cobwebs tremble.
The negro nurse on the doorstep crooned the hymn as she held the
sleeping baby. Uncle Tony, sitting on the steps of the pulpit platform,
swayed his body and nodded his head in rhythmic motion. He could not
carry a tune, but now and then would join in with a single note which
rang out clear and loud above all the rest. Other negroes from their
places in the gallery over the doorways opposite the pulpit, though
they knew not the words of the hymn, added the melody of their
plaintive voices. Little girls seated by their mothers on the woman's
side of the low partition, and little boys by their fathers on the
other side of the church, joined in with piping treble. Deacon
Gilcrest, his stern features relaxed, kept time with his hand (down,
left, right, up) as he thundered forth a ponderous bass. Old Matthew
Houston from one "amen corner" added his quavering notes; while from
the other, Squire Trabue, his chair tilted back, his face beaming, sang
with little regard to time or tune, but with melody in his heart, if
not in his voice. Near the central partition Susan Rogers and Betsy
Gilcrest, happy and bright-eyed, sang from the same book, their voices
clear, true, and sweet as bird notes.

As the music arose in a swelling wave of melody, Abner Dudley looked
through the congregation for the girl in the lavender sarcenet.
Presently he discovered her seated near a window and singing with the
rest. Her veil was thrown back, and from the depths of the scoop
bonnet, with a wreath of roses under its brim, shone forth a face of
radiant loveliness. From her broad, white brow the shining brown hair
was parted in rippling masses; she had darkly fringed blue eyes, a
well-rounded chin, and skin whose tints of rose and pearl were like the
delicate inner surface of a sea shell.

"Abigail Patterson, of Williamsburg!" he mentally ejaculated. "What is
she doing here? Henry said that she was Major Gilcrest's niece, too. So
this is the 'Miss Abby' whom the Rogers children talk so much about,
and whom the Gilcrest children are always quoting. And to think that I
had pictured her a prim old maid."

It was not until the preacher, who until now had been hidden by the
high pulpit, stepped forward, that Abner was aroused to a sense of time
and place. He looked up as the clear tones of the speaker rang through
the building, and saw for the first time the man who was destined to
exert a powerful influence upon his career--Barton Warr