The Markhams were orthodox. Dr. Lyman was a nearly unbelieving
materialist at this time, but had several times "wabbled," as Bart
expressed it, from orthodoxy to infidelity, without touching the
proscribed ground of Uncle Aleck.

Mr. Young was an obsolete revival exhorter, whose life did little
to illustrate and enforce his givings out. He had a weakness for the
elder Scriptures; and hence the irreverent name applied to him in the
boat by Bart.




CHAPTER XII.

A CONSECRATION.


Among the adherents of uncle Aleck were the Coes, a mild, moony race,
and recently it was understood that Emeline, the only daughter in a
family of eight or nine, a languid, dreamy, verse-making mystic, had
expressed a wish to receive the rite of Christian baptism, at that
time practised by Uncle Aleck and his associates in Northern Ohio.

The ceremony had been postponed on account of the illness of her
mother, and was finally performed on the Sunday following the
incidents last narrated. A meeting was to be holden in the primitive
forest, near Coe's cabin, on the margin of a deep, crystal pool,
formed naturally by the springs that supplied Coe's Creek. Few events
happened in that quiet region, and this was an event. News of it had