dle-aged evangelistic preacher, who bowed and smiled in agreeable
surprise at the new-comer. The room held fifty or sixty men and women,
all silently awaiting the beginning of the services. Henley seated
himself on the front bench nearest the preacher, and put his hat on the
floor, and dropped his handkerchief into it.

The meeting was opened with the singing by the congregation of familiar
hymns, in which Henley joined harmoniously with a fair bass. It was
known of him that he never declined an invitation to lead in prayer, and
on being asked this evening he readily complied. His voice was deep and
round and mellow, and the burden of his utterances was suitable to that
or any other religious occasion, being a sort of singsong tribute to
the eternal glory of humility and submission to the divine will. The
prayer was followed by a rousing sermon from the preacher, and, in
closing, he called attention, as Henley evidently had gathered from some
source that he would do, to the future plans of the organization. The
time was ripe for work in the highways and byways--the sowing of seed in
out-of-the-way places, and the preacher was to "take the road" with one
or two good singers, a cornet-player, and a cottage-organ, and give
people in isolated mountain-nooks a chance to hear the Word and profit
thereby for their eternal weal.

He had just seated himself and was mopping his perspiring brow when
Henley rose and stood hemming and hawing and clearing his throat.

"I want to say in this same connection," he began, "that I plumb approve
of this new idea of taking the great and living Truth into remote
corners of our spiritually dark land. Here in Chester we are, you might
say, basking in the sunshine of Christian civilization, but away out off
of the main roads in the mountains the Book hain't read and prayer
hain't held except now and then. I heard that you had already entered
into negotiations with an Atlanta tent factory to furnish you with a
tabernacle, an' I must say it ain't a bad notion, because many a fine
bush-arbor meeting has been busted all to flinders by sudden showers
that good, stout canvas would shed as well as a roof of shingles. I want
to contribute five dollars toward the fund myself; but I'm here to
confess to you frankly that I wouldn't like to see the money throwed
away. The great majority of them meeting-tents on the market are simply
made to sell and not for hard use. They look all right in the
sample-roo