THE

HROUGH the twilight that filled the valley a winding white pike was all that could be seen distinctly. The brownfurrowed corn-fields were blotted out in the dusk. Farm-houses had merged their outlines into the dark mass of the surrounding trees. Only the apple-orchards preserved their identity, and that because it was blossom-time, and the dewy night air was heavy with their sweetness.

Somewhat back from the pike, yet near enough for the rattle of passing wheels to give a sense of companionship, a man sat rocking back and forth in a narrow vineinclosed porch. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and collarless, and the slow creak of the old wooden chair seemed to voice his physical comfort like a purr; but it by no means expressed the state of his mind. That was attuned to something wholly melancholic, like the croaking of frogs in the pond below his house, or the far-away baying of a dismal-minded hound, which, tied behind some cabin across the clearing, was making the peaceful Sabbath evening vibrant with its misery.

"I can't help havin' a sort of fellowfeelin' for that dawg," muttered the man, raising his head to listen, and passing his

hand slowly over the bald spot on his crown. "Must be considerable of a relief to let out and howl like that when you feel bad. There's been times when I would n't 'a' minded tryin' it myself for a spell."

Then he settled back into his chair with a long-drawn sigh. He was awaiting the second ringing of the church bell. The first one had tolled its summons through the valley nearly an hour before, and vehicles were beginning to rattle along the pike toward evening service. The little frame meeting-house, known as the Upper Beargrass Church, stood in a grove of cedars just beyond Baptist Sloan's potatofield. It was near enough for any one sitting on his porch to hear the preacher's voice all through the sermon, and sometimes when he waxed eloquent at the close, in a series of shouted exhortations, even the words were distinctly audible.

But never in all the years of his remembrance had Baptist Sloan listened to the services of the sanctuary from his doorstep. On the few occasions that illness had kept him at home, pain and multitudinous bedclothes had shut out all sound of song or sermon; and at other times he was the

most punctual attendant of all the congregation, not excepting even the sexton. People wondered why this was so, for he was pointed out as the black sheep of the flock, a man little better than an infidel, and belonging to that stiff-necked and proud generation which merits the anathemas of all right-minded people.

That he was a riddle which Upper Beargrass Church had been trying vainly to read for thirty years was a fact well known to the reprobate himself; for he had been openly preached at from the pulpit, labored with in private, and many a time made the subject of special prayer. So, as he sat on the porch in the dark, with only the croaking of the frogs and the distant baying of the hound to break the stillness, it was with no surprise whatever that he heard his own name spoken by some one driving up the pike.

He could not see the horse that plodded along at a tortoise-like gait, or the old carryall that sagged and creaked with the weight of two big men on the front seat and a woman and three children on the back; but he recognized the voice as that of Mrs. Jane Bowles. Thin and strident, it stabbed the stillness like the rasping shrill of a katydid. She was leaning forward to speak to the visiting minister on the front seat.

"We 're coming to Bap Sloan's house now, Brother Hubbs," she called in high staccato. "I want you should rub it into him good to-night in your sermon. He's a regular wolf in sheep's clothing, if ever there was one. Twice on a Sunday, for fifty-two weeks in the year, he 's sitting in that third pew from the front, as pious as any pillar in the congregation. You can count up for yourself how many sermons he must have heard, for he 's fifty, if he 's a day. But in spite of all that anybody can say or do, he won't be immersed and join. He's held out against everything and everybody till he 's gospel-hardened. I ain't saying he does n't put into the collection-box regular, or that he ain't a moral man outwardly; but that outward show of goodness only makes his example worse for the young folks. I never can look at him without saying to myself, 'But inwardly ye are ravening wolves.''

The old horse had crawled along almost to the gate by this time, but Sister Bowles, not being able to see any one on the porch,

went on, serenely unaware of being overheard.

"And there's Luella Clark that he 's courted off and on for twenty years. It makes me real mad when I think of the good offers she's had and let slip account of him. She could n't marry him, being close communion, and not tolerating the idea of being unequally yoked together with unbelievers.' 'T would n't 'a' been right; and yet, somehow, she did n't seem to be quite able to give him up, when that was the only thing lacking. He'd make a good husband, for there never was a better brother lived than he was to his sister Sarah. She kept house for him till the day of her death. They say that last winter, when she lay there a-dying, she told him she could n't go easy till she saw him immersed; but all he 'd say was, 'Oh, don't ask me! I can't now, Sarah. Some day I will, but not now.'

Here the preacher's voice broke in like. the deep roll of a bass drum. "Has this -ah-young woman any idea of what— ah-produces such a state of-ah-obstinacy in the brother's mind?"

"Not an i-dee!" was the reply, jolted out shrilly as the carryall struck a stone. "Not one good reason could he give Luella for putting off attending to his soul's salvation and trifling away his day of grace. Not one good reason, even to get her to marry him. But I think Luella is getting tired of dangling along. The other day I heard her joking about that little bald spot that 's beginning to show on his head, and I noticed that Mr. Sam Carter's buggy has been hitched at their gate several times when I 've happened to be passing. He's a widower, and you know, Brother Hubbs, that when widowers-"

The loud clanging of the church bell struck Sister Bowles's sentence in the middle, and the end of it was lost to the eager ears on the porch. Although this sound of the church bell was what Baptist Sloan had been waiting to hear for the last hour, he did not rise until the final echo of its ringing had died away in the farthermost part of the valley. Then he went slowly into the house and lighted a lamp.

The open door into the kitchen revealed the table where he had eaten his dinner and supper without removing the soiled dishes. In every corner was the cheerless look that betrays the lack of a woman's

presence. He had done his own housekeeping since his sister's death in the early winter. As he passed the table he gathered up a plateful of scraps which he had intended to give to the cat, but had forgotten, and carried it out to the back door-step. He tried to be mindful of the old creature's comfort for his sister's sake; but he was an absent-minded man, irresolute in nearly every action, and undecided in all things except the one for which the neighborhood

condemned him.

Just before he entered the house he had almost made up his mind that he would not go to church that night. Sister Bowles's conversation had startled him with a new idea, and jogged him out of his well-worn rut. He would sit out on the porch till church was over, and then follow Luella home, and take up the thread of his protracted courtship where she had snapped it five years before.

But the habit of decades asserted itself. He bolted the back door, carried the lamp into the little bedroom adjoining the kitchen, and proceeded to brush his hair according to the usual Sunday-night program of preparation. Sarah had always tied his cravat for him, and his stiff fingers fumbled awkwardly at the knot. That was one ceremony to which he could not grow accustomed, and he had serious thoughts of turning out a beard that would hide all sins both of omission and commission in the way of neckties.

At last he was ready, but even with his hand on the knob and his hat on his head, he wavered again and turned back. Cautiously tiptoeing across the floor to see that the blue paper shade was drawn tightly over the one tiny window of the little bedroom, he opened the door into the closet, and felt around until his hand struck a nail that marked some secret hiding-place in the wall. From somewhere within its depths he drew out a little japanned canister, branded, in gilt letters, "Young Hyson"; but it was not tea that he emptied on the bed and poured through his rough hands, horny with long contact with hoe and plow. It was a stream of dollars and dimes and nickels, with an occasional gold piece filtering through like a disk of sunshine. A wad of paper money stuck in the canister until he shook it. He counted that last, smoothing out the ragged bills one at a time, and then folding them inside

a crisp new one so that its flaunting V was displayed on top.

One might have thought him a miser gloating over his gold, so carefully he counted it again and again, sitting there on the edge of his bed. But there was no miserly greed in the wistful glance that followed the last coin into the little canister, and it was with a discouraged sigh that he replaced the cover and sat looking at it, the slavish hoarding of years.

"It will take twenty dollars more," he finally whispered to himself; "and I can't depend on any ready cash until after wheat harvest." He counted slowly on his fingers May, June, July-it might be three months before he could get his threshing done, and three months, now that he was so near the goal of his life's ambition, seemed longer than the years already passed in waiting.

They were singing in the church when he went out on the porch again, and as he did not want to go in late, that decided the question that had been see-sawing in his mind. He sat down in the rockingchair, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Sister Bowles's conversation still rankled.

"O Lord," he groaned presently, "you know I'm not a wolf in sheep's clothing. More like I'm a sheep in a wolf's. Nobody understands it. Not even Luella. I want to tell her, and yet it seems like I had n't ought to yet awhile. One minute I think one way and the next minute another. O Lord, I vow I don't know what to do!"

Then he caught the words of the song. It was not one of the usual hymns that floated out to him across the scent of the apple-boughs, but an old tune that he had heard years ago at a camp-meeting:

"John went down to the river Jordan! John went down to the river Jordan! John went down to the river Jordan To wash his sins away!"

Little did the congregation think, as they lifted their lusty voices, that with the thread of that old tune lay the unraveling of Bap Sloan's riddle. For this is the scene it brought back to him, out of one of the earliest years of his childhood. There was a white face lying back among the pillows of a great bed, with carved posts and a valance of flowered chintz that smelled