d expanded in little wrinkles at the ends
of his eyes. "No," he said jestingly. "I'm death on collecting debts;
and I reckon that the church still owes me a girl. I'll have one yet."

So, with merriment the echoes of which pleasantly accompanied Theron
down the stairway, the two men parted.

CHAPTER XIII

Though time lagged in passing with a slowness which seemed born of
studied insolence, there did arrive at last a day which had something
definitive about it to Theron's disturbed and restless mind. It was a
Thursday, and the prayer-meeting to be held that evening would be the
last before the Quarterly Conference, now only four days off.

For some reason, the young minister found himself dwelling upon this
fact, and investing it with importance. But yesterday the Quarterly
Conference had seemed a long way ahead. Today brought it alarmingly
close to hand. He had not heretofore regarded the weekly assemblage
for prayer and song as a thing calling for preparation, or for any
preliminary thought. Now on this Thursday morning he went to his desk
after breakfast, which was a sign that he wanted the room to himself,
quite as if he had the task of a weighty sermon before him. He sat at
the desk all the forenoon, doing no writing, it is true, but remembering
every once in a while, when his mind turned aside from the book in his
hands, that there was that prayer-meeting in the evening.

Sometimes he reached the point of vaguely wondering why this strictly
commonplace affair should be forcing itself thus upon his attention.
Then, with a kind of mental shiver at the recollection that this was
Thursday, and that the great struggle came on Monday, he would go back
to his book.

There were a half-dozen volumes on the open desk before him. He had
taken them out from beneath a pile of old "Sunday-School Advocates" and
church magazines, where they had lain hidden from Alice's view most of
the week. If there had been a locked drawer in the house, he would have
used it instead to hold these books, which had come to him in a neat
parcel, which also contained an amiable note from Dr. Ledsmar, recalling
a pleasant evening in May, and expressing the hope that the accompanying
works would be of some service. Theron had glanced at the backs of the
uppermost two, and discovered that their author was Renan. Then he had
hastily put the lot in the best place he could think of to escape his
wife's observation.

He realized now that ther