e ter choose a-tween us. Only I hadn't
never thought of thet--an'----." Once more he fell silent.

"My God, Turner," exclaimed Jerry, with a sudden realization of the
absurdity of such an idea, "I could have no thought of marrying her."

"Why couldn't ye?" For an instant the gray eyes narrowed and into them
came a dangerous gleam. "Hain't she good enough--fer you or any other
man?"

Jerry Henderson nodded with grave assent.

"She's good enough for any man alive," he declared. "But I can't think
of marriage at all now. All my plans of life prohibit that." Bear Cat
Stacy drank in the clear air in a long breath of joyous relief.

"That's all I needs ter know," he said with entire sincerity. "Only,"
his voice dropped and he spoke very gently, "only, I reckon ye don't
realize how much yore eddycation counts with us thet wants hit an'
hain't got hit. Don't let her misunderstand ye none, Mr. Henderson. I
don't want ter see her hurt."

CHAPTER IX

Marlin Town lies cradled in the elbow of the river and about its ragged
edges the hills stand beetling, hemming it in.

Had it been located in Switzerland, it would have been acclaimed in
guide-book and traveler's tales for the sheer beauty of its
surroundings.

Hither, when the summer had spent its heat and the hard duties of the
farmer had relaxed, flocked the men and women and the children of the
country side for that annual diversion which combined with the ardor of
religious pilgrimage a long-denied hunger for personal intercourse and
excitement. Then, in fine, came "big-meeting time."

The clans gathered from "'way over on t'other side of nowhars." They
trooped in from communities which the circuit rider visited so rarely
that it was no disgrace for a man and a maid to dwell together as man
and wife until a child had been born to them before opportunity came to
have the marriage rites solemnized. They flocked from localities so
remote that in them sometimes the dead lay buried without funeral until
an itinerant minister chanced by to hold obsequies over all delinquent
graves in common. It is even told how occasionally a widowed husband
wept over the mortal remains of his first and second wife--at a sermon
held for both.

So while the magnet which draws them out of their deep-burrowed
existence is the Camp-meeting with its hymns and discourse, the
occasion holds also the secular importance of county-fair and social
conclave.

Brother Fulkerson left his cab