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.