ck part of the room. "That's
what I want to know."

"He's a bad pill," said another, repeating a pun already old.

"I guess so! He borrowed twenty dollars o' me last week," said the first
voice.

"He owes me for a pig," shouted a short man, excitedly. "I believe he's
skipped to get rid o' his debts."

"So do I. I allus said he was a mighty queer preacher."

"He'd bear watchin' was my idee fust time I ever see him."

"Careful, brethren--_careful_. He may come at any minute."

"I don't care if he does. I'd bone him f'r pay f'r that shote, preacher
'r no preacher," said Bartlett, a little nervously.

High words followed this, and there was prospect of a fight. The
pressure of the crowd, however, was so great it was well-nigh impossible
for two belligerents to get at each other. The meeting broke up at last,
and the people, chilly, soured, and disappointed at the lack of
developments, went home saying Pill was _scaly_; no preacher who chawed
terbacker was to be trusted; and when it was learned that the horse and
buggy he drove he owed Jennings and Bensen for, everybody said, "He's a
fraud."

V.

In the meantime, Andrew Pill was undergoing the most singular and awful
mental revolution.

When he leaped blindly into his cutter and gave his horse the rein, he
was wild with rage and shame, and a sort of fear. As he sat with bent
head, he did not hear the tread of the horse, and did not see the trees
glide past. The rabbit leaped away under the shadow of the thick groves
of young oaks; the owl, scared from its perch, went fluttering off into
the cold, crisp air; but he saw only the contemptuous, quizzical face of
old William Bacon--one shaggy eyebrow lifted, a smile showing through
his shapeless beard.

He saw the colorless, handsome face of Radbourn, with a look of reproach
and a note of suggestion--Radbourn, one of the best thinkers and
speakers in Rock River, and the most generally admired young man in Rock
County.

When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the
calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made
his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter
of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a
shelving sand-bank--in unstable equilibrium--needing only a touch to
send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch
had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his fallin