CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.
Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any one venture to open the door of Kike's room. He found the patient much better. But the improvement could not be permanent, the sedative of mental rest and the tonic of joy had come too late.
"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one more service. Nettie will explain to you what it is."
After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away, leading Kike's horse with him. The doctor thought he could guess what Morton went for, but, even in melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children, are fond of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to themselves. At ten o'clock that night Morton came back without Kike's horse.
"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown visibly weaker.
Morton nodded.
"And you sent the message?"
"Yes."
Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank into a satisfied sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate to Doctor Morgan and Patty that he had seen in the moonlight a notorious highwayman. "His nickname is Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes from or goes to. He got a hard blow in a fight with the police force of the camp meeting. It's a wonder it didn't break his head. I searched for him everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared. If I had been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him, for he was alone."
Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.
"Our patient, Patty."
But Patty did not say a word.
"You must have got that information through him!" said Morton, with surprise.
But Patty only kept still.
"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had killed my deliverer! Strange that he should be the bearer of a message to me, though. I should rather expect him to kill me than to save me."
Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away while yet so weak, and found in herself the flutterings of a hope for which she knew there was no satisfactory ground.
When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking. "Doctor Morgan," he said, "do not leave me long. Nettie and I want to be married before I die."
"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to suspect Kike's secret.
"Morton got it the other day. And I am looking for my mother to-day. I don't want to be married till she comes. Morton took my horse and sent for her."
Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived. On Sunday morning he was almost past speaking. Nettie had gone out of the room, and Kike was apparently asleep.
"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to Morton, pointing to the dying man.
"Yes, indeed. What a pity he had no care for himself," answered Morton.
"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."
Patty got the Bible.
"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the seventh verse to the thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke as if he were announcing a text.
Then, when Patty was about to read, he said: "Stop. Call Nettie."
When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she read all about the alabaster box of ointment, very precious, that was broken over the head of Jesus, and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's reply.
"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan, with effusion, "what is spent for love is never wasted. It is a very precious box of ointment that you have broken upon Christ's head, my son. The Lord will not forget it."
When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the door on Sunday morning, the people had already begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the expectation that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge church. Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous all the country over, was dying, they filled Doctor Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad, silent groups on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the shade of the yard trees. As the dying preacher's mother passed through, the crowd of country people fell back and looked reverently at her.
Kike was already far gone. He was barely able to greet his mother and the good-hearted Brady, whose demonstrative Irish grief knew no bounds. Then Kike and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all. This sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than a funeral. After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's side, and he rallied for a moment and solemnly pronounced a benediction on her. Then he lifted up his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord! I have kept back nothing. Amen."
His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie. The people had crowded into the hall and stood at the windows. For awhile all thought him dead.
A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and lighted upon the bed of the dying man. The early Western people believed in marvels, and Kike was to them a saint. At sight of the snow-white dove pluming itself upon his breast they all started back. Was it a heavenly visitant? Kike opened his eyes and gazed upon the dove a moment. Then he looked significantly at Nettie, then at the people. The dove plumed itself a moment longer, looked round on the people out of its mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the window again and disappeared in the sunlight. A smile overspread the dying man's face, he clasped his hands upon his bosom, and it was a full minute before anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of Hezekiah Lumsden had gone to its rest.
He had requested that no name should be placed over his grave. "Let God have any glory that may come from my labors, and let everybody but Nettie forget me," he said. But Doctor Morgan had a slab of the common blue limestone of the hills—marble was not to be had—cut out for a headstone. The device upon it was a dove, the only inscription: "An alabaster box of very precious ointment."
Death is not always matter for grief. If you have ever beheld a rich sunset from the summit of a lofty mountain, you will remember how the world was transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent light, and how, long after the light had faded from the cloud-drapery, and long after the hills had begun to lose themselves in the abyss of darkness, there lingered a glory in the western horizon—a joyous memory of the splendid pomp of the evening. Even so the glory of Kike's dying made all who saw it feel like those who have witnessed a sublime spectacle, which they may never see again. The memory of it lingered with them like the long-lingering glow behind the western mountains. Sorry that the suffering life had ended in peace, one could not be; and never did stormy day find more placid sunset than his. Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to her. When he was gone she was as one whom an angel of God had embraced. She regretted his absence, but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and she had not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.
The only commemoration his name received was in the conference minutes, where, like other such heroes, he was curtly embalmed in the usual four lines:
"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely gave up his life for his work. He was tireless in labor, patient in suffering, bold in rebuking sin, holy in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."
The early Methodists had no time for eulogies. A handful of earth, a few hurried words of tribute, and the bugle called to the battle. The man who died was at rest, the men who staid had the more work to do.
NOTE. In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's bed, I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.—E.E.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE BROTHERS.
Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a letter from her father, asking her to come home. Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote penitently and asked Patty's forgiveness. Captain Lumsden never did anything otherwise than meanly. He wrote that he was now bedridden with rheumatism, and it seemed hard that he should be forsaken by his oldest daughter, who ought to be the stay of his declining years. He did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so religious and yet leave him to suffer without the comfort of her presence. The other children were young, and the house was in hopeless confusion. If the Methodists had not quite turned her heart away from her poor afflicted father, she would come at once and help him in his troubles. He was ready to forgive the past, and as for her religion, if she did not trouble him with it, she could do as she pleased. He did not think much of a religion that set a daughter against her father, though.
Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that it set before her to feel the sting very keenly. There was another pain that had grown worse with every day she had spent with Morton. Beside her own sorrow she felt for him. There was a strange restlessness in his eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he was doing, that indicated how fearfully the tempest raged within. For Morton's old desperation was upon him, and Patty was in terror for the result. About the time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul also. He had mastered himself, and the restless wildness had given place to a look of constraint and suffering that was less alarming but hardly less distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding her own agony. But the disappearance of Pinkey had awakened some hope in her. Not one jot of this trembling hopefulness did she dare impart to Morton, who for his part had but one consolation—he would throw away his life in the battle, as Kike had done before him.
So eager was Patty to leave her school now and hasten to her father, that she could not endure to stay the weeks that were necessary to complete her term. She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the possibility of getting some one to take her place, and both had concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane Morgan being too much out of health. But to their surprise Nettie offered her services. She had not been of much more use in the world than a humming-bird, she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would be better pleased that she should make herself useful.
Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and Morton, who could not reach the distant part of his circuit, upon which his supply was now preaching, in time to resume his work at once, concluded to set out for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents fared. But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who departed in company with Brady and his wife. Morton would not trust himself in her society longer. He therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks to Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.
I may not describe the enthusiasm with which Morton was received at home. Scarcely had he kissed his mother and shaken hands with his father, who was surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting up into manhood, when his mother whispered to him that his brother Lewis was alive and had come home.
"What! Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I thought he was killed in Pittsburg ten years ago."
"That was a false report. He had been doing badly, and he did not want to return, and so he let us believe him dead. But now he has come back and he is afraid you will not receive him kindly. I suppose he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard on his evil ways. But you won't be too hard, will you?"
"I? God knows I have been too great a sinner myself for that. Where is Lew? I can just remember how he used to whittle boats for me when I was a little boy. I remember the morning he ran off, and how after that you always wanted to move West. Poor Lew! Where has he gone?"
His mother opened the door of the little bed-room and led out the brother.
"What! Burchard?" cried Morton. "What does this mean? Are you Lewis Goodwin?"
"I am!"
"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun when you found out who I was. That's how you saved me that day at Brewer's Hole. And that's why you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other warning. Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you anyhow, but I ought to be not only glad as a brother, but glad that I can thank you for saving my life."
"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."
"What of that? God forgives, and I am sure that it is not for such a sinner as I am to condemn you. If you knew what desperate thoughts have tempted me in the last week you would know how much I am your brother."
Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed it open, with a "Howdy, Misses Goodwin? Howdy, Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"
"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady. We thought he was dead."
"Heigh-ho! The prodigal's come back agin, eh? Mrs. Goodwin, I congratilate ye."
And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis. Patty, who stood behind, came forward, and Morton said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother Lewis."
"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis. "She knows me already. If it hadn't been for her I might have been dead, and in perdition, I suppose.
"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.
"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable of the Prodigal Son, and told me that it was my mother's favorite chapter."
"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it every day for years. But how did you know that, Patty?"
"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman knew how another woman felt. But you don't know how good Miss Lumsden is. She did not know me as Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different character. I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast of it, Mort, at once. Then there'll be no surprises afterward. And if you hate me when you know it all, I can't help it." With that he stepped into the bedroom and came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.
"What! Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.
"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to knock down, and then hunted all over the country to find."
Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery of his brother's bad character, Patty added adroitly: "The Pinkey that saved your life, Morton."
Morton got up and stood before his brother. "Give me your hand again, Lewis. I am so glad you came home at last. God bless you."
Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands. "I have been a very wicked man, Morton, but I never committed a murder. I am guilty of complicity. I got tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band. I helped them because they had a hold on me, and I was too weak to risk the consequences of breaking with them. That complicity has spoiled all my life. But the crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly committed by others. Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all sins were laid."
"I must hurry home," said Patty. "I only stopped to shake hands," and she rose to go.
"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to destroy these lies. You shall have them to do what you like with. I wish you could take my sins, too."
Patty put the disguises into the fire. "Only God can take your sins," she said.
"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis, with bitterness.
Patty went home in anxiety. Lewis Goodwin seemed to have forgotten the resolution he had made as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.
But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of present duty crowd out thoughts of possible happiness. She bore the peculiar paternal greetings of her father; she installed herself at once, and began, like a good genius, to evolve order out of chaos. By the time evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress again.
CHAPTER XXXV.
PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.
That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother Lewis strolled into the woods together. It was not safe for Lewis to walk about in the day time. The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah Harp's band, perhaps, on the other. But in the twilight he told Morton something which interested the latter greatly, and which increased his gratitude to Lewis. That you may understand what this communication was, I must go back to an event that happened the week before—to the very last adventure that Lewis Goodwin had in his character of Pinkey.
Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed. She had ridden ten miles to Mount Tabor Church, one of Morton's principal appointments. No doubt Ann Eliza persuaded herself—she never had any trouble in persuading herself—that zeal for religious worship was the motive that impelled her to ride so far to church. But why, then, did she wish she had not come, when instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located brother who was supplying his place in his absence at Kike's bedside? Why did she not go on to the afternoon appointment as she had intended? Certain it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log church—called Mount Tabor because it was built in a hollow, perhaps—she felt unaccountably depressed. She considered it a spiritual struggle, a veritable hand to hand conflict with Satan. She told the brethren and sisters that she must return home, she even declined to stay to dinner. She led the horse up to a log and sprang into the saddle, riding away toward home as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer would carry her. She was vexed that Morton should stay away from his appointments on this part of his circuit to see anybody die. He might know that it would be a disappointment to her. She satisfied herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination the half-coldness with which she would treat Brother Goodwin when she should meet him. She inly rehearsed the scene. But with most people there is a more secret self, kept secret even from themselves. And in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that she would not dare treat Brother Goodwin coolly. She had a sense of insecurity in her hold upon him.
Riding thus through the great forests of beech and maple Ann Eliza had reached Cherry Run, only half a mile from her aunt's house, and the old horse, scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture ahead of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the "run," when what should she see ahead but a man in wolf-skin cap and long whiskers. She had heard of Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this must be he. Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the highwayman advanced.
"I haven't anything to give you. What do you want?"
"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do your duty," he said, seating himself by the side of the trail on a stump.
"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened, starting her horse.
"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want to talk to you." And he sat down again, holding fast to her bridle-rein.
"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense of helplessness.
"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a canting tone, "that you are doing just right? Is not there something in your life that is wrong? With all your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a wicked woman."
Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire. "Who are you, that talk in this way? You are a robber, and you know it! If you don't repent you will be lost! Seek religion now. You will soon sin away your day of grace, and what an awful eternity—"
Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein, partly because it was habitual with her, and consequently easier in a moment of confusion than any other, and partly because it was her forte and she thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations were her best weapons. But when she reached the words "awful eternity," Pinkey cried out sneeringly:
"Hold up, Ann Eliza! You don't run over me that way. I'm bad enough, God knows, and I'm afraid I shall find my way to hell some day. But if I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on my arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do. You see I know all about you, and it's no use for you to glory-hallelujah me."
Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate to the occasion, and so she remained silent.
"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your hooks, now, and that you mean to marry him against his will. Is that so?"
"No, it isn't. He proposed to me himself."
"O, yes! I suppose he did. You made him!"
"I didn't."
"I suppose not. You never did. Not even in Pennsylvania. How about young Harlow? Who made him?"
Ann Eliza changed color. "Who are you?" she asked.
"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name? The one you danced with down at Stevens's one night."
"What do you bring up all my old sins for?" asked Ann Eliza, weeping. "You know I have repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my sins and let me see the light of his reconciled countenance——"
"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey. "You sha'n't glory-hallelujah me in that style, confound you! Maybe God has forgiven you for driving Harlow to drink himself into tremens and the grave, and for sending that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing, you know. You wouldn't like me to mention it. You've got a very pretty face, Ann Eliza,—you know you have. But Brother Goodwin don't love you. You entangled him; you know you did. Has God forgiven you for that, yet? Don't you think you'd better go to the mourners' bench next time yourself, instead of talking to the mourners as if you were an angel? Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can sing glory-hallelujah. Hey?"
"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.
"Not yet, you angelic creature. Now that I come to think of it, piety suits your style of feature. Ann Eliza, I want to ask you one question before we part, to meet down below, perhaps. If you are so pious, why can't you be honest? Why can't you tell Preacher Goodwin what you left Pennsylvania for? Why the devil don't you let him know beforehand what sort of a horse he's getting when he invests in you? Is it pious to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth? Come now, you talk a good deal about the 'bar of God,' what do you think will become of such a swindle as you are, at the bar of God?"
"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up the sins that I have put behind my back. Why should I talk with—with Brother Goodwin or anybody about them?"
For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by reasoning that God's forgiveness had made the unpleasant facts of her life as though they were not. It was very unpleasant, when she had put down her memory entirely upon certain points, to have it march up to her from without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and false whiskers, and speaking about the most disagreeable subjects.
"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience, but you don't seem to have any. You are totally depraved, I believe, if you do love to sing and shout and pray. Now, when a preacher cannot get a man to be good by talking at his conscience, he talks damnation to him. But you think you have managed to get round on the blind side of God, and I don't suppose you are afraid of hell itself. So, as conscience and perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else. You are going to write a note to Preacher Goodwin and let him off. I am going to carry it."
"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"
"You aren't afraid of gunpowder. You think you'd sail into heaven straight, by virtue of your experiences. I am not going to shoot you, but here is a pencil and a piece of paper. You may write to Goodwin, or I shall. If I write I will put down a truthful history of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and I shall be quite particular to tell him why you left Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize the wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly blue eyes. But, if you write, I'll keep still."
"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.
"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious tormentor, leading the horse up to the stump.
Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the pencil. Her ingenious mind immediately set itself to devising some way by which she might satisfy the man who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and yet keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher. But the man stood behind her and said, as she began, "Now write what I say. I don't care how you open. Call him any sweet name you please. But you'd better say 'Dear Sir.'"
Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."
"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken off. It is my fault, not yours.'"
"I won't write that."
"Yes, you will, my pious friend. Now, Ann Eliza, you've got a nice face; when a man once gets in love with you he can't quite get out. I suppose I will feel tender toward you when we meet to part no more, down below. I was in love with you once."
"Who are you?"
"O, that don't matter! I was going to say that if I hadn't been in love with your blue eyes once I wouldn't have taken the trouble to come forty miles to get you to write this letter. I was only a mile away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I heard that you had victimized him. I could have sent him a note. I came over here to save you from the ruin you deserve. I would have told him more than the people in Pennsylvania ever knew. Come, my dear, scribble away as I say, or I will tell him and everybody else what will take the music out of your love-feast speeches in all this country."
With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting that she could send another note after this and tell Brother Goodwin that a highwayman who entertained an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot and extorted this from her. She handed the note to Pinkey.
"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive this sin, too. You may pray and shout till you die. I'll never say anything—unless you open communication with preacher Goodwin again. Do that, and I'll blow you sky-high."
"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and—"
"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter names than that, and you don't look half so fascinating when you're mad as when you are talking heavenly. Good by, Miss Meacham." And with that Pinkey went into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and rode away, not on the road but through the woods.
If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her many lovers this might be she would have set about forming some plan for circumventing him. But the mystery was too much for her. She sincerely loved Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others had now come back to her own lips. And with it came a little humility. She could not again forget her early sins so totally. She looked to see them start out of the bushes by the wayside at her.
After this recital it is not necessary that I should tell you what Lewis Goodwin told his brother that night as they strolled in the woods.
At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not stay longer with safety. The war with Great Britain had broken out and he joined the army at Chillicothe under his own name, which was his best disguise. He was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that he was trying to wipe the stain off his name. He afterward moved West and led an honest life, but the memory of his wild youth never ceased to give him pain. Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed sinner as forgetfulness.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
GETTING THE ANSWER.
When Patty went down to strain the milk on the morning after her return, the hope of some deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had well-nigh died out. If he had had anything to communicate, Morton would not have delayed so long to come to see her. But, standing there as of old, in the moss-covered spring-house, she was, in spite of herself, dreaming dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she could have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin, while he was yet Pinkey, had dropped. By the time the first crock was filled with milk and adjusted to its place in the cold current, she had recalled that morning of nearly three years before, when she had resolved to forsake father and mother and cleave to Morton; by the time the second crock had been neatly covered with its clean block she thought she could almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on that morning:
"Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,
Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dearie."
Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance with the Book of Discipline, given up "singing those songs that do not tend to the glory of God," but she felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again, assuring her of his strong protection, as it had on that morning three years ago. Meanwhile, she had filled all the crocks, and now turned to pass out of the low door when she saw, standing there as he had stood on that other morning, Morton Goodwin. He was more manly, more self-contained, than then. Years of discipline had ripened them both. He stepped back and let her emerge into the light; he handed her that note which Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty read:
"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:
"Dear Sir—The engagement between us is broken off. It is my fault and not yours.
"ANN E. MEACHAM."
"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty, in pity. Morton loved her better for her first unselfish thought.
He told her frankly the history of the engagement; and then he and Patty sat and talked in a happiness so great that it made them quiet, until some one came to call her, when Morton walked up to the house to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and mollified Captain Lumsden.
"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he came to understand how matters stood, "you've got the answer in the book. It's quare enough. Now, 'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and one is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to anybody. You've got it, and I'm glad of it. May ye niver conjugate the varb 'to love' anyways excipt prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural number, 'we love.' I don't keer ef ye add the futur' tinse, and say, 'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the parfect and say, 'we have loved,' but may ye always stick fast to first parson, plural number, prisint tinse, indicative mood, active v'ice!"
Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some trepidation. He feared that the old brethren would blame him more than ever. But this time he found himself the object of much sympathy. Ann Eliza had forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement with the very willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a great deal to think how he had "cut out" the preacher, after all. And when Brother Magruder came to understand that he had not understood Morton's case at all, and to understand that he never should be able to understand it, he thought to atone for any mistake he might have made by advising the bishop to send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included Hissawachee. And Morton liked the appointment better than Magruder had expected. Instead of living with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon installed himself for the year at the house of Captain Lumsden, in the double capacity of general supervisor of the moribund man's affairs and son-in-law.
There rise before me, as I write these last lines, visions of circuits and stations of which Morton was afterward the preacher-in-charge, and of districts of which he came to be presiding elder. Are not all of these written in the Book of the Minutes of the Conferences? But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of Patty and her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded nowhere but in the Book of God's Remembrance.
THE END.