CHAPTER XIII


"Twenty years ago I came to this country. During these twenty years I
have done my utmost to preserve and defend the faith of Mount Olivet
church." The person who spoke was Preacher Bonds. The place where he
spoke was in his own pulpit. The persons to whom he spoke were his
twenty members, who were the fragments of the once thriving and powerful
rural church. Bonds was at his best on this particular Sunday morning in
April, and he had planned to give his hearers a sort of history of the
events during his twenty-years pastorate at Mount Olivet.

The morning was a most beautiful one. All nature wore a smile. Only
those who have experienced the rare joy of taking a stroll through the
wooded dell in the famous Ozarks on a spring morning can fully
appreciate the scene. Spring had made her long-delayed journey from the
southland and by the strength of her warm and winning ways had forced
grim old winter to a hasty retreat northward, and now exulted in her
unchallenged sway. All the birds on this morning seemed to have come out
to help her in her celebration. A red-bird, perched on the tip-top twig
of the venerable oak which stood near the church, bathing his crimson
feathers in the morning sun, warbled his sweetest notes to his mate in a
hawthorn thicket across the field. Rollicking robins were vying with
each other in their quest of worms in the meadow east of the church. A
gray squirrel chattered in a hickory-tree near by and scattered
particles of bark all around. A red-headed woodpecker sat in the round
door of his cozy house in an old snag and seemed perfectly content in