not even the soggy chill of his
wet clothes could depress the spirit which had made good its footing on
the high mount of humility.

VIII

THE BACKSLIDER

It was late in September before the dreaded invasion of the sacred
places, foreboded by Thomas Jefferson's prophetic soul, became one of
the things to be looked back on; and the interval had sufficed for
another change of heart, or, more correctly, for a descent to the valley
of things as they are from the top of that high mountain of spiritual
humility.

Thomas Jefferson did not analyze the reactionary process. But the
milestones along the backward way were familiar.

In a little while he found that he was once more able to say his prayers
at bedtime with the old glibness, and with the comfortable feeling that
he had done his whole duty if he remained on his knees for sixty full
ticks of the heirloom grandfather clock. It was an accomplishment on
which he prided himself, this knack of saying his prayers and counting
the clock ticks at the same time. Stub Helgerson, whose mother was a
Lutheran and said her prayers out of a book, could not do it. Thomas
Jefferson had asked him.

A little farther along he came to the still more familiar milestone of
the doubtful questionings. Did God really trouble Himself about the
millions of things people asked Him to do? It seemed highly incredible,
not to say impossible, in the very nature of it. And if He did, would He
make one person sick for the sake of making another person sorry? These
questions were answerless, like so many of the others; but after the
perplexity had been pushed aside, the doubt remained.

Coming down by such successive steps from the mount of penitent
thanksgivings, it was but a short time before he found himself back on
the old camping-ground of sullen resentment.

When the girl got well enough to go about, she would find him out and
warn him off; or perhaps she might do even worse, and tag him. In either
case he should hate her, and there was a sort of ferocious joy in the
thought that she would doubtless be a long time getting well, and would
probably not be able to find him if he kept far enough out of her way.

Acting on this wise conclusion, he carefully avoided the manor-house and
its neighborhood, making a wide circuit when he went fishing in the
upper pools. And once, when his father had sent him with a message to
the Major, he did violence to his own sense of exact obedience by