Chapter 4

“Where is your father, Sister Gillespie?” he demanded of the girl, who wavered in his strong voice like a plant in the wind.

“I don't know--he's at home,” she said.

“See that he comes, another time. I send him my peace, and tell him that it will not return to me. Say that I said he needs me.”

He went out between Enraghty and Hingston, and as they walked away, he sank his voice back in words of Scripture; farther away he began his hymn:

“Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, We wretched sinners lay”--

and ended with his shout of “Salvation!”

VII

The cabin of the Reverdys stood on a byway beyond the Gillespies. Sally had joined the girl on her way out of the Temple, and was prancing beside her as they went homeward together. “Oh, ain't it just great? I feel like as if I could fly. I never seen the Power in Leatherwood like it was to-night. He's _sent_; you can tell that as plain as the nose on your face. How happy I do feel! I believe in my heart I got salvation this minute. Don't you feel the Spirit any? But you was always such a still girl! I did like the way the women folks was floppun' all round. _I_ say, if you feel the Power workun' in you, show it, and help the others to git it. What do you s'pose he meant by your paw's needun' him?”

“I don't know. Perhaps _he_ will,” the girl answered briefly.

“Goun' to tell him? Well, that's right, Janey. I kep' wonderun' why he didn't come to-night. If Abel hadn't be'n so beat out with his work at the Cross Roads to-day, you bet I'd 'a' made _him_ come; but he said I'd git enough glory for both. I believe his talkun' with Squire Braile don't do him no good. You b'lieve Washington and Jefferson was friends with Tom Paine? The Squire says they was, but I misdoubt it, myself; I always hearn them two was good perfessun' Christians. Kind o' lonesome along here where the woods comes so close't, ain't it? Say, Janey: I wisht you'd come a little piece with me, though I don't suppose the bad spirits would dast to come around a body right on the way home from the Temple this way--”

They had reached the point where Sally must part with the girl, who stopped to lift the top rail of the bars to the lane leading from the road to her father's cabin. She let it drop again. “Why, I'll go the whole way with you, Sally.”

“Will you? Well, I declare to gracious, you're the best girl I ever seen. I believe in my heart, I'll rout Abel out and make him go back home with you.”

“You needn't,” the girl said. “I'm not afraid to go alone in the dark.”

“Well, just as you say, Janey. What do you do to keep from beun' afraid?”

“Oh, I don't know. I just think, I suppose.”

“Well, _I_ just want to _squeal_.” Sally had been talking in her loud, loose voice to keep her courage up. “Well, I declare if we ain't there a'ready. If you just say the word I'll have Abel out in half a minute, and--”

“No,” the girl said. “Good night.”

“Well, good night. I've got half a mind to go back with you myself,” Sally called, as she lifted her hand to pull the latchstring of her door.

Jane Gillespie found her father standing at the bars when she went back. He mechanically let them down for her.

“I thought you would be in bed, Father,” she said gently, but coldly.

“I've had things to keep me awake; and it's hot indoors,” he answered, and then he demanded, “Well?”

If it was his way of bidding her tell him of her evening's experience, she did not obey him, and he had to make another attempt on her silence. “Was Hughey there?”

“Hughey? I don't know.”

“Didn't he ask to come home with you?”

“I didn't see him. Sally Reverdy came with me.”

“Yes, I knew that.”

She was silent for another moment and then she said, “Father, I have a message for you. He said, 'I send my peace to him; and it will not return unto me.' He said you needed him.”

Gillespie knew that she meant Dylks and he knew that she kept out of her voice whatever feeling she had in delivering his message.

In the dark, she could not see her father's frown, but she was aware of it in his answer. “You went there against my will. Well?”

“I believe.”

“You believe? What do you believe?”

“Him. That he is sent.”

“Why?”

“I can't tell you. He made me; he made all the people there.”

Her father was standing between her and the door. He stood aside. “Go to bed now. But be quiet. Your Aunt Nancy is there.”

“Aunt Nancy?”

“Laban came, but he went back to the Cross Roads, and she's over for the night with the baby.”

“The baby? Oh, I'll be careful!” A joy came into her voice, and the strain left it in something like a laugh.

Early in the morning she crept down the ladder from the loft; her father had looped his cot up against the cabin wall and gone out. Nancy was sitting up in the bed she had made for herself on the floor, coiling a rope of her black hair into a knot at her neck. The baby lay cooing and kicking in her lap. The morning air came in fresh and sweet at the open door.

“Oh, Aunt Nancy, may I take her?”

“Yes; I'll get the breakfast. Your father'll be hungry; he's been up a good while, I reckon.”

“I'll make the fire first, and then I'll take the baby.”

The girl uncovered the embers on the hearth and blew them into life; then she ran out into the cornfield, and gathered her apron full of the milky ears, and grated them for the cakes which her aunt molded to fry for breakfast. She took the baby and washed its hands and face, talking and laughing with it.

“You talk to it a sight more than you do to anybody else, Jane,” the mother said. “Don't put anything but its little shimmy on; it's goin' to be another hot day.”

“I believe,” the girl said, “I'll get some water in the tub, and wash her all over. There'll be time enough.”

“It'd be a good thing, I reckon. But you mustn't forget your milkin'. I dunno what _our_ cow'd do this morning if it wasn't for Joey. But he'll milk her, him and Benny Hingston, between them, somehow. Benny stayed with him last night.”

“I did forget the milking,” the girl said, putting the baby's little chemise on. “But I'll do it now. Sissy will have to wait till after breakfast for her washing.” She got the tin bucket from where it blazed a-tilt in the sun beside the back door of the cabin, and took her deep bonnet from its peg. She did not ask why the boys slept alone in the cabin, but her aunt felt that she must explain.

“Laban's got work for the whole fall at the Cross Roads. He went straight back last night. I come here.” She had got through without telling the lie which she feared she must. “I'm goin' home after breakfast.”

Jane asked nothing further, but called from the open door, “Sukey, Sukey! Suk, Suk, Suk!” A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping sound of a cow's eager hoofs; the hoarse drumming of the milk in the bucket followed, subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the strippings in the foam. Jane carried the milk to the spring house before she reappeared in the cabin with a cup of it for the baby.

“It's so good for her to have it warm from the cow,” she said, as she tilted the tin for the last drop on the little one's lips. “I wish you'd leave her here with me, Aunt Nancy.”

“It's about time she was weaned,” the mother said. “I reckon you better call your father now. He must be ready for his breakfast, bendin' over that tobacco ever since sun-up.”

Jane took down the tin dinner horn from its peg, and went to the back door with it, and blew a long, loud blast, crumbling away in broken sounds.

The baby was beating the air with its hands up and down, and gurgling its delight in the noise when she came back. “Oh, honey, honey, honey!” she cooed, catching it up and hugging it to her.

The mother looked at them over her shoulder as she put the cakes of grated corn in the skillet, and set it among the coals on the hearth. “It's a pity you ha'n't got one of your own.”

“I don't want one of my own,” the girl said.

“I thought, a spell back,”--the woman took up the subject again after a decent interval--“that you and Hughey Blake was goin' to make a match.” The girl said nothing, and her aunt pursued, “Was he there, last night?”

“I didn't notice.”

“Many folks?” her aunt asked with whatever change or fulfilment of a first intent.

From kneeling over to play with the baby the girl sank back on her heels with her hands fallen before her.

“I don't know.”

“What did he preach?”

“The Word of God; God's own words. All Scripture; but it was like as if it was the first time you ever heard it.”

The girl was looking at the woman, but seemed rapt from the sight of her in a vision of the night before.

“I reckon Satan could make it sound that way,” Nancy said, but her niece seemed not to hear her. Nancy stood staring at her, with words bitter beyond saying in her heart; words that rose in her throat and choked her. When she spoke she only said, “Get up, Jane; your father'll be here in a minute.”

“I'm not going to eat anything. I'm going into the woods.” She staggered to her feet, and dashed from the door. The child looked after her with outstretched arms and whimpered pitifully, but she did not mind its call.

“Where's Jane?” her father said, coming in at the back door.

“Gone into the woods,” she said.

“To pray, I reckon.”

He sat down at the table-leaf lifted from the wall, and his sister served him his breakfast. He ate greedily, but his hand trembled so in lifting his cup that the coffee spilled from it.

When he had ended and sat leaning back from the board, she asked him: “What are you going to do?”

The old man cleared his throat. “Nothing, yet. Let the Lord work His will.”

“And let Joseph Dylks work _his_ will, too! I'll have something to say about that.”

“Be careful, woman. Be careful.”

“Oh, I'll be careful. He has as much to lose as I have.”

“No, not half so much.”

VIII

Where Matthew Braile sat smoking most of the hot forenoon away on the porch of his cabin, there came to him rumor of the swift spread of the superstition running from mind to mind in the neighborhood, and catching like fire in dry grass. The rumor came in different voices, some piously meant to shake him with fear in the scorner's seat which he held so stubbornly; some in their doubt seeking the help of his powerful unfaith; but he required their news from them all with the same mocking. They were not of the Scribes and Pharisees, the pillars of the Temple, the wise and rich and proud who had been the first to follow Dylks, but the poorer and lowlier sort who wavered before the example of their betters, and were willing to submit it to the searching of the old Sadducee's scrutiny.

The morning after Abel Reverdy had finished his work at the Cross Roads, and had returned to the cares patiently awaiting him at home he rode his claybank so hesitantly toward the Squire's cabin that his desire to stop and talk was plain, and Braile called to him: “Well, Abel, what do they think of the Prophet over at Wilkins's? Many converts? Many dipped or sprinkled, as the case required?”

Reverdy drew rein and faced the Squire with a solemnity presently yielding to his natural desire to grin at any form of joke, and his belief that when the Squire indulged such flagrant irreverence as this he must be joking. Yet he answered evasively: “You hearn't he says now he hain't never go'n to die?”

“No. But I'm not surprised to hear it; about the next thing on the docket. Did he say that at the Cross Roads?”

“Said it right here in Leatherwood. Sally told me the first thing when I got home. You wasn't at the Temple last night, I reckon?”

“Well, not _last_ night,” Braile said with an implication that he had been at the Temple all the other nights, which made Reverdy laugh with guilty joy.

“One o' the Hounds--no, it was Jim Redfield hisself--stopped on the way out, and he says, 'What's this I hear? You say you ain't goin' to die.' And Dylks he lifts his hands up over his head and he says, 'This shell will fall off'; and Jim he says, 'I've got half a mind to _crack_ your shell,' and the believers they got round, and begun to hustle Jim off, but Dylks he told them to let him alone, and he says, 'I can endure strong meat, but I must be fed on milk for a while.' What you s'pose he meant, Squire?”

Braile took his pipe out and cackled toothlessly. “I'm almost afraid to think, Abel. Something awful, though. You say Sally told you?”

“Yes.”

“I should think Sally would know what he meant, if anybody.” He looked at Abel, and Sally's husband joined him in safe derision. “Tell you anything else?”

“Well, no, not just in so many words. But it 'pears he's been teachun' round all sorts of things in private, like. Who do you reckon he says he is?”

“Not John the Baptist, I hope. I don't know where we should get the locusts and wild honey for him in _this_ settlement. Might try grasshoppers, but the last bee-tree in the Bottom was cut down when I was a boy. I got a piece of the comb.”

“I don't know if he said John the _Baptist;_ but it was John, anyway. And they say--or that's what Sally hearn tell--that when he was off with Enraghty and Hingston on some 'pointments down round Seneca there was doun's that 'uld make your hair stand up.”

“You don't happen to know just what the doings were?”

“Well, no, I don't, Squire. But they was doun's to deceive the very elec', from all I hearn.”

“That's just what Hingston and Enraghty both are--the very elect. What deceived _them_?”

“Oh, pshaw, now, Squire! You know I don't mean they were deceived! That's just a Bible sayin'. You see, Brother Briggs was sick and Brother Enraghty went along with Dylks and Brother Hingston to preach in his place.”

“Couldn't Dylks have done the preaching?”

“I reckon he could. But there was three 'p'intments, and may be Dylks couldn't fill 'em all, and may be he didn't want to. Fust Brother Enraghty preached in the Temple at Seneca, and then at Brother Christhaven's house off south of that, and then at David Mason's, the local preacher; but Brother Mason has got the consumption, and he couldn't preach, so Brother Enraghty had to do _all_ the preachun'.”

“I see. Well?”

“Well, that wasn't anything out o' the common, but what Dylks done to the Devil beat all the preachun', I reckon.”

“How'd it get out? Devil tell?”

“No. Brother Enraghty told, and Sally she got it putty straight from the wife of the man that he told it to.”

“Go on,” Braile said. “I can hardly wait to hear.”

“Well, sir, they had just got acrost the Leatherwood, and Brother Enraghty felt as if he was lifted all at once into heaven; air diff'ent, and full of joy. Dylks's face got brighter and brighter, and his voice sounded like music. When they got to the top of the hill where you can look back and see the Temple, Dylks turned his horse and stretched out his hands, and says he, 'How ignorant them people is of my true natur'. But time will show 'em.' Well, not just them words, you know; more dictionary; and they preached with a great outpourun' at Seneca. They didn't go to bed that night at all, accordun' to the woman's tell that Enraghty told her man; sot up tell mornun' prayun', and singun' hymns and readun' the Bible. Next mornun' when they started out Brother Enraghty seen a bright ring round Dylks's head, and whenever Dylks got down to pray the ring just stayed in the air over the saddle tell he got back, and then it dropped round his head ag'in.”

Reverdy stopped for the effect, but Braile only said, “Go on! Go on!”

“Well, sir, so they kep' on all that day and all the next night, prayun', and singun', and readun' the Bible. The next mornun' when they started Brother Enraghty felt kind o' cold all over, and his teeth chattered, and Dylks looked at him hard in the face, and says he, 'Time is precious now. This is the time for work. I now reveal unto you that you are Paul the Apostle.'”

“And what did Paul the Apostle say? Did he own up that he was Paul?”

Reverdy halted in his tale. “Look here, Squire! I don't feel just right, havun' you say such things. It sounds--well, like profane swearun'.”

“Any worse than Dylks or Enraghty? You go right ahead, Abel. I'll take the responsibility before the law.”

“Well,” Reverdy continued with a reluctance that passed as he went on, “what Dylks told him was that he would increase his faith, so't he could see the sights of his power, and glorify him among men, and then Enraghty he commenced to git warm ag'in, and Dylks he turned up his eyes and kep' still, and it was so bright all round him that it made the daylight like dusk, and Dylks made him hark if he didn't hear a kind of rush in the air, and Dylks said it was the adversary of souls, but he would conquer him. They came into a deep holler in the woods and there they see the devil standun' in their way, and Dylks he lights and hollers out, 'Fear not, Paul; this day my work is done,' and he went towards Satan and Satan he raised his burnun' wings and bristled his scales, and stuck out his forked tongue and dropped melted fire from it; and he rolled his eyes in his head, hissun' and bubblun' like sinners boilun' in hell's kittles. Then Dylks he got down on his knees and prayed, and got up and give his shout of Salvation, and the devil's wings fell, and he took in his tongue, and his eyes stood still, and Dylks he blowed his breath at him, and Satan he turned and jumped, and every jump he give the ground shook, and Dylks and the balance of 'em follered him till the devil come to Brother Mason's house, and then he jumped through the shut winder out of sight. They found Brother Mason's son David in bed sick, but he got up and took Dylks in his arms and called him his Savior, and everybody got down on their knees and prayed, and their faces was shinun' beautiful, and Dylks he walks round David Mason, and rubs his hands over him, and says, 'I bind the devil for a thousand years,' and he hugged David, and said, 'The work is done.' And he wouldn't stay to preach there, but told 'em they must come back with him to the Temple here in Leatherwood. On the way back he wouldn't talk at all, hardly, but just kep' sayun', 'The perfect work is done,' and he didn't give his shout any more; just snorted.”

Braile's pipe had gone out, but he pulled at it two or three times, before he said, “Well, Abel, I don't wonder Sally is excited. I suppose _you_ would be, if you believed a word of this yarn?”

“Well, it's poorty cur'ous doun's, Squire,” Reverdy said, daunted between his natural bent and his wish to be of the Squire's thinking. “Don't _you_ believe it?”

“Oh, yes, _I_ believe it. But you know _I_ believe anything. If Dylks did it, and Enraghty says he did it, why there we've got the gospel for it--right from St. Paul himself.”

He said no more, and Reverdy lingered a moment in vague disappointment. Then he sighed out, “Well, I must be goun', I reckon,” and thumped his bare heels into the claybank's ribs and rode away.

Day by day the faith in Dylks spread with circumstance which strengthened it in the converts; they accepted the differences which parted husband and wife, parent and child, and set strife between brothers and neighbors as proof of his divine authority to bring a sword; they knew by the hate and dissension which followed from his claim that it was of supernatural force, and when the pillars of the old spiritual temple fell one after another under his blows, they exalted in the ruin as the foundation of a new sanctuary. They drove the worshipers out of the material Temple, Methodists and Moravians and Baptists who had used it in common. They met to dedicate it solely to the doctrine of the prophet who came teaching that neither he nor they should ever die, but should enter in the flesh into the New Jerusalem which should come down to them at Leatherwood. His steps in passing from teacher to prophet and to Messiah were contested by a few with bitter and strenuous dissent, but on the night when Dylks proclaimed before the thronging assembly in the stolen Temple, “I am God and there is none else,” they pressed round him, men and women and children, and worshiped him. “I am God and the Christ in one,” he proclaimed. “In me, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are met. There is no salvation except by faith in me. They who put their faith in me shall never taste death, but shall be translated into the New Jerusalem, which I am going to bring down from Heaven.” He snorted; the few unbelievers protested in abhorrence; but the Sisters in the faith shrieked and the Brothers shouted, “We shall never die!” Dylks came down from the pulpit among them, and Enraghty called out, “Behold our God!” and they fell on their knees before him. As it had been from the beginning, the wisest and best, the first in prayer and counsel, were foremost in the idolatry; and young girls, and wives and mothers joined in hailing Dylks as their Creator and Savior, and besought him to bless and keep them.

The believers were in such force that none of the Hounds, veteran disturbers of camp-meetings and revivals, who were there, dared molest them; the few members of the sects expelled from the Temple of their common worship held aloof from the tumult in dismay, and made no attempt to reclaim the sanctuary. One man, not of any church, but of standing in the community, tried to incite the sectarians to assert their rights, but found no following among them. They left the Temple together with certain others who had been trembling toward belief in Dylks, but whom the profanation repelled; when they were gone the tumult sank enough to let Enraghty announce another meeting a week hence, and then dismiss the congregation.

“An' afore that we're goin' to have a murricle,” Sally Reverdy told Squire Braile, sitting early the next morning at the receipt of gossip on his cabin porch with his pipe between his teeth; her cow had not come up the night before, and Abel had not found her in the woods-pasture when he went to look. “An' I couldn't wait all day, an' I just slipped over to git some milk of Mis' Braile,” she explained to the Squire as she paused with the bucket in her hand. “I told her I'd bring it back the first chance't I git at our cow; I reckon Abel will find her some time or 'nuther; and I 'lowed you had plenty.”

Braile had already heard her explaining all this to his wife, but now he kept her for the full personal detail of the last night's event at the Temple. She ended an unsparing report of the wonders seen with a prophecy of wonders to come.

“Why,” Braile said, “I don't see what you want of a miracle more than what you've had already. The fact that your cow didn't come up last night, and Abel couldn't find her in the woods-pasture this morning is miracle enough to prove that Dylks is God. Besides, didn't he say it himself, and didn't Enraghty say it?”

“Well, yes, they did,” Sally assented, overborne for the moment by his logic.

“And didn't you all believe them?”

“Well, _we_ all did,” Sally said. “But look here, Squire Braile, what about them that didn't believe it?”

“Oh, then there were some there that didn't believe it! Well, I suppose nothing less than more miracles will do for _them_. Who were they?”

“Well, of course, there was Jim Redfield; he's been ag'inst him from the first; and there was old George Nixon, and there was Hughey Blake, and a passel of the Hounds that I don't count.”

“Why, certainly not; the Hounds would doubt anything. But I'm surprised at Redfield and Nixon and Hughey Blake. What reason did they give for the faith that wasn't in them? When a man stood up and snorted like a horse and said he was God, why didn't they believe him? Or the other fellows that didn't snort, but said they knew it was God from a sound that he made?”