The Leatherwood God | Page 8

As he
dropped his chair forward, he heard a sound of frying, and "Pshaw,
Martha!" he called. "You're not getting me some fresh bacon?"
"Did you suppose there'd be some left?" she demanded, while she

stepped to and fro at her labors. Her steps ceased and she called, "Well,
come in now, Matthew, if you don't want _every_thing to get cold, like
the pone is."
Braile obeyed, saying, "Oh, I can stand cold pone," and at sight of the
table with the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked tenderly,
"Now just to reward you, Martha, I've got half a mind to go with you to
the next meeting in the Temple."
"I don't know as I'm goin' myself," she said, pouring the coffee.
"I wish you would, just to please me," he teased.

II
No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger went home
from the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie and his girl. Many had
come forward with hospitable offers, and the stranger had been affable
with all; but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had parried
the invitations made him. Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and
his shy daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their
claims; yet the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and
spent all the next day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn
fields in.
Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl when
she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin. The girl seemed still under the
spell that had fallen upon many at the meeting, and it appeared to Sally
that she did not want to talk; at any rate she did not talk to any
satisfactory end. A squirrel hunter believed he had caught a glimpse of
the stranger in the chestnut woods behind the Gillespie spring-house,
but he was not a man whose oath was acceptable in the community and
his belief was not generally shared. It was thought that the stranger
would reappear at the last night of the camp-meeting, but the Gillespies
came without him, and reported that they had expected he would come
by himself.
The camp-meeting broke up after the Sunday morning service and most
of the worshipers, sated with their devotional experience, went home,
praising the Power in song as they rode away in the wagons laden with
their camp furniture, and their children strewn over the bedding. But for
others, the fire of the revival burned through the hot, long, August
Sabbath day, and a devout congregation crowded the Temple.

The impulse of the week past held over to the night unabated. The
spacious log-built house was packed from wall to wall; the men stood
dense; the seats were filled with women; only a narrow path was left
below the pulpit for those who might wish to rise and confess Christ
before the congregation. The people waited in a silence broken by their
deep breathing, their devout whispering, the scraping of their feet; now
and then a babe, whose mother could not leave it at home, wailed
pitifully or spitefully till it was coaxed or scolded still; now and then
some one coughed. The air was thick; a bat scandalized the assemblage
by flying in at the open door, and wavering round the tallow candles on
the pulpit; one of the men beat it down with his hat, and then picked it
up and crowded his way down the aisle, out into the night with it.
When he came back it was as if he had found the stranger whom they
were all consciously expecting, and had brought him in with David
Gillespie and his girl. She was tall and straight, like her father, and her
hair was red, like his; her eyes were gray blue, and the look in them
was both wilful and dreamy.
The stranger smiled and took the hands stretched out to him in passing
by several of the different sectarians who used the Temple. Gillespie
seemed not to notice or to care for the greetings to his guest, and his
girl wore her wonted look of vague aloofness.
Matthew Braile had been given a seat at the front, perhaps in deference
to his age and dignity; perhaps in confusion at his presence. He glanced
up at the stranger with a keen glint through his branching eyebrows,
and made a guttural sound; his wife pushed him; and he said; "What?"
and "Oh!" quite audibly; and she pushed him again for answer.
The Gillespies sat down with the stranger in the foremost bench. He
wore the black broadcloth coat of the Friday night before; his long hair,
combed back from his forehead, fell down his shoulders almost to his
middle; the