, and ye're willin' to bet that ye'll niver bet agin, and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife; but the flesh is ferninst ye. When Koike's bad, he's bad all over; lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it mesilf. Now he's got good, the divil'll have as hard a toime makin' him bad as I had makin' him good. I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad. Got ivery lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of the school! What do you say to that, Moirton? The divil's got his hands full thair. Hey, Moirton?"

"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher. He wants to get rich just to spite the Captain."

"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton. And he'll be a praycher yit. Didn't he give me a talkin' to this mornin', at breakfast? Think of the impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to tell his ould masther that he ought to repint of his sins! He talked to his mother, too, till she croid. He'll make her belave she is a great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit, excipt in her grammar, which couldn't be worse. I've talked to her about that mesilf. Now, Moirton, I'll tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the Mithodists. Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a body, you needn't be afeard of. But those that git it bad, and are throublesome, and middlesome, and aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out praychers. The lad that'll tackle his masther and his mother at breakfast the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed, two to one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the faild to be a praycher of the worst sort; one of the kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."

"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other people alone? That meddling is just what I don't like," growled Morton.

"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel thought about ould Elijy! We don't any of us loike to have our wickedness or laziness middled with. 'Twas middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to; and if the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he wouldn't niver a been crucified."

"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said Mr. Job Goodwin.

"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin. I'm rale lazy. This lookin' at the state of me moind's insoides, and this chasin' afther me sins up hill and down dale all the toime, would niver agray with me frail constitootion. This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery wake in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin', aren't for sich oidlers as me. I'm too good-natered to trate mesilf that way, sure. Didn't you iver notice that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a rale good-nater'd man?"

Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe in front of the fire, and found it well browned. Supper was ready, and the conversation drifted to Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden to cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers." Morton's father shook his head ominously. Didn't believe the Captain was in 'arnest. Ef he was, Mort mout git the fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up. 'Twouldn't do to depend on no sech promises, no way.

But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton did hold to the Captain's promise, and to the hope of Patty. To the Captain's plans for mobbing Wheeler he offered a strong resistance. But he was ready enough to engage in making sport of the despised religionists, and even organized a party to interrupt Magruder with tin horns when he should preach again. But all this time Morton was uneasy in himself. What had become of his dreams of being a hero? Here was Kike bearing all manner of persecution with patience, devoting himself to the welfare of others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse circumstances. One of Morton's temperament must either grow better or worse, and, chafing under these embarassments, he played and drank more freely than ever.

_CHAPTER XIII._

TWO TO ONE.

Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a Sunday sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to preach twice every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious manner of the circuit-rider of his time. And since he expected to leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in order.

When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton, with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.

John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer. Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee, reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach. When he had ridden more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks over a battle-field before the engagement begins. Then he dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil." When at last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was ablaze. Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in the presence of such a scene:

"O sun of righteousness, arise
With healing in thy wing;
To my diseased, my fainting soul,
Life and salvation bring.

"These clouds of pride and sin dispel,
By thy all-piercing beam;
Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart
With holy hopes inflame."

By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple, and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.

"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle: "you git down!"

"What for?" said Magruder.