ay to two hundred dipped in the blood of the lamb and emerging white as
the Dove? Souls ain't what they were," he muttered pessimistically; "it
used to be you could hear the Redeemed a spell of miles from the church,
now they're as confidential as a man borrowing money. The Lord will in no
wise acknowledge the faint in spirit." Suddenly, "Glory! Glory!" he
shouted, and his old eyes flamed with the inextinguishable blaze of his
enthusiasm.

The minister's wife inserted in the door from the kitchen a face bright
red from bending over the stove. "Now, pa," she admonished, "you'll scare
them children again."

XXVI

The "board or so" to be replaced on the ice house, as Gordon had surmised,
proved to be extensive--a large section of the inner wall had rotted from
the constant dampness, the slowly seeping water. The ice house stood back
of the dwelling, by the side of the small barn and beyond a number of
apple trees: it was a square structure of boards, with no opening save a
low door under the peak of the roof with a small platform and exterior
flight of steps.

In the gloomy, dank interior a rough ladder, fastened to the wall, led
down to the falling level of soggy sawdust, embedded in which the
irregular pieces of ice were preserved against the summer. From the
interior the opening made a vivid square of blue sky; for long hours the
blue increased in brilliancy, after which, veiled in a greyer haze of
heat, the patch of sky grew gradually paler, and then clear; the
suggestion of immeasurable space deepened; above the dark hole of the ice
house the illimitable distance was appalling. Gordon was resting from the
sullen, muffled knocking of his hammer when a figure suddenly blotted out
the light, hid the sky. He recognized the sharply-cut silhouette of the
school-teacher.

"What a horrid, spooky place," she spoke with a shiver, peering within.

"It's cool," Gordon told her indifferently.

"And quiet," she added, seating herself upon the platform with an elbow in
the opening; "there's none of the bothersome clatter of a lot of
detestable children." She raised her voice in shrill mimicry, "'Teacher,
kin I be excused? Teacher!... Teacher--!'"

"Don't you like children?"

"I loathe them," she shot at him, out of the depths of a profound,
long-accumulated exasperation; "the muddy little beasts."

"Then I wouldn't be vexed with them."

"Do you like nailing boards in a rotten ice house?"

"Oh, I'm dog poor; I'