X.

The displeasure of his fellows is a slight and ephemeral matter to a man

whose mind is fixed on a great essential question, charged with moral

gravity and imperishable consequence; whose physical courage is the

instinct of his nature, conserved by its active exercise in a life of

physical hardship.

Kelsey had forgotten the gander-pulling, the impending election, the

excitement of the escape, before he had ridden five miles from the

Settlement. He jogged along the valley road, the reins on the horse's

neck, his eyes lifted to the heights. The fulness of day was on their

unpeopled summits. Infinity was expressed before the eye. On and on the

chain of mountains stretched, with every illusion of mist and colour,

with every differing grace of distance, with inconceivable measures of

vastness. The grave delight in which their presence steeped the senses

stirred his heart. They breathed solemnities. They lent wings to the

thoughts. They lifted the soul. Could he look at them and doubt that one

day he should see God? He had been near--oh, surely, He had been near.

Kelsey was comforted as he rode on. Somehow, the mountains had for his

ignorant mind some coercive internal evidence of the great truths. In

their exalted suggestiveness were congruities; so far from the world

were they--so high above it; so interlinked with the history of all that

makes the races of men more than the beasts that perish, that conserves

the value of that noble idea--an immortal soul. On a mountain the ark

rested; on a mountain the cross was planted; the steeps beheld the

glories of the transfiguration; the lofty solitudes heard the prayers of

the Christ; and from the heights issued the great Sermon instinct with

all the moralities of every creed. How often He went up into the

mountain!

The thought uplifted Kelsey. The flush of strong feeling touched his

cheek. His eyes were fired with that sudden gleam of enthusiasm as

remote from earthly impulses as the lightnings of Sinai.

'An' I will preach his name!' the parson exclaimed, in a tense and

thrilling voice. He checked his horse, drew out of his pocket a thumbed

old Bible, clumsily turned the leaves and sought for his text.

No other book had he ever read: only that sublime epic, with its deep

tendernesses and its mighty portents; with its subtleties of prophecy in

wide and splendid phrase, and their fulfilment in the barren record of

the simplest life; with all the throbbing presentment of martyrdom and

doom and death, dominated by the miracle of resurrection and the potency

of divinity. Every detail was as clearly pictured to his mind as if,

instead of the vast, unstoried stretches of the Great Smoky Mountains,

he looked upon the sanctities of the hills of Judaea.

He read as he rode along--slowly, slowly. A bird's shadow would flit

across the holy page, and then away to the mountain; the winds of heaven

caressed it. Sometimes the pollen of flowering weeds fell upon it; for

in the midst of the unfrequented road they often stood in tall rank

rows, with a narrow path on either side, trodden by the oxen of the

occasional team, while the growth bent elastically under the passing bed

of the waggon.

He was almost happy. The clamours of his insistent heart were still. His

conscience, his memory, his self-reproach, had loosed their hold. His

keen and subtile native intellect stretched its unconscious powers, and

discriminated the workings of character, and reviewed the deploying of

events, and measured results. He was far away, walking with the

disciples.

Suddenly, like an aerolite, he was whirled from high ethereal spaces by

the attraction of the earth. A man was peering from between the rails of

a fence by the wayside.

'Kin ye read yer book, pa'son, an' ride yer beastis all ter wunst?' he

cried out with the fervour of admiration.

That tree of knowledge--ah, the wily serpent!

Galilee--it was thousands of miles away across the deep salt seas.

The parson closed his book with a smile of exultation.

'The beast don't hender me none. I kin read ennywhar,' he said, proud of

the attainment.

'Waal, sir!' exclaimed the other, one of that class, too numerous in

Tennessee, who can neither read nor write. 'Air it the Good Book?' he

demanded, with a sudden thought.

'It air the Holy Bible,' said the parson, handing him the book.

The man eyed it with reverence. Then, with a gingerly gesture, he gave

it back. The parson was looking down at him, all softened and humanized

by this unconscious flattery.

'Waal, pa'son,' said the illiterate admirer of knowledge, with a

respectful and subordinate air, 'I hearn ez ye war a-goin' ter hold

fo'th up yander at the meet'n-house at the Notch nex' Sunday. Air that a

true word?'

'I 'lows ter preach thar on the nex' Lord's day,' replied the parson.

'Then,' with the promptness of a sudden resolution, 'I'm a-goin' ter

take the old woman an' the chillen an' waggon up the Big Smoky ter hear

the sermon. I 'low ez a man what kin ride a beastis an' read a book all

ter wunst mus' be a powerful exhorter; an' mebbe ye'll lead us all ter

grace.'

The parson said he would be glad to see the family at the meeting-house,

and presently jogged off down the road.

One might regard the satisfaction of this simple scene as the due meed

of his labours; one might account his pride in his attainments as a

harmless human weakness. There have been those of his calling, proud,

too, of a finite knowledge, and fain to conserve fame, whose conscience

makes no moan--who care naught for humility, and hardly hope to be

genuine.

The flush of pleasure passed in a moment. His face hardened. That fire

of a sublimated anger or frenzy touched his eyes. He remembered Peter,

the impetuous, and Thomas, the doubter, and the warm generosities of the

heart of him whom Jesus loved, and he 'reckoned' that they would not

have left Him standing in the road for the joy of hearing their learning

praised.

He rebuked himself as caring less for the Holy Book than that his craft

could read it. His terrible insight into motives was not dulled by a

personal application. Introverted upon his own heart, it was keen,

unsparing, insidiously subtle. He saw his pride as if it had been

another man's, except that it had no lenient mediator; for he was just

to other men, even gentle.

He took pitiless heed of the pettiness of his vanity; he detected

pleasure that the man by the wayside should come, not for salvation, but

to hear the powerful exhorter speak. He saw the instability of his high

mood, of the gracious re-awaking of faith; he realized the lapse from

the heights of an ecstasy at the lightest touch of temptation.

'The Lord lifts me up,' he said, 'ter dash me on the groun'!'

No more in Judaea, in the holy mountains; no more among the disciples.

Drearily along the valley road, glaring and yellow in the sun, the book

closed, the inspiration fled, journeyed the ignorant man, who would fain

lay hold on a true and perfected sanctity.

He despatched his errand in the valley--a secular matter, relating to

the exchange of a cow and a calf.

The afternoon was waning when he was again upon the slopes of the Big

Smoky; for the roads were rough, and he had travelled slowly, always

prone to 'favour the beastis.' He stopped in front of Cayce's house,

where he saw Dorinda spinning on the porch, and preferred a request for

a gourd of water.

The old woman heard his voice, and came hastily out with hospitable

insistence that he should dismount and 'rest his bones, sence he hed rid

fur, an' tell the news from the Settlemint.' There was a cordial

contrast between this warm esteem and his own unkind thoughts, and he

suffered himself to be persuaded.

He sat under the hop-vines, and replied in monosyllables to the old

woman's animated questions, and gave little news of the excitements at

the Settlement which they had not already heard.

Dorinda, her wheel awhirl, one hand lifted holding the thread, the other

poised in the air to control the motion, her figure thrown back in a

fine, alert pose, looked at him with a freshened pity for his downcast

spirit, and with intuitive sympathy. He sorrowed not because of the

things of this world, she felt. It was some high and spiritual grief,

such as might pierce a prophet's heart. Her eyes, full of the ideality

of the sentiment, dwelt upon him reverently.

He marked the look. With his overwhelming sense of his sins, he was

abased under it, and he scourged himself as a hypocrite.

'Thar air goin' ter be preachin' at the meetin'-house Sunday, I hearn,'

she observed presently, thinking this topic more meet for his discussion

than the 'gaynder-pullin'' and the escape, and such mundane matters.

The tempered green light fell upon her fair face, adding a delicacy to

its creamy tint; her black hair caught a shifting golden flake of

sunshine as she moved back and forth; her red lips were slightly parted.

The grasshoppers droned in the leaves an accompaniment to the whirr of

her wheel. The 'prince's feathers' bloomed in great clumsy crimson tufts

close by the step.

Mirandy Jane, seated on an inverted noggin, listened tamely to the

conversation, her wild, uncertain eyes fixed upon the parson's face; she

dropped them, and turned her head with a shying gesture, if by chance

his glance fell upon her.

From this shadowed, leafy recess the world seen through the green

hop-vines was all in a great yellow glare.

'Be you-uns a-goin' ter hold fo'th,' demanded the old woman, 'or Brother

Jake Tobin?'

'It air me ez air a-goin' ter preach,' he said.

'Then I'm a-comin',' she declared promptly. 'It do me good ter hear

you-uns fairly make the sinners spin. Sech a gift o' speech ye hev got!

I fairly see hell when ye talk o' thar doom. I see wrath an' I smell

brimstone. Lord be thanked, I hev fund peace! An' I'm jes' a-waitin' fur

the good day ter come when the Lord'll rescue me from yearth!' She threw

herself back in her chair, closing her eyes in a sort of ecstasy, and

beating her hands on her knees, her feet tapping in rhythm.

'Though ef ye'll b'lieve me,' she added, sitting up straight with an

appalling suddenness, and opening her eyes, 'D'rindy thar ain't

convicted yit. Oh, child,' in an enthused tone of reproof, 'time is

short--time is short!'

'Waal,' said Dorinda, speaking more quickly than usual, and holding up

her hand to stop the wheel, 'I hev hed no chance sca'cely ter think on

salvation, bein' ez the weavin' war hendered some--an'----'

She paused in embarrassment.

'That air a awful word ter say--puttin' the Lord ter wait! Whyn't ye

speak the truth ter her, pa'son? Fix her sins on her.'

'Sometimes,' said the parson abruptly, looking at her as if he saw more

or less than was before him, 'I dunno ef I hev enny call ter say a word.

I hev preached ter others, an' I'm like ter be a castaway myself.'

The old woman stared at him in dumb astonishment. But he was rising to

take leave--a simple ceremony. He unhitched the horse at the gate,

mounted, and, with a silent nod to the group on the porch, rode slowly

away.

Old Mrs. Cayce followed him with curious eyes, peering out in the gaps

of the hop-vines.

'D'rindy,' she said, 'that thar Pa'son Kelsey--we-uns useter call him

nuthin' but Hi--he's got suthin' heavy on his mind. It always 'peared

ter me ez he war a mighty cur'ous man ter take up with religion an'

sech. A mighty suddint boy he war--ez good a fighter ez a catamount, an'

always 'mongst the evil, bold men. Them he consorted with till he gin

his child morphine by mistake, an' its mammy quine-iron; an' she los'

her senses arterward, an' flunged herse'f off'n the bluff. 'Pears like

to me ez them war jedgments on him--though Em'ly warn't much loss; ez

triflin' a ch'ice fur a wife ez a man could make. An' now he hev got

suthin' on his mind.'

The girl said nothing. She stayed her wheel with one hand, holding the

thread with the other, and looked over her shoulder at the receding

figure riding slowly along the vista of the forest-shadowed road. Then

she turned, and fixed her lucent, speculative eyes on her grandmother,

who continued:

'Calls hisself a castaway! Waal, he knows bes', bein' a prophet an'

sech. But it air toler'ble comical talk fur a preacher. Brother Jake

Tobin kin hardly hold hisself together, a-waitin' fur his sheer o' the

joys o' the golden shore.'

'Waal, 'pears like ter me,' said Mirandy Jane, whose mind seemed never

far from the culinary achievements to which she had been dedicated, 'ez

Brother Jake Tobin sets mo' store on chicken fixin's than on grace, an'

he fattens ev'y year.'

'I hopes,' proceeded the grandmother, disregarding the interruption, and

peering out again at the road where the horseman had disappeared, 'ez Hi

Kelsey won't sot hisself ter prophesyin' evil at the meetin'; 'pears ter

me he ought to be hendered, ef mought be, 'kase the wrath he foresees

mos'ly kems ter pass, an' I'm always lookin' ter see him prophesy the

raiders--though he hev hed the grace ter hold his hand 'bout'n the

still. An' I hopes he won't hev nuthin' ter say 'bout it at the meetin'

Sunday.'

The little log meeting-house at the Notch stood high on a rugged spur of

the Great Smoky. Dense forests encompassed it on every hand, obscuring

that familiar picture of mountain and cloud and cove. From its rude,

glassless windows one could look out on no distant vista, save, perhaps,

in the visionary glories of heaven or the climatic discomforts of hell,

according to the state of the conscience, or perchance the liver. The

sky was aloof and limited. The laurel tangled the aisles of the woods.

Sometimes from the hard benches a weary tow-headed brat might rejoice to

mark in the monotony the frisking of a squirrel on a bough hard by, or a

woodpecker solemnly tapping. The acorns would rattle on the roof, if the

wind stirred, as if in punctuation of the discourse. The pines,

mustering strong among the oaks, joined their mystic threnody to the

sad-voiced quiring within. The firs stretched down long, pendulous,

darkling boughs, and filled the air with their balsamic fragrance.

Within the house the dull light fell over a few rude benches and a

platform with a chair and table, which was used as pulpit. Shadows of

many deep, rich tones of brown lurked among the rafters. Here and there

a cobweb, woven to the consistence of a fabric, swung in the air. The

drone of a blue-bottle, fluttering in and out of the window in a slant

of sunshine, might invade the reverent silence, as Brother Jake Tobin

turned the leaves to read the chapter.

Sometimes there would sound, too, a commotion among the horses without,

unharnessed from the waggons and hitched to the trees; then in more

than one of the solemn faces might be descried an anxious

perturbation--not fear because of equine perversities, but because of

the idiosyncrasies of callow human nature in the urchins left in charge

of the teams. No one ventured to investigate, however, and, with that

worldly discomfort contending with the spiritual exaltations they sought

to foster, the rows of religionists swayed backward and forward in

rhythm to the reader's voice, rising and falling in long, billowy sweeps

of sound, like the ground swell of ocean waves.

It was strange, looking upon their faces, and with a knowledge of the

limited phases of their existence, their similarity of experience here,

where a century might come and go, working no change save that, like the

leaves, they fluttered awhile in the outer air with the spurious

animation called life, and fell in death, and made way for new

bourgeonings like unto themselves--strange to mark how they differed.

Here was a man of a stern, darkly religious conviction, who might either

have writhed at the stake or stooped to kindle the flames; and here was

an accountant soul that knew only those keen mercantile motives--the

hope of reward and the fear of hell; and here was an enthusiast's eye,

touched by the love of God; and here was an unfinished, hardly humanized

face, that it seemed as presumptuous to claim as the exponent of a soul

as the faces of the stupid oxen out-of-doors. All were earnest; many

wore an expression of excited interest, as the details of the chapter

waxed to a climax, like the tense stillness of a metropolitan audience

before an unimagined _coup de theatre_. The men all sat on one side,

chewing their quids; the women on the other, almost masked by their limp

sun-bonnets. The ubiquitous baby--several of him--was there, and more

than once babbled aloud and cried out peevishly. Only one, becoming

uproarious, was made a public example, being quietly borne out and

deposited in the ox-waggon, at the mercy of the urchins who presided

over the teams, while his mother creaked in again on the tips of

deprecating, anxious toes, to hear the Word.

Brother Jake Tobin might be accounted in some sort a dramatic reader. He

was a tall, burly man, inclining to fatness, with grizzled hair reached

back from his face. He cast his light grey eyes upward at the end of

every phrase, with a long, resonant 'Ah!' He smote the table with his

hands at emphatic passages; he rolled out denunciatory clauses with a

freshened relish which intimated that he considered one of the choicest

pleasures of the saved might be to gloat over the unhappy predicament of

the damned. He chose for his reading paragraphs that, applied to aught

but spiritual enemies and personified sins, might make a civilized man

quake for his dearest foe. He paused often and interpolated his own

observations, standing a little to the side of the table, and speaking

in a conversational tone. 'Ain't that so, my brethren an' sisters! But

_we_ air saved in the covenant--ah!' Then, clapping his hands with an

ecstatic upward look, 'I'm so happy, I'm so happy!'--he would go on to

read with the unction of immediate intention, 'Let death seize them! Let

them go down quick into hell!'

He wore a brown jeans suit, the vest much creased in the regions of his

enhanced portliness, its maker's philosophy not having taken into due

account his susceptibility to 'chicken fixin's.' After concluding the

reading, he wiped the perspiration from his brow with his red bandanna

handkerchief, and placed it around the collar of his unbleached cotton

shirt, as he proceeded to the further exertion of 'lining out' the hymn.

The voice broke forth in those long, lingering cadences that have a

melancholy, spiritual, yearning effect, in which the more tutored church

music utterly fails. The hymn rose with a solemn jubilance, filling the

little house, and surging out into the woods; sounding far across unseen

chasms and gorges, and rousing in the unsentient crags an echo with a

testimony so sweet, charged with so devout a sentiment, that it seemed

as if with this voice the very stones would have cried out, had there

been dearth of human homage when Christ rode into Jerusalem.

Then the sudden pause, the failing echo, the sylvan stillness, and the

chanting voice 'lined out' another couplet. It was well, perhaps, that

this part of the service was so long; the soul might rise on its

solemnity, might rise on its aspiration.

It came to an end at last. Another long pause ensued. Kelsey, sitting on

the opposite side of the table, his elbow on the back of his chair, his

hand shading his eyes, made no movement. Brother Jake Tobin looked hard

at him, with an expression which in a worldly man we should pronounce

exasperation. He hesitated for a moment in perplexity. There was a faint

commotion, implying suppressed excitement in the congregation. Parson

Kelsey's idiosyncrasies were known by more than one to be a thorn in the

side of the frankly confiding Brother Jake Tobin.

'Whenst I hev got him in the pul_pit_ alongside o' me,' he would say to

his cronies, 'I feel ez onlucky an' weighted ez ef I war a-lookin' over

my lef' shoulder at the new moon on a November Friday. I feel ez

oncommon ez ef he war a deer, or suthin', ez hev got no salvation in

him. An' eff he don't feel the sperit ter pray, he _won't_ pray, an' I

hev got ter surroun' the throne o' grace by myself. He _kin_ pray ef he

hev a mind ter, an' he _do_ seem ter hev hed a outpourin' o' the sperit

o' prophecy; but he hev made me 'pear mighty comical 'fore the Lord a

many a time, when I hev axed him ter open his mouth an' he hev kep' it

shut.'

Brother Jake did not venture to address him now. An alternative was open

to him.

'Brother Reuben Bates, will ye lead us in prayer?' he said to one of the

congregation.

They all knelt down, huddled like sheep in the narrow spaces between the

benches, and from among them went up the voice of supplication, that

anywhere and anyhow has the commanding dignity of spiritual communion,

the fervour of exaltation, and all the moving humility of the finite

leaning upon the infinite. Ignorance was annihilated, so far as Brother

Reuben Bates's prayer was concerned. It grasped the fact of

immortality--all worth knowing!--and humble humanity was presented as

possessing the intimate inherent principles of the splendid fruitions of

eternity.

He had few words, Brother Reuben, and the aspirated 'Ah!' was long drawn

often, while he swiftly thought of something else to say. Brother Jake

Tobin, after the manner in vogue among them, broke out from time to

time with a fervour of assent. 'Yes, my Master!' he would exclaim in a

wild, ecstatic tone. 'Bless the Lord!' 'That's a true word!' 'I'm so

happy!'

Always these interpolations came opportunely when Brother Reuben seemed

entangled in his primitive rhetoric, and gave him a moment for

improvisation. It was doubtless Hi Kelsey's miserable misfortune that

his acute intuition should detect in the reverend tones a vainglorious

self-satisfaction, known to no one else, not even to the speaker; that

he should accurately gauge how Brother Jake Tobin secretly piqued

himself upon his own gift in prayer, never having experienced these

stuttering halts, never having needed these pious boosts; that he should

be aware, ignorant as he was, of that duality of cerebration by which

Brother Jake's mind was divided between the effect on God, bending down

a gracious ear, and the impression of these ecstatic outbursts on the

congregation; that the petty contemptibleness of it should depress him;

that its dissimulations angered him. With the rigour of an upright man,

he upbraided himself. He was on his knees: was he praying? Were these

the sincerities of faith? Was this lukewarm inattention the guerdon of

the sacrifice of the cross? His ideal and himself, himself and what he

sought to be--oh, the gulf! the deep divisions!

He gave his intentions no grace. He conceded naught to human nature. His

conscience revolted at a sham. And he was a living, breathing sham--upon

his knees.

Ah, let us have a little mercy on ourselves! Most of us do. For there

was Brother Jake Tobin, with a conscience free of offence, happily

unobservant of his own complicated mental processes and of the motives

of his own human heart, becoming more and more actively assistant as

Brother Reuben Bates grew panicky, hesitant, and involved, and kept

convulsively on through sheer inability to stop, suggesting epilepsy

rather than piety.

It was over at last; exhausted nature prevailed, and Brother Bates

resumed his seat, wiping the perspiration from his brow and raucously

clearing his rasped throat.

There was a great scraping of the rough shoes and boots on the floor as

the congregation rose, and one or two of the benches were moved backward

with a harsh, grating sound. A small boy had gone to sleep during the

petition, and remained in his prayerful attitude. Brother Jake Tobin

settled himself in his chair as comfortably as might be, tilted it back

on its hind-legs against the wall, and wore the air of having fairly

exploited his share of the services and cast off responsibility. The

congregation composed itself to listen to the sermon.

There was an expectant pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the tumult of

emotion with which he stepped forward to the table and opened the book.

He turned to the New Testament for his text--turned the leaves with a

familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that wonderful story which would

touch the tender, true affinity of human nature for the higher

things--from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the same moment,

with a contrariety of feeling from which he shrank aghast, there was

skulking into his mind all that grewsome company of doubts. In double

file they came: fate and free agency, free will and fore-ordination,

infinite mercy and infinite justice, God's loving-kindness and man's

intolerable misery, redemption and damnation. He had evolved them all

from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they pursued him as if he

had, in some spiritual necromancy, conjured up a devil--nay, legions of

devils. Perhaps if he had known how they have assaulted the hearts of

men in times gone past; how they have been combated and baffled, and yet

have risen and pursued again; how, in the scrutiny of science and

research, men have paused before their awful presence, analyzed them,

philosophized about them, and found them interesting; how others, in the

levity of the world, having heard of them, grudge the time to think upon

them--if he had known all this, he might have felt some courage in

numbers.

As it was, there was no fight left in him. He closed the book with a

sudden impulse. 'My frien's,' he said, 'I stan' not hyar ter preach

ter-day, but fur confession.'

There was a galvanic start among the congregation, then intense silence.

'I hev los' my faith!' he cried out, with a poignant despair. 'God ez

gin it--ef thar is a God--hev tuk it away. You-uns kin go on. You-uns

kin b'lieve. Yer paster b'lieves, an' he'll lead ye ter grace--leastwise

ter a better life. But fur me thar's the nethermost depths of hell,

ef'--how his faith and his unfaith tried him!--'ef thar be enny hell.

Leastwise----Stop, brother,'--he held up his hand in deprecation, for

Parson Tobin had risen at last, with a white, scared face; nothing like

this had ever been heard in all the length and breadth of the Great

Smoky Mountains--'bear with me a little; ye'll see me hyer no more. Fur

me thar is shame, ah! an' trial, ah! an' doubt, ah! an' despair, ah! The

good things o' life hev not fallen ter me. The good things o' heaven air

denied. My name is ter be a by-word an' a reproach 'mongst ye. Ye'll

grieve ez ye hev ever hearn the Word from me, ah! Ye'll be held in

derision! An' I hev hed trials--none like them ez air comin', comin',

down the wind. I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, an' now fur shame.'

He stood erect; he looked bold, youthful. The weight of his secret,

lifted now, had been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone that

strange light which was frenzy, or prophecy, or inspiration; in his

voice rang a vibration they had never before heard.

'I will go forth from 'mongst ye--I that am not of ye. Another shall

gird me an' carry me where I would not. Hell an' the devil hev prevailed

agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I cannot pray fur myself. Pray that

God may yet speak ter me--speak from out o' the whurlwind.'

There was a sound upon the air. Was it the rising of the wind? A thrill

ran through the congregation. The wild emotion, evoked and suspended in

this abrupt pause, showed in pallid excitement on every face. Several of

the men rose aimlessly, then turned and sat down again. Brought from the

calm monotony of their inner life into this supreme crisis of his, they

were struck aghast by the hardly comprehended situations of his

spiritual drama enacted before them. And what was that sound on the air?

In the plenitude of their ignorant faith, were they listening for the

invoked voice of God?

Kelsey, too, was listening, in anguished suspense.

It was not the voice of God, that man was wont to hear when the earth

was young; not the rising of the wind. The peace of the golden sunshine

was supreme. Even a tiny cloudlet, anchored in the limited sky, would

not sail to-day.

On and on it came. It was the galloping of horse--the beat of hoofs,

individualized presently to the ear--with that thunderous, swift,

impetuous advance that so domineers over the imagination, quickens the

pulse, shakes the courage.

It might seem that all the ingenuity of malignity could not have

compassed so complete a revenge. The fulfilment of his prophecy entered

at the door. All its spiritual significance was annihilated; it was

merged into a prosaic material degradation when the sheriff of the

county strode, with jingling spurs, up the aisle, and laid his hand upon

the preacher's shoulder. He wore his impassive official aspect. But his

deputy, following hard at his heels, had a grin of facetious triumph

upon his thin lips. He had been caught by the nape of the neck, and in a

helpless, rodent-like attitude had been slung out of the door by the

stalwart man of God, when he and Amos James had ventured to the

meeting-house in liquor; and neither he nor the congregation had

forgotten the sensation. It was improbable that such high-handed

proceedings could be instituted to-day, but the sheriff had taken the

precaution to summon the aid of five or six burly fellows, all armed to

the teeth. They, too, came tramping heavily up the aisle. Several wore

the reflection of the deputy's grin; they were the 'bold, bad men,' the

prophet's early associates before 'he got religion, an' sot hisself ter

consortin' with the saints.' The others were sheepish and doubtful,

serving on the posse with a protest under the constraining penalties of

the law.

The congregation was still with a stunned astonishment. The preacher

stood as one petrified, his eyes fixed upon the sheriff's face. The

officer, with a slow, magisterial gesture, took a paper from his

breast-pocket, and laid it upon the Bible.

'Ye kin read, pa'son,' he said. 'Ye kin read the warrant fur yer

arrest.'

The deputy laughed, a trifle insolently. He turned, swinging his hat--he

had done the sacred edifice the reverence of removing it--and surveyed

the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed people, leaning forward, standing up,

huddled together, as if he had some speculation as to the effect upon

them of these unprecedented proceedings.

Kelsey could read nothing. His strong head was in a whirl; he caught at

the table, or he might have fallen. The amazement of it--the shame of

it!

'Who does this?' he exclaimed, in sudden realization of the situation.

Already self-convicted of the blasphemy of infidelity, he stood in his

pulpit in the infinitely ignoble guise of a culprit before the law.

Those fine immaterial issues of faith and unfaith--where were they? The

torturing fear of futurity, and of a personal devil and a material

hell--how impotent! His honest name--never a man had borne it that had

suffered this shame; the precious dignity of freedom was riven from him;

the calm securities of his self-respect were shaken for ever. He could

never forget the degradation of the sheriff's touch, from which he

shrank with so abrupt a gesture that the officer grasped his pistol and

every nerve was on the alert. Kelsey was animated at this moment by a

pulse as essentially mundane as if he had seen no visions and dreamed no

dreams. He had not known how he held himself--how he cherished those

values, so familiar that he had forgotten to be thankful till their

possession was a retrospection.

He sought to regain his self-control. He caught up the paper; it

quivered in his trembling hands; he strove to read it. 'Rescue!' he

cried out in a tense voice. 'Rick Tyler! I never rescued Rick Tyler!'

The words broke the long constraint. They were an elucidation, a flash

of light. The congregation looked at him with changed eyes, and then

looked at each other. Why did he deny? Were not the words of his

prophecy still on the air? Had he not confessed himself an evil-doer,

forsaken of God and bereft of grace? His prophecy was matched by the

details of his experience. Had he done no wrong he could have foreseen

no vengeance.

'Rick Tyler ain't wuth it,' said one old man to another, as he spat on

the floor.

The widow of Joel Byers, the murdered man, fell into hysterical

screaming at Rick Tyler's name, and was presently borne out by her

friends and lifted into one of the wagons.

'It air jes' ez well that the sher'ff takes Pa'son Kelsey, arter that

thar confession o' his'n,' said one of the dark-browed men, helping to

yoke the oxen. 'We couldn't hev kep' him in the church arter sech words

ez his'n, and church discipline ain't a-goin' ter cast out no sech devil

ez he air possessed by.'

Brother Jake Tobin, too, appreciated that the arrest of the preacher in

his pulpit was a solution of a difficult question. It was manifestly

easier for the majesty of the State of Tennessee to deal with him than

for the little church on the Big Smoky.

'Yer sins hev surely fund ye out, Brother Kelsey,' he began, with the

air of having washed his hands of all responsibility. 'God would never

hev fursook ye ef ye hedn't fursook the good cause fust. Ye air ter be

cast down--ye who hev stood high.'

There was a momentary silence.

'Will ye come?' said the sheriff, smiling fixedly, 'or had ye ruther be

fetched?'

The deputy had a pair of handcuffs dangling officiously. They rattled in

rude contrast with the accustomed sounds of the place.

Kelsey hesitated. Then, after a fierce internal struggle, he submitted

meekly, and was led out from among them.