Before those darkened,
bereaved eyes, turn where they would, Love's ever-renewed idyl of rustic
courtship was enacting, since Big Meetin' was the time and occasion of
all the year for Corydon to encounter Phyllis, to stroll or sit beneath
the trees with her, possibly to "carry her home."

Andy and Jeff began taking the Lusk girls to meeting, and within a week's
time two very pale young men--the twins always acted in concert--stumbled
up the earthen aisle between the puncheon seats to join the group at the
mourners' bench and ask for the prayers of the congregation. Brother
Bohannon knew what quarry he had netted, and he hurried down at once,
half in doubt that this was another scheme of these young daredevils to
make game of his meeting. But both boys were on their knees, and the
tears with which they began confessing to him past sins, the penitence of
their shaking voices, proclaimed the genuineness of their conversion.

Cliantha and Pendrilla left behind--they had been sober church members
since they were twelve years old--fluttered to Judith and demanded her
instant attention to the miracle.

"Oh, Judith, ain't it jest too good to be true?" panted little Cliantha.
"Jeff never did lack anything of bein' the best man that ever walked this
earth except to jine the church--an' now look at him!"

"And Andy, too," put in Pendrilla jealously. "I do believe Andy is a
prayin' the loudest--I'm shore he is."

Judith roused herself. "I'm mighty glad--for the both of ye," she said
kindly.

And then she looked at their tremulous, happy faces, at the kneeling boys
up among the press of figures about the pulpit, and burst into a storm of
weeping. Where was her lover? Where was Creed? Dead--or he had forgotten
her.

"Are you under conviction of sin, sister?" inquired one of the helpers.

Judith let it pass at that, and flung herself on her knees beside the
bench to wait until the last hymn and the dismissal.

Brother Bohannon was an extremely practical Christian; his creed applied
to every day in the year and to the most commonplace acts. He adjured his
converts not only to quit their meanness, but to go and acknowledge past
errors, to repair such evil as they could, and if possible to seek
forgiveness from man, certain that God's forgiveness would follow. Such
counsel as this brought the twins to their father's cabin early on the
morning after their conversion at Brush Arbour church.

"Pap," began Andy standing before his