rk waters.

Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good
woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:

"O Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could only
touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his
ways--if he says a thing he sticks to it."

Stacey turned to Mattie for a word of encouragement, but she only looked
away. It was impossible for her to put into words her feeling in the
matter, which was more of admiration for his courage than for any part
of his religious zeal. He was so different from other men. It seemed he
had a touch of divinity in him now.

It did him good to have them come, and he repeated his vow:

"By the grace of our Lord, I am going to rebuild the Cyene Church," and
his face paled and his eyes grew luminous.

The girl shivered with a sort of awe. He seemed to recede from her as he
spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and
splendid to her.

* * * * *

The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and
boots, the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the
heat, the closeness, were forgotten in the fervor of the young
evangelist's utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences
without his conscious effort, and these cadences sounded deep places in
the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory, it was
like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama, and
processions and apocalyptic visions. He had the histrionic spell, too,
and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took on majesty
and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge and an
appeal.

A series of stirring events took place on the third night.

On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
the women all were weeping on each other's bosoms; only one or two of
the men held out--old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the two factions
moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them one by one skeptics
acknowledged the pathos and dignity o