The girl was looking at the woman, but seemed rapt
from the sight of her in a vision of the night before.
“I reckon Satan could make it sound that way,”
Nancy said, but her niece seemed not to hear her.
Nancy stood staring at her, with words bitter beyond
saying in her heart; words that rose in her throat
and choked her. When she spoke she only said,
“Get up, Jane; your father’ll be here in
a minute.”
“I’m not going to eat anything. I’m
going into the woods.” She staggered to
her feet, and dashed from the door. The child
looked after her with outstretched arms and whimpered
pitifully, but she did not mind its call.
“Where’s Jane?” her father said,
coming in at the back door.
“Gone into the woods,” she said.
[Illustration: Nancy stood staring at her, with
words beyond saying in her heart—words
that rose in her throat and choked her]
“To pray, I reckon.”
He sat down at the table-leaf lifted from the wall,
and his sister served him his breakfast. He ate
greedily, but his hand trembled so in lifting his
cup that the coffee spilled from it.
When he had ended and sat leaning back from the board,
she asked him: “What are you going to do?”
The old man cleared his throat. “Nothing,
yet. Let the Lord work His will.”
“And let Joseph Dylks work his will,
too! I’ll have something to say about that.”
“Be careful, woman. Be careful.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful. He has as much
to lose as I have.”
“No, not half so much.”
Where Matthew Braile sat smoking most of the hot forenoon
away on the porch of his cabin, there came to him
rumor of the swift spread of the superstition running
from mind to mind in the neighborhood, and catching
like fire in dry grass. The rumor came in different
voices, some piously meant to shake him with fear
in the scorner’s seat which he held so stubbornly;
some in their doubt seeking the help of his powerful
unfaith; but he required their news from them all
with the same mocking. They were not of the Scribes
and Pharisees, the pillars of the Temple, the wise
and rich and proud who had been the first to follow
Dylks, but the poorer and lowlier sort who wavered
before the example of their betters, and were willing
to submit it to the searching of the old Sadducee’s
scrutiny.
The morning after Abel Reverdy had finished his work
at the Cross Roads, and had returned to the cares
patiently awaiting him at home he rode his claybank
so hesitantly toward the Squire’s cabin that
his desire to stop and talk was plain, and Braile
called to him: “Well, Abel, what do they
think of the Prophet over at Wilkins’s?
Many converts? Many dipped or sprinkled, as the
case required?”
Reverdy drew rein and faced the Squire with a solemnity
presently yielding to his natural desire to grin at
any form of joke, and his belief that when the Squire
indulged such flagrant irreverence as this he must
be joking. Yet he answered evasively: “You
hearn’t he says now he hain’t never go’n
to die?”
