re a fire was blazing, and Mattie and
Herman sang hymns and old-fashioned love-songs and college glees
wonderfully intermingled. They ended with _Lorena_, a wailing, extra
sentimental love-song current in war times, and when they looked around
there was a lofty look on the face of the young preacher--a look of
exaltation, of consecration and resolve.

III

The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit,
"We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is
over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie
thought it very brave of him to do so.

Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's
'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in
these theological contests. She doesn't even referee the scrap; she
never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a
finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I
can't see--and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my
corns."

Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He knew it was addressed
to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh
face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put other affairs very
far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely
girl.

After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear,
cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with
farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded
each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of
the fields.

Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked
briskly toward it, Herman's description of it came to his mind.

As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows
boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of
the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside
was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting
straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on
the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.

Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of
the Man of Galilee--a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and
depravity of man.

As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the o