t of trading outside the bounds of
the congregation, the trustees complained again, this time peremptorily.

Thus the second year dragged itself miserably to an end. Nor was
relief possible, because the Presiding Elder knew something of the
circumstances, and felt it his duty to send Theron back for a third
year, to pay his debts, and drain the cup of disciplinary medicine to
its dregs.

The worst has been told. Beginning in utter blackness, this third year,
in the second month, brought a change as welcome as it was unlooked for.
An elderly and important citizen of Tyre, by name Abram Beekman, whom
Theron knew slightly, and had on occasions seen sitting in one of
the back pews near the door, called one morning at the parsonage, and
electrified its inhabitants by expressing a desire to wipe off all their
old scores for them, and give them a fresh start in life. As he put the
suggestion, they could find no excuse for rejecting it. He had watched
them, and heard a good deal about them, and took a fatherly sort of
interest in them. He did not deprecate their regarding the aid he
proffered them in the nature of a loan, but they were to make themselves
perfectly easy about it, and never return it at all unless they could
spare it sometime with entire convenience, and felt that they wanted to
do so. As this amazing windfall finally took shape, it enabled the Wares
to live respectably through the year, and to leave Tyre with something
over one hundred dollars in hand.

It enabled them, too, to revive in a chastened form their old dream of
ultimate success and distinction for Theron. He had demonstrated clearly
enough to himself, during that brief season of unrestrained effulgence,
that he had within him the making of a great pulpit orator. He set
to work now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and master all the
principles which underlie this art, and all the tricks that adorn its
superstructure. He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked
daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, addressing those people who
had so darkened his life and crushed the first happiness out of his
home, he withheld himself from any oratorical display which could afford
them gratification. He put aside, as well; the thought of attracting
once more the non-Methodists of Tyre, whose early enthusiasm had
spread such pitfalls for his unwary feet. He practised effects now
by piecemeal, with an alert ear, and calculation in every tone. An
ambi