hitherto forbidden pleasure. She did not fail to note her father's
eagerness for the arrival of the paper; and recalled the fact that he
had once objected to her reading "Pilgrim's Progress" on the Sabbath.

"It's useful, perhaps," he had said, "useful in its way and in its
place, but it is fiction nevertheless."

There were many vexing questions of church discipline that winter, and
the Rev. Samuel McClanahan rode over from Cedar Township often and held
long theological discussions with her father in the privacy of the best
room. Once Squire Wilson came with him, and as the two visitors left the
house Marg'et Ann heard the Rev. Samuel urging upon the elder the
necessity of "holding up Brother Morrison's hands."

It was generally known among the congregation that Abner Kirkendall had
been before the session for attending the Methodist Church and singing
an uninspired hymn in the public worship of God, and it was whispered
that the minister was not properly impressed with the heinousness of
Abner's sin. Then, too, Jonathan Loomis, the precentor, who had at first
insisted upon lining out two lines of the psalm instead of one, and had
carried his point, now pushed his dangerous liberality to the extreme of
not lining out at all. The first time he was guilty of this startling
innovation, "Rushin' through the sawm," as Uncle John Turnbull
afterwards said, "without deegnity, as if it were a mere human
cawmposeetion," two or three of the older members arose and left the
church; and the presbytery was shaken to its foundations of Scotch
granite when Mr. Morrison humbly acknowledged that he had not noticed
the precentor's bold sally until Brother Turnbull's departure attracted
his attention.

It is true that the minister had preached most acceptably that day from
the ninth and twelfth verses of the thirty-fifth chapter of Job: "By
reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to cry:
they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty.... There they cry, but
none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men." And it is
possible that the zeal for freedom that burned in his soul was rather
gratified than otherwise by Jonathan's bold singing of the prophetic
psalm:--

"He out of darkness did them bring
And from Death's shade them take,
Those bands wherewith they had been bound
Asunder quite he brake.

"O that men to the Lord would give
Praise for His goodness then,
And for His works of w