uds were floating across the sun and a delicate shadow lay over the
flower-beds around us. Aunt Jane's eyes were on the distant hills
beyond the budding orchard trees, and I saw with delight that she was
in the garden but not of it. A few moments ago the present beauty of
the wistaria had possessed her, but now she was living in another
spring.

"Dr. Pendleton used to tell Hannah that her name ought to 'a' been
Martha, because she was troubled about many things," continued Aunt
Jane; "and it was her takin' trouble over things that come near
throwin' her off her balance, back yonder in '54, the year we had the
big drouth. Maybe you've heard your grandmother tell about it, child.
Parson Page used to say there was nothin' like a drouth for makin'
people feel their dependence on a higher power, and I reckon more
prayers went up to heaven that summer than'd gone up for many a year,
and folks prayed then that never had prayed before. A time like that
is mighty hard on man and beast. The heavens were brass and the earth
cast iron jest like the Bible says. Every livin' thing was parched up
and I ricollect Sam Amos sayin' that, with the cistern and the spring
dry and the river a mile and a half away, for once in his life he
found it easier to be godly than to be clean.

"Well, about the time when everything was at its worst, we had a
strange preacher to fill the pulpit o' Goshen church, and he preached
a sermon that none of us ever forgot. There's two kinds of preachers,
child, the New Testament preachers and the Old Testament preachers.
Parson Page was the New Testament kind. Sam Amos used to say that
Parson Page's sermons never interfered with anybody's Sunday evenin'
nap. But the minute I laid eyes on the new preacher, I says to myself,
'We're goin' to have an Old Testament sermon, this day,' and sure
enough we did. He was a tall, thin man, with the blackest eyes and
hair you ever saw and a mouth that looked like he'd never smiled in
his life, and when he walked up into the pulpit you'd 'a' thought he
was one o' the old prophets come to warn men of judgment to come. He
read the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, that chapter that's all about
judgments and punishments; and then he turned over to Leviticus and
read a chapter there about the same things, and then he picked out two
texts from these chapters. One was, 'Thou shalt give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning
for burning, wo