The Project Gutenberg EBook of The River Prophet, by Raymond S. Spears

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Title: The River Prophet

Author: Raymond S. Spears

Illustrator: Ralph Pallen Coleman

Release Date: May 16, 2009 [EBook #28848]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: "_She snatched the automatic pistol from her bosom
and ... fired. The man stumbled back with a cry._"]

THE RIVER PROPHET

By

Raymond S. Spears

Frontispiece by

Ralph Pallen Coleman

Garden City New York

Doubleday, Page & Company

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

THE RIVER PROPHET

THE RIVER PROPHET

CHAPTER I

Elijah Rasba lived alone in a log cabin on Temple Run. He was a long,
lank, blue-eyed young man, with curly brown hair and a pale, almost
livid complexion. His eye-brows were heavy and dark brown, and the blue
steel of his gaze was fixed unwaveringly upon any object that it
distinguished.

Two generations before, Old Abe Rasba had built a church on a little
brook, a tributary of Jackson River, away up in the mountains. The
church was laid up of flat stones, gathered in fields, from ledges of
rock and up the wooded mountain side. It was large enough to hold all
the people for miles around, and the roof was supported by massive hewn
timbers, and some few attempts had been made to decorate the structure.

Old Abe had called his church "The Temple," had preached from a big
hollow oak stump, and laid down the Law of the Bible, which he had
memorized by heart, and expounded from experience. Elijah Rasba,
grandson of Old Abe, thus came honestly by reverence and religion, but
the strange glory which had surrounded the old Temple had departed from
the ruin, and of all the congregation, only Elijah remained.

Land-slips had ruined a score of farms cleared on too-steep hills;
lightning had destroyed the overshot grist mill, and the two big sto