under conviction of his conscience; and when this great news got
abroad, Terry Lute, too, attended upon Parson Down's preaching with
regularity, due wholly, however, to his interest in watching the
tortured countenance of poor Bill Bull. It was his purpose when first
he began to draw to caricature the vanquished wretch. In the end he
attempted a moving portrayal of "The Atheist's Stricken State," a
large conception.

It was a sacred project; it was pursued in religious humility, in a
spirit proper to the subject in hand. And there was much opportunity
for study. Bill Bull did not easily yield; night after night he
continued to shift from heroic resistance to terror and back to heroic
resistance again. All this time Terry Lute sat watching. He gave no
heed whatsoever to the words of Parson Down, with which, indeed, he
had no concern. He heard nothing; he kept watch--close watch to
remember. He opened his heart to the terror of poor Bill Bull; he
sought to feel, though the effort was not conscious, what the atheist
endured in the presence of the wrath to come. He watched; he memorized
every phrase of the torture, as it expressed itself in the changing
lines of Bill Bull's countenance, that he might himself express it.

Afterward, in the kitchen, he drew pictures. He drew many; he
succeeded in none. He worked in a fever, he destroyed in despair, he
began anew with his teeth clenched. And then all at once, a windy
night, he gave it all up and came wistfully to sit by the kitchen
fire.

"Is you quit?" his mother inquired.

"Ay, Mother."

"H-m-m!" says Skipper Tom, puzzled. "I never knowed you t' quit for
the night afore I made you."

Terry Lute shot his father a reproachful glance.

"I must take heed t' my soul," said he, darkly, "lest I be damned for
my sins."

Next night Terry Lute knelt at the penitent bench with old Bill Bull.
It will be recalled now that he had heard never a word of Parson
Down's denunciations and appeals, that he had been otherwise and
deeply engaged. His response had been altogether a reflection of Bill
Bull's feeling, which he had observed, received, and memorized, and so
possessed in the end that he had been overmastered by it, though he
was ignorant of what had inspired it. And this, Cobden says, is a
sufficient indication of that mastery of subject, of understanding and
sympathy, which young Terry Lute later developed and commanded as a
great master should, at least to the completion o