as he prayed, lit the dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual
radiance, and then died out. The lingering trade winds fired a few
volleys over its grave and then lapsed into a chilly silence. The
young man staggered to his feet; it was quite dark now, but the
coming night had advanced a few starry vedettes so near the plain
they looked like human watch-fires. For an instant he could not
remember where he was. Then a light trembled far down at the
entrance of the valley. Brother Gideon recognized it. It was in
the lonely farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.


II


The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained in the
disorganized condition he had left it when removed from his sphere
of earthly uselessness and continuous accident. The straggling
fence that only half inclosed the house and barn had stopped at
that point where the two deacons who had each volunteered to do a
day's work on it had completed their allotted time. The building
of the barn had been arrested when the half load of timber
contributed by Sugar Mill brethren was exhausted, and three windows
given by "Christian Seekers" at Martinez painfully accented the
boarded spaces for the other three that "Unknown Friends" in
Tasajara had promised but not yet supplied. In the clearing some
trees that had been felled but not taken away added to the general
incompleteness.

Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and
asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently