arose from somewhere out of the deeper shadows, timid, beseeching at first, like a sad messenger of the outer darkness who had known all the torments of hell and trembled now before the throne of Heaven. But as the bearer of the petition gained courage from his very woes the volume of his voice increased until it filled the church. The rafters shook, and sinners fell prostrate in the chancel. This, however, was only the beginning. The great opera of Brother Pratt's spirit went on like a rude Wagnerian measure until none could resist it. Men arose from their knees shouting. Finally, the prayer-maker, who had risen in his passion and stood praying with his hands above his head, reaching visibly for salvation, fell exhausted to the floor.

The scene is no less amazing to me now as I recall it than it was that night thirty years ago as I sat, a trembling bride, in the remotest corner, praying privately and fervently that the Lord would spare me the sight of William taking part in it. I felt that if he did I should ever after have some earth fear of him. If preachers could only preach without thrusting us up too close to the awful elbows of God before our time!

It was the custom in those days always to conclude a Methodist revival with a "love feast"; you cannot have it where you cannot have an old-fashioned revival. One of the coldest functions I ever attended was a so-called "love feast" in a fashionable Methodist church at the end of a series of meetings. The men wore tuxedos and the women wore party gowns, high-necked, of course, on account of its being a church affair. And the only difference between that and any other social function was that a good many people were present whom the fashionable members never invited to their own homes and whom they treated with offensive cordiality on this occasion.

But at the end of the revival at Redwine there was a real "love feast." A great crowd had assembled, due to the honorable curiosity in the neighborhood to know who would "testify," who would confess his fault or proclaim that he had forgiven some brother man about a line fence between their farms or a shoat. It was, indeed, a sort of Dun and Bradstreet opportunity to know the exact spiritual standing of every man and woman in the community. And it was William's plan that the service should be held in the evening out-of-doors under the great pines. Torches of lightwood furnished the illumination. William stood beside a small table facing the congregation, who were seated on the benches that had been brought out of the church. After a song and a prayer that must have made the old saints sit up on their dust in the graveyard behind the church to listen, William gave the customary invitation.

"Brethren and sisters," he said, "we have had a gracious meeting and a mighty outpouring of the Spirit. It is meet and proper for those who have been helped, who feel that their sins are forgiven, who aim to live a new life, to get up and say so, and thus burn the bridges behind them. Come out on the Lord's side so everybody can see where you stand! I leave the meeting open to you."

"Brother Thompson," said a gray old man with meal on his coat, "I feel that I have been blessed durin' this meetin', and I ask the prayers of all Christian people that I may continue faithful to the end!"

"Amen!" said William, and there were general grunts of approval, for the miller was known to be a wonderfully good man.

"Brother Thompson," said a strange, shaggy young Adam, "I feel that my sins are forgiven me and that I am a child of God. I ask the prayers of all Christian people that I may continue faithful." He was a moonshiner who had destroyed his whisky and cut up his own copper worm and vats during the meeting. As he resumed his seat a little thin woman in a blue cotton dress sprang to her feet, hopped with the belligerent air of a fighting jaybird across the intervening space and lost herself in the arms of the regenerated moonshiner. She was his wife, the good woman who stayed at home and prayed for him of nights. Now she shouted and beat a tender tattoo with her little brown hands upon his bowed head.

"I jest can't help shoutin'," she cried. "I'm so glad he done it!"

He had "done it" three times before—reformed, only to fall again so soon as the corn was gathered in the fall. No one had confidence in him save this little blue-winged heart who loved him. It is no wonder women believe in God easier than anyone else does! They can believe with so little reason in men.

After this followed several triumphant testimonies. Sister Glory White began to shout sweetly and quietly in the amen corner, slapping her fat hands together and whispering softly:

"Bless the Lord, O my soul! Bless the Lord, O my soul! And all that is within me, praise His holy name!"

Presently there was an interruption. William had made the mistake of confiding one of the torches to Brother Billy Fleming, a "holiness man." Suddenly he leaped into the air, shouting and brandishing his blaze in every direction. The paroxysm of joy was short, however, and when quiet was restored, in the deeper darkness—for Brother Fleming's torch had gone out—a tall man arose from near the middle of the congregation. He had a bushy brown beard, a little apostrophe nose, childish china-blue eyes, and a thin high voice which gave the impression upon hearing it that he was at the very moment trying hard to squeeze through the eye of his needle, spiritually speaking. I recognized him as Brother John Henry, distinguished for having the most sensitive conscience of any man in the church. Now he stood with the tears in his eyes, too deeply moved for a moment to speak. Everyone leaned forward, for it was always a matter of interest to know what else was troubling Brother Henry's soul. At last, in a quavering treble he confessed with the air of one doomed to suffer terrible disappointment.

"Brother Thompson, you know, all of you know, I try to be a good man. But the flesh is weak. I git tempted and fall into sin before I know it. I'm sufferin' remorse now beca'se I set my old dominique hen twice and cheated her into hatchin' two broods of chickens without givin' her a day's rest between settin's! My remorse is worse beca'se a man can't apologize to a hen or make restitution!"

Such rarefied confessions were common, and this was one of many occasions when I disgraced William by snickering in the solemn pause which followed.

However, these faded daguerreotypes of memory suggest but faintly any idea of the people with whom I began my life as a minister's wife. I can only show their narrowness. I am not able to give the shrill high notes of faith in their lives. They made an awful business of being good. And the contrast between them and the witty, mind-bred, spirit-lost people of the world was startling indeed, but more to their credit than some are accustomed to think.

CHAPTER IV

WILLIAM AS A LEADER OF FORLORN HOPE

For spiritual beings we do take with singular heartiness to the soil and spoils of this present world. The hope of immortality is more a fear than a hope with many of us. We do not like to see the open door of death that leads to it. So every good preacher is the shepherd of our misgivings, the leader of our forlornest hopes, the captain more particularly of men and women who are about to die, or who are seeking Heaven at last in a state of earthly disappointment and world exhaustion. I have rarely known a person in good health morally and physically, fortunately situated in life, who voluntarily sought the consolations of religion. I reckon the Lord knew what He was about when He turned His back and let Satan fill creation with snares and pitfalls and sorrows and temptations. If we did not fall into so many of them we should never get the proper contrite spirit to seek of our own will and accord after salvation. He would have been obliged to thrust it upon us and we might have been no