“There was a lot of talk about freedom while we were building this house,” said Gunner “but I haven’t heard a liberal word since the place was first opened.”

The schoolmaster grew purple.  Gunner’s remark was the first evidence of any actual hostility or revolt.  “Let me remind you, Bullet Gunner, that here you have heard the true freedom preached, as Luther taught it; but here there has been no license to preach the kind of new-fangled ideas that spring up one day and fall to the ground the next.”

“The schoolmaster would have us think that everything new is worthless as soon as it touches upon doctrine,” Gunner replied soothingly and half regretfully.  “He approves of our using new methods of caring for our cattle, and wants us to adopt the latest agricultural machinery; but we are not allowed to know anything about the new implements with which God’s acres are now being tilled.”

Storm began to think that Bullet Gunner’s bark was worse than his bite.  “Is it your meaning,” he said, adopting a facetious tone, “that we should preach a different doctrine here from the Lutheran?”

“It is not a question of a new doctrine,” roared Gunner, “but as to who shall preach; and, as far as I know, Matts Ericsson is as good a Lutheran as either the schoolmaster or the parson.”

For the moment the schoolmaster had forgotten about the parson; but now he glanced down at him.  The clergyman sat quietly musing, his chin resting upon the knob of his cane.  There was a curious gleam in his eyes, which were fixed upon Storm, never leaving him for a second.

“After all, perhaps it would have been just as well if the parson hadn’t come to-day,” thought the schoolmaster.  What was then taking place reminded Storm of something he had experienced before.  It could be just like this in school sometimes, on a bright spring morning, when a little bird perched itself outside the schoolroom window and warbled lustily.  Then all at once the children would tease and beg to be excused from school; they abandoned their studies and made so much fuss and noise that it was almost impossible to bring them to order.  Something of the same sort had come over the congregation after Hoek Matts’s arrival.  However, the schoolmaster meant to show the pastor and all of them that he was man enough to quell the mutiny.  “First, I will leave them alone and let the ringleaders talk themselves hoarse,” he thought, and went and sat down on a chair behind the table on which the water bottle stood.

Instantly there arose against him a perfect storm of protests; for by that time every one had become inflated with the idea that they were all of them just as good as the schoolmaster.  “Why should he alone be allowed to tell us what to believe and what not to believe!” they shouted.

These ideas seemed to be new to most of them, yet from the talk it became evident that they had been germinating in their minds ever since the schoolmaster had built the mission house, and shown them that a plain, ordinary man can preach the Word of God.