the evening chores in order that everything might be in readiness for
the evening meeting.




CHAPTER VIII


When the afternoon shadows began to lengthen there began to gather
around the new-made brush arbor on Post Oak Ridge a number of men and
boys. These were mostly idlers of the community, who had nothing in
particular to do, so had come early to the arbor. But when the last
faint streaks of the dying day were fading, the more substantial
citizens of the community began to gather at this spot of interest. They
came from every direction. Every path seemed to lead to the arbor ridge.
Some came in wagons, some in buggies, some on horseback, others walked.

Everybody, almost, was there. Grandma Gray was there. She sat serenely
in her big willow rocker, which Nolan had placed just in front and to
the left of the speaker's stand. Her age-wrinkled face was all aglow
with the joy of full salvation. Aunt Sally Perkins was there. Poor old
Aunt Sally. She was notorious as a shouter and a hypocrite. Nobody had
any confidence in her as a Christian, but she was much given to sitting
in the "amen" corner, and on this particular night she came into the big
arbor and deposited her scanty self right on a front bench. And there
she sat, wrapped in her old grey shawl, peeping out from beneath her old
black bonnet. Old Brother Bunk was there. For a quarter of a century he
had been a true and tried member of Mount Olivet Church, but of late he
had been much wrought upon by the holiness agitation. "Spooky" Crane was