meward, his will and hopes broken, and sank
dejectedly into a slough of despondency. All his good intentions, all
the inspiration of his endeavour, his very spiritual exaltation had
terminated in a tragedy, as inexplicable as it was depressing.

His conscience would neither let him rest nor work. He looked at his
Bible, inside and out, the very fibres of his brain struggling by
reason, by effort, by main strength, to discover what his duty was. No
answer soothed his waking hours or gave him rest from his dreams. On him
rested a kind of superstitious scorn and fear, and he began to believe
the whisperings of his neighbours which reached his ears. They said:

"He's possessed!"

To his own freighted mind the statement seemed to be true. He did not
know what new sin he had committed, nor could he look back on long years
of his youth and young manhood and discover any sin which he had not
already expiated, over and over again. He had obeyed the scriptural
injunctions to the best of his knowledge, and the reward was this daily
and nightly torment, the scorn of his fellows, and the questioning of
his own soul.

Worst of all, constructively, he had given feud fighters the chance to
do murder upon one another. Under the guise of preaching for them for
the good of their souls, he had enabled them to meet in antagonism,
watch in wrath, and kill without mercy. Too late he realized that he
should have foreseen the tragedy, and that he should have provided
against it by going first to each faction, preaching to each family, and
then, when he had brought them to their knees, united them in the common
cause of religion.

"On me is Thy wrath!" he cried out in the anguish of his soul. "Give thy
tortured slave something good to do, ere I go down!"

There was no reply, immediate or audible; he was near the limits of his
endurance; he drew his arm back to throw the Bible into the flames of
his fireplace, but that he could not do. He tossed it upon the shelf,
drew his hat down upon his ears and at the approach of night started
over the ridges to the Kalbean stillhouse.

He stalked down a ridge into that split-board shack of infamy. He found
five or six men in the hot, sour-smelling place. They started to their
feet when they saw the mountain preacher among them.

"Gimme some!" he told Old Kalbean. "I'm a fool! I'm damned. I'll go with
the rest of ye to Hell! Gimme some!"

"Wha--What?" Old Kalbean choked with horror. "Yo' gwine to d