The revival in Paradise Valley, conducted by the Reverend Silas Crafts,
of South Tredegar, was in the middle of its second week, and the
field--to use Brother Crafts' own word--was white to the harvest.

Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the
valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past
by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from
the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening
the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.

Those who came farthest were first on the ground; and by the time
twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson, spatting barefooted up the dusty pike,
had reached the church-house with the key, there was a goodly sprinkling
of unhitched teams in the grove, the horses champing their feed noisily
in the wagon-boxes, and the people gathering in little neighborhood
knots to discuss gravely the one topic uppermost in all minds--the
present outpouring of grace on Paradise Valley and the region
round-about.

"D'ye reckon the Elder'll make it this time with his brother-in-law?"
asked a tall, flat-chested mountaineer from the Pine Knob uplands.

"Samantha Parkins, she allows that Caleb has done sinned away his day o'
grace," said another Pine Knobber, "but I ain't goin' that far. Caleb's
a sight like the iron he makes in that old furnace o' his'n--honest and
even-grained, and just as good for plow-points and the like as it is for
soap-kittles. But hot 'r cold, it's just the same; ye cayn't change hit,
and ye cayn't change _him_."