sharp accent on the air. The chant of the katydids had become a
chorus, and the hush of darkness was settling over the steady flow
of water and the low drone of the millstones.

"I hain't afeerd," he kept saying to himself. "I hain't afeerd o'
nothin' nor no-body; but he lay brooding until his head throbbed,
until darkness filled the narrow gorge, and the strip of dark blue up
through the trees was pointed with faint stars. He was troubled
when he rose, and climbed on Rome's horse and rode homeward
-so troubled that he turned finally and started back in a gallop for
Hazlan.

It was almost as Crump had said. There was no church in Hazlan,
and, as in Breathitt, the people had to follow Raines outside the
town, and he preached from the roadside. The rider's Master never
had a tabernacle more simple: overhead the stars and a low moon;
close about, the trees still and heavy with summer; a pine torch
over his head like a yellow plume; two tallow dips hung to a beech
on one side, and flicking to the other the shadows of the people
who sat under them. A few Marcums and Braytons were there,
one faction shadowed on Raines's right, one on his left. Between
them the rider stood straight, and prayed as though talking with
some one among the stars. Behind him the voice of the woman at
her tiny organ rose among the leaves. And then he spoke as he had
prayed; and from the first they listened like children, while in their
own homely speech he went on to tell them, just as he would have
told children, a story that some of them had never heard before.
"Forgive your enemies as He had forgiven his," that was his plea.
Marcums and Braytons began to press in from the darkness on
each side, forgetting each other as the rest of the people forgot