he was not a man whose oath was acceptable in the community and his belief
was not generally shared. It was thought that the stranger would reappear
at the last night of the camp-meeting, but the Gillespies came without
him, and reported that they had expected he would come by himself.

The camp-meeting broke up after the Sunday morning service and most of
the worshipers, sated with their devotional experience, went home,
praising the Power in song as they rode away in the wagons laden with
their camp furniture, and their children strewn over the bedding. But for
others, the fire of the revival burned through the hot, long, August
Sabbath day, and a devout congregation crowded the Temple.

The impulse of the week past held over to the night unabated. The
spacious log-built house was packed from wall to wall; the men stood
dense; the seats were filled with women; only a narrow path was left below
the pulpit for those who might wish to rise and confess Christ before the
congregation. The people waited in a silence broken by their deep
breathing, their devout whispering, the scraping of their feet; now and
then a babe, whose mother could not leave it at home, wailed pitifully or
spitefully till it was coaxed or scolded still; now and then some one
coughed. The air was thick; a bat scandalized the assemblage by flying in
at the open door, and wavering round the tallow candles on the pulpit; one
of the men beat it down with his hat, and then picked it up and crowded
his way down the aisle, out into the night with it. When he came back it
was as if he had found the stranger whom they were all consciously
expecting, and had brought him in with David Gillespie and his girl. She
was tall and straight, like her father, and her hair was red, like his;
her eyes were gray blue, and the look in them was both wilful and dreamy.

The stranger smiled and took the hands stretched out to him in passing by