ilent and when she spoke he started out of his
revery and rubbed his eyes as if he had been asleep; but he had not, for
as a spirit, a little boy Bud, he had played with her in the gulch,
coming out from beneath the rock when she called him.

"Let us go back to the house," she said. "They will wonder what has
become of us."

Jim and Mrs. Mayfield were coming down the hill. The preacher, too, had
for the most part been silent, though not in reverie, but in a constant
struggle. Once he said to her: "Ma'm, I can't get it out of my head that
you are makin' fun of me."

"I make fun of you, Mr. Reverend? I admit that in the past my heart was
gayer than wise, but there never was a time when I could have made fun
of you."

Slowly they walked down the hill and he pondered over what she had said,
but a simple heart is often a suspicious heart; rustic faith is afraid
of itself, and he did not believe her. He was not wise enough to see
that in her eye he was a moral Hercules. He did not know that in his
great strength, in his very awkwardness, there was a fascination for
this woman who had drunk wine from a golden goblet and found it bitter.
On every creed there are dark spots, and in his devotion to his calling
he was afraid that she had come to him as a temptation, to lead him
away from the work of saving souls. Sometimes he caught himself
foolishly wishing that suddenly she might develop into a man, the evil
one himself, that he might defy him; and then the softness of her words
would bring shame upon him and he would mutter imprecations against
himself.

"The sun is no longer shining upon it, but in my mind that hill-top will
always glow," she said when they had reached the road. "It must ever
remain a gold-tipped promontory of the past."

"Ma'm, I don't know what you mean."

CHAPTER IX.

AT DRY FORK.

The next day was Sunday, and immediately after breakfast Jasper
announced that he was going "to haul a passel of them" over to church,
the place of worship and of gossip being about five miles distant. And
when everything was made ready, Mrs. Mayfield was delighted to find upon
going out to the gate that they were to be drawn by two enormous oxen.
But Margaret objected. "Thar air two hosses out yander at the stable,
and it is jest one of Jasper's pranks to take these steers," she said.
"And I jest know he's a doin' it to humiliate me." The old man,
pretending to fix the yoke, ducked his head to hide his grinni