Chapter VII: Part 7

You have never been a young Methodist preacher of the olden time. You never had over you a presiding elder who held your fate in his hands; who, more than that, was the man appointed by the church to be your godly counsellor. In the olden time especially, presiding elders were generally leaders of men, the best and greatest men that the early Methodist ministry afforded; greatest in the qualities most prized in ecclesiastical organization--practical shrewdness, executive force, and a piety of unction and lustre. How shall I make you understand the weight which the words of such a man had when he thought it needful to counsel or admonish a young preacher?

Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value as an organizer, had been made an "elder," and just now he thought it his duty to have a solemn conversation with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville circuit, upon matters of great delicacy. Magruder was not a man of nice perceptions, and he was dimly conscious of his own unfitness for the task before him. It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting. He had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would like to have a word with him, and they were walking side by side through the woods. Neither of them looked at the other. The "elder" was trying in vain to think of a point at which to begin; the young preacher was wondering what the elder would say.

"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother," said Magruder, desperately.

When they had sat down there was a pause.

"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother Goodwin?" he broke out abruptly at last.

"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly, not disposed to help the presiding elder out of his difficulty. Then he added: "But not thinking it a profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my thoughts to other things."

"Ahem! But have you not taken some steps toward matrimony without consulting with your brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"

"No, sir."

"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you have done a great wrong to a defenceless girl, who is a stranger in a strange land."

"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?" asked Morton, startled by the solemnity with which the presiding elder spoke.

"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the matter to guess who the person is. You have encouraged her to think that you meant to marry her. If I am correctly informed, you even advised Holston, who was her lover, not to annoy her any more, and you assumed to defend her rights in the lawsuit about a piece of land. Whether you meant to marry her or not, you have at least compromised her. And in such circumstances there is but one course open to a Christian or a gentleman." The elder spoke severely.

"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth," said Morton, rising and speaking with vehemence. "I have been very much struck with the eloquence of Sister Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or speaks in love-feast. I did not mean to marry anybody. I have always defended the poor and the helpless. She told me her history one day, and I felt sorry for her. I determined to befriend her." Here Morton paused in some embarrassment, not knowing just how to proceed.

"Befriend a woman! That is the most imprudent thing in the world for a minister to do, my dear brother. You cannot befriend a woman without doing harm."

"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to give it to her. She told me that she had refused Bob Holston five times, and that he kept troubling her. I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated with him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the country and said that I told him I was engaged to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he didn't let her alone. What I did tell him was, that I was Ann Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I thought, as a gentleman, he ought to take five refusals as sufficient, and not wait till he was knocked down by refusals."

"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take up a woman's cause that way, you have got to marry her or ruin her and yourself, too. If you were not a minister you might have a female friend or two; and you might help a woman in distress. But you are a sheep in the midst of--of--wolves. Half the girls on this circuit would like to marry you, and if you were to help one of them over the fence, or hold her bridle-rein for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five minutes with her about the turnip crop, she would consider herself next thing to engaged. Now, as to Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to gossip over the whole circuit."

"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising indignation.

"Why, everybody. I hadn't more than touched the circuit at Boggs' Corners till I heard that you were to be married at this very Quarterly Meeting. And I felt a little grieved that you should go so far without any consultation with me. I stopped at Sister Sims's--she's Ann Eliza's aunt I believe--and told her that I supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require my aid pretty soon, and she burst into tears. She said that if there had been anything between you and Ann Eliza, it must be broken off, for you hadn't stopped there at all on your last round. Now tell me the plain truth, brother. Did you not at one time entertain a thought of marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"

"I have thought about it. She is good-looking and I could not be with her without liking her. Then, too, everybody said that she was cut out for a preacher's wife. But I never paid her any attention that could be called courtship. I stopped going there because somebody had bantered me about her. I was afraid of talk. I will not deny that I was a little taken with her, at first, but when I thought of marrying her I found that I did not love her as one ought to love a wife--as much as I had once loved somebody else. And then, too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry have to locate sooner or later, and I don't want to give up the ministry. I think it's hard if a man cannot help a girl in distress without being forced to marry her."

"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter further," said the elder, who was more than ever convinced by Morton's admissions that he had acted reprehensibly. "I have confidence in you. You have done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not. There is only one way of making the thing right. It's a bad thing for a preacher to have a broken heart laid at his door. Now I tell you that I don't know anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than Sister Meacham. If the case stands as it does now I may have to object to the passage of your character at the next conference."

This last was an awful threat. In that time when the preachers lived far apart, the word of a presiding elder was almost enough to ruin a man. But instead of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly stubborn. If the elder and the conference could be so unjust he would bear the consequences, but would never submit.

The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house, and the presiding elder accordingly preached in the grove. All the time of his preaching Morton Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the zealous Ann Eliza were there. But no Ann Eliza appeared. Nothing but grief could thus keep her away from the meeting. The more Morton meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel. He had acted from the highest motives. He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt--the weak-looking Sister Sims--had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness the appearance of courtship. How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann Eliza of any design? Old ministers know better than to trust implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people. There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves. Intrigue is one of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks--a small but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of Mansoul under an alias.

A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from other people. He was conscious that Magruder's confidence in him was weakened, and it seemed to him that all the brethren and sisters looked at him askance. When he came to make the concluding prayer he had a sense of hollowness in his devotions, and he really began to suspect that he might be a hypocrite.

In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and in the presence of class-leaders, stewards, local preachers and exhorters from different parts of the circuit, the once popular preacher felt that he had somehow lost caste. He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for three months of labor; and small as was the amount, the scrupulous and now morbid Morton doubted whether he were fairly entitled to it. Sometimes he thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience by marrying Ann Eliza with or without love. But his whole proud, courageous nature rebelled against submitting to marry under compulsion of Magruder's threat.

At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and he got on but poorly. He looked in vain for Miss Ann Eliza Meacham. She was not there to go through the audience and with winning voice persuade those who were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's bench for prayer. She was not there to pray audibly until every heart should be shaken. Morton was not the only person who missed her. So famous a "working Christian" could not but be a general favorite; and the people were not slow to divine the cause of her absence. Brother Goodwin found the faces of his brethren averted, and the grasp of their hands less cordial. But this only made him sulky and stubborn. He had never meant to excite Sister Meacham's expectations, and he would not be driven to marry her.

The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting saw all the roads crowded with people. Everybody was on horseback, and almost every horse carried "double." At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast began in the large school-house. No one was admitted who did not hold a ticket, and even of those who had tickets some were turned away on account of their naughty curls, their sinful "artificials," or their wicked ear-rings. At the moment when the love-feast began the door was locked, and no tardy member gained admission. Plates, with bread cut into half-inch cubes, were passed round, and after these glasses of water, from which each sipped in turn--this meagre provision standing ideally for a feast. Then the speaking was opened by some of the older brethren, who were particularly careful as to dates, announcing, for instance, that it would be just thirty-seven years ago the twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at the mourner's bench in Logan's school-house on the banks of the South Fork of the Roanoke River in Old Virginny." This statement the brethren had heard for many years, with a proper variation in date as the time advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted it again with pious ejaculations of thanksgiving. There was a sameness in the perorations of these little speeches. Most of the old men wound up by asking an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their "last days might be their best days," and that their "path might grow brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." Soon the elder sisters began to speak of their trials and victories, of their "ups and downs," their "many crooked paths," and the religion that "happifies the soul." With their pathetic voices the fire spread, until the whole meeting was at a white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!" "Bless the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the fervor of feeling. Of course, you, sitting out of the atmosphere of it and judging coldly, laugh at this indecorous fervor. Perhaps it is just as well to laugh, but for my part I cannot. I know too well how deep and vital were the emotions out of which came these utterances of simple and earnest hearts. I find it hard to get over an early prejudice that piety is of more consequence than propriety.

Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza. If she were present he could hardly tell it. Make the bonnets of women cover their faces and make them all alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a uniform of homespun cotton, and there is not much individuality left. If Ann Eliza Meacham were present she would, according to custom, speak early; and all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and eloquent utterances. So when the speaking and singing had gone on for an hour, and the voice of Sister Meacham was not heard, Morton sadly concluded that she must have remained at home, heart-broken on account of disappointment at his neglect. In this he was wrong. Just at that moment a sister rose in the further corner of the room and began to speak in a low and plaintive voice. It was Ann Eliza. But how changed!

She proceeded to say that she had passed through many fiery trials in her life. Of late she had been led through deep waters of temptation, and the floods of affliction had gone over her soul. (Here some of the brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at Brother Goodwin.) The devil had tempted her to stay at home. He had tempted her to sit silent this morning, telling her that her voice would only discourage others. But at last she had got the victory and received strength to bear her cross. With this, her voice rose and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph to the end. Morton was greatly affected, not because her affliction was universally laid at his door, but because he now began to feel, as he had not felt before, that he had indeed wrought her a great injury. As she stood there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved her. He pitied her; and Pity lives on the next floor below Love.

As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader think too meanly of her. She had resolved to "catch" Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment she saw him. But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the rights which the highest civilization accords to woman is that of "bringing down" the chosen man if she can. Ann Eliza was not consciously hypocritical. Her deep religious feeling was genuine. She had a native genius for devotion--and a genius for devotion is as much a natural gift as a genius for poetry. Notwithstanding her eloquence and her rare talent for devotion, her gifts in the direction of honesty and truthfulness were few and feeble. A phrenologist would have described such a character as possessing "Spirituality and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small." You have seen such people, and the world is ever prone to rank them at first as saints, afterwards as hypocrites; for the world classifies people in gross--it has no nice distinctions. Ann Eliza, like most people of the oratorical temperament, was not over-scrupulous in her way of producing effects. She could sway her own mind as easily as she could that of others. In the case of Morton, she managed to believe herself the victim of misplaced confidence. She saw nothing reprehensible either in her own or her aunt's manœuvering. She only knew that she had been bitterly disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through whom the disappointment had come.

Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards of his time. Such genuine fervor was, in his estimation, evidence of a high state of piety. One "who lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist phrase, must be honest and pure and good. So Morton reasoned. He had wounded such an one. He owed reparation. In marrying Ann Eliza he would be acting generously, honestly and wisely, according to the opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority he knew. For in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get the most saintly of wives, the most zealous of Christians, the most useful of women. So when Mr. Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the service to put away every sin out of their hearts before they ventured to take the communion, Morton, with many tears, resolved to atone for all the harm he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, and to marry her--if the Lord should open the way.

But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion. His high spirit resented the threat of the presiding elder. He would not be driven into marriage. In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed the night. But Magruder being a shrewd man, guessed the state of Morton's feelings, and perceived his own mistake. As he mounted his horse on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted eyes, ready to bid an official farewell to his presiding elder, but not ready to give his usual cordial adieu to Brother Magruder.

"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with sincere pity, "forgive me; I ought not to have spoken as I did. I know you will do right, and I had no right to threaten you. Be a man; that is all. Live above reproach and act like a Christian. I am sorry you have involved yourself. It is better not to marry, maybe, though I have always maintained that a married man can live in the ministry if he is careful and has a good wife. Besides, Sister Meacham has some land."

So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little distance. Then he turned back and said:

"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden to take his place on Peterborough circuit till Conference. I suppose some young exhorter can be found to take Lumsden's place as second man on Pottawottomie Creek, and Peterborough is too important a place to be left vacant."

"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton, coldly.

"Oh! I hope he will. Peterborough isn't much more unhealthy than Pottawottomie Creek. A little more intermittent fever, maybe. But it is the best I can do. The work is everything. The men are the Lord's. Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose him, though. He'll stop and see you as he comes through, I suppose. I think I'd better give you the plan of his circuit, which I got the other day." After adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the two preachers parted again.

Morton mounted Dolly. The day was far advanced, and he had an appointment to preach that very evening at the Salt Fork school-house. He had never yet failed to suffer from a disturbance of some sort when he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was sure of a perilous encounter. But now the prospect of fighting with the wild beasts of Salt Fork was almost enchanting. It would divert him from graver apprehensions.

_CHAPTER XXVI._

ENGAGEMENT.

You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of mind as he rides toward Salt Fork, weighing considerations of right and wrong, of duty and disinclination, in the balance. He is not an epic hero, for epic heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by intuition just what is right, or they are like Milton's Satan, unencumbered with a sense of duty. But Morton was neither infallible nor a devil. A man of sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a woman's heart without compunction.

When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met by Burchard, now sheriff of the county, and warned that he would be attacked. Burchard begged him to turn back. Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice and time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been under such obligations to him, and had not been touched by this new evidence of his friendship. But Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his life.

"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard," he said, "and I will do it or die."

Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could not get rid of his love affair. He was touched to find lying on the desk in the school-house a little unsigned billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting, uttering a warning similar to that just given by Burchard.

It was with some tremor that he looked round, in the dim light of two candles, upon the turbulent faces between him and the door. His prayer and singing were a little faint. But when once he began to preach, his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice rose above all the shuffling sounds of disorder. The interruptions, however, soon became so distinct that he dared not any longer ignore them. Then he paused in his discourse and looked at the rioters steadily.

"You think you will scare me. It is my business to rebuke sin. I tell you that you are a set of ungodly ruffians and law breakers. I tell your neighbors here that they are miserable cowards. They let lawless men trample on them. I say, shame on them! They ought to organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."

Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a horse-pistol. Morton turned pale; but something in his warm, Irish blood impelled him to proceed. "I called you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily. "Now I tell you that you are cut-throats. If you kill me here to-night, I will show your neighbors that it is better to die like a man than to live like a coward. The law will yet be put in force whether you kill me or not. There are some of you that would belong to Micajah Harp's gang of robbers if you dared. But you are afraid; and so you only give information and help to those who are no worse, only a little braver than you are."

Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him too far. He now saw that his denunciation had degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt had provoked his enemies beyond measure. He had been foolhardy; for what good could it do for him to throw away his life in a row? There was murder in the eyes of the ruffians. Half-a-dozen pistols were cocked in quick succession and he caught the glitter of knives. A hasty consultation was taking place in the back part of the room, and the few Methodists near him huddled together like sheep. If he intended to save his life there was no time to spare. The address and presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood did not fail him now. It would not do to seem to quail. Without lowering his fiercely indignant tone, he raised his right hand and demanded that honest citizens should rally to his support and put down the riot. His descending hand knocked one of the two candles from the pulpit in the most accidental way in the world. Starting back suddenly, he managed to upset, and extinguish the other just at the instant when the infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon him. The room was thus made totally dark. Morton plunged into the on-coming crowd. Twice he was seized and interrogated, but he changed his voice and avoided detection. When at last the crowd gave up the search and began to leave the house, he drifted with them into the outer darkness and rain. Once upon Dolly he was safe from any pursuit.

When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond danger, Morton was in better spirits than at any time since the elder's solemn talk on the preceding Saturday. He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and of a sense of triumph. So bold a speech, and so masterly an escape as he had made could not but demoralize men like the Salt Forkers. He laughed a little at himself for talking about dying and then running away, but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression of these lawless gangs. He would himself head a party against them if necessary.

This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression as his mind reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's writing. How thoughtful in her to send it! How delicate she was in not signing it! How forgiving must her temper be! What a stupid wretch he was to attract her affection, and now what a perverse soul he was to break her devoted heart!

This was the light in which Morton saw the situation. A more suspicious man might have reasoned that Ann Eliza probably knew no more of Goodwin's peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous thrusting of herself on his attention. A suspicious person would have reasoned that her delicacy in not signing the note was only a pretense, since Morton had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in the affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her. But Morton was not suspicious. How could he be suspicious of one upon whom the Lord had so manifestly poured out his Spirit? Besides, the suspicious view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann Eliza did love Morton almost to distraction, and had entertained the liveliest apprehensions of hie peril at Salt Fork.

But with however much gratitude he might regard Ann Eliza's action, Morton Goodwin could not quite bring himself to decide on marriage. He could not help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house, nor could he help contrasting that strong love with the feebleness of the best affection he could muster for the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann Eliza Meacham.

But as he proceeded round the circuit it became more and more evident to Morton that he had suffered in reputation by his cool treatment of Miss Meacham. Elderly people love romance, and they could not forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way they wished. They felt that nothing could be so appropriate as the marriage of a popular preacher with so zealous a woman. It was a shock to their sense of poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the only fitting denouement. So that between people who were disappointed at the come-out, and young men who were jealous of the general popularity of the youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had visibly declined. Nevertheless there was quite a party of young women who approved of his course. He had found the minx out at last!

One of the results of the Methodist circuit system, with its great quarterly meetings, was the bringing of people scattered over a wide region into a sort of organic unity and a community of feeling. It widened the horizon. It was a curious and, doubtless, also a beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of half-civilized territory called Jenkinsville circuit there was now a common topic for gossip and discussion. When Morton reached the very northernmost of his forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped from the excitement.

"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat at breakfast, "whatever folks may say, I am sure you had a perfect right to give up Sister Meacham. A man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her out. _I_ don't think it would take a smart man like you long to find out that Sister Meacham isn't all she pretends to be. I have heard some things about her standing in Pennsylvania. I guess you found them out."

"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said Morton, as soon as he could recover from the shock, and interrupt the stream of Sister Sharp's talk.

"Everybody thought you did."

"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding out anything, I can tell you that Sister Meacham is, I believe, one of the best and most useful Christians in the world."

"That's what everybody thought," replied the other, maliciously, "until you quit off going with her so suddenly. People have thought different since."

This shot took effect. Morton could bear that people should slander him. But, behold! a crop of slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely to grow out of his mistake. In the midst of a most unheroic and, as it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and perplexity, he came at last to Mount Zion meeting-house. It was here that Ann Eliza belonged, and here he must decide whether he would still leave her to suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of his own good name, or make a marriage which, to those wiser than he, seemed in every way advisable. Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day. When once the benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved to free himself from remorse and obloquy by the only honorable course. He would ride over to Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself to Ann Eliza.

Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister Meacham's true character that made him hesitate? Or was it that a pure-hearted man always shrinks from marriage without love? He reined his horse at the road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed the hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion class, instead of receiving Sister Sims's welcome. He intended by this means to postpone his decision till afternoon.

Out of the frying-pan into the fire! The leader took Brother Goodwin aside and informed him that Sister Ann Eliza was very ill. She might never recover. It was understood that she was slowly dying of a broken heart.

Morton could bear no more. To have made so faithful a person, who had even interfered to save his life, suffer in her spirit was bad enough; to have brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her outright was ingratitude and murder. He wondered at his own stupidity and wickedness. He rode in haste to Sister Sims's. Ann Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously ill, and was ill more of a malarious fever than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and disappointment had much to do with it. Morton, convinced that he was the author of her woes, felt more tenderness to her in her emaciation than he had ever felt toward her in her beauty. He could not profess a great deal of love, so he contented himself with expressing his gratitude for the Salt Fork warning. Explanations about the past were awkward, but fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk much on exciting subjects. Besides, she did not seem to be very exacting. Morton's offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness that annoyed him. When he rode away to his next appointment, he did not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected to. He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances, and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted. And yet, one must not expect all qualities in one person. What could be finer than Ann Eliza's lustrous piety? She was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second Mrs. Fletcher, maybe. And how much she must love him to pine away thus! And how forgiving she was!

_CHAPTER XXVII._

THE CAMP MEETING.

The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's life did not allow Morton much opportunity for the society of the convalescent Ann Eliza. Fortunately. For when he was with her out of meeting he found her rather dull. To all expression of religious sentiment and emotion she responded sincerely and with unction; to Morton's highest aspirations for a life of real self-sacrifice she only answered with a look of perplexity. She could not understand him. He was "so queer," she said.

But people whose lives are joined ought to make the best of each other. Ann Eliza loved Morton, and because she loved him she could endure what seemed to her an unaccountable eccentricity. If Goodwin found himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the highest qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting that all women were probably deficient in these regards. For men generalize about women, not from many but from one. And men, being egotists, suffer a woman's love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins. And then Morton took refuge in other people's opinions. Everybody thought that Sister Meacham was just the wife for him. It is pleasant to have the opinion of all the world on your side where your own heart is doubtful.

Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted through the mind of Morton Goodwin and gave him a moment of fright. But Patty was one of the things of this world which he had solemnly given up. Of her conversion he had not heard. Mails were few and postage cost a silver quarter on every letter; with poor people, correspondence was an extravagance not to be thought of except on the occasion of a death or wedding. At farthest, one letter a year was all that might be afforded. As it was, Morton was neither very happy nor very miserable as he rode up to the New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant midsummer afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.

Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable entertainment. So earnest and gifted a Christian as she was always welcome; and now that she held a mortgage on the popular preacher every tent on the ground would have been honored by her presence. Morton found a lodging in the preacher's tent, where one bed, larger, transversely, than that of the giant Og, was provided for the collective repose of the preachers, of whom there were half-a-dozen present. It was always a solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping of sheets, blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who made this bed gave a cross-wise continuity to the bed-clothing.

This meeting was held just six weeks after the quarterly meeting spoken of in the last chapter. Goodwin's circuit lay on the west bank of the Big Wiaki River, and this camp-meeting was held on the east bank of that stream.

It was customary for all the neighboring preachers to leave their circuits and lend their help in a camp-meeting. All detached parties were drawn in to make ready for a pitched battle. Morton had, in his ringing voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick wit, rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and, as the nearest preacher, he was, of course, expected to help.

The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to Jonesville circuit had gone after the zealous itinerant like "an arrow after a wild goose," and he had only received it in season to close his affairs on Pottawottomie Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on his way to his new work. His emaciated face smote Morton's heart with terror. The old comrade thought that the death which Kike all but longed for could not be very far away. And even now the zealous and austere young man was so eager to reach his circuit of Peterborough that he would only consent to tarry long enough to preach on the first evening. His voice was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in the uproar of a mob that had come determined to make an end of the meeting.

So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from Jenkinsville and Salt Fork that the brethren were demoralized. After the close of the service they gathered in groups debating whether or not they should give up the meeting. But two invincible men stood in the pulpit looking out over the scene. Without a thought of surrendering, Magruder and Morton Goodwin were consulting in regard to police arrangements.

"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have the sheriff here in the morning. I am afraid he hasn't got back-bone enough to handle these fellows. Do you know him?"

"Burchard? Yes; I've known him two or three years."

Morton could not help liking the man who had so generously forgiven his gambling debt, but he had reason to believe that a sheriff who went to Brewer's Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his political alliances.

"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to spare you from preaching and exhorting, but you must take charge of the police and keep order."

"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.

"Why?"

"If I am in command there'll be a fight. I don't believe in letting rowdies run over you. If you put me in authority, and give me the law to back me, somebody'll be hurt before morning. The rowdies hate me and I am not fond of them. I've wanted such a chance at these Jenkinsville and Salt Fork fellows ever since I've been on the circuit."

"I wish you _would_ clean them out," said the sturdy old elder, the martial fire shining from under his shaggy brows.

Morton soon had the brethren organized into a police. Every man was to carry a heavy club; some were armed with pistols to be used in an emergency. Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot. Goodwin said that his father had fought King George, and he would not be ruled by a mob. By such fannings of the embers of revolutionary patriotism he managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.

At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and sent out scouts. Platforms of poles, six feet high and covered with earth, stood on each side of the stand or pulpit. On these were bright fires which threw their light over the whole space within the circle of tents. Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons covered with cotton cloth, in which slept people from a distance who had no other shelter. In this outer darkness Morton, as military dictator, had ordered other platforms erected, and on these fires were now kindling.

The returning scouts reported at midnight that the ruffians, seeing the completeness of the preparations, had left the camp-ground. Goodwin was the only man who was indisposed to trust this treacherous truce. He immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away than before on every road leading to the ground, with instructions to let him know instantly, if any body of men should be seen approaching.

From Morton's previous knowledge of the people, he was convinced that in the mob were some men more than suspected of belonging to Micajah Harp's gang of thieves. Others were allies of the gang--of that class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and a wholesome fear of the law, but whose protection and assistance is the right foot upon which every form of brigandage stands. Besides these there were the reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from a love of mischief for its own sake; men who were not yet thieves, but from whose ranks the bands of thieves were recruited. With these last Morton's history gave him a certain sympathy. As the classes represented by the mob held the balance of power in the politics of the county, Morton knew that he had not much to hope from a trimmer such as Burchard.

About four o'clock in the morning one of the mounted sentinels who had been posted far down the road came riding in at full speed, with intelligence that the rowdies were coming in force from the direction of Jenkinsville. Goodwin had anticipated this, and he immediately awakened his whole reserve, concentrating the scattered squads and setting them in ambush on either side of the wagon track that led to the camp-ground. With a dozen mounted men well armed with clubs, he took his own stand at a narrow place where the foliage on either side was thickest, prepared to dispute the passage to the camp. The men in ambush had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as soon as the fight should begin in front. It was a simple piece of strategy learned of the Indians.

The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders, coming round a curve, caught sight of Morton and his right hand man. Then there was a surprised reining up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge on the other. At the first blow Goodwin felled his man, and the riderless horse ran backward through the ranks. The mob was taken by surprise, and before the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to his men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both flanks. The rowdies fought hard, but from the beginning the victory of the guard was assured by the advantage of ambush and surprise. The only question to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had ordered the arrest of every man that the guard could bring in. But so sturdy was the fight that only three were taken. One of the guard received a bad flesh wound from a pistol shot. Goodwin did not give up pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash into the river opposite Jenkinsville. He then rode back, and as it was getting light threw himself upon one side of the great bunk in the preachers' tent, and slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the pulpit for the eight o'clock preaching.

When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that day he was evidently frightened at the earnestness of Morton's defence. Burchard was one of those politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a compromise with a typhoon. He was in a strait between his fear of the animosity of the mob and his anxiety to please the Methodists. Goodwin, taking advantage of this latter feeling, got himself appointed a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those whom he knew to be leaders. Then he summoned his guard as a posse, and, having thus put law on his side, he announced that if the ruffians came again the guard must follow him until they were entirely subdued.

Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly that such extreme measures would cost his life. Some of these men belonged to Harp's band, and he would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of the gang. "Don't throw away your life," entreated Burchard.

"That's what life is for," said Morton. "If a man's life is too good to throw away in fighting the devil, it isn't worth having." Goodwin said this in a way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice. But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could not help thinking that if Patty were in place of Ann Eliza, Morton might think life good for something else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.

As there was every sign of an approaching riot during the evening service, and as no man could manage the tempest so well as Brother Goodwin, he was appointed to preach. A young theologian of the present day would have drifted helpless on the waves of such a mob. When one has a congregation that listens because it ought to listen, one can afford to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in the world for an orator. It will teach him methods of homiletic arrangement which learned writers on Sacred Rhetoric have never dreamed of.

The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's tall figure appeared in the stand. Frontier-men are very susceptible to physical effects, and there was a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well calculated to impress them. Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power of his mind and body was at its best in the presence of a storm. He knew better than to take a text. He must surprise the mob into curiosity.

"There is a man standing back in the crowd there," he began, pointing his finger in a certain direction where there was much disorder, and pausing until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny story I once heard." At this point the turbulent sons of Belial, who loved nothing so much as a funny story, concluded to postpone their riot until they should have their laugh. Laugh they did, first at one funny story, and then at another--stories with no moral in particular, except the moral there is in a laugh. Brother Mellen, who sat behind Morton, and who had never more than half forgiven him for not coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a meeting, was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the pulpit, but Magruder, the presiding elder, was delighted. He laughed at each story, and laughed loud enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the senior's approval of his drollery. But somehow--the crowd did not know how,--at some time in his discourse--the Salt Fork rowdies did not observe when,--Morton managed to cease his drollery without detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of laughter. The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping their curiosity perpetually excited, Goodwin did not give them time to rally at all. Whenever an interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so gain the sympathy of the rough crowd who were habituated to laugh on the side of the winner in all rude tournaments of body or mind. Knowing perfectly well that he would have to fight before the night was over, Morton's mind was stimulated to its utmost. If only he could get the religious interest agoing, he might save some of these men instead of punishing them. His soul yearned over the people. His oratory at last swept out triumphant over everything; there was weeping and sobbing; some fell in uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in terror. Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton described how, step by step, a young man was led from bad to worse, and then recited his own experience. At last there was the utmost excitement. As soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the point of confusion, the rioters broke the spell of Morton's speech and began their disturbance. Goodwin immediately invited the penitents into the enclosed pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space was filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and groans made the woods resound. But at the same moment the rioters increased their noisy demonstrations, and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell them, descended from the pulpit and took command of his camp-meeting police.

Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway enough to have necessitated the severest measures if it had not been for Mr. Mellen. As soon as he detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it. He did not ask permission of the presiding elder, as he was in duty bound to do, but as soon as there was a pause in the singing he began to exhort. His style was violently aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob. He began with the true old Homeric epithets of early Methodism, exploding them like bomb-shells. "You are hair-hung and breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.

"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to the infinite amusement of the rest.

For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind of religious aqua fortis upon the turbulent crowd, which grew more and more turbulent under his inflammatory treatment. Finding himself likely to be defeated, he turned toward Goodwin and demanded that the camp-meeting police should enforce order. But Morton was contemplating a master-stroke that should annihilate the disorder in one battle, and he was not to be hurried into too precipitate an attack.

Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as small doses of nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation, he thought it necessary to administer stronger ones. "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and when you get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to roast your souls in!"

"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled ruffians, and Brother Mellen gave up the fight, reproaching Morton hotly for not suppressing the mob. "I thought you was a man," he said.

"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said Goodwin, savagely. "Do you get a club and ride by my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am sure you are a man."

Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all the while at Morton's tardiness.

"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.

But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt internal maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.

Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should report to him the first attempt at concentration on the part of the rowdies. He had not been deceived by their feints in different parts of the camp, but had drawn his men together. He knew that there was some directing head to the mob, and that the only effectual way to beat it was to beat it in solid form.

At last a young man came running to where Goodwin stood, saying: "They're tearing down a tent."

"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting deliberately. "Catch all you can, boys. Don't shoot if you can help it. Keep close together. We have got to ride all night."

He had increased his guard by mustering in every able-bodied man, except such as were needed to conduct the meetings. Most of these men were Methodists, but they were all frontiermen who knew that peace and civilization have often to be won by breaking heads. By the time this guard started the camp was in extreme confusion; women were running in every direction, children were crying and men were stoutly denouncing Goodwin for his tardiness.

Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two parts, he sent one half round the outside of the camp-ground in one direction, while he rode with the other to attack the mob on the other side. The foot-police were sent through the circle to attack them in a third direction.

As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw the mob off their guard. They had demolished one tent and, in great exultation, had begun on another, when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two sides, dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their ironwood and hickory clubs. Then the footmen charged them in front, and the mob were forced to scatter and mount their horses as best they could. As Morton had captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback and attempted a rescue. For two or three minutes the fight was a severe one. The roughs made several rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the savage blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader from falling into their hands. At last, however, after firing several shots, and wounding one of the guard, they retreated, Goodwin vigorously persuading his men to continue the charge. When the rowdies had been driven a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform torch, the same strangely dressed man who had taken the money from his hand that day near Brewer's Hole. This man, in his disguise of long beard and wolf-skin cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp by creeping through the bushes.

"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen. "I know him--he's a thief."

No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him, and but for the intervening brush-wood, which broke the force of the blow, it might have killed him.

"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton to his men; but the other side now made a strong rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.

Then they fled, and this time, letting the less guilty rowdies escape, Morton pursued the well-known thieves and their allies into and through Jenkinsville, and on through the country, until the hunted fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods on foot. For two days more Morton harried them, arresting one of them now and then until he had captured eight or ten. He chased one of these into Brewer's Hole itself. The shoes had been torn from his feet by briers in his rough flight, and he left tracks of blood upon the floor. The orderly citizens of the county were so much heartened by this boldness and severity on Morton's part that they combined against the roughs and took the work into their own hands, driving some of the thieves away and terrifying the rest into a sullen submission. The camp-meeting went on in great triumph.