Presently he heard her calling again.

"What is it?" he said, sitting up.

"I'm so lonesome, I'm afraid to stay in here all alone."

"I will go over and get your mother." And he got up.

"She won't come."

"I'll bring her," said Canute grimly.

"No, no. I don't want her, she will scold all the time."

"Well, I will bring your father."

She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to
the key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak
before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear
her.

"I don't want him either, Canute,--I'd rather have you."

For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan.
With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in
the snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the door
step.

_Overland Monthly_, January 1896

_Eric Hermannson's Soul_

I.

It was a great night at the Lone Star schoolhouse--a night when the
Spirit was present with power and when God was very near to man. So
it seemed to Asa Skinner, servant of God and Free Gospeller. The
schoolhouse was crowded with the saved and sanctified, robust men
and women, trembling and quailing before the power of some
mysterious psychic force. Here and there among this cowering,
sweating multitude crouched some poor wretch who had felt the pangs
of an awakened conscience, but had not yet experienced that complete
divestment of reason, that frenzy born of a convulsion of the mind,
which, in the parlance of the Free Gospellers, is termed "the
Light." On the floor, before the mourners' bench, lay the
unconscious figure of a man in whom outraged nature had sought her
last resort. This "trance" state is the highest evidence of grace
among the Free Gospellers, and indicates a close walking with God.

Before the desk stood Asa Skinner, shouting of the mercy and
vengeance of God, and in his eyes shone a terrible earnestness, an
almost prophetic flame. Asa was a converted train gambler who used
to run between Omaha and Denver. He was a man made for the extremes
of life; from the most debauched of men he had become the most
ascetic. His was a bestial face, a face that bore the stamp of
Nature's eternal injustice. The forehead was low, projecting over
the eyes, and the sandy hair was plastered down over it and then
brushed back at an abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, the
nostrils were low and wide, and the