chief sinners in his congregation. Some of them sat in
such high places in the church--perhaps behind him in the pulpit.
Compared with these the reprobates on the back benches were easily
stirred and awakened to a sense of their lost condition. Sometimes one
of these members would confess to feeling "cold" spiritually, but I do
not now recall a single one who really confessed his sins or renounced
them.

Suppose a steward owns a big flour mill and can afford to pay the
preacher liberally, bear more than his share of the "assessments," and
own an automobile besides, because he cheats every customer out of a
few ounces of real flour by substituting "fancy flour." What shall he
do--sacrifice the auto and the church "causes"? He never does, because
at bottom he has a sneaking conviction that the auto in particular is
worth more than his kind of a soul, and he is shockingly correct in his
estimate of values. If there really are any apostates in this world
they belong to this spiritually-refrigerated class to be found in every
religious denomination.

But if he did not close in often with the chief sinners, William
occasionally came upon a rare saint. I mean "rare" in the scientific,
spiritual sense--that is, different, moving in time, but not of it--the
unconscious prophet of a new order in the souls of mankind. And it was
a grand sight to see him measure the sword of his spirit with one of
these.

The last encounter he had of this kind, I remember, was on the Bowtown
Circuit not long before he was superannuated, and it was with a woman.
She was called Sal Prout. The omission of the last syllable of her
given name implied social ostracism and personal contempt. And she
deserved both, having been a notorious woman in her younger days. We
heard of her first from Brother Rheubottom. He was the shriveled,
grizzled local preacher who furnished a kind of gadfly gospel to the
church at Bowtown when he was invited to fill the pulpit, which was no
oftener than could be helped. He called to tell William about the
"Prout woman" before we had had time to unpack our clothes and
commentaries.

"She's been a terrible creature," he explained, wagging his hard old
hickorynut head and clawing his beard with a kind of spiritual rapacity
for devouring the worst of Sal's character.

"She's done more harm than a dozen wildcat stills. Then all at once,
here about five years ago she turned good, 'lowed she'd heerd from God.
It w