dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots,
the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the
closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's
utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep
places in the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory,
it was like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama,
and processions and apocalyptic visions. This youth had the histrionic
spell, too, and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took
on majesty and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge
and an appeal.

A series of stirring events took place on the third night.

On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
the women were weeping on one another's bosoms; only one or two of the
men held out--old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the two factions
moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them, one by one, skeptics
acknowledged the pathos and dignity of the preacher's views of life and
death.

Meanwhile the young evangelist lived at high pressure. He grew thinner
and whiter each night. He toiled in the daytime to formulate his
thoughts for the evening. He could not sleep till far toward morning.
The food he ate did him little good, while his heart went out constantly
to his people in strenuous supplication. It was testimony of his human
quality that he never for one moment lost that shining girl face out of
his thought. He looked for it there night after night. It was his
inspiration in speaking, as at the first.

On the nights when Mattie was not there his speech was labored (as the
elders noticed), but on the blessed nights when she came and sang, her
voice, amid all the rest, came to him, and uttered poetry and peace like
a rill of cool, sweet water. And afterward, when he walked home under
the stars, his mind went with her, she was so strong and lithe and good
to see. He did not realize the worshipping attitude the girl took before
his divine duties.

At last the great day came--the great night.

In some way, perhaps by the