"I can wait," Mostyn said to himself, with fervor. "She is mine--she
is mine."





CHAPTER X




The next morning after breakfast John Webb met Mostyn as he stood
smoking on the front porch.

"If you haven't got nothin' better to do," he said, "you might walk
down with me to Dolph Wartrace's store, at the cross-roads. Thar will
be a crowd thar to-day."

"Anything special going on?" Mostyn asked.

"If the feller keeps his appointment we'll have a sermon," John
smiled. "For the last seven or eight years a queer tramp of a chap--
John Leach, he calls hisself--has been comin' along an' preachin' at
the store. Nobody knows whar he is from. Folks say he makes his rounds
all through the mountains of Tennessee, Georgia, an' North Carolina.
He won't take a cent o' pay, never passes the hat around, an' has been
knowed to stop along the road an' work for poor farmers for a week on
a stretch for nothin' but his bed an' board. Some say he's crazy, an'
some say he's got more real Simon-pure religion than any regular